Are separates on borrowed time?

[John Duncan]

I agree with him 100%.

I think that I need to have a lie down too after a shock like that.

Aye, took you a while to come round to my way of thinking though ;-)

 

[The_Lhc]

Looking at the title of the posts, all I can think about is stabbing people.

I often feel like that here.

Do you get that on other forums and in real life, or is it just here?

Other forums?

 

[Anonymous]

My, my, from the way this is going it appears that Major General I. Sation will be less prevalent around here from now on (except in my posts such as this)

 

[Diamond Joe]

Oh good, not just me then, especially when any of the letters A, V, I, D or M and the number 9 get mentioned!!

[/quote]

Oh, I will never hug you now ...

regards

[/quote]Awwwww. Oh well, probably for the best, people will just talk... you know what they're like!

Edit: Ooops, goofed up the formatting there didn't I :doh:

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

[UNPUBLISHED]

if we're talking money no object why not get the band to come and play in your front room? in the real world, were cost is a factor, show me some passives that get even close to my opals and i'll eat my hat.

from s.o.s. "distortion is quoted (measured at 90dB SPL, 1m) as: 500-7kHz, 0.08 percent; 200-20kHz, 0.2 percent; and <200Hz, 1.5 percent. This wouldn’t look that special on a power amp, but for speakers, where distortion figures of 10 percent are not uncommon, it’s very impressive." don't forget that the price includes four mono block power amps putting out peaks of over 700 watts per channel.

LOL!

Craig, this is exactly what I was writing about. before I get into more details let me draw your attention to this thread from the dreaded HDD audio forum (as it should somewhat validate my point, I guess) regarding levels of distortion from a passive xover:

http://hddaudio.net/viewtopic.php?id=886

so, the guy is measuring distortion levels for a speaker with a passive xover. crossover used is 2nd order (less than optimal but not that bad). applied power is 10W (which by itself, believe me, is way to much for any domestic use. if you listened at 10W RMS you'd have severe hearing damage by now). inductors used are iron and ferrite cored (he was mentioning he didn't use air cored and gave some vague reason not to, which IMO was completely taken out of thin air). he's not saying anything about caps but I would be deeply surprised if they were anything of for instance Mundorf Supreme (polypropylene) sort. so, you get here arguably the worst case scenario for a passive variant. and the result is 1% for iron coil and 3% for ferrite coil. this is barely more than intrinsic distortion of the drivers themselves! so where did this polluting distortion go? now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to convince anybody that passive xover is no different or even better than the active variant. God forbid! what I'm trying to say is that the "active is better" brigade is really barking at the wrong tree. it's not the xover which is the limiting factor here. it's the drivers themselves.

granted, if I could choose I'd choose no xover at all in a heartbeat. unfortunately there's no GOOD speakers meeting this requirement invented yet (I don't rate Lowthers an the likes as good speakers. true, they are full range but have other limitations too). there's one speaker (that I'm aware of) that nearly gets there but not quite there yet. nearly full range, easy on the amp, vanishingly low distortion, essentially flat freq response (without any equalisation). this bit with "nearly full range" lets it down.

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

EDIT: as a matter of reference. 10W into 87dB/1m/1W speakers (reference: AVI Neutron 5 speakers) yields 97dB volume @ 1m. very loud. expect raised distortion values for such a loud output.

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

[UNPUBLISHED]

if we're talking money no object why not get the band to come and play in your front room? in the real world, were cost is a factor, show me some passives that get even close to my opals and i'll eat my hat.

from s.o.s. "distortion is quoted (measured at 90dB SPL, 1m) as: 500-7kHz, 0.08 percent; 200-20kHz, 0.2 percent; and <200Hz, 1.5 percent. This wouldn’t look that special on a power amp, but for speakers, where distortion figures of 10 percent are not uncommon, it’s very impressive." don't forget that the price includes four mono block power amps putting out peaks of over 700 watts per channel.

LOL!

