Loudspeakers have we really made that much progress since the 1930s?
People like Ed Villchur and Gilbert Briggs knew as much about loudspeakers as anyone around today. Some of the stories about Briggs live v recording shows are still wonderful. One thing is indisputable, high quality sound has never been as affordable as now. Hi-Fi for the masses, if they want it. Those ba****ds responsible for the loudness wars have blighted a generation. Hopefully we are now in a new era where low bit MP3 is a thing of the past. |
Yes, unfortunately it looks as if major improvements are a thing of the past. Since the 1930s it’s difficult to think of major breakthroughs. Maybe only 2 - 1947 Tannoy Dual Concentric by Ronald Rackham 1954 Edgar Villchur invents the acoustic suspension loudspeaker [1957’s Peter Walker’s Quad Electrostatic is an alternative design but it’s difficult to ever see it attaining the popularity of the moving coil design]. The rest seems to be a case of endless experiment and refinement within certain budgets. Whichever way you look at it loudspeakers remain tremendously inefficient, wasting up to 99% of energy fed in through heat. Still the search for improvements goes on with different approaches proving that there is still no one set formula for designing a loudspeaker. In fact there’s no clear evidence that even the original cone material (paper) has ever truly been improved upon. Two recent approaches I am aware of include the Monopulse designs which are distinctly different with their obsessive devotion to timing to merit an audition. The other is the approach taken by the Ohm Walsh 2000s which are steadily generating a good word of mouth following. Both, with their alternate approaches may be significant incremental steps forward as opposed to mere refinement or just a reshuffling of sonic priorities. Whether either will ever demonstrate a clear superiority over existing designs remains yet to be seen. |
@simonmoon Taken from their website - "Continuous Bandwidth The Göbel Carbon Excellence bending wave loudspeaker has a continuous bandwidth from 170 Hz to over 31.000 Hz with only one driver! Through this seamless coverage of the entire frequency range, all problems with phase and time are completely solved from the outset." Impressive specs to go with a no less impressive price tag. I think Zu have tried to do something similar but only the other way around with the tweeter lending only the smallest of hands. The day when a single driver can handle the entire frequency range from 20 Hz - 20 kHz (or even say 40Hz - 20Hz) will be a great one for audio playback. The next major step in loudspeaker design? |
