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[Aaron Kovacik]

I remember having read or heard that certain drivers are designed for certain positions, and others are not. an example would be a woofer that is down firing, as opposed to front loaded. I ask because I have some drivers I pulled from a front loaded cab, and was thinking of using them to experiment with band pass designs, but I don't want to damage a driver by using it upside down (fighting against gravity?) or sideways. I can't see any reason why I couldn't use them in any orientation, but I've been wrong before. Any help is greatly appreciated.
-Aaron

[Art Welter]

Aaron,

Drivers are damaged thermally (burning/melting) or mechanically  (ripping, separating etc.) . You won’t damage your drivers unless you do one or the other or both.

It is easy to visually check the excursion limits by putting a dot on the cone (White Out or a silver Sharpie pen work well) and hold a ruler up to the cone as you run music, pink noise or sine wave through the speaker. Persistence of vision makes it possible to see the peak to peak movement, the dot will look like two dots or a line.

If your design allows  the mechanical limits to be exceeded well before the power limits, you don’t have a good match of cone to cabinet.

As far as the different mounting configurations, the primary thing to worry about is displacement. A speaker mounted with the magnet out of the enclosure increases the cabinet volume slightly, while mounting the speaker with the magnet in reduces the cabinet volume.

Lastly, I have not heard a bandpass cabinet that demonstrated any advantage over other designs other than the dubious distinction of being able to be run without a crossover.

Have fun!

[Dave Rickard]

http://www.partsexpress.com/resources/woofer-mount-up-down.c fm

for downfiring subwoofers.