Craig, this is exactly what I was writing about. before I get into more details let me draw your attention to this thread from the dreaded HDD audio forum (as it should somewhat validate my point, I guess) regarding levels of distortion from a passive xover:

http://hddaudio.net/viewtopic.php?id=886

so, the guy is measuring distortion levels for a speaker with a passive xover. crossover used is 2nd order (less than optimal but not that bad). applied power is 10W (which by itself, believe me, is way to much for any domestic use. if you listened at 10W RMS you'd have severe hearing damage by now). inductors used are iron and ferrite cored (he was mentioning he didn't use air cored and gave some vague reason not to, which IMO was completely taken out of thin air). he's not saying anything about caps but I would be deeply surprised if they were anything of for instance Mundorf Supreme (polypropylene) sort. so, you get here arguably the worst case scenario for a passive variant. and the result is 1% for iron coil and 3% for ferrite coil. this is barely more than intrinsic distortion of the drivers themselves! so where did this polluting distortion go? now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to convince anybody that passive xover is no different or even better than the active variant. God forbid! what I'm trying to say is that the "active is better" brigade is really barking at the wrong tree. it's not the xover which is the limiting factor here. it's the drivers themselves.

granted, if I could choose I'd choose no xover at all in a heartbeat. unfortunately there's no GOOD speakers meeting this requirement invented yet (I don't rate Lowthers an the likes as good speakers. true, they are full range but have other limitations too). there's one speaker (that I'm aware of) that nearly gets there but not quite there yet. nearly full range, easy on the amp, vanishingly low distortion, essentially flat freq response (without any equalisation). this bit with "nearly full range" lets it down.

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

P.S. as a matter of reference. 10W into 87dB/1m/1W speakers (reference: AVI Neutron 5 speakers) yields 97dB volume @ 1m. very loud. expect raised distortion values for such a loud output.

 

[BenLaw]

Looking at the title of the posts, all I can think about is stabbing people.

I often feel like that here.

Do you get that on other forums and in real life, or is it just here?

Other forums?

You've mentioned being on other forums before, sonos, ones you stopped frequenting because of how they were managed.

 

[Anonymous]

well, that largely depends on price point and engineering skills of the designer. at price-no-objecttive price point you can make pretty good passive crossovers that will hardly be distinguishable from active, if at all. it's even possible that they would sound better since there's no active electronic (hence no extra THD) in passive components. and top-of-the-line passive components maintain very strict tolerances therefore exhibit marginal distortion contribution.

so you can build a passive xover using cheap ferrite cored inductors and 10% - 20% tolerance electrolytic caps and then have it compared to how the speaker sounds with an active one. the result is obvious. but then again you can get copper foil air core inductors (the best it gets ATM, nearly perfect theoretical inductor, great electrical and mechanical properties) and 1% - 2% tolerance polypropylene caps (AFAIK the best electrical performance ATM) and design a proper 1st order xover (for various reasons the best design yet). I'll be very surprised if you heard any audible difference then. note "audible". that's the main reason why there are still people who pee on active speakers, despite their arguable superiority.

the problem is that one coil will be easily more expensive than the whole active xover. but it's not the point here.

FYI; if you are so much pro-active you should know it's way more useful to do the whole xover business in digital domain rather than rely on cheap off-the-shelf active solutions.

Distortion inside the crossover is only one, relatively minor, consideration. For example, a passive speaker can NEVER match the impulse response performance of an active speaker, all other things being equal. I realize "never" is a strong word, but let me explain. Passive components between the amplifier and the driver, by their nature, always degrade the transient performance of the driver, regardless of the quality of the passive components. I explained how higher current capacity amplifiers improve transient response in another thread:

http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/benifits-of-more-power#comment-2719505

One aspect of amplifier power that probably goes unrecognized its effect on speaker transient response – especially with regard to dynamic speakers. A dynamic speaker works by flowing current through a coil (or ribbon) that is suspended in a magnetic gap. As current flows back and forth, the coil moves in and out. It's just a particular type of electric motor. But, as you may know, an electric motor can also be used as an electric generator. If you force the coil to move in the magnetic gap, the system will generate a current in the coil. This is how a dynamic microphone works.

