Bill Fitzmaurice

30 years in my unheated workshop hasn't bothered the stereo rig I have there. But it doesn't go from cold to warm in short order.

3 hours ago, naxos10 said:

When I first had abass many decades ago I was always told that the bass should be felt and not heard.

 

Who told you that? Let me guess: a guitar player. 🙄

There's a common trait among the bass players who have the highest reputation, be it Jamerson, Sir Paul, The Ox, Bogert, Geddy, Stanley, Sting or whomever: they're heard.

The problem lies when you take it from the cold into the warm and that results in condensation inside. That can cause component failure. If what you call cold is still above freezing it probably won't matter. What I call cold is well below freezing and I don't leave gear where that occurs. That said I'm headed out for my daily walk, where it's a balmy -7C.

1 hour ago, BassmanPaul said:

Running your power amp in bridge releases a vast amount of power which will, in the end, toast your speaker cabinets.

Quite right. I ended up posting this in the FAQs on my forum in response to users toasting their drivers:

When should I bridge?

The answer is almost never. Forget about the silly power ratings that manufacturers post for bridged output, that's just advertising piffle aimed at the unwashed masses. Bridging isn't about power, it's about voltage swing. You use it when your amp doesn't have enough voltage swing to drive the speaker to its displacement limit. Nine times out of ten that's because the speaker has a high impedance, say 16 ohms. The tenth time is when your amp is rated at less than a quarter the power output that your speaker is.
If you do bridge when you don't need to the doubled voltage swing quadruples your chances of blowing drivers. Bridging into multiple cabs also can cause the amp to overheat, as bridging typically doubles the minimum load impedance, while using multiple cabs lowers the load impedance.

Way too much talk about watts here. I suspect 'I want to get all the watts out of my amp' is why the OP is bridging into a parallel load. Don't do that. Even if the cabs were identical that wouldn't be the best idea, and since they're not each should be driven with their own amp channel. As for the level matching, if the Sans amp is made to feed a bass amp or PA console it probably lacks the necessary voltage swing to drive a power amp to full output.

4 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

If you tempered it with a Fletcher-Munson loudness curve it would be amost equal between bassy bass and vox? That's how I hear reggae anyway.

Pretty much. At that level it takes roughly 10dB higher at 60Hz to be perceived as being the same volume as the midrange. But it still sounds subjectively bass heavy because there's not much in the natural environment with that frequency tilt. Maybe a stampeding herd of elephants. On that subject, there is a theory why most men like loud low frequency sounds and most women don't. When our distant female ancestors heard loud low frequencies it very well may have been a stampeding herd, so their natural instinct would have been to go further back into their cave or climb higher up a tree to avoid the potential danger. Their men folk would have gone towards the sound, with spears at the ready to hunt that evening's dinner.

It takes about a month to fully kick in, and then you take it indefinitely. 2000mg a day to start, then after 30 days 1000mg a day for maintenance. I weigh around 100 kg, so if you're much smaller you might get away with less. It's not an analgesic, so you don't take it when you have pain and then stop. It's more like a daily vitamin that lessens the potential for pain to occur in the first place, and makes it far less severe if it does.

Drink the gin, bag the raisins. I've had back trouble for 35 years. Once it got to the point that only Vicodin gave me relief I finally did the research and found out about turmeric. It has been a life changer for me. This is what I take, not that you'd order it from the UK, but for comparison purposes: https://www.puritan.com/puritans-pride-brand-0102/tumeric-curcumin-450-mg-015419

Pelvic tilt is a symptom, not a cause. When my lower back gets inflamed I tilt, and it has nothing to do with carrying an uneven load, which I never do. It happens because when my lower back becomes inflamed it does so more on my left side than my right. That makes me lean to the right, because it hurts too much to stay straight.

I've been to chiropractors, they were all quacks. None had any answer for my arthritis sourced lower back pain that regularly delivered me with crippling bouts of sciatica. Through my own research I found an effective treatment, turmeric capsules. I take two 500mg a day, every day. It's a low dose anti-inflammatory that builds up in your body to control inflammation. Thanks to it pain that used to last a week a more is now gone in a day or two, and I haven't had sciatica in seven years. It's effectiveness is increased when combined with black pepper, and you can buy capsules that contain both. I don't bother with that, as I consume black pepper with pretty much every meal.

The supporting evidence can be seen in Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. They get arthritis at the same rate as everyone else, but don't suffer pain from it nearly as much. That's because they practically live on curry, which is mainly turmeric and black pepper. They also have some of the lowest death rates from Covid, because the main cause of Covid deaths is inflammation that blocks the airways.

This is an RTA of The Wailers, taken at the FOH. The spacing between the horizontal lines is 10dB. The bass drops off below 60Hz, while the content from 160Hz and up is mainly the other instruments. The vocals dominate at 1.6k-6.3k, so clearly the bass is a lot louder than the vocals.

