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Bwcad1 wrote:I concur however i wouldn't say not in most cases. and an efficency of 85.5 isn't that impressive. most subs today or new released subs are in the low to high ninety's and some are even into the 100's, which leads me to believe the sub has a decent spider (s) in which case it would mechanically be able to take 300 watts in a standard box and possibly ib.

For an 8" that actually gets low, it's pretty good. Most 8" midbasses, even with the higher Fs and a lower Qts, light cone, etc. are in the 88db range or so, so for a driver with a lot more mass and an Fs placed in a much less efficient range for such a driver size, 85.5 is pretty good.

You aren't getting 100db off of a normal sized sub unless the thing has no excursion or is more like a pro audio design (no low end whatsoever). I haven't seen a modern 12" that puts out a TRUE even 95db 1W/1M in a while. Especially not since the small sealed box "power is cheap" craze, which the design aspect has made the subs much less efficient (lots of 12" subs around 84db 1W/1M).

look up the new hifonics maxximus. (yes its based on pro audio driversi believe its 102-105) and the new Olympus i believe is 97spl the Olympus achieves this with very soft spiders. thats what makes such a huge difference. with subs like that box design is extremely critical.

do you have a link to the id? i looked but there website seems to be down.

http://www.imagedynamicsusa.com/tech_pa ... =sub&id=id

This is for the 4 ohm coils.

Bwcad1 wrote:look up the new hifonics maxximus. (yes its based on pro audio driversi believe its 102-105) and the new Olympus i believe is 97spl the Olympus achieves this with very soft spiders. thats what makes such a huge difference. with subs like that box design is extremely critical.

do you have a link to the id? i looked but there website seems to be down.

a soft spider isn't going to give it that high an SPL. Drivers like dome midranges don't even have spiders and it doesn't offer much of a sensitivity advantage. If their rating is 102-105db on a regular size sub or even in an 18" format, there are only a few ways they could accomplish that rating:

1: taking a pro audio woofer or midbass, something with a really really light cone for the size, a stronger motor, a high Fs and low Qts, then calling it a subwoofer. Highly unlikely as it would sound like garbage performing subwoofer duty. And even then the rated 102-105 SPL is still high for such a driver. Take a look at a well proven and oft used pro audio design-the Aurasound NRT18. 18" woofer, can be used up to ~2khz region, and this is a woofer that in most optimal PORTED box designs puts the F3 in the 50-55hz region. Sealed would be far worse. 96db efficient. JBL's "woofers" in the 15-18" range have at most 99-100db 1W/1M and might have the relative low end output of a typical 8" midbass driver. And that's taking pro drivers with some of the best motor designs out there into account. To get subbass out of either driver, you're going to be adding a substantial amount of mass.

2: The ratings are total bullshit. This is likely as many manufacturers do the same thing. Take a dual 4 ohm driver, wire the coils in parallel and test it at 4 ohm standards, or if you put 2.83V into it (standard level for testing 8 ohm drivers) you're getting 4 watts. So, you can effectively subtract a healthy 3db from the sensitivity if it's 2 watts vs. 1, or you can subtract 6db from said sensitivity if it's 4.

It's not knocking Hifonics drivers. It's knocking BS marketing and overinflated ratings, which many companies are guilty of. You can't overcome physics.

Probably a better example of accomplishing efficiency would be to compare your typical 1" tweeter with the Aurasound whisper, or even better compare a typical midrange driver with one of the wideband or so called "full range" designs. Aura whisper had to add a ton of mass to get a 1" to be able to get down to the 250hz region, and has a 79db 1W/1M efficiency compared to the typical 90-93db efficiency of most tweeters of the same size. Most of your wideband midranges like the Hivi B3S or the Aura NS3 are right at 80db 1W/1M.

Same principles apply to Pro drivers versus conventional speakers or subs.

its a spl sub and its not made to play music, like i said check the sub out. do some research on it you will be surprised the sub is already 2db louder than anything close on the market. im not doubting you but technology has come a long way and when you have the resources they do to build the sub specifically for what it is and needs to be. maybe i got my ratings mixed up i dont know for sure i know it was wayyy the hell up there.

and on and on we go lol. i know a soft spider doesn't just increase efficiency alone but it does make a huge difference. i went back and checked the olympus spl rating is 92. im waiting for an answer from maxxsonics about the maxximus sub

http://www.maxxsonics.com/hifonics/subs_maxximus.html

Bwcad1 wrote:its a spl sub and its not made to play music, like i said check the sub out. do some research on it you will be surprised the sub is already 2db louder than anything close on the market. im not doubting you but technology has come a long way and when you have the resources they do to build the sub specifically for what it is and needs to be. maybe i got my ratings mixed up i dont know for sure i know it was wayyy the hell up there.

and on and on we go lol. i know a soft spider doesn't just increase efficiency alone but it does make a huge difference. i went back and checked the olympus spl rating is 92. im waiting for an answer from maxxsonics about the maxximus sub

http://www.maxxsonics.com/hifonics/subs_maxximus.html

That SPL rating on the Olympus, which size is it? Regardless, 92 isn't unrealistic for something like a 15" sub, maybe a 12" if it's a smaller x-max, lower Qts sub (loose suspension lowers Qts too). 97db is very unrealistic for a sub, of course you of all people know 5db is a LOT :) .

You don't remember the era I'm sure, but in the early 90s, late 80s, the going trend was making efficient subs. One reason was because the sub designs were inherently efficient, you didn't have the high excursion subs of today, thus less coil and former mass. And the other factor was that power was EXPENSIVE compared to today. And the challenge of speaker or subwoofer design stands today as it always has and will be: "You can have low end extension, high efficiency, or small enclosure size. Pick two" So obviously with the lack of cheap power, and a will to not lose low end, the design emphasis was to build a sub that got low and reasonably loud off of little power. This meant the subs had to either be mounted in a behemoth enclosure or be run IB in a package tray or similar.

Of course the market started shifting and wanted subs in smaller boxes to keep their trunk/cargo area, or in cars that just flat out can't fit a large sub box (my mustang is a PRIME example). That's a lot of when companies like JL Audio got popular, they were one of the first companies to really develop subs like this. The only drawback is more power is needed, but nowadays power is cheap. You can get a 1200W RMS amplifier that is reliable in the $300 range, hell a lot of times cheaper than that on ebay. There are a lot of "good for the money" companies out there now, fewer high end companies unfortunately, and a lot of garbage companies. Back then, you had garbage companies and super high end companies and not as many that fell somewhere in the middle, and the high end stuff, while well built, was very pricy.

Companies have developed and made improvements, same as many other products like automobiles that have improved so much recently, they've done so via CAD and FEA modeling. The main thing that's improved in audio has been the motor designs, improving linearity, inductance variation, etc. But the general physics for accomplishing efficiency hasn't changed, it's solely the motor force pushing the cone mass and suspension and that's all remained the same.

I think I've got it:

three ID8's in dual 4 ohm
~1.5 cube sealed box

I have the room to forward fire (just barely!)

The only place online I can find to buy ID stuff is woofersetc. Are there any other places anyone knows of? Their website lists no dealers within 600 miles of me...grr.

lol! how about that...


Actually, I do have one question, is that site run by Image Dynamics themselves? It doesn't really appear to be. I'm just wondering because on the actual ID site, they list woofersetc as an online retailer, but not that one.