brahma vs w6

You guys think my 2 12'' Brahmas can bury 4 W6's?

What size W6's?  Can "bury" them in SQ or SPL?  As Kfro1 mentions, application may be a factor as well.  The Brahma is more comparable to the W7 than the W6.

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio

ok ... How much power is he using?  What application?  You need to give us the complete picture.

You are talking about the W6v2's right?  For the most part, 4 12" subs are going to have the advantage over a pair of 12" subs.  Unless he's running all 4 in a 1 cubic foot shared sealed enclosure with only 100 watts total, I think he's going to have the SPL advantage.  He's got twice the cone area, and the extra excursion on the Brahma just isn't enough to make up for that, unless he's lacking in something else as well.

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio

sedate:  read the speaker page on http://www.bcae1.com/

You're right, excursion doesn't always equal massive output.  You're wrong though, excursion has little to do with a woofer being linear and clean.  In fact, greater excursion is almost always  _harder_ to keep linear and clean.  You had it backwards.

Here's the short of it.  Max SPL is largely a function of displacement.  Displacement = cone area x excursion.  Other things being equal, potential SPL at low frequencies increases as excursion capabilities increase.  However, with a larger xmax comes decreased efficiency.  In other words, while the potential displacement, and thus potential SPL, is larger, it takes more power to reach the SAME SPL level. 

Take the W6 and the Brahma.  The W6 is rated around 87db efficient, I believe.  The Brahma is around 84, again, off the top of my head.  If the W6 is fed 300 watts it takes 600 watts to get the Brahma just as loud.  If a system of W6's is fed 1000w, a Brahma system of an equal number of drivers must be fed 2000 watts to reach the same SPL level.  This is true of all speakers.  A 3db increase in SPL needs a doubling of power. 

Where the excursion helps the Brahma is where I alluded to above.  Excursion will limit the 3db = doubling of power rule.  At the excursion limit extra power simply won't make the driver any louder, and may actually physically damage it.  This is where the Brahma, with its massive excursion capability, can make up ground quickly.  Where a W6 is going to start having problems driven with around 400w, the Brahma can keep going past 1000w, making up that 3db difference in efficiency. 

You should note, however, that in this case the Brahma is probably more linear and clean than the W6 - not because of the high excursion though.  It is more linear and clean because Adire has developed the XBL^2 technology that keeps it clean IN SPITE of its high excursion levels.

So, you should learn not to make statements with words like "*ever*."  A sufficient amount of power to the right 2 high excursion drivers COULD make up the 3db increase system efficiency a doubling of cone area yields to the 4 driver system.  :-)