19 hours ago, Count Bassie said:

I think a sub is overkill. It fills the stage with super-low, mostly in-usable freqs,

True. While it seems to have a lot of low frequency content reggae bass isn't all that low, it's just loud. Most content is between 60 and 90 Hz. If it went much lower the Fridge wouldn't be the benchmark reggae bass cab.

Time was that bass cabs didn't go as low and loud as PA subs, but that's no longer the case. Cabs loaded with long throw high displacement woofers are just as capable. The trick is finding out which cabs are so equipped, as very few provide said information. Barefaced is one that does.

FWIW a high energy rock concert will measure 105 to 115dBC at 30 meters from the stage. Interestingly metal tends to measure no higher than other genres, because their guitar tones are highly compressed.

There's nothing wrong with mixing speaker sizes, if it's properly implemented, with separate driver chambers, drivers optimized for different pass bands and a crossover. That's SOP with PA cabs, with bass cabs not so much.

Quote

We had a decibel meter at rehearsal last night and we topped out at around 100dB.

That's not loud at all, so I suspect you used an 'A' weighted meter, which doesn't measure low frequencies. A 'C' weighted meter is required to measure the full spectrum.

1 hour ago, Shiveringbass said:

Rear ported cabs are often seen as a bit more difficult to place on stage

'Seen' is the operative word. The back of the cab would have to be tight to the wall for there to be any audible effect, and that effect would be reduced low frequency output, not enhanced. However, if one sees the port is on the rear and thinks as a result that it will make a difference confirmation bias kicks in, and as a result it will be heard. 🙄

Port radiation is 360 degrees, so it doesn't matter which direction it's aiming. As for tone clarity, that's sourced in the mids and highs. Ports don't radiate mids and highs.

2 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

 What waste reason for the design?

An isobaric configuration reduces the cabinet size required to realize a desired low frequency response. For those of you who know what T/S specs are the Vas is halved compared to one driver, and therefore so is the cabinet volume exclusive of the space taken up by the second driver. The downside is that the cone displacement exposed to the air, T/S spec Vd, is the same for the two drivers as it is for one, so maximum output is the same as with one driver, albeit from a smaller cab. Isobarics were somewhat logical decades ago, when Vas values of 600 liters weren't unusual, making cabs capable of going low really huge. Since the drivers used in the Orange have a Vas around 150 liters the size advantage gained isn't that much, and as you've found it doesn't go nearly as loud as a standard 212, by 6dB to be precise.

On 22/01/2022 at 06:56, mybass said:

Speaker design and tech has probably moved forward in some areas quite a bit.

Not all that much in the last 15 years. The last significant tech change was to neo magnets, which allowed improvements in excursion without sacrificing sensitivity, and as a result higher output than previously possible. Most of the major alterations that neo allowed came circa 2004-2008. There have been further refinements since then, but nothing earth shaking or trouser flapping. 

The BF displacement is 250cc. Markbass? Who knows? Where bass output is concerned it's just like horsepower from an engine, there's no replacement for displacement.

There are tens that can handle a lot more, but to do that they sacrifice midrange response, so they're typically used in subwoofers or designs with separate midrange drivers. On the flip side guitar tens that will go into high distortion with only ten watts are common.

5 hours ago, Tdw said:

Thanks, I thought that might be the case. I don't suppose you've any idea about x max for the barefaced and the te 10 inch drivers?

The BF ten has 250cc of displacement, indicating around 7.5mm xmax, which is very respectable. I don't see it handling less than 225w. The TE driver is an unknown commodity. It supposedly uses an Eminence Neo Ten, but they make at least four different varieties, and that doesn't count OEM variants.

They're just examples of how far apart drivers can be in their mechanical capability, which is defined by xmax. By no means are these differences rare. One of the most ubiquitous drivers is the Eminence Beta 10, and OEM versions of it. Orange uses it in their OBC 410. It reaches xmax at 40w at 80Hz, where the output demand for electric bass is at its highest.

3 hours ago, acidbass said:

Maybe from a scientific perspective it isn't 'correct' but to me what's correct is what sounds good

When you have one driver that can only take 50 watts before reaching its mechanical limit and another that can take 500 watts before reaching its mechanical limit you don't need a scientific background to see that it's a bad pairing. It's not about being correct, it's about being logical.

Don't mix different cabs. If they're not identical, most especially if the drivers aren't identical, you're creating a weak link in the chain scenario.

31 minutes ago, jay42 said:

 in my mind if I went for 4 Ohm cabinets I could utilise full power from the amp

Divest that notion. It's the rare cab that can make use of more than half its rated thermal input power before running out of the mechanical ability to use it, so the oft mentioned quest of 'getting all the watts out of my amp' is right up there with the search for the Holy Grail or an honest politician of things not worth the effort.