Why side-woofers are not more common?

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I mean, Put a Ok tweeter, and Ok mid-woofer in the top + dual opposed woofers in the below cabinet for bring more LFE...?
( 2 box's, one in the top and the another one below)



is not a complicated to do.. yet most of the speakers sucks at LFE, even the expensier ones

You can put a big lateral woofers without making a huge speaker.. and these are going to cancel the vibrations, its a good idea.
Why insist in put the LFE in front of the speaker?

A dual opposed woofer for the range 20hz-100hz, and the top box for the 100hz-20,000khz range.


For example this one, is not a 2 box tower but you got the idea

 

[polmuaddib]

I don't have an answer for you, but LFE refers to a channel reserved for low frequency effects in multichannel mixes.
What you mean is, pure and simple, bass.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I don't have an answer for you, but LFE refers to a channel reserved for low frequency effects in multichannel mixes.
What you mean is, pure and simple, bass.

LFE is Low frequency Extension which does mean, the deepest bass.

I'm not asking the Bass range. Im asking for use these opposed woofer for subwoofer purpose, not for bass range purpose. Only 20hz-100hz.

 

[fpitas]

A huge driver begins to need a correspondingly huge box.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

A huge driver begins to need a correspondingly huge box.

You can put a big lateral woofers without making a huge speaker.. and these are going to cancel the vibrations, its a good idea.

 

[AudiOhm]

I use a sub woofer, it took a long time to get it in the correct spot in my room to work the best for me.

Can't imagine trying to set up speakers in my room with side firing woofers...

Ohms

 

[fpitas]

Uhm...ok. A couple cute drivers. And...?

 

[Doodski]

An additional woofer is required for a side firing design as well as additional cabinet work and crossover parts and I think most speaker designers are into 2-way speakers for the economics of the build and the additional ease of design and calibration of a 2-way as compared to a 3-way or more. Side firing and rear firing woofers come and go as different models come out over the years but the majority are 2-way.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

An additional woofer is required for a side firing design as well as additional cabinet work and crossover parts and I think most speaker designers are into 2-way speakers for the economics of the build and the additional ease of design and calibration of a 2-way as compared to a 3-way or more. Side firing and rear firing woofers come and go as different models come out over the years but the majority are 2-way.

It's also tricky to pull off a properly optimized passive crossover at 100 Hz without running into impedance problems. This design makes more sense in an active application.

 

[Travis]

You can put a big lateral woofers without making a huge speaker.. and these are going to cancel the vibrations, its a good idea.
Why insist in put the LFE in front of the speaker?

Well if you want to know the answer from a scientific/engineering perspective, I think you need to start with whether this is any Spinorama or NFS data on speakers with side-firing woofers (LFE or not) so you can compare directivity, and then see what conclusions you can draw from that.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

It's also tricky to pull off a properly optimized passive crossover at 100 Hz without running into impedance problems. This design makes more sense in an active application.

I often see active speakers using this way, that's was a nice answer.

Thanks Dennis.

 

[617]

Dennis curious what crossover frequency you'd stay under for side woofers. I think I've seen speakers going up to 350.

It's also tricky to pull off a properly optimized passive crossover at 100 Hz without running into impedance problems. This design makes more sense in an active application.

 

[Prana Ferox]

There is some opinion on what frequency becomes omnidirectional, some will say you need to cross over no higher than 200hz, some say don't go higher than 80hz, etc. Either way you still need a front-baffle driver that can output signal that far down, at the SPL you want, which means a reasonably strong midbass driver. For conventional speakers with passive crossovers, crossing at frequencies that low tends to be complicated and expensive. Also, due to simple physics, the low bass signal tends to require a lot more wattage, so you need really big amps for your mains to sufficiently drive the sub driver, while maybe not being the cleanest amp for the highs.

If your 'sub' woofer is on the front baffle that allows a lot more flexibility to cross higher and reduces the bass/midbass demand on the mid driver.

But also it's just a fashion thing, putting the subwoofer in your LR mains adds complications and size while also most likely putting the subs in a suboptimal room location. Using a more common setup of a digital crossover on the preamp level, combined with dedicated amp and cabinet for the sub, gets rid of a lot of these complications and allows the mains and the sub(s) to be optimally located.

 

[rogu3]

We should get @jackocleebrown in here KEF has been using side-firing woofers for a while now to good success. Like others have said, they're force-canceling but I'm guessing there are some nuances to the implementation that are different and perhaps more complex than traditional front-firing woofers.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Dennis curious what crossover frequency you'd stay under for side woofers. I think I've seen speakers going up to 350.

I don't have any practical experience, but 350 seems high to me. Concert A is 440 Hz, so 350 Hz is smack in the male vocal range.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

It's also tricky to pull off a properly optimized passive crossover at 100 Hz without running into impedance problems. This design makes more sense in an active application.

is not easier to making the speaker with '' opposed '' woofers even below 100hz? like 60hz or 80hz? being passive, of course

 

[Prana Ferox]

is not easier to making the speaker with '' opposed '' woofers even below 100hz? like 60hz or 80hz? being passive, of course

Subwoofers have motors behind them that take up a lot of space. So you may not be able to put two back to back without a fairly wide cabinet. If you end up with a wide baffle anyway, you're kind of reducing the point of having the subs on the sides.

A lot of times when you see 'woofers' on the sides opposing each other, they're passive radiators, which is really a variation on a ported box. Because of the way a passive radiator works, you need roughly 2x the area of your PRs as you have for your actual powered woofers, but there's nothing on the back end but maybe some weights, so they don't take up much space. PRs are going to be active at the frequencies a port would be (i.e. really low) without any electronic crossover parts so you can stick them on the sides, or the back, or the bottom of the cabinet and it doesn't matter.

E: Here's an Ultimax 12 sub as a somewhat exaggerated example:

If you put two of these back to back you'd end up with a wider baffle than if you just stuck them both on the front in the first place. This tends to be even more exaggerated with smaller-coned subs.

I'd also not worry too much about the lateral force of the subs making the speaker shake, you need a lot of watts and a lot of moving mass there and your tower is probably pretty substantial at that point regardless, but... again... placing a sub on the front baffle of a speaker presumably longer than it is wide generally resolves that, and putting it in its own box (or using two in a DO pair, if you wanted) makes the problem go away entirely.

 

[ErVikingo]

I have a set of speakers with side firing woofers (Aerial 8b). They are awesome and great for a narrow room. I find them more finicky to place because of the direction of the woofers. Nothing that an hour, good bourbon and some great tracks hasn't solved in my last 2 homes.

 

[rogu3]

I have a set of speakers with side firing woofers (Aerial 8b). They are awesome and great for a narrow room. I find them more finicky to place because of the direction of the woofers. Nothing that an hour, good bourbon and some great tracks hasn't solved in my last 2 homes.

I approve of this approach Gonna have some 4 Roses single barrel tonight myself.

 

[SDC]

Most side firing subs require huge box. Small ones are more like side firing woofers... or maybe tailor-made for small box which will have really low sensitivity by the iron law.