The EP800 has lower bass extension than the EP600 because the EP800 has two drivers and therefore double (or 113.4 sq in) more driver surface area. This would be equivalent to a single 17" driver.
That's pretty much what I figured. But where I start to lose a clear understanding of the way things work is, if they're using 600 watts to move the one woofer in the EP600 in a ported design, which is more efficient than a sealed box, then I would have thought the EP800, which uses a less efficient design, would require more than 400 watts per speaker to even get close to the output of the 600.
I was very surprised when the EP800 came out that it was only their second sealed subwoofer. I'm very interested to hear, from one of Axioms designers, why they chose to go with a sealed box for the 800 instead of porting it like most of their subs, which produces greater bass extension. The way I'm understanding things now it just seems like it would have been easier to achieve their goal performance with a ported box.
If in fact a ported design holds an advantage in the area of bass extension, then I'm curious why they would take what seems like 'the harder road' to getting the EP800 to hit those awesome low bass notes that it does. And why it doesn't require gobbs more power than it does to perform the way it performs.
I'm certainly not trying to be difficult here, I'm just really mixed up in the reasonings behind all these decissions because my understanding of the differences between the two designs is very fuzzy. I've thrown out all the information I had on the subject growing up because it seems it was all based on myths. But so far, all attempts I've made searching for the differences via the internet seem to conflict with the information I've gotten here.
Which is why I'd love to hear it from the horses mouth. What advantage did the sealed box used with the EP800 have?
