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Yeah underhungs are rare. The top plate is usually what costs so much.

bigbassman wrote:you'd see more underhung designs today if it weren't for their excessive cost, wasted flux (i.e low efficiency), and intolerance of abuse..

...and since XBL^2 caters more to SQ than to SPL, none of that really matters.
Price.. wel, $145 for a good 12" sub isn't expensive, looking at the Atlas gen 1. $369 for a 12" XXX isn't cheap, but for a 60lbs speaker with the performance of the XXX, it's reasonable. Efficiency isn't an issue if you supply adequate power, and most SQ people give plenty of power as reserve to handle transient demands anyway and SQ people don't abuse equipment the way SPL people do. In addition to that, if you mean clipping by abuse, there's no reason an amplifier should ever enter clipping in a well designed system anwyay. Clipping supplies no more power than you'd get with the amplifier properly driven, so it really gains you nothing but premature driver death.

All in all, for what XBL^2 is used for, it fits the bill well.

KikiTheCat wrote:...and since XBL^2 caters more to SQ than to SPL, none of that really matters.
Price.. wel, $145 for a good 12" sub isn't expensive, looking at the Atlas gen 1. $369 for a 12" XXX isn't cheap, but for a 60lbs speaker with the performance of the XXX, it's reasonable. Efficiency isn't an issue if you supply adequate power, and most SQ people give plenty of power as reserve to handle transient demands anyway and SQ people don't abuse equipment the way SPL people do. In addition to that, if you mean clipping by abuse, there's no reason an amplifier should ever enter clipping in a well designed system anwyay. Clipping supplies no more power than you'd get with the amplifier properly driven, so it really gains you nothing but premature driver death.

All in all, for what XBL^2 is used for, it fits the bill well.

I wasn't talking about XBL^2, as its neither underhung, nor overhung in topology..

I am refering to drivers such as the Mass 2012, CMP, and so on...

true underhung units... with a gap generally twice the length of the coil's winding..

its becoming a fastly dying topology, due to the reasons I described in the previous post..

if you'd like for me to delve into the world of XBL^2, I'll go as far as the NDA I signed lets me :)

Loyd L.

pretty much everything about xbl^2 is in the publically available PDF files anyway