Do 6.5 inch woofers sound better than 5 inch woofers?

AudioNut1983

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I was wondering if anyone here knows whether a 5 inch woofer has worse stereo imaging then a 6.5 inch?
I was on the hunt for some floor standers but came across a used pair of mission 792’s, I used to own the 790’s which were great but I always felt the bass and stereo imaging was a little lacking.
Would the 6.5inch woofer have better stereo imaging?
Really interested to know if size makes a difference in that department particularly
 
In theory the 5” should have a wider sweet spot than the 6.5” if crossed over at the same point, the 6.5” will start to beam (narrowing of the horizontal angle from the speaker that has a uniform volume) at a lower frequency. However, I suspect the 5” will be crossed a bit higher which will take some of the strain off the tweeter (assuming the tweeters are the same). The 5” will also roll off at the bass end at a higher frequency which may affect the mid bass as well. Baffle width will also play a part, the crossover topology, the centre to centre distances of the woofer and tweeter and box volume/port tuning/stuffing all affect the sound of a speaker.

I think there are probably too many variables to generalise which is why auditions are so important, preferably at home for speakers especially.
 
Although the 5" will roll off at the bass at a higher frequency, this can be compensated with two woofers in a larger cabinet.

Smaller cones also.mean the tweeter can be mounted closer to the centre of the cone.

Another factor to consider is whether 2 way or 2.5 way will have an impact on the mid bass and the crossover of the second woofer in a 2.5 way speaker.
 
Best stereo imaging I’ve ever heard was from my Quad 10L with 13cm woofers. Outstanding speaker in every respect.
 
Best stereo imaging was my first hifi which were the JPW ML310i (£39 brand new) speakers, 4 inch woofers, partnered with a Cambridge Audio A1 v1 (£59.95 brand new from RS). Better than the £900 Monitor Audio gold gr10 I owned and Kef Blades I heard in a demo room.
 
In theory the 5” should have a wider sweet spot than the 6.5” if crossed over at the same point, the 6.5” will start to beam (narrowing of the horizontal angle from the speaker that has a uniform volume) at a lower frequency. However, I suspect the 5” will be crossed a bit higher which will take some of the strain off the tweeter (assuming the tweeters are the same). The 5” will also roll off at the bass end at a higher frequency which may affect the mid bass as well. Baffle width will also play a part, the crossover topology, the centre to centre distances of the woofer and tweeter and box volume/port tuning/stuffing all affect the sound of a speaker.

I think there are probably too many variables to generalise which is why auditions are so important, preferably at home for speakers especially.
That’s really interesting, I thought due to a larger speaker it would have an even wider sweet spot, how wrong I was!
 
Up to a certain frequency they will be very similar with almost equal output in a 30deg horizontal arc. After a frequency (generalising hugely) equal to the diameter of the cone I.e. 34400/cone diam in cm, the off axis will start to drop fairly rapidly E.g. 8” driver with 17 cm diam will start beaming (off axis starts to drop off) at around 2khz.

This is the point at which you need to start to cross over to the tweeter in a 2way speaker, however many 1” tweeter like to be crossed at around 3khz therefore you need to go up a size in tweeter or down a woofer size or compromise that 2-3khz area by using very steep crossover slopes (4th order 24db/octave slope) which is why an 8+1” 2 way speaker is notoriously hard to get right.
 

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