Technical Information
Sound and the production of it is a pretty complicated subject so over the coming months we intend to explain the following subjects in the hope of creating a world of better informed and thus better sounding and better playing bassists! If you're wondering about anything amplification or tone related then send us a question and it may inspire yet another (hopefully) useful article.
- Barefaced Technical Specs
- Stage or floor coupling
- Understanding room acoustics
- Understanding power handling
- Understanding sound dispersion
- Loudspeaker non-linearity
- Cone size vs frequency response
- What exactly is punch?
- Volume displacement, i.e. moving air
- What is bottom?
- Mythbusters #1 - amplifiers
- How to interpret our specs
High hopes maybe but no point aiming for mediocrity...
Sound Files
(right click and select 'save as' to copy to your computer)
For breaking-in new woofers:
When a high performance pro-audio woofer is fresh out of the box its suspension is very stiff. This means that the woofer is over-damped in the low frequencies compared to its design parameters, resulting in thinner bass response and lower efficiency. It also means that the woofer is under-damped in the mid and high frequencies, resulting in worse control of the higher frequency break-up modes and thus a harsher sound. During the first few hours of high SPL use the suspension loosens up and settles into its long-term design parameters.
The simplest way to break in your woofers in is to play bass through it - the louder the gig or rehearsal, the quicker the woofers will loosen up. But if you're impatient then you can follow the instructions with the sine wave below...
Unlike a brand new car you do not need to baby the loudspeaker whilst it's still 'running in' and in fact the louder you play it, the quicker it'll loosen up (but don't be silly, modern amps are powerful!) Play a few loud gigs or rehearsals and your cab will reach its destination tone and performance. Alternatively, play the 25Hz sine wave above through your rig, with the volume turned up so that the air movement from the port feels like a desk fan on low, not like a hair dryer on high. If you have a steel grill cab you'll see the woofer(s) moving about 1/2". Leave it like that for as long as you can bear the rumble - three hours will get you a good distance along the break-in curve, which is reversal exponential, so the first five minutes make as much difference as the last fifty minutes.
Full Pink Noise for reference:
If you suspect your cab is suffering after an intense gig, you can use this pink noise sample at very low volume to check the woofer(s) and/or mid and/or tweeter is working. If you play this sample at high SPL you risk blowing the mid and/or high frequency components as its power distribution is unnaturally hard on tweeters and suchlike. Please email us for assistance if you're needing to play this sample, we want to help!