Phil Starr

Having a back up amp is a great idea for any performing bassist though youcan always go through the PA so taking along a Sansamp or something similar would get you out of a hole. It makes sense for a backup amp to be cheap and light so look for one of the newer switch mode amps like the Promethean. There are cheap clones/rebadged versions of this in europe so look for similar in the States. Behringer is built to a budget, so less attention to detail and cheaper components but good design and value. Their PA amps are well respected though and seem fairly robust, I have two, never a problem. The amp part of the heads will be the same so as long as you don't get the last one made on a Fri I wouldn't worry. If I wanted just a backup amp for less than $200 I'd probably buy a used Peavey. Do the job and bomb proof.

[quote name='aende' timestamp='1358415163' post='1938603'] Interesting - I looked at the eminence beta too. I spoke to blue aran and they recommended a p audio driver..... This may be a suck it and see..... [/quote] Ultimately it always is, the problem with DIY is you can't try before you buy, but the more you understand the better chance you have of being happy with the result. [quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1358431907' post='1939002'] You're not considering the most important charts, maximum power and maximum SPL. [/quote] Well that's kind of true but if it sounds s**t then being loud and s**t won't help any more than sounding great at one watt but exceeding xmax at anything like stage volume. [quote name='aende' timestamp='1358436333' post='1939108'] This is true - My budget is tight due to an ongoing job/house move - However, I did read this: [url="http://billfitzmaurice.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2357"]http://billfitzmauri...php?f=12&t=2357[/url] on your website Bill. Are Eminence Alpha 10's really a close match to the driver in the Ampeg SVT210HE cab? I am using the SVT210HE at the moment borrowed from my father-in-law. However, my 'new' cabs are similar in size a volume - peavey tx cabs unloaded tuned for 40hz with crossover and horn at 3500hz - 80 liters or 3 cu ft volume - ported at the rear. I have opted for the Eminence Beta as I prefer some low end. However, I am wondering if I could have used the Alpha...... [/quote] So have you ordered the Beta's? I was going to put the drivers into winisd for you but if you've ordered it is too late.

[quote name='aende' timestamp='1358355521' post='1937689'] Thanks Phil - I agree with you. I think I will run up one cab now and see how it goes. My thoughts are more towards the Eminence Delta's mentioned - they seem to be a bit more punchy. [/quote] If you compare the Delta 10A with the Beyma you are going to hear quite a difference. The Delta's have a huge cone resonance which gives a big peak in frequency response centred on 2.7 kHz. and a roll off at 3.7. This upper mid peak is going to dominate the sound and may well come across as punchy. There's a huge magnet for a speaker this size and that gives good control of the cone. On the minus side the cone is quite light (probably why it is peaking in the upper mids ) and the resonance is high for a bass speaker at 66Hz which is about bottom C so little fundamental for anything lower than C. The big magnet will roll off low frequencies too. Again this will give a lighter faster sound to the speaker. Having said that we don't really hear the fundamentals that well and really deep bass can result in a boomy sound in a lot of venues. If you compare this with the Beyma the heavier cone damps the resonance better and the mid range peak is smaller (5dB v's 8) more importantly the bass resonance is lowered to 43Hz, more or less bottom E. This speaker is going to have a modern sound with good control of deep bass, which is actually going to be there. The SM110 also gives more treble output. The biggest difference is in Xmax and Xlim, basically how far the cone can move before distorting and then damaging the speaker. Sadly they use differnt ways of expressing this with Beyma more conservative. I reckon the Beyma would measure about 6.5mm for Xmax compared to the Delta's 3.5mm meaning the Beyma will move twice as much before distorting. I haven't modelled these speakers but I think the Beyma will handle more power than the Eminences despite the thermal rating. The Beyma also has the plus of a cast chassis. There isn't a right choice here though, you just need to decide on what sound you want. The Delta has the sort of response you'd get from a guitar speaker at the top and less deep bass but could well give the sort of 'in your face' sound you want. the Beyma will be better behaved, if my 112's which have similar properties are anything to go by they are subtle and revealing. More Jazz bass than Ricky. Oh be prepare to wait for the Beymas though, they're Spanish and will have to be ordered by Blue Aran.

