# Do you really need midbass drivers most good home systems are tweeter,midrange,woofer



## coomaster1 (Jul 22, 2010)

Hi,Do you really need midbass woofers in your car to have the full spectrum of sound. Most quality home systems have used 3 way speakers for years and sound fantastic. A tweeter at the top,a midrange driver in the middle ,and a woofer at the bottom. If I have quality tweeters,quality midranges and 2 quality subwoofers ,won't I be covered for fantastic sound quality as well.,as long as everything is mounted,deadened and tuned properly for the car environment. All these speakers are essentially a 3 way.Thanks


----------



## trumpet (Nov 14, 2010)

You described the most common, simple sound quality system in a car. It's done all the time. We use midbass drivers in a 4-way system but it's not essential by any means to get the full spectrum of sound.


----------



## RNBRAD (Oct 30, 2012)

That's kind of a loaded question....

Your just referring to a typical 3 way system where you have a single driver that would do the work of 2 drivers in or of a standard 4 ways setup. So in your case you would have a single midbass/midrange driver. So to answer your question, no you do not need a dedicated midbass driver for SQ. Now does a 4 way system with a dedicated midbass driver sound better than a 3 way system with midbass/midrange driver? In a perfect world yes but not in all instances and another thread all together. The key to a good sounding 3 way setup is speaker size, selection, & x/o points. You want a nice size midrange/midbass driver that is capable of playing down to the upper frequency range of your subwoofer. On how well you do this will effect your subbass to midbass transition. 

In other words, don't buy 15'' subs, 4'' mids and tweets. It's good to carefully match all 3drivers, looking at their frequency response (A diy'r needs this info) and carefully select x-over points based on this information. It gets sophisticated, that's why company's put the sets together for you and build compatible x/o for them.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

No, you don't _need_ dedicated "midbass" drivers. Most people use them because of their reluctance to let the subwoofer handle higher frequencies, like in home audio applications. I'm not exactly sure where this reluctance comes from, although I suspect a big part of it comes from some of the common difficulties that some people have with tuning a subwoofer in the car. If you saw people successfully lowpassing their subwoofers around 150Hz or so, which is often the case in home audio, you'd see more people use dedicated midranges in their cars, instead of asking woofers to pull double-duty (most 2-way front stages) or adding dedicated "midbass" speakers (most 3-way front stages).


----------



## BassnTruck (May 27, 2010)

There is 1 major thing you are not understanding when you make your comparison. The fact that 3 way home system is all on the same plain. That woofer usually plays 300+Hz. When the speakers are all next to each other playing you really can not tell unless you drop the mid and tweeter. Now if you used the same crossover points in a 3 way car set up with the tweeter and mid up front and the subwoofer in the rear your sound stage would likely be pulled to the back of the car very often. The general consensus is a subwoofer playing above 100Hz can start to be localized. Which you do not want with it in the rear. This is why most subwoofer stages in a vehicle are low passed 80Hz and below. In a 4 way system most subwoofers are crossed 40-60Hz and the midwoofer picks it up from there. Which could go as high as 2000Hz but not typically until the mid range picks it up. The crossover points really depend on the speakers ability to play in their response range and then tuning to what sounds better because of overlap and environmental factors. There is no hard set rule to what crossover point and slope to use.

Hopefully that helps you understand.


----------



## cAsE sEnSiTiVe (Jun 24, 2008)

For me personally, I have NEVER heard a car sound good to *my* liking with rear-mounted subs playing well into the vocal range. Any sub crossed at 150+hz, no matter how steep the slope, is going to be producing some of the fundamental of the vocal, brass instruments...etc...etc.

If you can properly setup a system where all the drivers are physically in front of you, then I suppose anything's possible, but even then you'd most likely again have problems with a sub playing up that high...a sub that would almost certainly be installed well off-axis.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

Yet, in the home audio realm, some people have subwoofers mounted behind them or in some corner of the room, and the crossover points are often ~150Hz (the spec for the LFE channel in 5.1, IIRC), sometimes even higher. 