Generating that current also generates a magnetic field inside the coil that opposes the fixed magnetic field in the gap. In other words, as you push on the coil, the coil pushes back. The more current that is generated, the harder the opposing force - or damping force. The regenerative breaking systems in hybrid and electric vehicles work on this same principle where the current generated recharges the battery. But the maximum damping occurs when you actually short the terminals of the motor (speaker) because this presents the least resistance and allows the most current to flow.

Powerful amplifiers with high current capacity behave like very low impedance sources. In other words, connecting a speaker to a powerful amp is like shorting the speakers terminals. And we know that shorting the terminals generates the most breaking power in the coil.

Ok, so what does this have to do with transient response? We don't actually push on our speakers cones, right? As a matter of fact, we do push on the speaker – with the amplifier signal. The amplifier generates current to push on the speaker to make sound. Obvious enough. But what happens when the amplifier stops pushing on the speaker, or tries to force the speaker to move in a different direction? Well, dear old Isaac Newton tells us that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. The speaker diaphragm has inertia and it will keep on moving even after the amplifier signal stops. The speaker will overshoot changes in the amplifier signal and continue to "ring" in the absence of signal.

So how do we solve this problem? What we need is a good breaking system like we described above, right? And as we just learned, the best breaking comes from having a high current capacity amplifier. So if the speaker tries to shoot past its mark, we have the maximum opposing force to damp its motion.

Make sense?

Thomas

Given this information you can easily see that connecting the amplifier directly to the speaker driver terminals yields the best possible impulse response for that given driver. Passive components necessarily introduce transient degrading series resistances and impedances between the drivers and amp. There's simply no getting around it. One obvious example is the series resistor that you typically see in line with the tweeter in passive speakers. This resistor is necessary to match the output levels between the tweeter and the woofer – the tweeter having a higher sensitivity due to its lighter mass. The resistor always degrades the tweeter’s impulse response because it allows less damping current to flow, as I explained in the quote above.

So you think you can be clever by reducing the tweeter sensitivity to match the woofer without the need for the resistor? Well, you can do that by either increasing the diaphragm mass or decreasing the motor strength. But guess what, both of those paths will also degrade the impulse response. Now you decide to increase the woofer sensitivity to match the tweeter instead. You could decrease the mass of the cone, but that often leads to worse cone breakup properties. You’ll also have to decrease the mass of the voice coil, but that results in less excursion and higher distortion and dynamic compression. You could try making the motor super powerful, but that will rob you of a lot of low frequency extension. Even if you find some amazing technical solutions to all the hurdles, an active speaker can just as easily incorporate these features and still come out ahead.

Let’s just say that you did came up a passive solution that maintained all the driver performance characteristics while introducing no series resistances. That's cool, but you still lose. Why? Because inductors and capacitor always introduce series impedances. That's how they function as filters. They introduce large impedances between the amp and drivers in their stop bands (above or below the respective cutoff frequency of the filter section). In an active system the amplifiers simply send a lower amplitude signal to the drivers in the filter pass bands. The output impedances and damping capabilities of the amps remain unchanged.

No matter how you cut it, an active speaker designer always has a path to superior results, all other things being equal. And this impulse response advantage is just one example. There are many other advantages to active design that can be exploited. I could go on, but I don't want to write a book – or give away the farm.

Thomas

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

if we're talking money no object why not get the band to come and play in your front room? in the real world, were cost is a factor, show me some passives that get even close to my opals and i'll eat my hat.

from s.o.s. "distortion is quoted (measured at 90dB SPL, 1m) as: 500-7kHz, 0.08 percent; 200-20kHz, 0.2 percent; and <200Hz, 1.5 percent. This wouldn’t look that special on a power amp, but for speakers, where distortion figures of 10 percent are not uncommon, it’s very impressive." don't forget that the price includes four mono block power amps putting out peaks of over 700 watts per channel.

LOL!