The problem with the driver you suggest is that it is very low sensitivity, only the same as a hi fi speaker so you'll need a lot of power to get the volume on stage. If you want to keep the costs down then these http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=FANSOV10-125&browsemode=category will be louder as a 2x10 than both of your cabs loaded with these cheap speakers. The Fanes do sound good as bass speakers too. You'll spend about £100 on four of these cheapies, Spend £50 each on two better 10's and you'll end up with a better sounding and louder cab for the same price and you'll only have to carry one cab. If you love it and want even more volume then you can go for a second cab when you can afford it. For £50 you can get these. I use the 12" versions and they are fab sounding. http://profesional.beyma.com/pdf/SM-110%20NE.pdf there's also the eminence Deltas and for a little more the basslites to consider.

Oh, I was looking for some monitors on ebay this morning and there are loads of bins on there of all qualities. This is a good time to buy, people are skint after Christmas and the bidding is often quite weak

Punctured? if there is just a small hole in the cone you can repair it by pushing as much of the fibres back into place then layer up a small patch on both sides using Copydex (a latex adhesive) and tissue paper. It won't be as good as new but it does work and lasts indefinitely as a fix. Alternatively this might do the job http://www.faneinternational.com/downloads/FANE_Studio_5FRK_Specs.pdf

First the actual answer to your question is that you will be approximately 2dB louder with the extra 100w, 1dB you will just hear and 2 you will notice but not by much, a bit like just tweeking the telly a little. Generally at any given price point I's go for a 2x10. They are likely to be in a smaller lighter box and two speakers are going to be be lighter than 4 in most cases. If the overall price is the same the two speakers for the price of four are going to be better quality, again most of the time. Knowing the techie stuff helps you home in on what to look at but the most important thing is to try them out and choose the one that sounds best. 200W through a high efficiency 2x10 should be louder than the drummer

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1356785858' post='1913560'] So why does anyone have anything more than 100watts? Why do barefaced cabs get a reputation for being power hungry etc? [/quote] Amplifying electric guitar or bass is a matter of design philosophies and compromises. If you are amplifying double bass or an acoustic guitar then you are usually trying to get a 'natural' sound but there's nothing natural about amplified electric bass. All speaker design is a matter of compromise. For example you can have a speaker that goes deep, you can have a speaker that is efficient and you can have a speaker that goes loud but you can't have all three because they place different demands upon the voice coils, magnets and cones. I'll explain: To make a cabinet go deep you need to add weight to the cone and put in a long voice coil to get the extra movement. A heavy cone is harder to accelerate so the speaker is less efficient. The longer voice coil means most of it will be outside of the magnet gap and you lose more efficiency. To make a speaker more efficient you can make sure all the voice coil sits inside the magnet gap so all the electrical input is used, but as soon as you put a signal in it moves out of the gap and the speaker starts to compress and distort. the deeper the bass the more air you need to move so if you want to get efficiency this way you have to limit the bass response and the power you feed to the speaker. To get the cab to be loud enough you're going to use a lot of speakers or put up with bass being limited. The one positive thing you can do is to increase the size of the magnet, There's a limit to this though, partly because the cost gets to be extraordinary and also the weight becomes significant, Eventually you also have problems with saturation of the pole pieces and so it goes on. The advent of neodymium magnets has given us a bit more wriggle room and new opportunities but at significant cost. Designers like Barefaced have grasped the opportunities of new materials and cheap amplifier power. By using long throw speakers they can get more sound out of single drivers and they can get deeper bass without compression or exceeding the limits of speaker movement but the 'cost' is very good drivers, which are expensive, and long coils which are by their nature less efficient, This isn't a problem in a world where you can buy lots of watts for relatively little outlay. The big plus is a versatile sound and light weight. You could take a completely different design philosophy though. Since the whole sound of electric bass is artificial anyway then go for the distortion, embrace the 'natural sound' of 'under-powered' valve amps driven hard and the 'louder' sound of a short voice coil in a speaker with prominent peaks in the bass and mid-range. Valve amps are pricey so you are stuck with low watts or an overdraft but you can spend on extra speakers to give you more sound for your watts. You'll lose deep bass and your top end will be restricted by the problems of multiple drivers but you'll have the classic sound of rock and incidentally the look which 'modern' designs probably still don't quite achieve. These design philosophies are only two of the options though. BFM designs for example use horns to raise efficiency, which imposes a different set of compromises and there are other conventional designs which just set the compromises in different parts of the spectrum.

