That’s not what he’s saying. He is saying the increased power is what increases handling and therefore speed or perception of speed.
I too thought that fast and clean low end could only be achieved with small drivers. Until I heard Magico speakers…
Smaller drivers have to have a larger excursion to produce the same frequency as a large driver moving a tiny amount. Big drivers move more air and if sensitive enough, or powered adequately, will have a big impact. Think about rock concerts. That attack comes from many huge drivers.
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That is providing adequate power for peaks, but as described in an earlier post power is not everything - power delivery across the impedance range of the speaker, and a low enough output impedance can also be significant for adequate control of the driver cone(s)
The power amp’s speed of power delivery of course also plays a part.
A bit of a generalisation, perhaps true at the time when valves became a thing and people tried resurrecting old models.
I am happily driving LS5/9s with 13 watts. Thing is they are Tim de Paravicini watts, one thing that is often written about his designs, the bass is not typical of valve reputation. He explained it was down to transformer design.
My listening amongst others, for speed is the bass line on Black Uhuru, Botanical Roots, for slam, which to me is also speed related, Rhiannon Giddens, Waterboy.
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Yes, but only if you replace one driver by a smaller one. What @anon4216120 was talking about is replacing a bigger driver by multiple smaller ones.
It’s essentially about the amount of air that’s moved
- one bigger one with little excursion
- a smaller one with a lot of excursion
- multiple smaller ones (with the combined surface area of the bigger one) with a little excursion
All amounts to the same.
Just ask @Mitch whether his speakers do bass. Not a big driver in sight.
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The difference is that the mass of a large cone has more inertia, so is slower to accelerate and decelerate all else being equal. But of course all else is not normally equal, with different magnetic motors, so less easy to predict differences in acceleration and deceleration ability, and linearity of power response, while as someone pointed out earlier with the multiple small driver approach there is the added variable of matching mechanically and electrically so all move perfectly in unison.
That is why there are ‘fast’ speakers with bigger bass drivers and slower ones with smaller, as well as vice versa.
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Something like dynaudio exite x14 or audiovector qr 1 will fit that discription I guess.
Nailed it!
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Yeah of course, i get that. So why is it that as we see the majority of super high end loudspeakers like the big wilson’s, big b&w, big focals etc, using large woofers? Why don’t they all use multiple smaller drivers? I would assume there are advantages and disadvantages to both. To make the same surface area as a 12" takes nearly 4 x 6" drivers. i suppose it is a balance between performance and aesthetics and what the designer wants to achieve. i personally like the looks of bigger drivers in speakers vs lots of smaller ones.
I suspect cost is a big factor. 2 x 8" drivers don’t even make that of a 12 " and i suspect that 2 x 8" drivers of a similar quality would cost more than the 12" alone.
Just found this
4.00" = 12.57 sq.in. = 1.00
5.00" = 19.64 sq.in. = 1.56
5.25" = 21.65 sq.in. = 1.72
6.00" = 28.27 sq.in. = 2.49
6.50" = 33.18 sq.in. = 2.64
7.00" = 38.49 sq.in. = 3.06
8.00" = 50.27 sq.in. = 3.999 = 4.0
10.0" = 78.54 sq.in. = 6.25
12.0" = 113.1 sq.in. = 8.997 = 9.0
15.0" = 176.7 sq.in. = 14.06
My Grandinote Mach 36’s have 36 drivers and 25 tweeters. They reproduce incredible bass. come over and listen to “Fanfare for the Common Man” by Copeland and I think you’ll agree!
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No doubt! 
I wish i could take you up on that offer!
what is the driver size mitch?
4 inches.
So equivalent of 2.5 x 15" woofers of surface area.
I wonder what the crossover setup is? Are the drivers split into frequency bands?
whatever the impediment…I’ve always said, "Where there’s a will, there’s a way OUT!
There is only a single capacitor in each speaker box
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Oh yeah there’s a way out but it would probably cost as much as a new piece of hifi! I am in North Queensland Australia.
I live about 200 meters from this beach…
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That table is the areas of circles of said size, and not really relevant in comparing equivalent number of drivers, though resultantcomparative figure may not be far wrong in many instances. The piston (cone) area of woofers is quite a bit less than the driver overall diameter, and it is that you really need to compare if you are trying to assess how many of a given small size is equivalent cone area to a single larger size. The relative cone size of different size drivers varies between manufacturers and sometimes between different models of nominally the same size from a given manufacturer. If you look up driver details it is usually given among the Thiel-Small data, denoted Sd. E.g. just picking from one catalogue to hand, the Volt RV3143 12” radial bass driver has Sd=479cm2 (75in2) Their 6.5” BM165.1 driver has Sd=154cm2 (24in2) so using three of the 6.5” drivers the cones would have fractionally further than that of one 12” for the same sound level.
Interestingly the effective moving masses of these specific two different drivers differ by almost exactly the same ratio as the piston diameters, so the same mass is moving the same distance, just in one a single motor and in the other 3 motors.
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Yeah the table isn’t perfect but it is really close to your finding.
I think it was just interesting to see it in a table this way. Puts things into perspective.
I think a lot of constructions these days are governed by shipping, storage, size and weight etc…
It would be interesting to see where speakers would go if these constraints were not an issue.
My guess is that we would see more sensitive speakers with large cabs and 15" woofers. Not the slim line speakers we often see. I believe this is done largely for aesthetics. Then we need attenuation and lowered sensitivity in order to get lots of bass from smaller boxes.
I think i would like to build something like this next and try a high sensitivity speaker & valve amp fed by a Naim streamer. Faital-3WC-15