jsautter, I think you are on the right path. All anyone can ever do with problems is compound them. Not that you can't tune your system to sound a certain way with the attractive characteristics of certain components. In spite of my system being very solid state and digitized I use a tube phono amp because it fits my concept of what vinyl should sound like. |
Prof, 100+++
Speakers are the weakest link by far and will be responsible for the overall sound of a system regardless of anything accept the worst components up stream. If a cable changes the sound of a system it is a bad cable. Good ones have no sound of their own. I use Canare wire. Prof uses Beldon. Both perfectly fine. Cable length is perhaps the most important factor and when you make your own you can size them perfectly. It sickens me that so many of us fall for the idiotic marketing of manufacturers who have only one goal in mind and that is to make money. Nothing else. While I am at it, audiophiles use to build stuff. From amps to cables to speakers. It seems the modern audiophile is just a consumer of products for the sole purpose of satisfying their ego. They have no idea how to handle a soldering iron let alone design a speaker. I have been ostracized for using drivers in a clever way because a few people think they know what is going on by reading static specs. Unbelievable. Instead of being quizzical and asking me why I designed a speaker in such a way they immediately shot me up because I did not coincide with their unexperienced and faulty version of reality. In doing so they lose the opportunity to learn something and perpetuate their own mythology. How dysfunctional can you get.
Older guys like Prof and myself have been through the ringer and made many mistakes in the endeavor to find the sound that we want. It is called experience, the best teacher of all.
Next some idiot is going to post an extremely negative review of this post and he is exactly that individual that I am talking about. |
That is odd kosst. I did not think I offered an explanation of break up. I only mention some factors that might or might not contribute to it. You obviously like Science cop do not understand it either or how to or how not to apply crossovers or how to chose drivers to accomplish a specific goal based on their static specs. I suggest you and science cop get yourselves a bunch of drivers, capacitors, chokes, test equipment and soldering irons so you can start having fun playing around. If you are stuck for money I can loan you mine:) |
Oh and Sciencecop, I can digitally emulate any crossover you can think of and on the fly bi and tri amping. Making analog copies is child's play. |
Sciencecop, I hate to say this but you have no idea what you are talking about and you are having trouble applying the manufacturer's data to real life performance. Those frequency response graphs you are referring to are take under static conditions. Music is not. It is dynamic. Whether or not a cone "breaks up" depends not only on the frequency but on the volume and duration of the signal. I know from experience that I can apply certain drivers that way in that format with insanely good results for a point source speaker. |
ScienceCop, how many loudspeakers have you built? 6dB is a huge difference in power and volume. The anomalies you mention will have less effect on the sound than the phase shift from a higher order crossover. Burn that tweeter out? Your ears will burn out long before that tweeter will get even just a degree warmer. I suggest you go pick up a copy of loudspeaker design for dummies. |
smodtactical The 3.7 is the best value in the Maggie line up. It's tweeter is better than any dome made of any material. Even an ESL can not match it for sheer performance above 10K. It has an amazingly smooth dispersion pattern and because it is a line source throughout its range it projects way better than any dome. In this regard its only equal is an ESL. ESLs have a problem with dispersion. SoundLabs has the best solution to the problem but the result is a huge loudspeaker 40 inches wide. |
It is all about the design and specs of the tweeter, not the material. In the speaker design I mention above the tweeter is ceramic not diamond because the Accuton diamond tweeter does not fit into the design well. It is less efficient and will not match up well with Accutons spectacular midrange drivers. The diamond tweeters will go up higher but the ceramic ones already go way beyond the limits of human hearing so it means zip. There is no commercially available dynamic loudspeaker that will keep up with the design I mention for anywhere near the money and you can cut the price dramatically by using other less expensive drivers with very close to the same results. |
Hey Kosst_amojan the more a speaker disperses the worse it's image is going to be in any typical room. In open air they will image fine. I think your imagination may have the best of you. The membrane of an ESL represents a segment of the sound wave of a performance at a distance and it hearkens back to the stage in a way no other speaker can because it represents a segment of that sphere perfectly as there is no crossover. The ESL mimics the performance while the point source tries to mimic the performers resulting in a miniature sound stage and contracted depth as well as much more distortion and much poorer phase characteristics due to the crossovers and the nature of the drivers. ESLs can actually produce fabulous bass but you have to put them in an infinite baffle to make them work well which is totally and completely impractical for any remotely reasonable person so, the compromise is the subwoofer.
Because I am sure your hearing is just fine I know for an absolute fact that you have not heard an appropriately set up ESL infinite Line source system and they are not easy to find. Should you ever be in the Boston area I would be more than happy to demonstrate.