Oh s**t after my last post I had better get on with explaining why I think there is nothing in the science to stop you mixing speakers in a stack and why anyone who gives that advice may be well meaning but is fundamentally wrong. Firstly there are lots of advantages in using a single driver and keeping it small when it comes to the dispersal pattern of the speaker. If you use multiple drivers of any size better to arrange them vertically if you can. I've explained why above or use the link to barefaced http://barefacedbass.com/uploads/BGM62%20Jan2011.pdf This all assumes the single driver has the sound you want and is loud enough. Using more of the same drivers won't just give you more but louder as some people are saying, There will be cancellation of higher frequencies and the tonal balance will change, by the time this has bounced off the floors, ceilings and walls the audience will hear the difference. However if you want more but louder there probably isn't a better way of getting it. So, why do I think it is OK to mix drivers and to use multiple drivers, Well first of all lots of famous songs and bands have used 8x10's and 4x10's with 15's and had a great sound. We're not talking about hi-fi speakers and most of what we think of as the sound of a guitar amp or speaker is about inaccuracy in the sound. mixing drivers causes distortion but we don't say "it is always wrong to use distortion on your bass". All cabs distort the sound and whether that distortion is acceptable to you or not is a matter of taste not science. So what distortions are introduced when you mix drivers in your stack? If you get time look at the link above, there are three frequency plots for different speakers. The most important bit of the plots in determining the sound of the speaker are the bits between 500 and 5000Hz roughly, because that is where our ears are most sensitive to changes in sound. If you look at the first speaker it has a few peaks in this area (where the speaker is louder) and it cuts off at just over 2000Hz theres another peak at 5,000Hz and lots of lumps and bumps. The cut off at 2000 Hz would mean this would be raqther dull sounding with bass. the second speaker shows a large peak between 2k and 5kHz, up 5dB so it would sound quite lively with bass. Like the other speaker there are lots of minor lumps and dips in the frequency response.. So what would happen when you mix the two. Well obviously where two peaks coincide you'd get a bigger peak and where a peak and a dip coincide you'd find them compensating and cancelling each other. Actually a plot in more detail would show a lot more peaks and dips. They rarely completely coincide and so the overall effect is a kind of leveling down. Rather than getting the character of both speakers you get less of the character of either of them. There are so many irregularities though that it is really hard to control a design by doing this, you just have to try it and listen so designers who are trying to control a sound shy away from this method, The second thing is the 'sound' of a 15 and a 10. Alex says that they don't have a 'sound' applicable to all 10's and 15's and this is right especially as so much depends upon these higher frequency resonances which are much more individual to each design. It's not even true that 15's go deeper, My 5.25" hi fi speakers go much deeper than any bass guitar speaker. But, and it's a big but, if you took 25 different 15's made for bass and 25 10's you'd find the average cut off frequency was lower for the 15's and the bass efficiency would on average be higher. The average for 25 12's would sit in the middle in all probability.So adding a 15 to get extra deep bass can work and isn't a daft idea, you just need to check it is the right 15. There might also be a 2x10 that will do the job too of course. So there you are, you can mix speakers and you can get extra bass with a 15, but any old 15 won't do and there are no guarantees how it will sound. The science makes sense but sometimes you just have to try things. Me? I use a single speaker and DI through the PA.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1357915228' post='1930537'] Phil, so how does this manifest itself when we're playing Staccato funk bass line or an 8 in the bar bass line or a walking 4 in the bar across the whole neck? How much of the science doe we hear in the sound? [/quote] I'll assume this is a serious comment first of all I am only answering the OP's question, some people like to know these things and there's a lot of misinformation on the internet. No knowledge is ever completely useless and an understanding of some basic engineering can help shortcut the process of finding the sound that suits you. Equally the science is complex enough that is only gives you part of the answer and you might well be better off just listening to great bass players and learning from them. Each to their own. If you read all of my posts (and you'd have to be very bored before you did that, you'd certainly be bored after) you'll see that I'm always a great one for saying if it sounds good it is good, and that most of a good tone is in the fingers and mind of the bassist. My problem is with the 'experts' who come up with "never mix speakers of different sizes" or "15's don't increase the bass" or any other helpful advice which is simply incorrect as stated and not backed up by the science. Following the 10 pages of this thread I think it would be hard for anyone without some science background to know whether it was OK to mix drivers or to know the likely effects of doing so. Certainly almost all of the posts with any factual content confuse the effects of using multiple drivers with mixed drivers, and they don't have the same effect. I didn't think me saying you're all wrong helps much so I put in a bit of explanation for anyone who cares. I also don't want people to be put off trying things because some so called expert says you can't mix 10's and 15's. Mixing speakers does have some predictable outcomes and some unpredictable ones. There are bad ways of mixing and better ways. As you point out there's a lot more to playing bass than the sound the speaker makes, but this is the amps and cabs forum after all. Sorry this all sounds more serious than I intended

