Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

jweiss wrote:

It was good to finally meet you at CES at the Cogent Room. I guess that you really found Steve and Rich's drivers pretty interesting (you initially wanted to buy a pair of the midrange drivers, remember?)

Hi, Jonathan. Yes, I was quite curious about the Cogent results before the CES. I am glad that I head them, and although I do not completely like what I heard but still, it was a multifaceted educational experience.  I do not know if you have seen it but my observations regarding the Cogent’ sound at CES available at:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?postID=1922#1922

jweiss wrote:

It would seem from all the activity on your website that you now want to convert your own Vitavox to field coils, just as Dr. Edgar is trying to do with vintage JBL and Altec drivers. Would you like to comment on what exactly you liked so much in the Cogent room that made you want to take this experimental path?

Well, ironically it is not “exactly I liked so much in the Cogent room” motivated me to try an electromagnetic driver. Rather opposite: what I did not heard at the Cogent’s sound that motivated me and it made me wonder to see if anything is available in this direction. You see, I dealt with electromagnetic in past and generally I did not like what I’ve got, I never dealt with the electromagnetic compression drivers though… I had long time ago an objective to try an electromagnetic compression driver, preferably with a combined magnet featuring a filed coil AND permanent magnet but I clearly had and have a point of reference what I might lead into.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?postID=929#929

I thought the Cogent’s efforts would give me an idea. In a way they did and at the same time they did not. The reasons why I was not satisfied with the Cogent’s results was not because their sound was good or bad (this is secondary) but because the Steve’s and Rich’s efforts do not answer the actual question about the benefits or shortcomings of the electromagnetic solutions for compression drivers. You see, the sound that Cogent got out of their drivers (let disregard the inadequate horns) was not because the electromagnetic. There are dozens different criteria why a driver sound in the way that it sounds and the type of magnet used is juts one of them. Cogent did own driver, with own cone, own suspension, own compression scenario, own wave-guides, own phase plug and many other “own” things and the combination of all those things is responsible for the sound that Cogent got. The filed coil contribution is might be proportionally negligible, or I would more correctly say… unknown. I personally, a little caution that in their design thay went for an imitation of the old RCA driver. Those old vintage driver… all of them are very-very poor and I’m for a long time am a vocal and persistent opponent of the brainless admiration of the “vintageism”. The only good ingredients that some of the vintage drivers had, were some of the materials that they used. Instead of the using the same materials but with the better design the Cogent guys went for an imitation of the same vintage compromised topology but with the “other” materials.  I do not think that it is a fruitfully direction.

I do not know what Dr. Edgar is trying to do with vintage JBL and Altec drivers. I think that the audio-Morons will eventually crated a bogus empty-based exuberance around electromagnetic drivers and people like Dr. Edgar would cash on selling to their mostly Moronic customers the “new” Titan III version. It would not be difficult: a crappy “pressurizing” sound, a new strategically deployed article groundlessly praising the filed coils and an article of a drooling idiot-reviewers would be very sufficient for the cretins around this country begin to dump the permanent magnet driver and to but into the electromagnets…. It dose not mean the Burse personally do not understand what might be done with JBL and Altec drivers or can’t appreciate the good result but unfortunately when you mention the Dr. Edgar’s efforts you do not refer to him personally but to the crap that he makes available for his mostly idiotic customers. I kind of understand him. If my loudspeakers would be sitting in the rooms of the humane waste like Ed Sawyer, Rod Morris and the rest of "The List" then I would probably make my loudspeakers to sprinkle the Hydrogen Cyanide out of horn, killing that audio-dirt, preferably along with whoever ever approach their homes…

Anyhow, my personal objectives in electromagnetic are much moderate and are very specific. I would like under no circumstance deviate from the current Vitavox S2 sound by keeping the diaphragm, suspension and phase plug (the core of any compression driver) completely unchanged. I like very much the result it does now and I consider it a reference result. All that I would like to do is to eliminate a very specific design shortcoming that I feel the S2 driver has (get rid of the pre-phase plug ledge) and to introduce a filed coil to this driver (or perhaps a combined magnet). I feel that this experiment would be more indicative about the benefits or weakness of the electromagnets. I will post my comments about the result I get out of electromagnets on my S2 driver and if they will be positive then I have a very definitive further re-design of the Vitavox S2 driver, converting it into 3-4 polls driver with 380Hz horn rate.

jweiss wrote:

Look forward to coming for a visit to Boston in the Springtime.

Sure, I will be glad to have you over…

PS: BTW, you posted in a wrong thread and I moved it to a correct one. I hope you do not mind...

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site