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rdrysdale wrote:

….as of now I'm convinced that a compression driver is the best way to go for fast, detailed and dynamic bass. The compression ratio needs to be just right, and the horn needs to be right, when these two are working together properly, and the room set up is right, it's the way to go.

Rich,

I would like to argue those points. Not because I agree or disagree with what you are saying but because I think “strategically” those remarks shoot slightly in a not the most fruitful direction.

First, as usually, a little attitude: I habitually afraid the so-called “fast and dynamic bass”. The “fast and dynamic bass” is a property of reproduction but NEVER a properly of “live” bass, or I would say more correctly: out reaction to the “live
 bass. The “fast and dynamic” perception usually is born within an audiophile awareness when people listen and asses the quality of bass in the rooms that have too short reverberation time for a giver LF and as the result - the bass has truncated harmonics and presented too sharp (in musical trims). The audio people are accustomed only to this bass or something that I call “fabricated bass”; furthermore this “fast and dynamic” fabricated bass is being violently cultivated by the audio propaganda and by audio industry (dealers, show rooms, reviews… go to talk with any typical idiot-reviewer about bass quality and you would feel that you talk with 5 years old about the quantum physics). Still, I have to note that the large rooms where I would say 40Hz decay at 60dB over 1sec the virtue of the size are not panacea and are not necessary resolve the problems, in fact the larger room even more complicated as the have own “hard to resolve” dilemmas. Ironically, when I visit the “good bass performing audio rooms” I always feel that the “fast” and the “dynamic” are the ejectives that bother me. I always would like to make audio bass slower and softer, though without loosing the “details”…. The “live” bass never “dynamic” and I sincerely feel that the “bass’s dynamic” is the situation when we, audio people, experience the room pressure instead of the sound pressure.

Anyhow, I can go on and on about it but let me to switch to the main subject or my reply.

I do not think that in the subject of midbass reproduction might be any “best way to go”. There are so many variables involved that so difficult could be assessed and predicted that I would be afraid to make any generalizations, or would be skeptical if someone would do them. Midbass in Reproduced sound is a property of environment, or I would say that it is a property of in many ways random Results instead of the property of the specific activities.  How do you know that the “compression ratio needs to be just right”? Are you sure that you do not deal with the horn throat reactance, or with mass of the cone projected to the flux strength, or with propagation the energy through the cone projected to the elasticity of suspension, or with reactance to the horn’s mouth coupled with the boundaries of the room, or with hundreds and hundreds of other things that is virtually imposable to predict or even to classify?

The reason I object the idea of “it's the way to go” in midbass because we Americans are damn and our consciousness is completely screwed by the evil of the multiple choice education when the educational hatchet-machine convert the infinite, continued and ever-connected analog Reality into the binary surrogate of pre-existing answers.  Unfortunately the 99.9999% of all audio people (I called them the Audio-Morons ™) when they would like to learn something about audio do recognize that the knowledge was shared ONLY if they recognize a precompiled set of concepts, conclusions or rules.  Suggesting that  “a compression driver is the “way to go” in midbass you in fact made up this “rule” and effectively sold your own subscription to the rule? Even if you get a “positive result” with your compression driver then would it be “as good as it might be” and would the “positiveness” of your result derive from the “compressness” of your driver?

What I am trying to advocate is a disassociation ourselves form the “slavery of subscriptions to the convenient sold truth”. I think we should not worship the processes and methods but the results. We should learn to distinguish the results and learn to use the results. With admiration, respect and certain intelligent skepticism to the Result we always will find out pathes to accomplish the Result. From the other bide by the agricultureing of the specific, and in many instances accidental method “to get there”, we are juts pay the tribunes to our egos….

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