Sorry the physics teacher in me can't let this go so I'm going to attempt a couple of explanations which i hope will help. Let's have a go at explaining phase first since we're all bass players I'll try and use bass as the model. Pluck a bass string and release it and the middle of the string moves backwards and forwards tracing a sine wave. It'll also vibrate at other harmonic frequencies but let's keep it simple. Ultimately this will make a speaker and the air trace the same sinewave as the air is made to move back and to, tracing the strings movement. Now if a second string is made to sound a fraction of a second later it will arrive at the speaker out of phase. if both strings are moving in the same direction then the sound will be louder and if they are moving in the opposite direction then their movements will cancel and it will be quieter. It's really easy to demonstrate this and you've probably done it. Tune the E and A string and play the harmonics on the 5th and 7th frets. A standard method of tuning. If they are in tune you will hear a steady note. If you then slacken one of the strings then you will hear the note start to vary in volume giving a beat frequency. What has happened is that the string you changed has slowed down and the sounds are moving in and out of phase. When you hear the loudest sound the strings are moving in the same direction and when it is quietest they are moving in opposite directions. Anything that delays some of the sound getting to your ears will cause this effect of reinforcement and cancellation. The pond ripples are good at showing this too, though remember this is just in two dimensions not the three of sound waves in air. The surface of the water moves in sine waves and where two sets of ripples meet they either cancel and the peaks are reduced or they reinforce to give a sharper peak. Now think of a speaker cone playing a single note. Each part of the cone is radiating the same note at the same time and if you are facing the speaker straight on you'll hear just that. If you move to the side however one part of the cone is now a tiny bit further away from you than the other and the sound from that will arrive slightly later. It will be out of phase and you will get cancellation some of the time. With low notes the cancellation won't matter because the delay is only a tiny proportion of the wave with higher notes the cancellation becomes important. In practice if the wavelength is longer than the diameter of the speaker the sound will be radiated equally in all directions, above this the sound is radiated in an increasingly narrow beam with lots of side lobes. You can see the effect of this on frequency response in Alex's graphs http://barefacedbass.com/uploads/BGM62%20Jan2011.pdf Now all this is only down to two bits of speaker cone being a few inches apart and reproducing the same note. It doesn't matter if the cones are 15's 10's or 4's or even if they are on the same cone, All that matters is the distance between them and the relative volumes. You'll get this phase effect upon dispersion whether you use identical speakers or mix them up. It is only in this way that two 10's are like a 20" speaker.in fact because of the gap between them they'll radiate like a 22" speaker. Now if the speakers in a 4x10 are all in a long line above each other then you have a speaker which is 10" wide and 40" tall so you'll get better dispersion side to side than up and down. If you have a 2x10 and a 15 then it is still better to stack vertically but you have a 15" wide by 35" speaker and that sort of dispersal. So to sum up the phase and dispersion problems are caused by having multiple drivers of any type or size which are producing the same frequencies and higher frequencies are rolled off compares to single drivers unless you are staring down the barrel. There are lots of other effects of using multiple drivers and yet more effects of mixing drivers if they are producing the same frequencies but this post is already too long. Hope it helps though

