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Re: Room resonances and room noises are usually more audible and more important than subwoofer harmonic distortion

There are several factors which influence bass harmonic distortion. The skillful use of a servo sensor as velodyne does to continuously control the position of the voice coil is an excellent one. Here's one area where the principle of negative feedback is beyond dispute by anyone. Another is to use magnets with long linear fields so that large excursions don't place the voice coil in the region where the magnetic restoring force is reduced compared to the exciting force. Acoustic suspension speaker have a major inherent advantage in lower harmonic distortion over other types. This is because although the force driving the cone is applied near the center as with other designs, the restoring force is applied uniformly over the entire cone surface area instead of at the center and perimeter edge. This not only reduces the force per unit area on the cone material but eliminates both radial and circumferential differences in force which tend to create shearing forces along a cross section of the cone. This shearing force tends to cause the cone to break up into Bessel function vibrational modes much like a drum head. For non servo feedback deigns, these can be the lowest harmonic distortion woofers of all. AR1 exhibited distortion of only 5% at 30 hz 50 years ago, half of the competition. Even today, that's a hard figure to beat.

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