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An added complication is the non-linearity of the "Phenomenon of the 'Weak Fundamental' "




As far as I know, the sounds of all non-electronic musical instruments are seriously colored by physical or mechanical factors.

One example: The lowest string of a 4-string electric bass guitar is E, usually tuned to around 41Hz (the numbers to the right of the decimal point don't make a difference). 41Hz has a wavelength of 27.5 feet. To begin to do full justice to the frequency, you need a string length of 6.7 feet. Not gonna happen!!!

So, in real life, the low E of an electric bass is a "Weak Fundamental," which means that the octave harmonic of Low E, E = 82Hz, is 6dB louder, which is perceptually twice as loud. But even that harmonic is not "full voice." Not until you get up to 164Hz does the speaking length of the string get longer than the quarter-wave of the frequency.

Of course, it is a lot more complicated than that. When you hear an electric bass Low E, or a grand piano Low A = 27.5Hz, you don't viscerally feel "Wow, that sucks--so WEAK." That's because our ear-brain system, for reasons of its own, "fills in" the weak fundamental.

(I am trying my best to give the shortest possible version.)

If you give the matter some thought, it might become apparent that the problem of the Weak Fundamental has no choice other than to be inextricably intertwined with the problem of Baffle Step Compensation.

Then why, you might ask, would a loudspeaker designer omit BSC?

I can think of a few reasons.

One, both for ideological as well as expense reasons, wanting to keep the "parts count" of the crossover as low as possible.

Two, voicing a speaker entirely by ear and emotional responses, and for some designers, that is not a bug and it is not a feature. It's the farking entire Raison d'Etre!

Three, development costs. As far as I know, there is no crossover-design software that can compute BSC. Or, if it is, it's the kind of software that costs $2,500 per module to rent per year.

So, engineering a BSC network is as far as I know a trial and error iterative process, with lots of measurements. The designer of the final crossover for my current project put more than 50 hours work into it.

JA, please comment!

Thanks,

John

PS: That inductor is what it is for reasons of electrical efficiency.

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