The same can be accomplished in the car. Most people don't know how because they don't take the time to tune their cars properly. The first step in tuning your subwoofer is to make it blend with the midrange, NOT to make it produce the desired amount of low bass. Most people usually turn their sub level up until they get the amount of bass they're looking for. THIS IS WRONG. Since people generally like an upward sloping bass response, this is where bass boost is useful, rather than level controls. I would argue that this mistake is what leads to so much difficulty with broadband subwoofer responses, which is why so many people choose such a crazy narrow bandwidth for their sub. When the bandwidth is narrow, the subwoofer level control basically becomes a high Q bass equalizer.


----------



## cAsE sEnSiTiVe (Jun 24, 2008)

MarkZ said:


> Yet, in the home audio realm, some people have subwoofers* mounted behind them* or in some corner of the room, and the *crossover points are often ~150Hz* (the spec for the LFE channel in 5.1, IIRC), sometimes even higher.


Not in any system I'd want to listen to....and I'm referring mostly to 2-channel not 5.1....which is whole 'nother ball of wax to chew on. As another poster mentioned, if mounted in a close time-aligned/sloped baffle array with the other drivers, absolutely it can and does often work well in a home environment. 

It just comes down to preference for me personally and what I look for in the reproduction of music.


----------



## michaelsil1 (May 24, 2007)

I would like to add one thing I haven't heard mentioned, a high end Home System usually doesn't get lower than 30Hz so it's easy for them to seal the Mid Bass and have it play down low.


----------



## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

I'm having to agree with MarkZ here. With proper tuning, your subwoofer can really make the midbass frequencies come alive.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

cAsE sEnSiTiVe said:


> Not in any system I'd want to listen to....and I'm referring mostly to 2-channel not 5.1....which is whole 'nother ball of wax to chew on. As another poster mentioned, if mounted in a close time-aligned/sloped baffle array with the other drivers, absolutely it can and does often work well in a home environment.
> 
> It just comes down to preference for me personally and what I look for in the reproduction of music.


I was using the 5.1 spec as an example of an industry accepted cutoff (it's actually 120Hz according to wikipedia... my mistake).

So what's special about a coincident baffle that can't be artificially corrected for using DSP? Time alignment is easy to deploy with DSP. Obviously baffle step isn't an issue at these frequencies. These frequencies are also too low to show any difference between on- and off-axis FR. So why must the low freq driver be on the same plane?

More to the point, where did this "100Hz" number come from? Is there something specific about our auditory systems that occurs at 100Hz? My understanding is that front-rear ambiguity is still strong up to a few hundred Hz. So why is 100Hz the target?

Anyway, the point is that lots of people have gotten this to work well in the car. If you haven't, that's fine, but you shouldn't tell other people that it's impossible. There are threads here and elsewhere that explain how to get it to work.


----------



## coomaster1 (Jul 22, 2010)

Great responses so far. You guys really know your stuff. One responder said, If you mount the midrange/midbass speaker in a certain location.It will be more of a midrange speaker in certain locations,and more of a midbass if mounted in a different location. If the speaker is intended for say midrange frequencies.Wouldn't it always be a midrange no matter where you located it.If this is true where would be the best place to mount the midrange and also the midbass if it is really required for optimum sound. Also will I lose out on some of the frequencies of the music if I don't have a dedicated midrange and dedicated midbass or is midbass just another term for small subwoofer and the main subwoofers produce all the sounds that a dedicated midbass will produce.


