1. Home
  2. speakers
  3. 153969-20253

There's a lot more bass in a 6.5" driver than most of you think

One topic of discussion I often see new audiophiles touch on is whether to get larger speakers for more bass.

I usually suggest they tune the room first, then re-evaluate. This is based on listening and measurement in several apartments I’ve lived in. Bigger speakers can be nothing but trouble if the room is not ready.


In particular, I often claim that the right room treatment can make smaller speakers behave much larger. So, to back up my claims I’d like to submit to you my recent blog post here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html


Look at the bass response from those little drivers! :)


I admit for a lot of listeners these speakers won’t seem as punchy as you might like, but for an apartment dweller who does 50/50 music and theater they are ideal for me. If you’d like punchy, talk to Fritz who aligns his drivers with more oomf in the bass.


erik_squires
murphythecat
181 posts
 
ive compared hundreds of speakers at this point, ive never heard any 6 inch 2 way sounds anything but a toy vs a pair of real Tannoy, JBL, or whatever big speaker. so you either drive a lawnmower or a ferrari, your choice

treating the room instead of trying to compensate the bad room with a limited speaker is the path to long term satisfaction ime

someone mentionned the alpair 12p, I loved my pair when i had them. but to say it has tremendous bass just goes to show how relative this hobby is. jbl l300 has tremendous bass, not alpair 12p 
4krowme's avatar
4krowme
542 posts
 
The Alpair 12P would likely fail in bass response given a conventional cabinet, i.e. ported, bass reflex, sealed box. I was actually expecting that sort of performance from them regardless of the fact that they were being mounted in a folded horn. If I had no experience with folded horns in the past, I would come to the same conclusion as you. FWIW, I owned a pair of JBL 4343, you know, the ones with 15" woofers? Never could get decent bass performance from them. Owned them in 3 separate houses, with different amplification too. Yah, I wouldn't have believed it either.
erik_squires OP
17,612 posts
 
treating the room instead of trying to compensate the bad room with a limited speaker is the path to long term satisfaction ime

I agree.

noble100's avatar
noble100
2,419 posts
 
      " treating the room instead of trying to compensate the bad room with a limited speaker is the path to long term satisfaction ime"

   I believe the same and it makes a lot of sense to me.  I hope we're all correct, since I just spent about $3,500 in GIK acoustic room treatments which should arrive and be installed in about 2-3 weeks.

I'll let you know,
       Tim
dgarretson
2,634 posts
 
I’ve been a long-time fan of Merlin VSM two ways. The VSM employs a 6.5" Scanspeak 8545 in combination with a line-level equalizer that boosts LF output by 5db, providing useful output into the low 30s. I’m following @theaudiotweak with an order for early-production Purifi 6.5" to try in the VSM cabinet as an alternative to Scanspeak. Early reviews of the Purifi suggest that this driver is capable of lower LF distortion and better dynamics than any 6.5" to date. Its sensitivity, frequency response curve, and dimensions are not too far off the 8545 to be a "drop in."
More to discover