I’m sure there’s a potential to design speakers according to the marketing department’s request. But can we reverse engineering down to the T/S parameter selection of the drive units? For example, assume they request for the closed enclosure bass loading with F3 at 30Hz and Fb (box resonance) at 35Hz. Is it too complicated to find the woofers that could meet that requirement? If not, could anyone advise for the above example, what should the T/S parameters of these woofers look like? Or what information will be additionally required?
Marketing team more likely asks the speaker must be max 15cm wide no more than 10litres in volume, golden binding posts and fancy name, 150db output and 95db sensitivity and at least hundred Watts, because Watts are important, like Ohms. With maximum production cost worth two hour salary of storage room employee including surface finish, no more. As you say it can't be done, you make anything that fits the budget to keep your job and the marketing department writes the datasheet in colorful language and bent numbers so they can check all the requirements fullfilled. And onto next project, to make mo money for the stock holders. Qts and Fs and Fb and other abbreviations are likely least important things, except perhaps xmax, and Watts, gotta have more Watts since it's better then.
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I find it difficult to believe that marketing would even know what a bass alignment or box resonance would mean. However. If marketing came to you and said we need a closed box speaker that will have an F3 of 30Hz then yes you could design the ts parameters of a driver to fit that.
However, first and foremost, I would imagine they'd know how big they wanted the speaker to be. So now you'd have the size and the extension they want. No problem. But if they want deep bass in a small box it's going to have low sensitivity. Or it'll be active with a limit on max spl in the bass.
If they really want small loud and deep then it's going to require active. A very powerful amplifier and a very robust driver with loads of Xmax and power handling. In other words expensive. This isn't usually what marketing want to hear.
However, first and foremost, I would imagine they'd know how big they wanted the speaker to be. So now you'd have the size and the extension they want. No problem. But if they want deep bass in a small box it's going to have low sensitivity. Or it'll be active with a limit on max spl in the bass.
If they really want small loud and deep then it's going to require active. A very powerful amplifier and a very robust driver with loads of Xmax and power handling. In other words expensive. This isn't usually what marketing want to hear.
I'm with 5th, however, I'd change your question a little. If you ask, is it possible to tightly integrate marketing and engineering, then absolutely.
Two organizations that historically have done exceedingly well in this is Harman and Bose. They don't attempt to match T/S parameters to sales however, but they do a fantastic job at matching the desirability of audible characteristics and usability features to product design. I don't want to get into a pro/anti bose debate here, but no one can argue their financial results. They have consistently created high value and high profit margin products and it can't all be attributed to advertising. They do a great deal of work of quantifying desirability of a sound's features to the money a consumer would shell out for it. They are the audio version of Dyson. Of course, they don't just match sound quality but form factor and ease of use, connectivity, etc.
Two organizations that historically have done exceedingly well in this is Harman and Bose. They don't attempt to match T/S parameters to sales however, but they do a fantastic job at matching the desirability of audible characteristics and usability features to product design. I don't want to get into a pro/anti bose debate here, but no one can argue their financial results. They have consistently created high value and high profit margin products and it can't all be attributed to advertising. They do a great deal of work of quantifying desirability of a sound's features to the money a consumer would shell out for it. They are the audio version of Dyson. Of course, they don't just match sound quality but form factor and ease of use, connectivity, etc.
If you're willing to settle for an F3 and Fb each in the 30-35 Hz range and a large box is OK, here's one:
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-10-woofers/scanspeak-classic-25w/8565-00-10-woofer/
Getting precisely the values you asked for is not easy in an off-the-shelf driver, but I'm also not sure why those precise values would be significant. Anything plus/minus a few Hz is likely to sound the same.
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-10-woofers/scanspeak-classic-25w/8565-00-10-woofer/
Getting precisely the values you asked for is not easy in an off-the-shelf driver, but I'm also not sure why those precise values would be significant. Anything plus/minus a few Hz is likely to sound the same.
Going even bigger, this one comes remarkably close to your 2 requested specifications in 400 liters 🙂
https://www.parts-express.com/GRS-R...5-Realistic-Mach-One-8-Ohm-290-184?quantity=1
https://www.parts-express.com/GRS-R...5-Realistic-Mach-One-8-Ohm-290-184?quantity=1
It's easy to make fun of marketing, but marketing and product development are two different groups, ideally. The product development teams can be great or they can be terrible. Lack of diversity of thought, fear of standing out from the crowd, and excessive control over a market space can all lead you down bad roads.
Lots of responses, but no answer yet. I am also too lazy to produce the answer, but you can figure it out. Find a speaker design book. It will have equations for calculating the Qtc and F3 for a sealed box from the box volume and the TS parameters. You can do a bit of algebra to reverse those equations or iterate to solve for TS parameters given the desired F3. I created a spreadsheet that you can copy and use to evaluate existing woofers. I found the Scanspeak Discovery 12" woofer to be one of a very few woofers to produce a low F3 in a sealed box. I was interested in finding woofers that produced the most displacement for the smallest box volume. Modern designs use equalization (Linkwitz transform AKA asymetric 2nd order shelf filter) to get the desired Qbox and F3 in a sealed box. The bass output is always constrained by the Xmax and woofer power handling. Use WinISD to explore the SPL max. Constraining your design to no use bass equalization leads to huge boxes for no good reason. It's not 1965. Here's a link to the spreadsheet. The columns with blue shading at the top are inputs. You enter the Box Q and TS parameters. The sheet calculates the box volume and F3 dB frequency (column L)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18BXQP-WSRRbQHTR_mXJ0OVdyYF8tixPRP3dvkLzf5m0/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18BXQP-WSRRbQHTR_mXJ0OVdyYF8tixPRP3dvkLzf5m0/edit?usp=sharing