Craig, this is exactly what I was writing about. before I get into more details let me draw your attention to this thread from the dreaded HDD audio forum (as it should somewhat validate my point, I guess) regarding levels of distortion from a passive xover:

http://hddaudio.net/viewtopic.php?id=886

so, the guy is measuring distortion levels for a speaker with a passive xover. crossover used is 2nd order (less than optimal but not that bad). applied power is 10W (which by itself, believe me, is way to much for any domestic use. if you listened at 10W RMS you'd have severe hearing damage by now). inductors used are iron and ferrite cored (he was mentioning he didn't use air cored and gave some vague reason not to, which IMO was completely taken out of thin air). he's not saying anything about caps but I would be deeply surprised if they were anything of for instance Mundorf Supreme (polypropylene) sort. so, you get here arguably the worst case scenario for a passive variant. and the result is 1% for iron coil and 3% for ferrite coil. this is barely more than intrinsic distortion of the drivers themselves! so where did this polluting distortion go? now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to convince anybody that passive xover is no different or even better than the active variant. God forbid! what I'm trying to say is that the "active is better" brigade is really barking at the wrong tree. it's not the xover which is the limiting factor here. it's the drivers themselves.

granted, if I could choose I'd choose no xover at all in a heartbeat. unfortunately there's no GOOD speakers meeting this requirement invented yet (I don't rate Lowthers an the likes as good speakers. true, they are full range but have other limitations too). there's one speaker (that I'm aware of) that nearly gets there but not quite there yet. nearly full range, easy on the amp, vanishingly low distortion, essentially flat freq response (without any equalisation). this bit with "nearly full range" lets it down.

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

P.S. as a matter of reference. 10W into 87dB/1m/1W speakers (reference: AVI Neutron 5 speakers) yields 97dB volume @ 1m. very loud. expect raised distortion values for such a loud output.

 

[John Duncan]

Distortion inside the crossover is only one, relatively minor, consideration.

What are the more major considerations? You may have already said, but I'm not very bright.

 

[Craig M.]

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

the quote is from the sound on sound magazine review of the opals.

 

[Anonymous]

What are the more major considerations?

[*]1. The effect on impulse response that I decribed above.[*] [*]2. An active crossover allows for a much wider parameter space (box size, cone mass, motor strength, etc.,) with which to achieve a desired response.

[*]3. An active crossover has a much wider range of potential crossover frequencies and alignments because it is not constrained by the impedance responses of the drivers.

[*]4. Compensating for the inevitable differences between individual driver sensitivities and/or responses and precisely calibrating every system coming off the prodction line to a reference standard is relatively easy (= inexpensive) to do for an active speaker, especially one with a DSP crossover. Doing so with a passive crossover can be very difficult and labor intensive (= expensive) to the point of being totaly impractical.

[*]5. Active crossovers can provide protection to help prevent burnout of expensive drivers playing at the most extreme levels while having no effect, audible or otherwise, at normal loud levels. These techniques are especially powerful with Digital Signal Processing. Passive protection circuits are abysmal in every respect.

[*]There are more, but this a lot. Items 2 and 3 could each have a dozen sub sections. [*] [*]Thomas

 

[drummerman]

Very interesting.

How do you go about sourcing drivers for your designs?

regards

 

[Anonymous]

Very interesting.

How do you go about sourcing drivers for your designs?

regards

Be careful, my little bundle of fun, you might end up brainwashed!!!

 

[chebby]

Thomas, in a review of your MicroMain 35s the reviewer stated...

"The most intriguing control is the Standard/Forgiving switch. Apparently this was introduced at the request of some customers wanting a more ‘hi-fi’ response. This switch “makes small changes to the mid bass/tweeter crossover, yielding a slightly recessed midrange and slightly brighter highs. Also, the bass response is altered to have less damping and steeper roll-off”. According to Barefoot, the result is “a hybrid bass character somewhere between the fast, tight, articulate sound of a sealed cabinet and the slower, fatter sound of a ported speaker."

Is this so that the 'mastered' sound (forgive me, I am not a recording engineer) can be monitored for how it will sound in a typical home system? Or is it to accomodate the sound preferences of some recording staff themselves?

