gootee,
After months of learning the most basics about amps and driver interaction, great help from this forums posters, what I was able to determine was the profile of distortion distribution as it is effected by the method of compensation was the "unmeasurable" and unknown masking factor that my wife is so sensitive to. Real topology difference, real measurement difference that matches what she hears. Now what she hears seems to be just plain distortion from the tweeters and with much better speakers, the much better amps ( thanks John) sound much better than the lousy speakers masked by the previous favorite amp. The state of the art may not be advanced, but for me, the understanding of the start of the art is advanced. Amps sound different and now I know one of the reasons.
After months of learning the most basics about amps and driver interaction, great help from this forums posters, what I was able to determine was the profile of distortion distribution as it is effected by the method of compensation was the "unmeasurable" and unknown masking factor that my wife is so sensitive to. Real topology difference, real measurement difference that matches what she hears. Now what she hears seems to be just plain distortion from the tweeters and with much better speakers, the much better amps ( thanks John) sound much better than the lousy speakers masked by the previous favorite amp. The state of the art may not be advanced, but for me, the understanding of the start of the art is advanced. Amps sound different and now I know one of the reasons.
Audible distortion from the tweeters is the key, but it's not the driver's fault, typically. How does one know when there is this type of distortion? Very easily, because you can "hear" the tweeter working, it's easy to pinpoint the sound coming from the driver. And as you move closer and closer to the typical tweeter in full cry it gets worse and worse, the sound from a tweeter with a "difficult" recording is stomach churning, close up. And this tells you everything -- the system is not working properly, normally because of the combined effect of all the weaknesses throughout the whole playback chain ...
Frank
This really happens in real life a lot, does it? I honestly don't know, although I've heard it myself even with supposedly good expensive systems.
Of the 4 loudspeaker pairs I have at home, only the cheapest 2 way can sometimes have its tweeter heard playing not in unison with the mid/bass driver. I've always forgiven them for it, they are the spare pair there just in case, and besides, one does not look the gift horse in the mouth.
But none of the other speakers (AR94 fully refurbished, JBL Ti600 and B&M 1041) has any problems with that. The ARs are the world's first "2.5" way speakers, the others are full 3 way speakers.
Especially the 1041, my pride and joy, is exceedingly well integrated, it truly acts as a single signal source despite three drivers (10" bass, 4" midrange, 1" dome tweeter). My only regret is that at the time (2003), Son Audax did not have an equivalent 12" bass in the same high tech series of low frequency drivers.
It was said in the 1950's a damping factor > 3 was useful . Speaker suspensions were stiffer then .
Like the Earth being flat assumptions have to be tested . The Earth is flat to a good approximation . Sometimes it is not . What cost to find out . I would guess 9 times out of 10 the flat answer is good enough . The speakers made today generally use these assumptions ( constant voltage source , high damping ) .
One thing to remember the damping is false . It is generated by feedback . If it is relaxed a little it might find a sweet spot where it works best . I know that will annoy many to have it as false and I apologies in advance .
Like the Earth being flat assumptions have to be tested . The Earth is flat to a good approximation . Sometimes it is not . What cost to find out . I would guess 9 times out of 10 the flat answer is good enough . The speakers made today generally use these assumptions ( constant voltage source , high damping ) .
One thing to remember the damping is false . It is generated by feedback . If it is relaxed a little it might find a sweet spot where it works best . I know that will annoy many to have it as false and I apologies in advance .
In my own experience this quality, or lack of it, is a function of the system as a whole; a better sorted out speaker will certainly help in a particular scenario, that of a particular combination of components.
This reducing the visibility of the tweeter is part of a process towards the ultimate goal: complete audible invisibility of the speakers in every sense, as being the sources of the sound, irrespective of where you, the listener, happen to be in the room. Only the absolute minimisation of distortion, with conventional speakers at least, allows this to happen ...
Frank
I have explained several times in this thread. I am relying on my wife's ultra sensitive hearing. The distortion causes actual pain. I think I hear an edge on some recordings, but not enough to be sure myself. I hear a clear difference in some guitar recordings where the strings sound metallic, not nylon, and the applause on the opening of Clapton Unpluged is worse that it really is.
Speakers are bar far the worst part of the overall system. Where I thought I was at a price level where they should start to be pretty good, I was wrong. What I thought were short-comings of amps, CD players or DAC's were actually their level of masking speaker problems. The cheapest Denon receiver is better than any speaker I have ever heard. Not that better electronics are not, well better.
