No it's about the other parameters of proper design.
A speaker housing and entire device cabinet that doesn't
resonant. An amp circuit that can provide the necessary
current without severe distortion. A speaker that can
likewise handle it.
Many simply thought the size of the speaker was the main
criteria when it is simply that small speakers are also more
commonly very cheap ones. Someone could make a really low
quality larger speaker, put it in a terribly resonant
cabinet and drive it will too low a wattage amp and it too
would sound terrible... though tend to have more bass.
No again. >
He's right.
There are two diverging methods now. You're talking about the pure form,
the striving for true hi-fi, where basic techniques are refined.
THis thread isn't about that though. It's about how speakers small enough
to have no chance of rendering real air moving capability without shaking
themselves to brittle fatigued pieces, mounted in tiny sealed baffles that
couldn't accept such movements without developing deap-sea pressures even
if such air movemnt were possible from those little speakers, can still
somehow produce good bass. All kinds of non-purist tricks must be used.
Actually, some of those tricks should be used even by the purists. The mani
one being panning and balance set by delay and not only by varing the
signal level. Try it with a flanger effect, set the feedback to zero,
modulation off, and adjust the sub-millisecond delays slowly to afect an
already-panned signal. This simulates the tiny delay our heads cause to
incoming sounds (That's what the 'head related transfer functions' thing is
about, btw). This, combined with subtle low-pass filtering, can make a
signal pan well beyond the speakers.
There are several reasons why such tricks are not used in purist hi-fi:
1. Expense. Until recently, it's been prohibitive.
2. Subjectivity. The delay needed to make a degree of panning depends on
ear and head shape.
3. The effect has been used as a gimmick, and has got a bad reputation in a
purist context.
If I were designing a balance control for hi-fi based on this I'd have a
main balance control that had a couple of smaller controls beside it, one
for filter, one for delay. To set it up, pan main hard left, then adjust
delay for making the sound go to best extreme for proper location left for
whoever is going to listen. Check it again on the right, then use the main,
then adjust the filter till it feels right. It's more complex than the
usual set of controls, but not much. It's no good setting up digital
poresets, a thing like that has to be as hands-on as the controls we've got
used to over decades.
Not sure whether the bass enhancement thing counts so well for hi-fi use
though. It might in active speakers though, where the aim is to match the
power gain stage with the transducer to air coupling. When you have that
much control over the output device, it probably can get hi-fi results for
a small bookshelf system.