Our ears aren't very sensitive below 150Hz where the bass bins are active and these frequencies are going to be less critical than the 500=5000 range where most of the music is. Given that you are using a separate amp and an active crossover to drive the bins you have some flexibility to match up the bins with your top units. Ideally you'd look for something where you know it will handle the power you are putting in. For bass bins the limiting factor is usually the excursion of the speaker (Xmax). They can all usually handle a lot of power without burning out but lots of deep bass demands that the cones can move a long way before the voice coils leave the magnet gap and some of the cheapies won't do that very well. A lot of the specs they give you are based on measurements taken at low power and extrapolated. If you know what drivers are in the cabs you can check xmax which needs an absolute minimum of 4mm but this information can be hard to find. On the plus side second hand bass bins are usually bargain prices, I picked up a couple of Yamaha S118's for £150 and there are a lot of cheap Peaveys out there fitted with the Black widow drivers which are OK. I'd never recommend the Peavey full range speakers but the bins are OK. Ideally look for something which roughly matches the sensitivity of your tops from a name manufacturer, if money is tight then I don't think these will critically affect your sound, though doubtless others will disagree.

OK as everyone is saying this is a huge topic. If it is any use I have started to write a Noddy's guide for Ultimate Guitar, this is the one for monitors, its fairly basic but might be useful [url="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/the_guide_to/the_guide_to_pa_part_three_-_monitors.html"]http://www.ultimate-...-_monitors.html[/url] the rest can be found through my profile on UG. If you are new to this then active monitors are great, just less to think about and they pretty much work like your guitar amp but for vocals which makes them quite non-scary to set up but there isn't a right or wrong. I don't think anyone clarified the pre-fade post-fade thing. Sorry if they did and I missed it. You need to be able to adjust the volume for the monitors separately from the main mix. Pre fade is before the main volume control for each channel and is for monitor use. Post fade takes the output from after the volume on each channel and is used for effects mainly. Obviously if you turn the vocals up you want the echo to go up by the same amount etc.

A 100W Marshall half stack fully cranked produces something like 128dB on axis at 1m. That's loud and has a number of effects upon a bands performance. If the vocal mics are less than 4m away on axis they will get about 116dB peaks in sound from the guitar, very few singers can achieve this level at the mic so the guitar will be louder than the vocals through the vocal mic making it impossible to mix the guitar and vocals. Since the whole point of a cranked valve amp is to get 'natural' compression the guitar will have even more of a tendency to drown out the rest of the band. Sound levels of over 100dB will cause permanent hearing loss with only a few hours exposure. Hearing loss isn't a good thing for anyone let alone a musician. In any case sound levels this high will cause physiological changes in your hearing as your body compensates for damaging sound levels which will reduce your ability to hear clearly. Musicians play better when they can hear themselves and the rest of the band clearly. So, unless you are playing on huge stages where everyone can get well away from the half stack the guitarist is buying their tone at the expense of the rest of the band and the audience.

The Thumps are not as loud as the SRM450's and that is where the compromise has been made to produce them at the price. They would probably be plenty for a Jazz band though. I've only heard one band using the Thumps (the 15's) and they sounded pretty good, three female vocalists and acoustic guitar. The guy on the desk seemed to know what he was doing though and that definitely counts. At the budget end it might be worth looking at the Alto Tourmaxes and the LD system speakers If you don't mind passive speakers these would be good, you have 8 hours left http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261147456633?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649 I'd happily pay £250 for them except I have a pair

Hi, all cabs leak a bit and so do the speakers themselves, through the gap the coil runs in and sometimes the surround. This is accounted for in the design process as a 'fiddle factor' for leakage called QL. I doubt that such a small hole will affect the sound much except as you say by cutting down extraneous noise which we would only hear if we were listening for it. why not just buy a couple of jacks to plug in the holes or a couple of 1/4in dowels from a woodworking shop, you could screw a washer to the end so you have something to stop them falling through and give you something to tug on if you need to remove them.