I think a lot has been said in this thread about the need to match electronics to a speaker and that in this day and age, that means a very bad design on at least one of the parts, if not both. Where my Rotel 951 sounded better on the Paradigms than my B&K or Parasound, the problem was with the Paradigms. With my speakers, the Parasound has much better detail and low level definition that the Rotel. I had already sold the B&K so who knows. The limitations of the Rotel, a design choice, did not reveal the defects in the Studio 20's. Good match? No, bad speakers.
The first pair of speakers I have built that pass the domestic distortion test would be in the $3000 and up retail range if they were a commercial product. That's a hint son.
Oh yea, it IS the drivers fault. Of course, you can misuse a driver and make a good driver bad and a bad driver terrible. You are never going to get a driver to be better than it is.
Speakers are bar far the worst part of the overall system. Where I thought I was at a price level where they should start to be pretty good, I was wrong. What I thought were short-comings of amps, CD players or DAC's were actually their level of masking speaker problems. The cheapest Denon receiver is better than any speaker I have ever heard. Not that better electronics are not, well better.
I think a lot has been said in this thread about the need to match electronics to a speaker and that in this day and age, that means a very bad design on at least one of the parts, if not both. Where my Rotel 951 sounded better on the Paradigms than my B&K or Parasound, the problem was with the Paradigms. With my speakers, the Parasound has much better detail and low level definition that the Rotel. I had already sold the B&K so who knows. The limitations of the Rotel, a design choice, did not reveal the defects in the Studio 20's. Good match? No, bad speakers.
The first pair of speakers I have built that pass the domestic distortion test would be in the $3000 and up retail range if they were a commercial product. That's a hint son.
Oh yea, it IS the drivers fault. Of course, you can misuse a driver and make a good driver bad and a bad driver terrible. You are never going to get a driver to be better than it is.
that's what i've been saying for ever, so seeing someone else saying the same is somewhat exhilarating for me. thank you.
Why didn't you just ask what we think?
Ever since the quality of my speakers overtook the rest of the system in the very early days of 1972, I realized that was so as I built my system and by 1976 it was clear to me that the speakers were by default suspected as the worst part of the system. No, let me rephrase that, as the most difficult part of the system to get right.
Which is why I pushed my good friend into developing the speakers I have now, in reality he did the brainwork like 95%, because speakers were his trade and great love in life. In the course of the work, we tried hard to eliminate if possible, or at least to minimize if not possible to eliminate, all the usual problems associated with speakers. As an example, the impedance modulus, on a nominally 8 Ohm speaker, varies from 6,5 to 14 Ohms worst case, which is VERY uncommonly even. With a minimum of 6,5 Ohms, virtually anything can drive them no problemo, even the junkiest of Technics amps.
It was really hard work, and took its sweet time, but in my view, it was well worth it.
On the other hand, another good friend swears by his Apogees, and if there ever was an amp killer, those must be the hit squad speakers.
Anyway, I agree with you, the loudspeakers are the most difiicult part of any system.
@Frank
Comletely agreed, Frank. It seems I have been more fortunate than many others to have hit on models which happen to well integrated, certainly above average. Hence, while I recognioze the merits of your reasoning, this is a problem for others to mull over. I am happy with my speakers.
@Nigel
Not to belabor the point, but if memory serves, somebody in the very early 70ies worked out that with a damping factor of 10 what the amp could do with the speaker Q factor was done, and increasing the DF thereafter had little or no effect on the loudspeakers any more, BUT was indicative of the possible amp current capability.
Years later, they discovered that a high DF factor was often an indication of high global feedback figures and was a very poor indicator of an amp's current capability.
I don't know what the current thinking is.
Well, I have has some success MODIFYING some drivers with a doping compound. If a little dope is good for an aluminum dust cap... well I had better stop there.
I suspect part of the problem is the normal human tendency to want to believe the next wonder product, be it cable stands or an actual great piece of electronics, they are all cheaper than great speakers. Will that $2000 amp be enough to make my $1000 speakers fantastic because I know better speakers cost five grand? Tempting. Wrong but tempting.
I suspect part of the problem is the normal human tendency to want to believe the next wonder product, be it cable stands or an actual great piece of electronics, they are all cheaper than great speakers. Will that $2000 amp be enough to make my $1000 speakers fantastic because I know better speakers cost five grand? Tempting. Wrong but tempting.
Having just ordered a pile of crossover parts, (ouch) it is the same thing. Is that $40 "audio special poly" cap and $50 tweeter going to sound better than a $10 poly cap and a $80 tweeter? Probably not. Now I am using the $80 tweeters, should I pony up for the $40 caps too? NO. Let that sink in a second. Because I should use that other $30 to replace electrolytics in my amp with $5 polys! At some point in time, probably. I am not at all denegrading quality components.
