i was admiring my arsenal today and i noticed it was pushin pretty nicely. when i was looking at it it looked like it was putting out close to an inch of excursion peak to peak. then i looked at my specs for it and it says Xmax is 20.5mm. i have a 400w rms sony amp pushing it and it is pretty much at full excursion.
do i need to upgrade my amp to something more powerful or ami i getting almost all i can get out of this amp?
what will a audiobahn 8000t do that my sony doesn't? (beside build quality)
the box can have a lot to do with it too. putting it in too large a box will let it reach full excursion with less power. i think ported will have the same effect, but not sure. kinda like running free air. if you push the RMS rating to a sub in free air, you will blow it.
the smaller the sealed enclosure the more power it will take for your speaker to reach x max. The larger you go the more the sub starts to act as a free air application so it takes much less power to reach full excursion in a larger sealed box. In ported you will not reach full excursion ever unless you lack a SS filter and you play the sub below tuning of the enclosure and it loses control and thats how you damage subs in a ported enclosure.
Boxes and/or any type of enclosure arround a speaker will produce a certain amount of resistant presure against the cone.
This pressure will also change the way the cone behaves and how it will reproduce air waves.
Because the air pressure changes, the suspension of the driver also changes and stiffens or loosens depending on the air pressure of the enclosure.
So,
If you have a 1 cf ported box with a port of say 3" wide by 6" long it will have a certain air pressure.
Now,
If you put the same woofer in a 15 cf ported box with a port 20" wide by 1" long, it will have a different air pressure compared to the other narrower and longer port.
No doubt, this will also change the tunning frequency.