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Frequency Response - Bass Response

Back in the late 60's Goodman's came out with the Maximus I as a tiny competitor to the AR-4. The 5" woofer was amazing with an extremely long magnet structure and rubber surround to theoretically produce the equivalent air volume output of the AR at low distortion. Because of the tiny sealed box, the internal air pressure was very high. Perfect sealing was paramount. I owned both and the Goodmans could never measure up except at near-field levels..
 
toxcrusadr said:
^^ I was going to post what twiiii said. To carry that a bit farther, let's say you have two speakers with similar frequency response ratings. If they are both really flat speakers - let's say +/-3 db across the entire spectrum, which is fairly impressive - you'd think they would sound the same. But even that tight of a range allows for one speaker to be -3db at a given frequency while the other is +3db, resulting in a 6 db difference in volume between the two speakers. 10 db is a factor of 10 in perceived volume, 3 db is a factor of two. No two speakers have identical curves and there will be peaks and dips and humps and valleys in different places. This can have a dramatic effect on the overall sound of the speakers. And remember these two speakers are about as tight as it gets. Add to that room response (resonance modes), off-axis response, dynamics, etc. and it's no wonder that two speakers both rated with the same "39Hz-20 KHz" frequency response will sound completely different.

That's why you always should listen to speakers to know whether you're going to like them. Specs can only go so far.
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The above is about the best explanation I've seen as to why drivers with same ratings sound different. If you want to compare specs, you really need to see the FR and impedance curves. That way you can better see the dips and peaks and compare them between drivers.

BUT you got the power and perceived volume confused. A 10dB SPL increase requires 10 times the power from the amplifier and has only 2 times the perceived volume (loudness) increase. A 3 dB SPL difference requires 2 times the power with a perceptible difference in volume that is less than double loudness.
 
The classic definition for bandwidth for electronics is +/- 3 db. But not for speakers. Its just been recently that JBL has set the standard with its M2 monitor speakers in an anechoic chamber. You can read about them else where.
 
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