"David Looser" wrote in message
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"Doki" wrote in message
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snip - cone size and bass

Throw can help, but at the end of the day, the size of the cone matters a
lot. As an example, a 6" sub driver I looked at for my car has a piston
area of 114cm2, the next size up, which is 7.125" has a piston area of
231cm2. Given similar throws (the larger speaker actually has a longer
throw), you're going to get twice as much air moved by a driver only a
little bit bigger. The dimensions are to the outer edge of the suspension
by the way. For a normal hifi speaker (ie, a box with some drivers stuck
in the front), there's no substitute for a big cone.

A car is hardly a good example of anything to do with HiFi. As for
speakers that are "a box with some drivers stuck in the front", maybe it's
better to engineer a good enclosure than to think that size is all that
matters.

A driver is a driver is a driver. Any driver with similar suspension is
going to have similar cone area, so the fact remains that adding an inch to
the size of the cone means a big increase in piston area. It doesn't matter
whether it's in a car, a living room or in my desk drawer, the cone area is
still the same.

Also don't forget the huge effect of the room on the bass performance of a
speaker, it's impossible to get really deep bass in the average living
room.

So what? You still can't magic bass from anywhere. A 6" driver at the same
cost as 7" driver is never going to be able to produce as much bass. Maybe a
6" at double the price. My opinion is that half the speaker design is about
making a small, pretty box rather than something that makes a decent sound.