----------



## left channel (Jul 9, 2008)

If you mount a Mid-Woofer in a well sealed door it will reproduce the lower midrange/midbass much more accurately. Put the same speaker in a kick panel or dash pod and it is not going to get nearly as low.



coomaster1 said:


> Great responses so far. You guys really know your stuff. One responder said, If you mount the midrange/midbass speaker in a certain location.It will be more of a midrange speaker in certain locations,and more of a midbass if mounted in a different location. If the speaker is intended for say midrange frequencies.Wouldn't it always be a midrange no matter where you located it.If this is true where would be the best place to mount the midrange and also the midbass if it is really required for optimum sound. Also will I lose out on some of the frequencies of the music if I don't have a dedicated midrange and dedicated midbass or is midbass just another term for small subwoofer and the main subwoofers produce all the sounds that a dedicated midbass will produce.


----------



## cAsE sEnSiTiVe (Jun 24, 2008)

MarkZ said:


> I was using the 5.1 spec as an example of an industry accepted cutoff (it's actually 120Hz according to wikipedia... my mistake).
> 
> So what's special about a coincident baffle that can't be artificially corrected for using DSP? Time alignment is easy to deploy with DSP. Obviously baffle step isn't an issue at these frequencies. These frequencies are also too low to show any difference between on- and off-axis FR. So why must the low freq driver be on the same plane?
> 
> ...


Mark,

I think you misunderstood my response. I didn't say it was impossible, I said I hadn't yet heard a car that allowed me tightly focused images within the soundstage, with appropriate depth, width, height....what have you, with rear-mounted subs that were playing high enough to intervene with the above. I'd love to proven wrong....who wouldn't like some more impact without any deleterious effects?

I'm not sure where 100hz came from either....I typically don't run my sub higher than say 50hz....in fact right now they are at 40hz @36db. I get plenty of power in the low end, and a completely seemless sounding transition between sub and midbass.


----------



## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

Wow, I ran two active with a single 12" sub, and had the crossover point at 100Hz on the mids at 12dB slope, and 80Hz on the sub with 12dB slope. Really brought the midbass to life for my particular install, but that was in a regular cab truck.


----------



## coomaster1 (Jul 22, 2010)

So when people are talking midbass or midrange on these forums. They are the same speaker?Just tuned differently. Or is there really a separate speaker that produces midbass sounds more easily or a separate speaker that produces midrange sounds more easily.If they are indeed the same speaker,why can't they just call it either the midrange or midbass.Would make it easier for people to understand. Coming from home audio, I usually just here tweeter, midrange or woofer.


----------



## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

The woofer is referred to as midbass on some mobile audio forums.


----------



## coomaster1 (Jul 22, 2010)

i thought the woofer was the same as subwoofer. And midbass and midrange meant the same thing. Is this correct ?


----------



## dozy_production (Mar 22, 2006)

no. midbass usually can dig to 60-80hz and crossed as high as the frequency response or distortion allow it to go up to. Midrange usually takes over from where the midbass leaves off and usually can play higher frequencies than the midbass and for the most part are smaller drivers that can be dome or cone.


----------



## left channel (Jul 9, 2008)

Most car woofers are designed to pull double duty as Midbass/Midrange and usually come in a 2-Way set with a woofer and tweeter. Some are designed as separate Midbass and Midrange and come in a 3-Way set with a woofer, midrange and tweeter. A few manufacturers offer all of them as raw drivers that can be mixed and matched with active crossovers. Then there are subwoofers which take care of the frequencies below the woofer. Most people run these at 100-80 hz and below but as stated can be run up to 150 hz or higher in certain situations.


----------



## asota (Feb 7, 2011)

coomaster1 said:


> i thought the woofer was the same as subwoofer. And midbass and midrange meant the same thing. Is this correct ?


Your mid bass are your woofers subs are sub bass. Some folks run there subs up into woofer range for added output from the larger drivers.


