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Posted by Romy the Cat on
06-20-2017
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The full-rage single-driver acoustic systems is probably the most hated playback topology by me. It is irrelevant if you use $200 Fostex or you use a family reserved edition of AER driver for $64.000. The result you have the same: a horrible dynamic compression, avalanche -like worsening with any single octave down and anything lower then lower-MF sound like a belching from alligator mouth.
Years back, when I still had a mild residual interest to mentally disturbed schizophrenic individuals who fancy themselves as audio-hobbies and allowed them to visit me, waste my time with them and educated them about audio. I was played to them some real music and one listening session was enough for them stop to waste time and practice the full-rage vision of audio they were perusing.
A week ago one “individual” who reportedly regularly read my site contacted me with a whole arrays of questions about my dislike of full-rage acoustic systems. I send his to fuck himself as I do with most of audio people who contact me directly about audio but something in his consequential response was from integrity and humor, the qualities that very seldom demonstrated by a typical audio people. So, I promised to him to response to him once via my site, so this post is a public response to you, Mark
Mark, register at any good Japanese music retailer site and buy a DVD of Gunter Wand performs along with his NDR orchestra, the Bruckner #4. The version you need comes with Beethoven’s Leonore overture and the Bruckner was recorded in 1990, during the Schleswig-Holstien Music Festival in North Germany. Gunter Wand unleashed the stunning force of the North German Broadcasting orchestra in Lubeck cathedral, the place of acoustic hajj, with super long reverberation time, reportedly 11 seconds. The music is great to listen next 10 years 5 time a day, the interpretation is one of the greatest for this work and now we need to identify Sound. Find large multi-channel (I do not mean 5ch surround but rather at least 5 drivers/channels per side), truly full-range, stereo installation and take you DVD there. Take 2 of Padron 50 Years anniversary cigars to the listening room. Set the playback to deliver 120dB at fff (this is critical) and play the music. Then come home listen a few bars of your “full-rage”, single-driver acoustic system. Then take an axe, chop your speakers on small pieces, pile the pieces into 42 gallon contraction bag, put the bad at the curve of your driveway and process your life with more sensible hobbies, the philately or scuba diving is highly advisable.
A bad version of the first movement:
Mark, please do not comment on my post.
The Cat
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Posted by Iraschwips on
12-27-2018
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Poor Mark. I hope he didn't pull his back out cutting all that wood with just an axe. I wish someone recommended a wood chipper. It's going to be hard to take up scuba diving in such condition.
While it's certainly going to be dynamically restricted, is it possible that the poles figured out how to do a single-driver speaker with competent sound at a middle tier hedge fund manager's salary?
https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/cubeaudio2/
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Posted by decoud on
12-29-2018
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Surely questions of optimal topology need cognizance of the material to be played. If someone listens only to lieder, say, two drivers are sufficient. It is only those of us trying to reconstruct a Wagnerian orchestra that need multichannel breadth.
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Posted by rowuk on
12-30-2018
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Considering that Srajan is the ultimate audio reviewer, it should be clear to all that there is no opinion worth considering in that article.
Where is the cone area to recreate anything except a fart? How is any type of low distortion HF possible with all of that moving mass? Why does anyone considering high quality playback turn off their ears? Why do they want to believe that distortion=high fidelity? Must be deaf... Just like Srajan.
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Posted by Paul S on
12-30-2018
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Sure, forget the sales pitch, but some of similar might be good for fairly wide range MF. However, based on the sound sample, it's hard to say much about this one, apart from what looks like an extra load of multiple whizzers at/near the voice coil/former.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9EXd3hCYEs
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-30-2018
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I like this Polish guy in your tube interview. I hate his speakers
of cause. The best this is this YouTube interview is the Peter Breuninger’s proposal
“certificate of accomplishments” that the speaker maker was granted. That was
huge recognition and I am sure the speaker maker will be keeping the certificate
for next 10 years under his pillow.
I do not know anything about the speakers, neither the sound
they produced in the video made me inspired to learn about them more. One thing
I would like to note. The speaker maker mentioned with pride that they have a
prototype of a full range driver with neodymium 2.4T magnet. Sorry to defecate upon
the speaker maker price but those drivers are ultimate horror in the realm of
full range drivers.