Playing in big spaces changes a lot of things. Obviously a bigger space needs more volume, the best solution is to use the PA as backup but charity stuff doesn't pay, so unless you already have access to a decent PA this may not be possible. If you are playing on a stage with a proscenium arch then there are two problems, the stage may have unwanted echoes to muddy the sound and a raised wooden stage is often something that resonates muddying the bass, the gramma pad may help this but not the other problems. I find high ceilings a real problem. There are a couple of other problems with large spaces. You'll be further away from the walls and ceilings. These normally reinforce your bass sound and you will have to eq differently in each hall. Since the reflections are from further away there will be places in the room where they reinforce (boomy) and places where they interfere (tinny) and you can get both happening in different parts of the room. Finally you have the space to propagate deep bass notes which normally get lost where the room is smaller than wavelength of your lowest notes. You will also have the problem that in a small room you are right on top of your cab but you may be playing with a long lead some distance from your speaker which changes what you hear. Knowing why you are having problems doesn't help much though. First don't panic, The bass may sound weird to you but the audience may be hearing it quite clearly so the problem may not be as bad as you think, ask someone to check. The best way to get extra volume is to add an extra speaker when you need it. There are a lot of cheap and heavy Peavey cabs out there that will help at the price of a Gramma pad, or borrow one, people help out if it is for charity. Finally be prepared to fiddle around with your eq a lot more to adjust for the acoustics for each room, arrive earlier and get someone in the audience area to help if you can. Finally few of us can afford to have the perfect bass rig for every occasion. If the sound is good enough for the audience to have a good time and you are doing your best then just be proud of yourself for helping other people and have a great time.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1356896810' post='1914924'] If the drummer prefers this...he must play pretty light..? What do the other guys hear..? [/quote] We're a three piece so there's only the singer/guitarist to worry about. The drummers pretty experienced so he just plays at whatever volume we need and so far we haven't needed to mic' the drums. Gigs aren't the problem as I just roll of the bass and you hear that from the PA anyway. At rehearsals it is pushing it a bit without the PA support, You have to put up with a bit less bass and the speaker will hit the magnet if I forget to roll off. Mainly I put the Hartke into a corner and get boundary reinforcement from the walls and floors. Drummers generally only want timing information and cues from the bass and this is mainly in the midrange anyway, the way we set up he gets more midrange from my monitor than he did from the stack and because it is small I usually manage to squeeze it in behind him. I think he hears the Toms and Kick better without a lot of deep bass on stage and the bonus is a lot less spill through the mic's. He's a bit of a tone freak with his drums and likes to hear them clearly. Remember that loudness is logarithmic so 120W is only 6dB down from 500W so 6dB of bass cut allows you to be a similar volume in the rest of the range, You don't lose as much as you'd think and the increase in clarity and cleaning up the front of house sound is worth the trade.

I've been using 600W of amp with various speakers for several years, then I bought a Hartke Kickback10 for a semi-acoustic set and rehearsals. It worked pretty well and I tried it out at a gig. Crucially I own and carry the PA and I can either fit in the two subs or my bass stack in the car but not both. Both the onstage sound and the audience's experience were better using the kickback and PA than using the stack and I can't imagine going back. In fact I am redesigning my 15's to become lightweight subs which can double as a stack if I need one. What I do now is roll off the bass on the kickback (The deepest notes come back from the PA anyway) and DI for the audience. I can actually hear more of what I am playing this way than I ever did off a stack. My drummer prefers this set up too. So to answer your question 120W through a 10" speaker is enough for me as a monitor so long as it can be angled at your ears.

