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In the Forum: Audio News
In the Thread: The best speaker in the world, is yet again available
Post Subject: Let me extrapolate and speculatePosted by Gregm on: 11/7/2007
 morricab wrote:

It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker.  Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint.  My guess is cost.

Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible.  Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations.  I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good.  My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues.  Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer.

I would agree about the cost -- but that's my speculation. Extrapolating, I have a personal theory regarding hard ceramics. The ratio of the cone size vs paper drivers vs usable frequency is +1,5 octave at least in hi-pass: i.e. let's say you have a great choice of a driver from say 1kHz, changing the cone to diamond you should be considering upwards of 2,5kHz.

So, if I had two diamond-coned drivers, one 2,5" & one 1", I would be spending a lot of money to cover a region only from upper-mid to bats (the tweet reaches its limits ~100kHz). To be safe, I would propose over 4-5kHz. Furthermore, it's difficult to mate that hard ceramic with anything else after it... what would be the MF of choice?? Probably another similar ceramic, since it's available. But then, you're stuck with the rest of the frequency spectrum. For mid-bass I would like driver that provides some tonality and also contributes to the spacial restitution; this is usually a paper, and its characteristics must differ from, say, the upper mid unit -- obviously, each is dealing with a different FR. The smaller the soundwave, the better suited is the hard ceramic.

Admittedly this is no scientific observation -- just little experience trying to "systemise" Accuton's regular mid + tweet in a system. It is also what invariably comes to mind whenever I listen to speakers which use small ceramics as mids & the equivalent tweets, including the diamond ones. I have nothing to back it up, except for Caballe sounding as if she lost a LOT of weight, the cello sounding like a viola, and the violins made mostly out of plastic (sometimes glass).

 morricab wrote:
I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker.  I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money.  It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny.
Indeed, it's the marketing approach that captured my interst.

 morricab wrote:
Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like?  
Yes, and no. Yes, as in there were the speakers in a room being used. No, because I didn't hear the mid & tweet but what Marten did with them and what the owner did placing the speaker system and setting it up to play, and it was impossible to move all those boxes anyway to change anything in their spacial position... and the sonic result is better left out of the discussion.

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