Why not acoustic suspension?
When I was young, late 60's early 70's, the sealed or acoustic suspension speakers were quite commonplace. Now bass reflex, ported speakers seem to be much more common. My understanding is that both speaker designs, assuming competent design will perform very well. Perhaps with the ported getting a slightly lower bass response and higher efficiency gives it the edge. Thinking efficiency though, amplifier watts don't cost that much more today so it doesn't seem like a deal maker. What I don't understand from a pragmatic corporate standpoint is why more acoustic suspension speakers aren't available. My understanding is that the sealed speaker box can be smaller which would be a plus from a cost standpoint, both in less material, lighter cabinet and more speakers could be shipped in a truck reducing shipping cost. Any thoughts as to why the industry has shifted so hard in the bass reflex direction?
I have completely forgotten the name of the speakers I had as a kid. They used passive radiators in the back, so they were in-between i suppose.
But one day I removed the passive radiators, and sealed the holes shut with some round, wooden disc's i found at the local hardware store, and in my opinion, they performed so much better. I could crank them so much harder without the woofers getting too wild. The bass was tight as you would expect from a sealed box. |
Passive radiators are a port substitute and basically give the same response as a ported speaker. There is no in between. If there is any in between perhaps it is a heavily stuffed port(variovent) which has no acoustic output but it ends up 12 dB like a closed box but it has tighter bass than an equivalent sized closed box. However an acoustic suspension woofer won't work in it. Yogiboy did a pretty good explanation of acoustic suspension. My main minor gripe is where he says closed box roll off can vary. It ultimately becomes 12 dB per octave like all closed boxes of which acoustic suspension is as said a variation. |
I appreciate my new found understanding of acoustic suspension vs closed box speaker--thank you all for that. Can anyone name modern acoustic suspension, true acoustic suspension speakers made today? I think KLH came out with one in the last several years, also Magico was mentioned by dynamiclinearity. Others? |
Modern’ish (vs. stuff from the 1970’s), but no longer manufactured - Aerial Acoustics LR5 (link). |
thanks for the clarifications, so only my AR-2ax are acoustic suspension, all the others are simply sealed boxes. my 15W woofers are the 1st column in this spec sheet from Electro-Voice. The last two columns, 15WK and 15BWK were the drivers used by Klipsch originally. file:///C:/Users/elliott/Downloads/15W,%2015BW,%2015WK,%2015BWK%20EDS.pdf
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