It is an interesting idea that the monitor itself should be 'tweakable' in this respect. I thought that any such 'flavour' or 'character' would be introduced to the signal before it reached the monitors.

Another possibility that springs to mind are set-ups where the 'forgiving' setting compensates for an extremely 'live' sounding room (with hard/reflective surfaces etc.) but where damping measures are not possible/acceptable because the room is borrowed temporarily or in a setting where monitors are only used 'ad-hoc' and the decor/surroundings can't be tampered with.

 

[drummerman]

Very interesting.

How do you go about sourcing drivers for your designs?

regards

Be careful, my little bundle of fun, you might end up brainwashed!!!

... and getting my carefully coiffeured hair wet?

Whatever next ...

regards

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

Distortion inside the crossover is only one, relatively minor, consideration. For example, a passive speaker can NEVER match the impulse response performance of an active speaker, all other things being equal.

http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/benifits-of-more-power#comment-2719505

that's very interesting bit and something that interests me most ATM. IMO impulse response and square wave response of a speaker is the test that truly shows if speakers are worth something. for some reason EVERY manufacturer doesn't show this test's results. I know that dynamic speakers fare very poorly in this regard (loads overshooting due to high moving mass of the drivers). it's nigh impossible to find test results on the internet. would you have impulse response and square wave response graphs for your speakers by chance? this might be argument that finally extinguishes active scepticism in me.

One aspect of amplifier power that probably goes unrecognized its effect on speaker transient response – especially with regard to dynamic speakers. A dynamic speaker works by flowing current through a coil (or ribbon) that is suspended in a magnetic gap. As current flows back and forth, the coil moves in and out. It's just a particular type of electric motor. But, as you may know, an electric motor can also be used as an electric generator. If you force the coil to move in the magnetic gap, the system will generate a current in the coil. This is how a dynamic microphone works.

Generating that current also generates a magnetic field inside the coil that opposes the fixed magnetic field in the gap. In other words, as you push on the coil, the coil pushes back. The more current that is generated, the harder the opposing force - or damping force. The regenerative breaking systems in hybrid and electric vehicles work on this same principle where the current generated recharges the battery. But the maximum damping occurs when you actually short the terminals of the motor (speaker) because this presents the least resistance and allows the most current to flow.

Powerful amplifiers with high current capacity behave like very low impedance sources. In other words, connecting a speaker to a powerful amp is like shorting the speakers terminals. And we know that shorting the terminals generates the most breaking power in the coil.

Ok, so what does this have to do with transient response? We don't actually push on our speakers cones, right? As a matter of fact, we do push on the speaker – with the amplifier signal. The amplifier generates current to push on the speaker to make sound. Obvious enough. But what happens when the amplifier stops pushing on the speaker, or tries to force the speaker to move in a different direction? Well, dear old Isaac Newton tells us that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. The speaker diaphragm has inertia and it will keep on moving even after the amplifier signal stops. The speaker will overshoot changes in the amplifier signal and continue to "ring" in the absence of signal.

So how do we solve this problem? What we need is a good breaking system like we described above, right? And as we just learned, the best breaking comes from having a high current capacity amplifier. So if the speaker tries to shoot past its mark, we have the maximum opposing force to damp its motion.

Make sense?

Thomas

Given this information you can easily see that connecting the amplifier directly to the speaker driver terminals yields the best possible impulse response for that given driver. Passive components necessarily introduce transient degrading series resistances and impedances between the drivers and amp. There's simply no getting around it. One obvious example is the series resistor that you typically see in line with the tweeter in passive speakers. This resistor is necessary to match the output levels between the tweeter and the woofer – the tweeter having a higher sensitivity due to its lighter mass. The resistor always degrades the tweeter’s impulse response because it allows less damping current to flow, as I explained in the quote above.

