Any high sensitivity woofers?

Hari Iyer

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I have experienced with a 12" Ahuja woofer with a published sensitivity of 97db(fake). Also my 12" Alnico woofer with original cone was only 93dB sensitive. I reconed the Alnico with foam surround and no dustcap to reduce moving mass and that improved the sensitivity to a meager 95dB.

My monoblocks are just a 3+ 3 watts power output. My field coil driver is a 103+dB SPL and compression driver is 108+dB SPL sensitivity wise. Very nice and very easy to drive with my tube amplifier with zero stress and enough headroom. But the issue happens at the bottom end as my woofer is almost -10dB lower in level compared to my mids and highs causing imbalance in sound stage.

To reduce this effect, i have now biamped my 12" woofer with my Denon AVR which has levelled the response from 40Hz till 500Hz and it sounds very nice. But, I am looking for woofers that can be as sensitive as my field coil and compression driver for me to avoid any biamping.

I could only find GPA drivers (104+dB and way way outside my budget) and eminence woofers(100dB and can be thought of) to somewhat fit my requirements. Any thing else is not known to me. Suggestions please.
 
I have experienced with a 12" Ahuja woofer with a published sensitivity of 97db(fake). Also my 12" Alnico woofer with original cone was only 93dB sensitive. I reconed the Alnico with foam surround and no dustcap to reduce moving mass and that improved the sensitivity to a meager 95dB.

My monoblocks are just a 3+ 3 watts power output. My field coil driver is a 103+dB SPL and compression driver is 108+dB SPL sensitivity wise. Very nice and very easy to drive with my tube amplifier with zero stress and enough headroom. But the issue happens at the bottom end as my woofer is almost -10dB lower in level compared to my mids and highs causing imbalance in sound stage.

To reduce this effect, i have now biamped my 12" woofer with my Denon AVR which has levelled the response from 40Hz till 500Hz and it sounds very nice. But, I am looking for woofers that can be as sensitive as my field coil and compression driver for me to avoid any biamping.

I could only find GPA drivers (104+dB and way way outside my budget) and eminence woofers(100dB and can be thought of) to somewhat fit my requirements. Any thing else is not known to me. Suggestions please.

I run ALTEC 515G-8HPs in a ALTEC 825 enclosure. ANY " G " 515 will be a keeper.

IT out-played my ALNICO 515Bs........... by a noticeable margin. Better diction, less colored, better pulse response. Real progress. 132 ounce ceramic magnet.

You do not need to buy a GPA 515. The same later 16 inch frame is on an ALTEC Pro Sound circa 1995 9864A........ and it can be run as a woofer only. These come out of service from time to time. I paid $100.00 for my first complete 9864A, and the second one was given to me free, a few months ago.

I got the stock 515G-8HP driver to play at LEAST one dB louder by reducing the 825's internal volume systematically by ear, and a careful base - to - floor design of my own over the last few months.

Any 515G, on, is a keeper from my experience so far.
 

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I would advise you to stay put with woofer running active only. You may want to experiment with driving your woofer with speaker level inputs. Use a nice subwoofer amp with options built in.

You may look at PRV, P Audio for woofer options.

I guess 3 watts is a little under rated to run a 3 way. 5 watts could have done it if the resultant sensitivity is 93dB or greater. That’s my own experience so far.
I am not looking at any subwoofer options at all. My current setup with Denon AVR is giving me enough SPL to level match the woofer with my field coil and CD. Infact using in subwoofer mode gives a bit of unnatural low end boom which I am looking to avoid.
Thanks,
 
the published woofer senstivities are at which frequency?
For field coil they are from 500hz till 4kHz @103dB. -10dB is at 100Hz.
For CD they are from 2khz till 20khz @ 108db
For 12" Alnico woofer it's from 50Hz till 2Khz at 95dB peaking at 2khz, -10 dB is at 40Hz I.e.85dB.
 
Purchase the Audiolab 6000A Integrated Amplifier at a special offer price.
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