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Why are Car and Home Audio Speakers so different?

I have two infinity floor standing speakers, each has an 8" low range driver. Im curious why the sound, both spl and range, are much like that of my JL 12" w6v2 subwoofer in my car. Ok maybe not spl, ive never experienced my sub putting out more than 1/2 power. They are so different, the 12" being massive, both by competent companies. Why is it that from appearance they are so different, yet in sound they are so much the same?

Public Comments

1. Essentially, the larger the speaker, the more efficient it is. A small 4" speaker when fed with a 100Hz tone will sound very much quieter then a 8" or 12", because the bigger speakers cones can vibrate more air particles then the smaller 4" or so speaker can. Also, bear in mind that the car sub is designed as a sub, most likely with a tuned and ported box, to make the sub box's resonate frequency somewhere in the middle of the bass frequencies - say 60-100Hz or so - making them most efficient(read: loud) at those low bass frequencies, plus car subs are normally driven harder then house subs, to produce more thumping bass from a relatively small sub box. Your house speakers are more wide-band, in that they tend to try to emphasize all frequencies - bass, vocals and treble. They get good sound, but require a larger volume box to produce the goods across the whole audio spectrum. House speakers too are built with the woofer as the top priority, 2nd the midrange speaker, and last is the tweeter. This is why most modern bookshelf-type stereo speakers(without a separate sub), lack bass, yet some big floor-standing speakers sound great due to the bigger box volume. Sub boxes only need to work with bass frequencies, and pretty much flatten out any vocals and high-frequencies are almost undetectable to the ear in these boxes. It's all to do with acoustic tuning of the speaker in question, to the box it is in. :)