If you have a string instrument and
take out of consideration the resonating chamber then the pitch will
be a primary a property of force the string tightness, material to some degree
and the string thickness, among a few other things. Now pretend you tight all
strings at maximum force, the 2.4T is max saturated magnetic field under normal
circumstance. So, how the hell a string at maximum force can produce proper harmonics
at 12Khz and 300Hz, it is absolutely impossible, unless you have a very wrong expectations
hos sound should sound, winch is very much the case with most of audio people.
I need to admit the some (very much not all of them) full range
drivers so make VERY good MF drivers. The problem is that when the system organizers
begin to stress them to go “one more octave down” they shot themselves in a
food and bury the whole idea. Do you like your full range drivers? Great, cross
your 8 inchers at ~500-800Hz and fortify from bottom by other channels. Want to
use the full range drivers as true full range, loading then to some kind of horn
or port? Great again. Do it and enjoy it but do not declare your “design” as
the best invention since Greek fire. Everyone heard your design.
I pretty much discard each and single attempt to use the full
range drivers. When people use the “full range drivers” as MF or even as HF driver
only I have no problem with it. Also, I need to mention that a very small monitor
made with a full range driver that I heard once was the most interesting sound
the I even hear in audio. It was not the most interesting sound overall but
there was one single aspect (transients) of it that was in my estimation unmatched
by anything that I ever heard. It was at a show (surprised, surprise) and it
was the only one time in my life when I was not able to distinct recording from
life sound. I was literally was staying for very long time in a corridor next
to the room and did not believe that the sound I hear was a recording. It was a
simple recording of cause. The irony is that after that show I spoke with a few
friends of my who had the same experience, it never made audio press however….
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Posted by Paul S on
12-31-2018
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I guess it's possible that someone somewhere could get this driver to sing through part of its range. And I admit that it is infuriating to me that people with the speaker construction technology typically build "well-made", bad-sounding drivers based on wrong premises and tin ears, and it appears to me that this has many of the earmarks of another such instance of heaped up, generic mistakes. Among the "exotic" "FR" driver features, the "strong magnet" is one favorite, also the "phenolic spyder", the "narrow gap", the "leather surround", "wooden cones", etc., etc. And the truth is, while any part of it might be OK in one situation or another, no one lives long enough to work through all the variables and combinations of variables, let alone make a thorough catalog of how each relates to the others with respect to the sound they make, and how these in turn affect the Music the drivers make. Rather, at some point a design is decided upon, and they move forward with a version of it that they can produce in sufficient quantities at an affordable price, at an acceptable location, on a reasonable schedule. Who knows for sure what this one's worth in a different context, but my own experience with this stuff suggests that a number of their "key features" are generic mistakes, rather they consistently proved detrimental to Sound during my own experiments. Yes, I'm jealous of their capabilities; but I do not covet their driver.
As for their approach, like Jackson Browne once said: "Though the future's there for anyone to change, still, you know, it seems it would be easier sometimes to change the past."
Paul S
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Posted by rowuk on
12-31-2018
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 Paul S wrote: | Sure, forget the sales pitch, but some of similar might be good for fairly wide range MF. However, based on the sound sample, it's hard to say much about this one, apart from what looks like an extra load of multiple whizzers at/near the voice coil/former.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9EXd3hCYEs
Paul S |
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Paul, is there a higher distortion way to create HF than with whizzer cones? Sure, it is possible to take a HF deficient construction and add a lightweight resonant structure that "flaps" in the wind. Maybe a type of bass reflex activity for HF?
In Germany we do not say "full range", rather "wide band" (Breitbänder). This better describes what we get. I recently heard some "wide band" 8" Fostex in an Oris 150Hz front loaded horn. Even simple baroque music with only a voice and lute had this sound of "tearing paper" attached to just about everything. It became a weapon of mass destruction when the shop owner wanted to prove how efficient the system was. I told him that rape is punishable by law. He did not understand.
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Posted by Paul S on
12-31-2018
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Yes, Robin, while the whizzer can do higher frequencies, it comes at the cost of ragged response in the mid-range for the typical "full range" driver, and it also simply adds mass that precludes better HF performance that might have been gotten with better voice coil, former, and related construction details. Since you live in Germany and practice Music and hi-fi there, you are probably aware that some of their old drivers can be re-purposed to good effect. In fact, I am amazed (and amused, and frustrated) to see the particular contortions people go through to "re-create" and/or implement some the worst aspects of some of the best Breitband drivers ever made. And I'm sure you've noticed, not all of them had whizzers (although whizzers can be used for HF only...). Like Mick Jagger once said, "It's the singer, not the song."