----------



## 04silverz (May 28, 2008)

Lord help me when I finally delve in to home audio. Never really looked at it yet as I always have rented houses and would like a somewhat stealth install. I have a feeling it's gonna be another giant money pit though


----------



## chaser9478 (Aug 16, 2011)

I agree with you about it being a money pit! I am getting ready to buy a house and a room for music and home theatre is high on the priority list. I am excited about it but its going to be pricey. I am thinking IB 18s vented in the soffet....

back on topic: It may be my subs or the enclosure that they are in, a small sealed, .625cf, but I dont care for them to play much higher than 60hz with a 24db slope. It maybe my lack of skill at sub tuning but I think it sounds to heavy....unreal I guess is a better word.

I am quite sure that in home system the woofers and subs play much higher but you have many more positions to work with. in a car things go where they can fit. I know some folks take great care in choosing locations for their drivers but a lot of us take the path of least resistance. That may not be right but its a lot easier than a ton of custom work.


----------



## nrubenstein (Sep 4, 2008)

I will say that I became DRAMATICALLY happier with my car stereos when I experimented with crossing the sub in the 125-150 range. Is it perfect? No. But taking some stress off the front stage makes it possible to simplify the install up front (less vibration) and makes the front stage sound a lot better by keeping the drivers in a range that they are actually comfortable with.


----------



## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL (Jan 31, 2011)

left channel said:


> If you mount a Mid-Woofer in a well sealed door it will reproduce the lower midrange/midbass much more accurately. Put the same speaker in a kick panel or dash pod and it is not going to get nearly as low.


This is entirely situational. Mount the same speaker in a vented kick panel and it can reach just as low as a door mounted speaker, almost always with less resonance.


----------



## 04silverz (May 28, 2008)

chaser9478 said:


> I agree with you about it being a money pit! I am getting ready to buy a house and a room for music and home theatre is high on the priority list. I am excited about it but its going to be pricey. I am thinking IB 18s vented in the soffet....
> 
> back on topic: It may be my subs or the enclosure that they are in, a small sealed, .625cf, but I dont care for them to play much higher than 60hz with a 24db slope. It maybe my lack of skill at sub tuning but I think it sounds to heavy....unreal I guess is a better word.
> 
> I am quite sure that in home system the woofers and subs play much higher but you have many more positions to work with. in a car things go where they can fit. I know some folks take great care in choosing locations for their drivers but a lot of us take the path of least resistance. That may not be right but its a lot easier than a ton of custom work.


Yeah I agree. In a room its fairly easy to move a sub box around or change where your satellite speakers are. For the majority of car audio users, we make do with what we have.


----------



## audiguy (Jul 30, 2007)

chaser9478 said:


> I agree with you about it being a money pit! I am getting ready to buy a house and a room for music and home theatre is high on the priority list. I am excited about it but its going to be pricey. I am thinking IB 18s vented in the soffet....
> 
> back on topic: It may be my subs or the enclosure that they are in, a small sealed, .625cf, but I dont care for them to play much higher than 60hz with a 24db slope. It maybe my lack of skill at sub tuning but I think it sounds to heavy....unreal I guess is a better word.
> 
> I am quite sure that in home system the woofers and subs play much higher but you have many more positions to work with. in a car things go where they can fit. I know some folks take great care in choosing locations for their drivers but a lot of us take the path of least resistance. That may not be right but its a lot easier than a ton of custom work.


I roll with 4-18s IB with 2400 watts


----------



## audiguy (Jul 30, 2007)

coomaster1 said:


> Hi,Do you really need midbass woofers in your car to have the full spectrum of sound. Most quality home systems have used 3 way speakers for years and sound fantastic. A tweeter at the top,a midrange driver in the middle ,and a woofer at the bottom. If I have quality tweeters,quality midranges and 2 quality subwoofers ,won't I be covered for fantastic sound quality as well.,as long as everything is mounted,deadened and tuned properly for the car environment. All these speakers are essentially a 3 way.Thanks


Yes


----------



## BassnTruck (May 27, 2010)

left channel said:


> If you mount a Mid-Woofer in a well sealed door it will reproduce the lower midrange/midbass much more accurately. Put the same speaker in a kick panel or dash pod and it is not going to get nearly as low.


