So you're claiming you know more about the operating parameters of the suspension, its tolerances etc. than its manufacturer does. Most impressive.
Last I checked, I didn't hammer a brand-new car engine either. This is simply about bringing the driver components to the intended operating window. Nothing mysterious about that. Nor something most driver manufacturers are in a position to do for you. Is it really such a hardship to use some common sense and go careful for a hundred hours or so rather than flogging them to death out of the box? I would therefore gently suggest to anybody reading that you adhere to the manufacturer recommendations regarding their own products and how to treat them in the initial stages. Unlike most, the owner / designer is actually here, and assuming you're polite and don't presume to lecture him on how to design his own drivers (in which case he'll likely tell you to go and make your own since you know all about it), will actually discuss things, and even ask what people want. Try that with a few others & see how far you get. Not very, most of the time.
Last I checked, I didn't hammer a brand-new car engine either. This is simply about bringing the driver components to the intended operating window. Nothing mysterious about that. Nor something most driver manufacturers are in a position to do for you. Is it really such a hardship to use some common sense and go careful for a hundred hours or so rather than flogging them to death out of the box? I would therefore gently suggest to anybody reading that you adhere to the manufacturer recommendations regarding their own products and how to treat them in the initial stages. Unlike most, the owner / designer is actually here, and assuming you're polite and don't presume to lecture him on how to design his own drivers (in which case he'll likely tell you to go and make your own since you know all about it), will actually discuss things, and even ask what people want. Try that with a few others & see how far you get. Not very, most of the time.
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It is the drivers. One but needs to listen to one fresh next to one well broken in to know break-in is very real.
dave
What actions do you perform to "correct it for reproduction" in your listening room?
Depends on what the idiot recording engineer did to it. Often nothing works. Unfortunately one cannot undo the effects of stupid . . .
Both the surround and (especially) the spider seem to change significantly after some certain amount of "exercise", and the result is audible. Not exactly sure what it is, but it's "real". I've noticed something perhaps similar with some power tools that initially ran "rough", but after a little "wear in" became considerably smoother (and quieter) in operation.
Foam surrounds rot, paper cones become brittle and shred, "plastic" cones lose plasticizers and become stiffer, compression tweeter diaphragms crack from fatigue . . . all sorts of mechanical changes occur in loudspeaker drivers over time and with use. Do you really believe none of that ever happens? Why would you deny that a hundred hours of flexing might change the properties of a "new" spider?
Tools and generally all mechanical appliances become smoother as the bearings and other surfaces wear in, then get rougher as the bearings finally wear out. Soft suspension parts, in drivers, do break in and loosen up to a degree (and can then stiffen as they reach their end of life), but what we're looking at here are gross linearity issues at a number of places. Break in will not fix these.
I will also add in that any break in period I am talking about refers to a general settling down of parameters/properties, such as the wearing away of the rough surface from a new set of bearings. A gradual change that is in process throughout the entire life of the driver or machine, is not break in, that's actual wearing and completely different.
I will also add in that any break in period I am talking about refers to a general settling down of parameters/properties, such as the wearing away of the rough surface from a new set of bearings. A gradual change that is in process throughout the entire life of the driver or machine, is not break in, that's actual wearing and completely different.
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Same with Magneplanars, and the same "break in" recommendation from the manufacturer. All "idiots", I suppose . . .
My favorite 3.5 inch full range driver too. Here are some frequency response measurements of this driver in a Nautaloss enclosure at different angles: 0 deg, 15 deg, 30 deg, and 45 deg. The red curve is the average of all 4 angles. 1/12th oct smoothing. This driver is also very low distortion with THD at -50dB or better above 200 Hz. There is no significant peaking here above 10kHz and peaks are in the 2-3 dB range. A very smooth sounding driver.
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Nor does anyone claim that it will. But it is the case that the behavior of the driver does change with use, and most of that change occurs in the first few dozen hours.
