Warp wrote:

>   I know next to nothing about audio and loudspeaker technology, but as
> far as I understand the capability of a loudspeaker to play bass
> frequencies is more or less directly proportional to the physical size
> of the loudspeaker (you need a larger box to get lower frequencies).
> Thus it's very difficult if not impossible to play low frequencies with
> very small speakers which do not have any volume to them to speak of.
> Thus you will never get high-quality sound from very small speakers.
> 
>   (One could ask what about headphones. Those are pretty small speakers
> and they can play pretty low frequencies. I assume it has something to
> do with their physical location with respect to the ear canal.)

Well, actually, I've found a pair of external speakers which are pretty 
small, yet seem to produce a surprising amount of bass.

The interesting thing is that the bass frequencies seem to die away 
*rapidly* as you move away from the speakers. So I'm hypothesizing that 
it's not so much that small speakers don't generate bass, but rather 
that it diminishes rapidly with distance. In other words, I hypothesize 
that you need a physically large speaker to generate low frequency waves 
that will *travel* some distance before dissapating.

What physical basis there is for this hypothesis, I have no idea...

[I also notice that the speakers in question are DAMN HEAVY. This may or 
may not be significant...]

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