Are you serious?

Where you mount a mid makes no difference on how it will play. I could mount one on the roof and it will play the exact same if all variables are kept in check (size and type of enclosure and crossover point and slope). Now if it sounds different it could be based off location because of time delay or positive interference. But to say a mid plays lower because it is mounted in a door vs some kicks is just silly.

I have purchased a number of things from sonic, but man am I glad I do not have to rely on their tech support because you know nothing and want to believe you do.


----------



## BassnTruck (May 27, 2010)

cajunner said:


> strictly based on size of enclosure, the doors almost always have more room than a sealed kick or dash pod.
> 
> seal the door and you have an enclosure that more closely reaches the ideal volume for a speaker designed to play below 120 hz.


Stop swinging on his nuts. Your answer is just a crap shoot. All that depends in your example is the T/S parameters of the speaker being used. Which could easily go either way.


----------



## BassnTruck (May 27, 2010)

cajunner said:


> hahaha..
> 
> if you want to argue about it, find me some kick panel enclosures that equal the volume of a door.
> 
> ...


More is not always better. Like I said the space requirement is dictated by the speaker not the size of a door or kick. Which is the point you are missing.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

"midbass speaker" = small format subwoofer.

For all intents and purposes, they're the same thing. Usually when people say they want a "midbass driver", they usually want something that reproduces 80Hz (or lower) up to a few/several hundred Hz, and they want it to do so with authority. This usually requires long throw drivers when you consider the types of cone dimensions often associated with what people mean by "midbass" (typically between 6.5"-8").

Sometimes people use poetic license and just refer to ALL 6.5" speakers in a component set as "midbass" speakers. I guess that's fine, considering that "midbass" to describe a speaker is kind of a ******** term anyway.  But it probably waters down the term even more to use it to refer to a 6.5" speaker with 4mm xmax.

I wouldn't worry so much about the designation. What you call it doesn't really matter. What matters is the driver's frequency response and its output capabilities. There are some drivers that are considered "subwoofers" that extend to 1kHz with ease, and there are some drivers that are considered by some people to be "midbass" drivers that will play low with authority. It's better to consider individual drivers and whether they'll do what you want them to do in the environment you're putting them in.


----------



## trumpet (Nov 14, 2010)

johinsyly said:


> You described the most common, simple sound top quality system in a car. It's done all enough time. We use midbass drivers in a 4-way system but it's not essential by any means for get the finish wide range of sound.


The hell is this, a spammer?  You copied my post and changed it into Engrish.


----------



## schmiddr2 (Aug 10, 2009)

trumpet said:


> The hell is this, a spammer?  You copied my post and changed it into Engrish.


lol. He did this in several places. I removed him. One of about 100 spammers I have removed this year. They keep evolving their tactics so keep a look out and report them.


----------



## goodstuff (Jan 9, 2008)

Yo dawg. We heard you like woofers so we put a midwoofer in your midbass in your midrange so you can midrange your midbass while you midwoofer your subwoofer.


----------



## left channel (Jul 9, 2008)

You totally missed my point. Its not the location itself that changes the sound. It is the size limitations of the location. A kick panel or dash pod is generally not going to be as large as a door so the enclosure is going to limit the low frequency extension. And the personal attack was completely unnecessary. 



BassnTruck said:


> Are you serious?
> 
> Where you mount a mid makes no difference on how it will play. I could mount one on the roof and it will play the exact same if all variables are kept in check (size and type of enclosure and crossover point and slope). Now if it sounds different it could be based off location because of time delay or positive interference. But to say a mid plays lower because it is mounted in a door vs some kicks is just silly.
> 
> I have purchased a number of things from sonic, but man am I glad I do not have to rely on their tech support because you know nothing and want to believe you do.


----------



## schmiddr2 (Aug 10, 2009)

I agree. I sent him a PM yesterday about his remarks to you and cajunner.