It is also the case that those "gross linearity issues" have surprisingly little (negative) effect on how the thing sounds. I'm not sure why that is . . . but I'd also note that similar "gross linearity issues" are found in a number of well received drivers when they are subject to the same critical scrutiny. That "midrange notch" occurs in the ScanSpeak Illuminator, along with a pronounced high frequency rise at a slightly lower frequency than the 7.3
The Madisound Speaker Store
and both are also present in the Seas MU10 as well
The Madisound Speaker Store
although neither of those drivers get the overtly hostile criticism that the 7.3 does for it. Neither of them sound bad, either.
The obvious about this thread is that everyone have their own agenda regarding the truthfullness of manufacturers specifications. Be you a seller or buyer you have an agenda. For my part I have decided which team lost this battle - the one trying to alter the scope to something personal... My agenda is to find a cheap driver and for that I need specifications from the manufacturer - if the drivers differs from the specs the outcome will be unpredictable. When and if I find the difference between specs and reality I would of course present it as marcus76 have done. We need a gamechange not only in drivers but as a whole - the good guys should prevail and the bad ones disappear from the scene. I do understand that the most succesful ones are those who can play the game and make something from an inferior product - think what they could do with better ones or maybe anyone could in that case?
Regards
Regards
So why the continuous questioning if the driver has been broken in when someone shows or comments on a frequency response graph?
I've found that frequency response has the utmost important effect on "how the thing sounds". Record a speaker with and without linear distortion in your room with a dummy head and listen A/B. The difference will be readily apparent.
Our hearing will make as much sense as it can from the acoustic input it receives and after some time of adaption ("driver break in"?) even a distorted speaker will sound normal or even good (there are other sensory inputs that can make a speaker sound good even if it's only the color of the speaker enclosure). But objectively the sound will be distorted and it would sound more accurate (and still good or even better) without those distortions.
I guess everybody here is familiar with the Harman studies that showed over and over again how important smooth frequency response is.
The real problem with the Alpair driver (besides the highly misleading vendor supplied magnitude response graph) is its off-axis behavior. A power response hole followed by a huge peak. Elderly listeners with age-induced hearing loss might find such a power response peak beneficial though.
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Markus -what is it you are trying to achieve here? That is a genuine question by the way, because I for one am lost. This thread was inactive for around 9 months until you brought it back, with what appears to be the express purpose of 'attacking' (arguably not the best word but I'm down with a rotten cold at present so I'm not at my linguistic best -hats off to those for whom English is a 2nd language) the Alpair 7. I find it difficult to believe that is what you or any other intelligent person here would do, since it's not something that exactly goes down as a productive use of time for intelligent people (life being rather too short for such things). So it has to be something else, but what that is I can't work out.
-I can gather you don't like it. Fair enough.
-I'm not sure I agree with the 'misleading' soubriquet you apply to the published response graphs since the scale is there in black & white -if people don't read it, that their problem. Deception would occur if that was supressed. But all manufacturers without exception play the game in one way or another. They have to. They wouldn't sell anything if they didn't. Personally I think the dynamic range is expanded too far as well, although since the manufacturer doesn't use software smoothing, it's reasonable to suppose they'll use a respectable range to achieve a similar effect. It's a balancing act.
-The lines you have chosen to encircle above do show a large dip in the off-axis power response. You appear to have inadvertently neglected to mention how many degrees off axis those encircled are. The graph isn't labelled, possibly an earlier version is, but I haven't got time to go back through the thread to find it. But what exactly do you expect from a nominal 4in wideband driver? That, or similar effects varying from driver to driver in location &c., is what happens when substantially off-axis.
-I could be mistaken, but the majority of people who use the Alpair 7 (I don't have any myself) don't actually care. They are not interested in the 45 degree + off-axis response, not very interested in the FR graph narrowed to midbass levels of dynamic range (since widebanders by nature trade ultimate response linearity for extension), nor your sweeping claims that Eq will automatically improve the performance. No it won't. It might, but this is circumstance dependent.
-I can gather you don't like it. Fair enough.
-I'm not sure I agree with the 'misleading' soubriquet you apply to the published response graphs since the scale is there in black & white -if people don't read it, that their problem. Deception would occur if that was supressed. But all manufacturers without exception play the game in one way or another. They have to. They wouldn't sell anything if they didn't. Personally I think the dynamic range is expanded too far as well, although since the manufacturer doesn't use software smoothing, it's reasonable to suppose they'll use a respectable range to achieve a similar effect. It's a balancing act.
