box reducing power handling

[philsteroni 0]

hey guys,

so i'm getting a bl 15 hopefully soon. i was just reading a tread where someone meantioned that if you have a bigger enclosure reduces power handling. would i be ok giving 1500rms to a bl15 in a 4cubic foot enclosure or would i be better off reducing the enclosure size to around 3-3.5 cubic feet for better power handling? thx-phil

[KU40 173]

is this for ported? What's the tuning frequency?

[95Honda 486]

By making the box smaller and raising the power handling (mechanical) of the woofer, all you have accomplished is making the entire system less efficient. Also, due to thermal compression, it will never play as loud as the larger enclosure.... It's pretty much Hoffmans iron law...

Look at it this way, if you took say this same woofer and put it in a sealed box of .25ft the mechanical power handling would be through the roof, you could probably easily feed several thousands watts into the driver and never bottom it out at any frequency... The probelm is you would have to pour all that power into the driver to do what 1/2 or 1/4 the power would do in a LARGER box... And still, because of thermal issues (compression, failure, impedance fluxuation) it will still never get as loud.

One of the biggest backwards thing people say is "I want a woofer that will handle X amount of power". Not only is this completely backwards, but it is really, really stupid. The way it should go is "I have X woofer in X alignment, how much power do I need to bring the driver to it's full mechanical potential"? This is what you need to be thinking about.

Making the box smaller to handle more power is a step backwards in everything right. If you are making the box smaller to achieve a different target response, than that is different. At least understand this, if anything- If you make the box smaller, you alter the response. Especially for sealed alignments.

[philsteroni 0]

sorry forgot to meantion that the box will be ported and i'm still debating between 30-32 hz for the tuning. i got my sundown saz1500d, basically what i would like to know is: what size should i build my box to get the most out of the sub with the amp that i have?