----------



## Hanatsu (Nov 9, 2010)

goodstuff said:


> Yo dawg. We heard you like woofers so we put a midwoofer in your midbass in your midrange so you can midrange your midbass while you midwoofer your subwoofer.


xD xD


----------



## BassnTruck (May 27, 2010)

left channel said:


> You totally missed my point. Its not the location itself that changes the sound. It is the size limitations of the location. A kick panel or dash pod is generally not going to be as large as a door so the enclosure is going to limit the low frequency extension. And the personal attack was completely unnecessary.


I did not miss any point. I never said a door does not typically have more volume then a kick or dash pod. You made the assumption that all speakers need a large volume of space to produce midbass. Which is in fact not correct at all. You could get the same amount of midbass out of a door or a kick. It all depends on the speaker used. So making a blanket statement that door locations make more midbass is just silly and breeds ignorance.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

Someone's getting a little too defensive over his kick panel install...


----------



## ZAKOH (Nov 26, 2010)

coomaster1 said:


> Hi,Do you really need midbass woofers in your car to have the full spectrum of sound. Most quality home systems have used 3 way speakers for years and sound fantastic. A tweeter at the top,a midrange driver in the middle ,and a woofer at the bottom. If I have quality tweeters,quality midranges and 2 quality subwoofers ,won't I be covered for fantastic sound quality as well.,as long as everything is mounted,deadened and tuned properly for the car environment. All these speakers are essentially a 3 way.Thanks




In a car, I think 2 way front plus a subwoofer can work well and cover the entire spectrum of sound. However, this would require some good tuning and installation. A lot of subwoofers are kind of sloppy at above 80Hz. Of course, there are some exceptions. Another issue is that if you let your subwoofer play midbass frequencies then it may draw the sound stage to the rear of car. This may be a fault of the car itself as midbass frequencies have a potential to rattle things in the back of car, drawing attention to it. Because of this, I prefer to low pass subwoofer at 80Hz or lower. In fact, my subwoofer plays fantastic with 80Hz LP, however I can still hear some rattles and other distortions coming from the rear of (my crappy old) car, so I am finding 63Hz HP to be the least offending setting for a subwoofer right now.

At the same time a lot of 6 and 5 inch mids struggle to play below 100Hz. I mean, they can still have a good punch, but their bass is still rolling off below 100Hz. This is why a lot people just prefer to use 3-way front stage with a large dedicated midbass. Perhaps they also want to clear up the midrange by using a dedicated midrange speaker.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

ZAKOH said:


> However, this would require some good tuning and installation. A lot of subwoofers are kind of sloppy at above 80Hz.


 Like which ones?


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Mark, I keep going back and forth on trying either dedicated midbasses on the rear deck or running a pair of subs on the rear deck up sort of high. My thing is I don't know if having seperate midbasses would help or hurt me in getting everything anchored up front.

Any thoughts on that?


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

What kind of crossover points are you thinking about?


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Mmm could be 300 a down...maybe 150 and down.


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Yeap.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

I'd try the sub-only first, but only if you have EQ and enough power to handle the increased bandwidth.


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Power I have.

EQ...shopping for.


----------



## michaelsil1 (May 24, 2007)

thehatedguy said:


> Power I have.
> 
> EQ...shopping for.


No EQ!


----------



## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

With all the variables thrown in all I can say is I am able to blend my front stage (6.5" in the doors, 4x6" in the dash) & subs (two 10" sealed) together around 150-200hz with no problem. Utilizing a EQ to tame the sub's upper response is a given. There is usually a good rise in frequency around 200-300hz in a car so crossing over and/or cutting within that range a tad relieves the doors from added distortion which gives more resolution. I have no problems with anything drawing towards the rear more than I had before with the normal recommended 80hz xover frequency or even less. Impact is even better and appears to still come from the front. The fundamental percussion strikes is what will fool your ears and that is much higher than most think. I've even gotten away with this before using only a 4" comp set with a 12" sub. 