Now, isn't that interesting ...? My experience has been completely the opposite, that the electronics make or break the sound, from a subjective, "does it sound convincing" POV, and that the speakers are the least of your problems.
Okay, pigeons, here comes the cat, flying through the air! My belief is that altering the speaker in the main varies the electronic environment - think of the speaker cable through to the crossover circuitry and finally reaching the drivers as really being just an extension of the amplifier circuit, in space. This is what I find really sets the "tone" of the sound, subjectively, and the speaker drivers and cabinet are very highly dependant on the quality of that "input" in terms of delivering satisfying sound.
Put it this way: if I had $20,000 to invest in the amplifier electronics, to purchase and tweak them, and $1000 likewise for the speaker; this would annihilate, sound wise, quality wise, a combination priced the other way round. IMO.
Frank
I hear this - I call it sibilance. Its due to the electronics - so I agree with Frank.
I was in my local CD shop last night catching up on some of the latest releases. The owner there is into stereo systems - each time I go there's something a bit different to demo the music with. This time it was an Audiolab CD8000 player feeding an unidentified valve amp into Chario floorstanders.
My host wanted to sell me CDs so she played a lot of her own suggestions of both male and female vocals while she poured lots of high mountain oolong tea from Taiwan
I rejected most (about 2 out of every 3 she played) because the sibilance was baked in on the recording. It only takes the first couple of seconds to notice it and its normally consistent across all the tracks on a disk. But she did succeed in selling me 9 disks on which the sibilance was bearable or absent. Different disks had different tonality of the sibilance - some in the low HF and others higher up.Next time I'll take one of my prototype DACs and see how it holds up against their CD player.
Where I would argue the point with you is that this artifact is "baked on"; I have always found, always, that it is a manifestation of the playback state of tune. When my own system falls back a bit from a high point of "togetherness", there it is, there's the "digital edge"!! A clear pointer to something awry in what I'm doing, that's wrongly judged, or often simply because something has crept out of alignment, so to speak.
Unfortunately, with digital, the sound is either totally there, completely together; or you don't really want to know about it: there's very little halfway house, or margin of error ...
Put it this way ... when everything's right, there is no such thing as objectionable sibilance, in the sense of distortion, ever ...
So what does your 'everything right' system turn the baked-in sibilance into? Or does it just distract our attention from the flaws onto the glorious tonality? If you want evidence that its baked in to some tracks I could probably fire up Audacity and give you a screen shot of what I mean.
As the system I was talking about wasn't mine, I have no idea about its state of tune, except that some disks sounded great and others were flat. The presence of sibilance had a negative correlation with soundstage depth - those disks most free of siblance had great ambience retrieval. I suspect that if I'd substituted the valve amp with a typical transistor one, the sibilance problems would have been magnified.
As the system I was talking about wasn't mine, I have no idea about its state of tune, except that some disks sounded great and others were flat. The presence of sibilance had a negative correlation with soundstage depth - those disks most free of siblance had great ambience retrieval. I suspect that if I'd substituted the valve amp with a typical transistor one, the sibilance problems would have been magnified.
The distracting our attention is probably at the heart of the matter, because I have some CDs here which are absolutely foul, that still work. As in, they have been transferred in the worst possible way: a prime example is a Gene Pitney hits "bootleg", done by a total moron, who applied the most egregious noise reduction thingamajig for I don't know what reason. The volume pumping and "noise" gating is absolutely grotesque, the effect is somewhat like listening to those old time, via short wave, radio broadcasts where the signal constantly fades in and out. On a normal hifi system this is truly unbearable, would be good for piping into a cell to soften up a prisoner unwilling to talk ...
Yet, it's possible to lift the replay level to a quality where somehow the ear/brain is able to sift its way through to the heart of matter, and actually track the musical performance underneath, bypassing the muck which in this case is indeed ingrained. This is truly psychoacoustics at work, can be likened to listening to older, "bad" 78's which are submerged in high levels of noise and distortion of various types, on a TT tuned to make the most of such recordings.
That sibilance if it truly is a result of mic'ing technique won't go away, per se, but will sound "natural", like a real voice blending in with the musical content, won't draw attention to itself, if the system gets to a very high state of tune. I've gone the rounds so many, many times of having vocals not sounding right, until I get the last piece in the jig-saw of SQ fiddling in place; finally it clicks, and any doubts I have of being able to make it happen fall away ..
Frank
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My suspicion is that its not so much mic'ing technique which creates the sibilance, rather something going wrong in the mic preamp with RF caused IMD. Just a hunch, but I do notice that mic preamp vendors tout 'all discrete mic preamp designs' for example, in the same way as high end brands do. This is a bit unusual in the pro market which is by no means as fashion driven as high end audio. Mic wires are probably the biggest antennas in the recording set up and operating at such low levels the most susceptible to 'spectral contamination'.