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Iraschwips on
12-31-2018
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| Romy the Cat wrote: | Also, I need to mention that a very small monitor
made with a full range driver that I heard once was the most interesting sound
the I even hear in audio. It was not the most interesting sound overall but
there was one single aspect (transients) of it that was in my estimation unmatched
by anything that I ever heard. It was at a show (surprised, surprise) and it
was the only one time in my life when I was not able to distinct recording from
life sound. I was literally was staying for very long time in a corridor next
to the room and did not believe that the sound I hear was a recording. It was a
simple recording of cause. The irony is that after that show I spoke with a few
friends of my who had the same experience, it never made audio press however….
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I would be interested to know to what you would attribute this critical dampening of the system, if you had to wager a guess?
I imagine this excellent transient response was limited to a narrow frequency band that was emphasized by the specific recording?
Around 15 years ago I only had a headphone amp and a single pair of headphones. I wanted to try my hands at building a speaker. So I put together a single driver speaker following precisely a design I found online. I think the whole thing cost me under $200. They did sound fundamentally different than any speakers I had heard at the time when listening to some very simple acoustic music, but completely fell apart on large symphonic music. At this they sounded no better than any home theater system from best buy. There were other issues too, they had a HF glare, constricted dynamics, thin tone, and an overall veiled sound. Some of these problems were contributed to by the associated electronics, but I believe most of the obvious faults were endemic to the speaker. I subsequently heard single driver systems which were simply unlistenable, even within a narrow range of chamber and jazz recordings.
The best single driver system I heard was superb at what I would describe as "musical flow". A very intelligible rhythm and musical phrasing. I distinctly remember listening to Stern/Rose/Istomin playing Schubert and being completely drawn in, hanging on every note and experiencing each idea as perfectly following the prior. I've had other instances where listening to music on a "good" system informed me of the genius of a particular performance which I had previously and perhaps subsequently been ignorant to. I went on to youtube shortly after this experience and listened again to the performance and the magic was for whatever reason just not perceptible to me.
I listened to other music through these single driver speakers which I would also describe as having excellent musical flow, not just this one performance. At the time I attributed the cartridge that was used as the key ingredient to the sound, and the speakers as a weak point which was competent enough not to muck up what was good about the system. However, maybe the speakers while imposing limitations, were part of what was right about the sound.
I don't have enough technical knowledge to follow all of what has been said in this thread but within my primitive understanding I'm not so sure I'm willing to completely give up on the idea of single driver systems having some unique properties which are worthwhile to study and perhaps learn from.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
01-01-2019
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| Iraschwips wrote: | | I imagine this
excellent transient response was limited to a narrow frequency band that was
emphasized by the specific recording? |
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Yes, it is was very accurate guess: it was the “narrow
frequency” and it WAS to a degree emphasized by the specific recording. I was
not able to play anything as the person who run the show room was not my favorite
guy in audio, in fact I do not like him at all. Though I need to admit the he
did not play a “girl with banjo” only but he played a variety of “light audio”
| Iraschwips wrote: | | They did
sound fundamentally different than any speakers I had heard at the time when
listening to some very simple acoustic music, but completely fell apart on
large symphonic music. |
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I had the same experience many times with others
and with my own audio endeavors’ never had this happens to multi-channel system
systems however. I do don’t know the reason and Doppler distortion would be too
primitive reasoning to argue. Still, it looks like, purely empirically that multi-channel,
not to mention the multi-amp systems are immune to this problems.
| Iraschwips wrote: | | I'm not so
sure I'm willing to completely give up on the idea of single driver systems
having some unique properties which are worthwhile to study and perhaps learn
from. |
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And this is perfectly fine. My strong opposition to
single driver is a guidance for ME ONLY do not use single drivers for my own playback.
It is not a public instruction or an attempt to legislate for others. Audio is
a very personal matter. It is like the style of underwear you wear. You find
what works to satisfy you current set of expectations and demands and put you
best efforts to render it. Everything else is less relevant.
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