What speaker gets the bass most right?

Thought experiment: a perfect, zero distortion bass transducer is fed a signal which is combination of 20Hz, and 40Hz sine waves at a level where the sensitivity of the driver means the output measures 90db, and the 40Hz element is down 20dB compared to the 20Hz. What do you think the listener can hear? And how does that differ from a real world transducer, that generates 10% 2nd harmonic distortion, 20dB down, of a pure 20Hz input?

There have been many studies done on how much distortion we can detect, and second order harmonics effects:
http://www.axiomaudio.com/distortion This is a great article.

Back to the OP, to get the bass most right, it would have to be able to reproduce all frequencies in recordings, at sufficient volume, fast transient response and damping, ... say a friend brings by a recording of the Saint Saens Organ Symphony and your speakers have to be capable of reproducing a 16z pedal tone. Most people already do not have a speaker system capable of doing this. Just like the majority of subwoofers (or full range speakers ) whose frequency response fall off below 20z, like the backside of Mt. Everest. 13K dollar subs that are 20db down at 16z., and have lots of distortion too. But everyone has different music they like, and different speaker performance requirements.

The JL 113 subwoofer specs: (not picking on this brand, just an example)

F113 at 20Hz gives 101dB with 21% distortion

16hz lover said:

There have been many studies done on how much distortion we can detect, and second order harmonics effects:
http://www.axiomaudio.com/distortion This is a great article.

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I agree about the article ... however ... these speakers, "(Axiom M80ti's) operating with an Axiom EP600 subwoofer", are perfect, are they? That is, playing a pure 20Hz tone as input they have zero distortion ... 'cause if they didn't, that just might skew the listening results ...

fas42 said:

I agree about the article ... however ... these speakers, "(Axiom M80ti's) operating with an Axiom EP600 subwoofer", are perfect, are they? That is, playing a pure 20Hz tone as input they have zero distortion ... 'cause if they didn't, that just might skew the listening results ...

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Far from perfect, and the graph showed their system as having +13% distortion @20hz, so your comment is confusing. You don't need to reply as I'll unsubscribe from the thread now.

fas42 said:

Thought experiment: a perfect, zero distortion bass transducer is fed a signal which is combination of 20Hz, and 40Hz sine waves at a level where the sensitivity of the driver means the output measures 90db, and the 40Hz element is down 20dB compared to the 20Hz. What do you think the listener can hear? And how does that differ from a real world transducer, that generates 10% 2nd harmonic distortion, 20dB down, of a pure 20Hz input?

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No idea. I guess that that would depend whether or not the two tones are in the same critical band. Maybe one tone is modulating the other, so you’d hear a kind of beat?

And how does that differ from a real world transducer, that generates 10% 2nd harmonic distortion, 20dB down, of a pure 20Hz input?

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Well in this case the results looks like this:

caesar said:

What speaker gets the bass most right?

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You're probably not gonna' like this most right response but here goes...

First, I hope you realize that "excellent" bass is all over the map just like any other aspect of high-end audio. Ask one reviewer if this bass sounds good to them and they might reply, "that is the tightest, deepest, quickest, most well-defined realistic bass I've ever heard. In contrast the next reviewer might say, that is the sloppiest, most wooly, syrupy, rolling earthquake, ill-defined bass I've ever heard."

That said, the speaker that gets the bass "most right" is a sufficiently well-engineered / well-designed full-range speaker that has been meticulously / strategically positioned within a given sufficient listening room where the music info (signals) reaching the drivers have retained the vast majority of its original fidelity embedded in the recording medium such that much of the volumes of music info embedded in the recording remain audible above a much lowered noise floor, (which BTW only comes from an extremely well-thought-out playback system where distortions have been absolutely minimized across the board).

If Wilson speakers (or any other speaker) have given you the impression that it's the best bass you've heard to date, I can assure you the speaker itself is not the only reason.

There are no shortcuts to reproducing a tremendously musical bass region. Or any other region for that matter.