I would advise for anyone that does not believe it is possible to stop following such general tuning ideologies given in most instructions & guides.


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Nope, nothing in the car but the head unit, horns, and sub. No sound since I sold my MS-8.



michaelsil1 said:


> No EQ!


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Right now I have a Dayton HF 15 in the skipass that I can play with when I get some DSP loving. I think it is clean to 200 or so. If I had my way I would have a WGTi15 or a SBP15.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

thehatedguy said:


> Right now I have a Dayton HF 15 in the skipass that I can play with when I get some DSP loving. I think it is clean to 200 or so. If I had my way I would have a WGTi15 or a SBP15.


Yeah, I'm using the JBL in my skipass, lowpassed somewhere in the 200-250 range. Not sure where breakup is on this sub. Did anyone plot harmonic distortion vs. freq for this driver? The spec sheet says it's 3dB down ~1kHz. I'm thinking about trying it for rear ambience too...


----------



## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

I remember back in 04 when Mark Elridge was on Team JBL and we were getting ready for a full range SPL shootout at Steel Vally Regionals saying his 15s (WGTis) were clean to 320 hertz. Me, him, and Steve Head had arguably the loudest full range cars there and we ironically got 5th, 4th, and 3rd.


----------



## trebor (Jun 30, 2008)

I'm running a 2-way and sub setup now with the sub/mid crossover at 500Hz because anything lower, my door speakers would have a lot of interference with each other (I'm using poor, factory door locations). I think the only way I'd want to try dedicated rear midbasses is if they were to play all the way up to your horns (2-way plus sub or subs). Getting the phase right, in my 2-way/sub setup took a lot of eqing. I'd imagine trying that between more speakers would be a real challenge. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

cajunner said:


> one is that there is no woofer out there that can do from 20 hz to 160 hz perfectly in the middle as well as at either end.
> 
> two, is that there is no midrange that can do from 60 hz, to 3500 hz perfectly, etc. etc.
> 
> three, is that there is no tweeter that can do from 1000 hz to 20 Khz perfectly, etc.


Huh?


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

cajunner said:


> at first, I thought "send this to dumb questions" but the more I thought about it, there's a general lack of understanding on this topic and maybe we should hash it out a bit.
> 
> statistically, if we have a 4 way system, (including subs) then it's a midbass being added to a 3 way system in the highest percentile.
> 
> I know, you can drop a tweeter and add a full ranger, etc. etc...., but historically, the midbass addition is what separates the 3 way from the 4 way.


This gets back to what I said earlier about "midbass" being a ******** term. There's no such thing as a "midbass" speaker. There were already too many designations _before_ it was invented, so I don't really understand how it came to be, and why it's useful.

The way I see it, there are three, maybe four, useful designations. Tweeters, midrange, and woofers. Each has a somewhat unambiguous definition. A fourth _might_ be subwoofers, because it implies a certain cone diameter and output capability, although I'm perfectly content leaving it categorized under woofer. There's no reason to try to come up with something that exists in between subwoofers and woofers, because there's not enough gray area between them to work with!

Anyway, in car audio, it's usually the upper part of the spectrum that has the more prominent differences between 3- and 4-way, IMO. It's not as if people don't use woofers already in 3-way systems. The most common 3-way is subwoofer (10"+, high excursion), woofer (5.25"-6.5" typically, xmax>3mm), tweeter. Most 4-way implementations use a similar set of drivers, but add a dedicated midrange of some sort. Even if you peruse this site, you'll see a ton of people using 6.5" woofers in their 4-way that would be perfectly appropriate in most 3-ways.

I'm not knocking the redundancy, by the way. It can sometimes still be useful in the car for aiming, and sometimes people are just limited to 6.5" drivers in their doors. You mentioned this.