So you think you can be clever by reducing the tweeter sensitivity to match the woofer without the need for the resistor? Well, you can do that by either increasing the diaphragm mass or decreasing the motor strength. But guess what, both of those paths will also degrade the impulse response. Now you decide to increase the woofer sensitivity to match the tweeter instead. You could decrease the mass of the cone, but that often leads to worse cone breakup properties. You’ll also have to decrease the mass of the voice coil, but that results in less excursion and higher distortion and dynamic compression. You could try making the motor super powerful, but that will rob you of a lot of low frequency extension. Even if you find some amazing technical solutions to all the hurdles, an active speaker can just as easily incorporate these features and still come out ahead.

Let’s just say that you did came up a passive solution that maintained all the driver performance characteristics while introducing no series resistances. That's cool, but you still lose. Why? Because inductors and capacitor always introduce series impedances. That's how they function as filters. They introduce large impedances between the amp and drivers in their stop bands (above or below the respective cutoff frequency of the filter section). In an active system the amplifiers simply send a lower amplitude signal to the drivers in the filter pass bands. The output impedances and damping capabilities of the amps remain unchanged.

No matter how you cut it, an active speaker designer always has a path to superior results, all other things being equal. And this impulse response advantage is just one example. There are many other advantages to active design that can be exploited. I could go on, but I don't want to write a book – or give away the farm.

Thomas

all right. this is all true. I know about back EMF and it's detrimental effect on signal fidelity. (I must admit that your way of explaining things is very reader-friendly. keep it up ). but isn't it true that it mostly is an issue within professional audio business? and then even more so within sound reinforcement business? the main reasons are high power/ high volume levels associated, high moving mass of drivers (that especially refer to very large woofers, where back EMF is a real issue). now, don't get me wrong. I understand very well that direct connection of an amp to the driver helps fighting this mechanism but what about mechanical damping in the speakers, like using air pressure within enclosure for damping and tuning bass response. some manufacturers (including yourself, I see) use dual opposite woofer arrangement to mechanically dampen cone movement (again, using air pressure as ally).

I should note now that the mechanism you've described (back EMF, lack of control over diaphragms) relates largely (and I mean LARGELY) to dynamic drivers. would you agree? I don't know if you share my view but I believe that dynamic drivers are the worst possible technology for speaker making available. mainly because for their utopian assumptions. perfect pistonic movement and no mass. those are mutually exclusive conditions IMO. how can you get perfect stiffness without raising mass of the diaphragm? that's the reason dynamic drivers ring. they're heavy. it's true that active technology can somewhat curb this effect but wouldn't it be better if it disappear altogether?

I must confess I recently began researching the market in search for "the perfect" speaker/ driver. ATM I've got Magnepan MG12 (planar magnetic/ quasi ribbon speakers). I used to have Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 and then Dynaudio Focus 110. both dynamic/ vented box speakers. I'm at experimenting stage right now but when I'll be upgrading my speakers I hope it'll be for life (unless some technological breakthrough comes up). who knows, maybe I'll even construct my speakers myself? DIY community is thriving. so that's why I want to know as much as possible about strengths and weaknesses of available driver technologies. my recent findings show that dynamic drivers are definitely flawed. like I mentioned above; they ring because they are too heavy. maybe that stems from the way those drivers excite the air? which is theoretically correct but completely unnatural - pistonic movement? everything in nature vibrates not moves back and forth. just some of my theorising...

ribbons on the other hand vibrate gently when reproduce sounds. just like vocal cords, lips, strings, percussion membranes. also, they are not inductive, so problems associated with back EMF are inexistent. not to mention the excursion is only minimal so the inductive force would be insignificant anyway. and they are also so light that free air itself presents enough damping - better coupling to the medium. there's also Heil AMT driver which is sort of a ribbon too but works in a different way. and there's also planar dipole bass. again, very light (essentially a sheet of Mylar with etched aluminium trace) and no box and associated with it bass resonances and dispersion anomalies. OK, dipoles have their own problems, like dipole cancellation, but so far MG12 gave me the best resolution in midbass to low midrange I've ever heard. and they are only passive speakers with passive components of very questionable quality.

maybe you should experiment with different technologies too? I'd like to hear your speakers with, say ESS Heil AMT or Bohlender - Graebener or Raal ribbons :?

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

the quote is from the sound on sound magazine review of the opals.