Now for those of you that want the ultimate point source speaker that will go loud enough to bust your eardrums you get four Accuton C168-6-490 midrange drivers and two C30-6-024 tweeters for a total price of $5000.00 Make a 2" thick plate 10" X 20" out of MDF and mount the midrange drivers on either side of the tweeter and as tight as you can to the tweeter. Make a simple 6 dB/Oct crossover at 3000 Hz. Cross to two subs at 125 Hz 24 dB/Oct. Lacquer plates to taste. I like Rasta. Don't forget to bull nose the edges. You might have to pad the MRs just a little. Hang the speakers from chains 1' in front of your wall right over the subs. The sensitivity will be about 93 dB 1 watt at 1 meter and the speaker should do 120 dB on just 100 watts! I would put acoustic foam behind the speakers. You would have to spend at least $30,000 on pre-assembled
speakers to match these, maybe even more....much more. Life in the fast lane. |
smodtactical, 3.7s are the cherry in the line cost considered and you will usually be able to hear them at a dealer.
Carbon, beryllium, diamond, silk, paper mache, whoopee. Power handling is the big issue for domes. But you are still left with a point source radiator. Using them in multiples has never worked well and probably never will. So, if all you are looking for is a midget sound stage they can be wonderful and I am not so sure the material makes an overwhelming difference. It is more important to find a speaker you like the sound of and will support the volume levels you aspire too and the best Tweeters will do this. |
georgehifi, it is not a matter of opinion. That ESLs are better is a matter of fact for the reasons I stated above. I love Maggies but they can not hold a candle to a big ESL. |
Oh kosst-amojan, there is no question that ribbons disperse better than many if not most ESLs. But if the ESL is designed correctly this is not a problem. Everywhere else there is no comparison first because there is no crossover. Second, the diaphragm has less than a 10th of the mass.
Third, the diaphragm of an ESL has uniform drive right down to the molecular level and is push pull throughout.
If you were to sit down in front of Soundlabs Majestic 845s driven by say Atma-Sphere MA-2s even without subs you would be dumbfounded. Your response would be, "How can a speaker do that!" You would probably even wet your pants or diaper or whatever.
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Hey smodtactical, the best value by far is the 3.7. Fabulous speaker for the money. There is no dome tweeter as good as the Maggie ribbon. |
Oh, and georgehifi it is the mass of air moved per unit weight. Since ESLs have such a large surface area the mass of air moved is quite high even when compared to ribbon tweeters and the mylar diaphragm weights much less than a comparably sized sheet of aluminum. The issue with ESLs has always been beaming. Unless you sit right in front of the diaphragm you hear no high end at all. ML deals with this by curving the diaphragm which greatly limits the low frequency capability of the panel. Sanders just makes a wider panel and says to sit right in line with the speakers and you shouldn't be listening any where else anyway. I am not kidding. Check out his web site. Acoustat made narrower panels and angled them. My 2+2s are two panels wide and only disperse 20 degrees at best so in reality you have to sit in line with them. They did make 3+3s and 4+4s which were really huge. Soundlabs uses a facet system that covers 45 degrees so you will have even treble over the size of a 3 person sofa. This is probably the best solution but it still results in a very large speaker. There have been attempts to electrically decrease the size or width of the tweeter area like Quad and Acoustat eventually played with but this causes other problems which I think interfere with the magical quality ESLs can have. No speaker can do the 1 way thing as well as a large ESL. Cross overs are a pain. |
They are interesting to say the least. I was in on the ground floor with Hill Plasmatronics helium tanks and all. I am not sure what those are but they are not plasma speakers. To create a plasma you need some serious heat which requires serious power and an inert gas. Those things would melt. Aside from that they are not line sources so they will not radiate in a way to match a line source. Maybe they will work well with a point source but you would have to get them close to the midrange driver which would make them impractical to use with most point source speakers. |
Today's dome tweeters are way superior to what we had 20 years ago primarily because their power handling has improved to the degree that you can get to 100+ dB without blowing them. For a point source system a single tweeter is optimal. Arrays with dome tweeters just do not work well primarily because you can not get good ones close enough to form a smooth linear array. To do this at 20 KHz the edge of the domes has to be closer than 15 mm. Not easy which is why ribbons make far better linear arrays. Will they ever be as good as an electrostatic speaker? If you prefer point source speakers sure. If not then never. ESLs are better than ribbons because their acoustic impedance more closely matches that of air and you can ditch the crossovers. The downside is that you wind up with a very large loudspeaker. |