What ever happened to the direct feedback of the speaker to the amp?
I remember reading this long ago, a company patented it then it disappeared?
I might actually have the speaker builder article.
I will take pics of my cabinets, heavily damped/stiffened that I built with my Grandfather, he made the cabinets, I still have and use them! I moved them recently, wow they weigh a ton!
Damping factor, the more the better, this is a physical piston moving, so if you can move it with more control, the better, sound wise? Well, that is up to the listener!
The whole system, needs to be taken into account, not just one component!
I think that is the fun of all this, to experiment!!!
I remember reading this long ago, a company patented it then it disappeared?
I might actually have the speaker builder article.
I will take pics of my cabinets, heavily damped/stiffened that I built with my Grandfather, he made the cabinets, I still have and use them! I moved them recently, wow they weigh a ton!
Damping factor, the more the better, this is a physical piston moving, so if you can move it with more control, the better, sound wise? Well, that is up to the listener!
The whole system, needs to be taken into account, not just one component!
I think that is the fun of all this, to experiment!!!
Are you perhaps referring to Kenwood/Trio Corp's "Sigma Drive" ciruitry?
This had an extra cable leading back from the speaker to the amp, and then being used for global amp feedback. The theory was that this would all but eliminate the influence of speaker cables, and in addition would provide for damping factors in the region of 1,000:1 on some better models.
It never really caught on, even if they did push it for 3 years or so, and eventually gave up. I heard it in action only once, and the result was a screeching speaker, although obviously much of this was the speaker itself.
@fas42
Frank, if you can, try to find and listen to an older Yamaha CD player, model CDX-993. Due to marketing reasonss, this model was sold in Europe and Asia, but not in both of the Americas, no idea about Australia.
In many ways, it was an odd one out. Its price, while not small, was not really high, but the quality of build you got was way above its price class - two transformers (one for digital, the other for audio), 4 6,800 uF caps with fast rectifier diodes, separate compartments, etc. The I/V stage used an NJR op amp per channel, but the buffer and output amp stages were 100% discrete, and done well.
As was, right out of the box, if anything, it sounded a little too warm and sweet. Coherent, defined, but actually too warm. Whenever something is too whatever, there is a price to pay, and in this case, I felt it lacked that last ounce of definition and fine detail. Swapping the NJR op amps for AD 826 cured the problem - it was still a nicely warm sounding CD player, but not overly so, and the level of detail did improve a bit.
Quite a few CDs which did sound a bit bright, some of which actually screeched, now came out in a quite acceptable manner, some even rather well. The one thing you will never get with it is listener fatigue.
Which is why I have kept it all these 9 years and until I hear better, it's not going anywhere. Truthfully, I never tested other CD players, rather took them in my stride, but I have yet to hear one which is clearly a better performer overall. Some do this better, other do that better, but overall, it's a tough one to beat.
The only thing I have changed since I bought it was to add an Aussie built Real Time DAC, which uses 8 Philips 1543 in parallel, eliminating the need for oversampling and brick wall digital filters. I never looked back.
Frank, if you can, try to find and listen to an older Yamaha CD player, model CDX-993. Due to marketing reasonss, this model was sold in Europe and Asia, but not in both of the Americas, no idea about Australia.
In many ways, it was an odd one out. Its price, while not small, was not really high, but the quality of build you got was way above its price class - two transformers (one for digital, the other for audio), 4 6,800 uF caps with fast rectifier diodes, separate compartments, etc. The I/V stage used an NJR op amp per channel, but the buffer and output amp stages were 100% discrete, and done well.
As was, right out of the box, if anything, it sounded a little too warm and sweet. Coherent, defined, but actually too warm. Whenever something is too whatever, there is a price to pay, and in this case, I felt it lacked that last ounce of definition and fine detail. Swapping the NJR op amps for AD 826 cured the problem - it was still a nicely warm sounding CD player, but not overly so, and the level of detail did improve a bit.
Quite a few CDs which did sound a bit bright, some of which actually screeched, now came out in a quite acceptable manner, some even rather well. The one thing you will never get with it is listener fatigue.
Which is why I have kept it all these 9 years and until I hear better, it's not going anywhere. Truthfully, I never tested other CD players, rather took them in my stride, but I have yet to hear one which is clearly a better performer overall. Some do this better, other do that better, but overall, it's a tough one to beat.
The only thing I have changed since I bought it was to add an Aussie built Real Time DAC, which uses 8 Philips 1543 in parallel, eliminating the need for oversampling and brick wall digital filters. I never looked back.
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