But I digress...

The reason I asked "Huh?" was because I didn't know what you meant when you said there are no drivers that produce those frequency ranges you listed. There certainly are. I thought maybe you were raising objections that people sometimes make to justify their choices?


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

cajunner said:


> I disagree. If I was looking for a definition, it would be a specialized speaker designed to have high excursion and because motor topology and cone density (long coil, stiff cone, high inductance) in a smaller speaker dictates the upper-end roll-off, these speakers have reduced ability in midrange applications. There are several popular drivers that fall into this designation that are well-liked in the midbass application but fall short when run into a 2 way app because the tweeter can't get down to 1.2 Khz, where harmonics are beginning to suffer in these special design woofers.


Specially designed? How is that any different from traditional woofers? There's a huge variation in the high frequency performance of woofers, in general. Sometimes it's a byproduct of increased excursion or some other factor. This isn't a new or special shortcoming. It's just something that's always been an issue, especially when looking at typical response properties of the type of woofers we call subwoofers. 

It's why I said at the beginning of the thread... "midbass" = subwoofer. Like you, I've been here for a long time, and it never fails that when somebody is talking about a "dedicated midbass", they're talking about adding a smaller format subwoofer to supplement their trunk-mounted subwoofer. They're also usually talking about adding this speaker in the front of the car somewhere. The installation location and intended crossover parameters of one user shouldn't dictate the characteristic of the speaker. If somebody wants to mount an 8" Peerless subwoofer in their front doors and call it a "midbass", does that mean the three that some other guy has mounted in a sealed box in his trunk is now also called a "midbass"?

I acknowledge that some people use low crossover points and will often use big speakers to make it happen, but I don't think bass has a unique design philosophy here. Like I mentioned in my last post, you add speakers and you're most likely going to reduce the bandwidth for all of your speakers. So this thread isn't "do you really need a midbass?" It's really just another 3-way vs. 4-way thread. 



> There is a school of thought that drivers should have smooth output 2 octaves outside of their bandwidth on either side.
> 
> this is what I'm referring to, because harmonics are what gives speakers their particular voicing, and my description above refers to the challenge to find speakers that can play outside of their 'usable' frequency response to create an effortless stage using multi-element approaches.


If we all followed that rule of thumb, we'd be dreadfully disappointed because we all use subwoofers that begin to roll off higher than 20Hz most of the time.  It's also not uncommon when designing passive crossovers to incorporate the speaker's intrinsic lowpass properties in your design. So I'm not sure I weight that 2 octave rule very highly.

Anyway, for the vast majority of users who are unhappy with their "midbass" response and want to add a dedicated driver to bolster this region, they're usually doing their subwoofer/mid integration wrong.


----------



## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

Wow!! This thread is starting to go awry.... To the OP, there's several ways to increase output in the midbass region, but the question is do you need to? Like it was noted earlier, low & mid integration is the main key with the mid's output capabilities being a dominant factor of how much you can introduce from the subwoofer without detracting from.the front stage. If you are keeping your crossover point fairly high, there is no reason to exclude pro audio drivers as their common higher output will render good results while still.maintaining a total 3-way system. You can include the use of a dedidcated narrow range "midrange" into a normal 2-way front stage, but with that comes various complexities including space, phase, etc.... It all depends how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go.


----------



## MarkZ (Dec 5, 2005)

cajunner said:


> I'm thinking that you intend to defend the old tw/mid/woof definitions but in car audio there are accepted terms that define a specific profile or feature set and a mid bass is one of them.
> 
> maybe it's as simple as saying it's a high excursion woofer that doesn't reach cleanly into the crossover range of the average tweeter.
> 
> The compromises chosen by the speaker designer such as high inductance, thick dust cap, stiff cone, long coil, large surround, etc. that decrease the performance in the midrange region, are instead concentrated to produce increased performance in the mid bass region.


You just described a typical subwoofer.


----------