Hi Andy, you are right about some speakers being designed to work in ported cabs and others in sealed cabs, you'd generally look for a more compliant suspension and a lower resonant frequency for a driver in a sealed cab. In a lot of commercial instrument cabs though you find a lot of 'general purpose' drivers which wil work OK in either cab. I have no idea what Markbass use. In all probability the drivers may be just working at less than their optimum as far as the bottom two octaves are concerned and you aren't going to damage them at all. They will in all probability bi in too big a cab to be ideal sealed cabinets and your speakers will be overdamped, a techie term that just means they will start to roll off an octave'ish higher than they do in a sealed cab and then peter out slowly at 6dB/octave as opposed to what they do now, a bit like (but not identical to) turning the bass down a couple of notches. You've nothing to lose by stuffing the ports full of Christmas socks and trying it but a proper airtight seal would be better if you decide you like the sound. It can work well in a boomy room. Have fun

[quote name='andyjingram' timestamp='1356006348' post='1905539'] Perception is fallible, but we can't put everything we notice in the world down to preconceived notions or suggestion. A very thorough test of multiple speakers by multiple examiners providing repeatable results would be the only way to truly prove any of this, but that costs time and money. Unike testing compounds for big pharma, the results would be very unlikely to make anyone any real money, so I can't see that strict enough science will ever be applied to get the kind of results (for or against) that we might like to see here. [/quote] Hi Andy, I pretty much agree but in practical terms this is low hanging fruit. It's the sort of project I'd have asked A level students to do. We already know how big a change in frequency response needs to be to be noticeable, so all we need to do is show a change in frequency resonse of that size. Several people here have gear to measure frequency response at varying degrees of sophistication and some, like Alex and BFM must do this regularly as part of their design process. As well as frequency responses we have a well worked out model (Thiele/Small) of the behaviour of speakers at low frequencies and can measure the TS parameters at home. At the moment there is no objective evidence to suggest that 'breaking in' happens and is audible, at least none here. It may be that this evidence exists and will emerge or that someone will do some tests which,whilst not being conclusive, will show that at least one speaker in one test showed a measurable change in frequency response with use. Stevie may be right and this is a bit of folklore passed down without much questioning but an absence of data doesn't prove anything. I'm curious as to the answer.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1355924143' post='1904527'] The lesson that should be learned is that no source is infallable, and if you think something they say may not be spot on don't hesitate to confirm or disprove it for yourself. One's own anecdotal experience can be the first step in that process. [/quote] [quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1355912277' post='1904223'] I think this is where I am, too (a little confused!). I have no evidence apart from my own anecdotal, I also feel that the changes in my speakers were more than subtle and insignificant but I can offer no explanation when confronted with measurements. [/quote] Bill is right of course, we should always be sceptical and just putting numbers to something doesn't prove anything. The problem is that at the same time everything Stevie said about how observations are made and how the expectations of the observer affect what is observed are also true. Listening tests on speakers are notoriously unreliable and we know that we are all unreliable witnesses and see and hear what we want to see sometimes. I'm in the camp that believes it hears speakers 'break in' but I have no data and am left wishing I had taken measurements. The way to resolve this though is in the science, to take measurements, say how you took them and let other people check them. The problem with giving advice in these fora is that there are things we pretty much know about speaker design and other things which are still to be resolved, like stuffing cabs and breaking in. Most people who ask questions want a simple answer: can I use this speaker in this box? Can I run four of these speakers off this amp? Sometimes the answer isn't simple or we can only answer it with the benefit of experience rather than sound theory. What is the expert to do then? Personally I hedge my answers with 'could', 'maybe' 'perhaps' type words and hope the OP notices that the advice comes with a health warning. I think the idea of breaking in a speaker isn't so much confusing as one we cannot be certain of. If someone has the killer data they haven't pointed to it yet.

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1355922451' post='1904489'] No suggestions here, I just wanted to say that I learned Slade's Merry Christmas the other night for a gig this Saturday. Great bassline! I practically never go walkies and it is a real challenge to remember/play something different. Really enjoy it! [/quote] This is known as nominative determinism, all your songs should be chrismuzz songs

Love this guys playing, keeps the verse simple and walks the chorus, easy four chords. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOgSdc8OAI Not strictly a walk but fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om9p0NUNlSk