How do small woofers produce large bass?


Hi All,

I am looking at loudspeakers... I currently own the Arendal 1723 THX Monitors. 2 8" woofers each. I listen to probably 80% home theater and 20% pure two-channel music of all sorts. I am contemplating upgrading the speakers, and there are a number that I am very interested in. The Arendals are killer for music and home theater. In fact crazy amazing at home theater. I have also 2 SVS SB-3000 subs. 

But as we all know, wanting to upgrade. blah blah ad nauseum.  :) 
 And most everything I’m looking at has 6.5" bass drivers, usually 2 per speaker. I am looking at the Acoustic Energy Corinium, the KEF R11 Meta, the Dali Opticon 8 MKII, and the PSB T600.

I have a fear that the bass will be plenty for two-channel music, but won’t have that bad-ass slam of the Arendal’s dual 8" drivers. So my question is sort of a scientific one or a physics one. I am baffled as to how the 6.5" drivers in all of these new speakers are going to produce home theater sized bass. I’ve watched every video, read every article about those 4 contenders (above) - and everything/everybody says essentially "no worries, the woofers are lighter and faster, and since there are two of them, they make a great deal of bass. I just think I’m not seeing the "science" or "physics" of that. Like how are these 6.5" drivers going to handle something incredibly powerful/dynamic (bomb blasts/gun shots/thunder/explosions etc etc???  I’m afraid I’ll be let down by something like the PSB T600’s or the KEF R11 Metas when head to head with the dual 8" drivers in my Arendals. I’m hoping people can assure me and/or run through the science....  thanks to all.    Oh, and yes, I do cross over to my two subs at 60Hz.   

audiotruth

Since you like your Arendals have you looked at the 1528 bookshelf or monitor 8?  They are monsters and even bigger than the 1723s.  I have the 1723 towers and I agree they are great for music and HT too.  With their buy, try and return for free if need be policy as you know you have nothing to lose except time and space.  

I have a pair of stand mounts with a 6.5" woofer in an acoustic suspension design.  They don't go very low but the bass is impressive.   The quantity and quality is amazing given their size.They like a lot more power than the speaker they replaced.    

With the info gathered from the OP, we can’t give him good advice until we know the room dimensions/size. If it’s a 10x10’ room, go with small woofers, if it’s a 20x13’ go bigger. Also, the OP wants 2 different outputs from 1 set of speakers, high output with a lot of bass for HT, but then real clean bass for music. Very hard to do. I am for separating the 2 environments to 2 different rooms with different systems.

I prefer the cleaner bass of smaller woofers (a few per speaker) instead of 1 larger woofers and get a real good sub that is tuned that you can’t tell that’s even on. 
 

Not sure about your subs, but with REL subs, you can hook up both a LFE connection and a high level connection off the amp. You can configure both inputs differently so you can still get slam from HT but clean bass for music