Aren't passive radiators out of phase?


Passive radiators seem like a great idea, but they must be out of phase with the driver. Yet, you see them on some pretty good speakers, such as the Sunfire subs. All I can think is they provide a spring-board, storing energy for the driver. Still, any sound produced by the PR is out of phase though. Any thoughts?
jhimnsue
NO! PRs are IN PHASE!

The passive radiator is a "phase inverter" just like a port or vented box is. There is phase shift across the working spectrum of a woofer, and a similar phase shift across the working (high Q) spectrum of the PR. However, at the primary frequency of interest - the resonant frequency of the PR, it is in phase with the output of the woofer. Indeed at that frequency, almost all the energy of the woofer is transferred to the PR, and the woofer's excursion is reduced almost to nil. This can be seen in the excursion graphs for any PR (or ported) box, as the excursion at the resonant frequency of the PR (or port) is substantially reduced as compared with frequencies above or below.

The PR or port is a rather high Q thing, meaning that it is a bandpass function that tends to be narrow and easy to excite at the center frequency, falling off on either side relatively quickly. Compare to the woofer itself which can be said to be a "bandpass" function, but one that is flat for many octaves. The PR (or port) tends to be narrow and function over less than one octave, usually about 1/2 octave in an effective manner.

So, neither the port or the PR is really "out of phase" with the woofer at any frequency where there is significant output from them. Just like the differential in phase between two drivers at the crossover point, as the PR comes into play, and then goes out, there is a phase differential between the two, but this will sum to a flat response, IF the alignment is set up that way.

The term "out of phase" here is taken to mean 180 degrees out of phase, and so cancelling when summed. Again this does not happen with a PR.

It is easy to think that it would be out of phase, if you assume a simple "pumping" from the reverse wave of the woofer - but this is not what happens!

Hope this explains...

_-_-bear
BTW, on my website there is a page with my version of subs with PRs, 18" PRs. Two per channel. I call them Quadripole, there are now some graphs and a better discussion than I had up a few months back... I do show the output of the PR and the woofer in separate graphs (iirc). I did not put up the impedance curves. FYI the pair (each channel) comes out now to 8 ohms... I can get some more "snot" if I rewire the drivers so that it ends up as 2 ohms, but I have to put back the Crown Macro Techs to drive that low impedance properly.

The cabinets shown are actually a bit too small - these are the original pairs that I built and they should have an extra cubic foot (a few inches back and one or two here and there gets you an extra cu ft!). IF it did have the extra foot the F3 would be at 20 Hz exactly and the overall response without EQ (I don't usually use any) would be a bit flatter...

_-_-

(Dickason's Loudspeaker Cookbook covers some of this theory, btw...)
Thanks Bear. I think I'm beginning to get it. The PR is tuneable with the volume of the cabinet (due to the compressing nature of air) and the properties of the PR stucture. I wonder, have there been any speakers with pressurized cabinets or maybe gas filled? ........ How about liquid filled (he,he)?