Srajan,
I noted in your preview of the SV-Audio Gro that most Danish speaker designers eschew large drivers, preferring to double up with smaller ones where necessary. That approach also seems to fit Laurence Dickie, the designer behind Vivid Audio and formerly of B&W where he designed the Nautilus. I could be wrong but I believe Dickie stated that drivers should never exceed the size of an average human head. Dickie has a clear design philosophy: keep drivers relatively compact but push them to extremely low distortion and high output with advanced engineering (tapered tubes, composite enclosures, pistonic drivers). Vivid’s woofers, even in large floorstanders like the Giya G1 Spirit or B1 Decade which I own, are usually 6.5" to 7" but arranged in multiple driver arrays or force-cancelling pairs. To emphasize this approach, the eight bass drivers in Vivid’s flagship speaker Moya (M1) are each about 9" in diameter. In sum, Dickie is vocal about preferring multiple smaller well-controlled woofers to a single large cone, arguing it gives better speed, integration and lower distortion. Maybe he’s Danish at heart? Michael
I'm not an engineer but common sense says that larger membranes should be more prone to flexing (deformation) and exhibit higher moving mass which could impact stoppages. I wager a guess that lower moving mass and more pistonic behaviour are why certain brands stick to smaller diaphragms then multiple drivers to reach the necessary cone surface for the desired displacement headroom. Srajan