I wish the reviewer could back his view up with some empirical data. AFAIK every well designed speaker, even passive, will have distortion levels no much worse than your Opals. but I stand to be corrected.

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

BTW. I had some problems with posting to this thread yesterday. fortunately I had the reply saved so it was just a matter of copy/ past business in the end. anyway I forgot to add a link to this bit (it was very late):

nearly full range, easy on the amp, vanishingly low distortion, essentially flat freq response (without any equalisation). this bit with "nearly full range" lets it down.

so, for anyone who is interested, here it is:

http://www.fibonaccitechnologies.com/html/two_channel.html

 

[drummerman]

BTW. where did you take this assumption that 10% distortion for a speaker is not uncommon. AFAIK it's quite uncommon. unless you have particularly sh***y drivers or you're driving midrangers or tweeters well into subbass at high power.

the quote is from the sound on sound magazine review of the opals.

I wish the reviewer could back his view up with some empirical data. AFAIK every well designed speaker, even passive, will have distortion levels no much worse than your Opals. but I stand to be corrected.

As far as I know most speakers, especially the smaller coned ones, have considerable distortion when driven hard. Ports have even more. Whilst I can't confirm 10% figures of 6 or 7% seem to be fairly common. Kef is one of the brands which deliberately cut low frequency response of some of their speakers off higher than normal to combat the issue to some extend.

So, whilst I agree that any anomalities further down the line, such as amplifier distortion, jitter and whathaveyou are not good and best avoided with good, sensible engineering, these are often of less magnitude than what is still the weakest link, the speaker and its drivers, not to mention the room interaction but thats another story altogether.

regards

 

[Anonymous]

How do you go about sourcing drivers for your designs?

Loose lips sink ships.

 

[Anonymous]

Is this so that the 'mastered' sound (forgive me, I am not a recording engineer) can be monitored for how it will sound in a typical home system? Or is it to accomodate the sound preferences of some recording staff themselves?

It is an interesting idea that the monitor itself should be 'tweakable' in this respect. I thought that any such 'flavour' or 'character' would be introduced to the signal before it reached the monitors....

This is an alternate crossover voicing that gives a bit sweeter, more "hi-fi" presentation to the sound. It was my answer to requests from some engineers who asked for a more forgiving, less brutally honest sound - for either their own pleasure listening or for when clients stop by to hear the mix. As I'm sure you’re aware, many modern recordings are dynamically compressed to hell and back and can sound rather harsh. Most engineers hate it, but it's what the record companies demand. So they do it to make a living.

Anyway, most recording monitors have a plethora tone knobs to tweak and contort the sound in every which way. This goes against my personal design philosophy. So my concession was to create a completely separate and cohesive voicing from my "optimal" voicing, enabling the engineer to quickly switch between the two.

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

This is an alternate crossover voicing that gives a bit sweeter, more "hi-fi" presentation to the sound.

I think putting term "sweeter voicing" along side "hi-fi" in one sentence is not in order. I'd wager your default setting is hi-fi and the sweater one is just colouring. colouring is not hi-fi IMO.

 

[fr0g]

This is an alternate crossover voicing that gives a bit sweeter, more "hi-fi" presentation to the sound.

I think putting term "sweeter voicing" along side "hi-fi" in one sentence is not in order. I'd wager your default setting is hi-fi and the sweater one is just colouring. colouring is not hi-fi IMO.

And I'd wager that the default setting is flat, accurate, pro audio style and the "sweeter" one is the "Hi-fi" one.

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

And I'd wager that the default setting is flat, accurate, pro audio style and the "sweeter" one is the "Hi-fi" one.

you don't have to wager. it's enough if you can read previous posts with understanding. that's exactly what was written. however, it's the flat setting which is hi-fi. the other one is not.

it doesn't matter if the product stems from pro or consumer audio market. if it alters the "reality" it's not hi-fi. in this particular case it was demand from recording engineers which introduced "sweeter" setting. nothing to do with consumer audio market. so I wouldn't be going so much into glorifying pro audio market. flat, accurate, pro audio style....