"I already tested Dayton's 18" woofers. They require active drive of at least 1KW which delayed me for a long time because I want my project to be passive. I've not heard those flower-quad woofer arrays [below] but the red frames multiple times at Munich. Last year they showed a far bigger version. Still no bass. I already tried nude woofers. For me they just don't work. I know that for many their kick-drum rendering is good enough. I understand and can enjoy specific music with it. But I expect more. Having no baffle won't ever work for me. Physics are heartless. Without baffle, a high-stroke 15" woofer starts its 6dB roll-off at already ~600Hz. That means it's down ~25dB/30Hz. I'd need eight per side just to compensate. Series-connected drivers never work well so now quad amping and high excursions enter the picture or there's no real bass. There is real bass to be had from Dayton's 18-inchers but only with 1'200-watt ICEpower on each and two per side; only for reasonable SPL. I tried it all. There's either a huge utility bill and complex design; or some kind of folded baffle. Kyron's Gaia [left] still needs their own active sub to achieve reference performance. Now what's the point of six nude woofers per channel?"
I excerpted this from an ongoing conversation I'm having with a clever designer about their new speaker project. The mention of ultra-power class D on mega woofers to overcome openly baffled premature ejection from the bassment had me revisit my hifi closet. Lo and behold, there sat two silvery Nord Acoustic Ncore-500 based monos with discrete opamps as class A input buffers. I looked up their specs. 700 watts into 4Ω. Yousa. The Gold Note PA-10 Evo Pascal-based monos I had on my own folded open-baffle sound|kaos sub with twin 15-inchers only did 280 watts. Yelp. Even my math-challenged brain could see that my tank was half empty.
Preceded by my new SPL Audio Crossover Mk2, I did a set of 4-stage auditions using two different subwoofer cables. One drove both woofers in mono so summed, the other in stereo off separate amps. Two scenarios, two sets of mono amps, two attentive ears. It didn't take long for that math to see that the far higher power of two Hypex amps driven balanced to control two big woofers in stereo consigned the 'power corrupts' credo to the bin. Politically it seems absolutely true. Ditto for full-range signal where it can eventually overdo control at the expense of elasticity. But for just bass particularly of the large-woofer dipole sort? Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely. It constructs a far more solid and defined foundation.
Of course that's old news to most but for me, the actual juxtaposition of it was still a surprise. Now I run my passive RiPol sub on 1'400 watts plus a 5dB/20Hz bass shelf set in Audirvana Studio's digital PEQ. In holy cannoli fashion, this made an offer I just couldn't refuse. I (cough!) do value my life…