-The lines you have chosen to encircle above do show a large dip in the off-axis power response. You appear to have inadvertently neglected to mention how many degrees off axis those encircled are. The graph isn't labelled, possibly an earlier version is, but I haven't got time to go back through the thread to find it. But what exactly do you expect from a nominal 4in wideband driver? That, or similar effects varying from driver to driver in location &c., is what happens when substantially off-axis.
-I could be mistaken, but the majority of people who use the Alpair 7 (I don't have any myself) don't actually care. They are not interested in the 45 degree + off-axis response, not very interested in the FR graph narrowed to midbass levels of dynamic range (since widebanders by nature trade ultimate response linearity for extension), nor your sweeping claims that Eq will automatically improve the performance. No it won't. It might, but this is circumstance dependent.
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What question? If it's "what exactly do you expect from a nominal 4in wideband driver?" then the answer is the thread title.
Present the on-axis and off-axis response of the Alpair 7.3 as it really is. The vendor supplied graphs are highly misleading.
The graph says "0°-90°". Does that answer your question?
That's not a question I can answer.
The OP is presenting measurements which I think are very helpful to the DIY community in seeing the performance of a fabled driver with warts and all. His measurements are also seconded by measurements of Bob Brines. The main point I see being made is that the high frequency peaks as presented by the manufacturer are indeed misleading and quite different: I see a 5 to 8 dB peaks above 10khz looking at the MA plots. The OP's and Bob Brines' measurements show more like a 12 to 14 dB high peaks above 10khz. Now whether or not people will hear this or notice it is irrelevant to the fact that it exists and is a magnitude much greater than most people would care to want in their driver if they are aiming for smooth response in the upper registers. In reading this thread I do not perceive the OP as attacking the manufacturer other than to point out that the objective data presented by the manufacturer is very different than a purchased and measured unit. I do however see that, very clearly, that there is a circling of wagons around the OP and he is the one being attacked for being the messenger. I for one, don't see anyone showing measurable evidence that break-in will tame or cure the HF peaks. In fact, I would think that Bob Brines' measurements would indicate that this is not the case as those are probably broken in drivers depicted. Here are Bob Brines' measurements again:
Knowing what I know now, it gives me pause when thinking about buying this driver because I don't think an $85 driver should have 12dB peaks like that. If you think you can't hear this, listen to the amplitude when you do a freq sweep - it will clearly go up then down then up and down from the 10 to 15 kHz range - 12 to 14 dB is indeed very audible.
Knowing what I know now, it gives me pause when thinking about buying this driver because I don't think an $85 driver should have 12dB peaks like that. If you think you can't hear this, listen to the amplitude when you do a freq sweep - it will clearly go up then down then up and down from the 10 to 15 kHz range - 12 to 14 dB is indeed very audible.
Understood. Thank you, the brain is not at its best today. I think we probably have a different interpretation of 'misleading' given that the scales are clearly marked, but YMMV as ever. I'd personally prefer to see them use a smaller dynamic range also, but widebanders tend to be presented with this quite wide as previously noted (and / or with significant smoothing), so plenty of company there.
I gathered that; I was hoping you could indicate degrees to colour / line. 90 degrees for e.g. is of little more than academic interest. Up to ~30 degrees is about the typical range of use for widebanders; out to 60 degrees I concur has some relevance in multiway design, but not for drivers of this type.
Well, for example, I was hoping you could post equivalent data & commentry for the other 4in widebanders you have presumably assessed under the same measurement conditions to provide a broad spectrum of data which may assist people in making informed choices.
X -I may have missed something recent, but who has been claiming break in cures HF peaks?
I gathered that; I was hoping you could indicate degrees to colour / line. 90 degrees for e.g. is of little more than academic interest. Up to ~30 degrees is about the typical range of use for widebanders; out to 60 degrees I concur has some relevance in multiway design, but not for drivers of this type.
Well, for example, I was hoping you could post equivalent data & commentry for the other 4in widebanders you have presumably assessed under the same measurement conditions to provide a broad spectrum of data which may assist people in making informed choices.
X -I may have missed something recent, but who has been claiming break in cures HF peaks?
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