Fine & interesting work, @EIArte !
Would you tell me more about your OB release here ?
- can I see a back picture of this OB ?
- whick speaker do you use ?
- what are the dimensions of that OB ? (seems to be small to me, but I may be wrong !)
- do you use any equalization with it ? Or additional Subwoofer or Super-Tweeter ?
Thanks !
T
Lii Song F15
15”
No EQ, but a subwoofer.
Whizzer cones are a pain, but they do the job in those.
Yes, descriptors can have ulterior motives as well. The notion of a "clean system" is one of absolute accuracy, devoid of "dirt" which was not in the original signal. The anthropomorphic attributes have no place in sound accuracies...This reckless dependence on our severely flawed biological abilities to hear is entertaining in the extreme. We already have long since fabricated machines, devices, technologies that can "hear" far better than any human being. If you say your OB speaker sounds better than anything else...I say, prove it.
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+ we live in consumer societies of intense frenzy. So, no matter how good something might be, people get bored of it and seek to buy something new, just because.
I am not saying progress hasn't been made over the past 20 years, but the intensity of the upgrading has far surpassed the intensity of the progress.
I am not saying progress hasn't been made over the past 20 years, but the intensity of the upgrading has far surpassed the intensity of the progress.
Ah, OK - thanks @ElArte !
I see, interesting unit - not precisely a toy-speaker :
And the Europe importer is located in Spain...
T
The F-15, I always thought those could sound good...trouble is creating a panel shape that doesn't look like a big tombstone....maybe a sideways ellipse, some 1.75 meter wide by 1.25 meter high???
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I'm only on page 2 of this thread, and I'm sure someone else will make the point I'm about to make:
If you look at magazines like Stereophile, they have a really bad habit of associating attributes that depend on BEAMWIDTH to the lack of a box.
For instance, they'll say that "planar speakers are fast" or "planar speakers don't sound boxy."
When a lot of what they're hearing is simply the absence of a floor bounce. A one meter tall speaker will generally have narrow vertical beamwidth down to about 340Hz. This eliminates the 'floor bounce' from the midrange and lower midrange and even some of the upper midbass.
Net effect is that the sound is "cleaner" and you can easily measure this in the impulse response.
But then the magazines lose the plot, and attribute the phenomenon to "the speaker is planar" or other incorrect assumptions. I'm not saying that diaphragm shape and material doesn't matter; I'm saying it ALL matters and the magazines are in the habit of NOT discussing beamwidth because the authors of the reviews literally don't understand how beamwidth control is achieved.
IMHO, the other reason that they often praise planars is simply because there are 100X as many planars out there, when compared to the number of giant full range arrays, or giant waveguides. My wife would never let me put a three foot tall waveguide in the living room EVER but those planars down at Best Buy look pretty good. And no, that's not a diss on Best Buy, I legitimately think it's cool that they sell Kef Blades and big planar loudspeakers these days.
Haven't read through the whole thread, so maybe this has already been said...
Perhaps not, but infinite baffle is close and it was not uncommon in the early years of home audio -- and theater/cinema audio as well. The speaker(s) was mounted on the wall, with a spare room, large closet, garage or other space on the other side. The back wave of the driver was effectively eliminated, and with the thicker more substantial walls in the homes of wealthy folks (the only ones who could afford to dabble with such music reproduction at home) in earlier times, there would have been zero back pressure or reflected out-of-phase delayed sound coming through the cone or the wall.
If I had the option, this would be my personal ideal.
IMO, the evolution of loudspeaker enclosure design is an on-going effort to deal with the back wave, one way or another. KEF's Meta designs, B&W's Nautilus, and Hegeman's multi-tube enclosures from 50 years ago share the goal of eliminating the back wave, in contrast to the more common ported, TL, or even open baffle designs which all try to make the back wave do something.
Undoubtedly, the OB has the distinct advantage of no back pressure or delayed reflected energy coming back through the cone. OK so you do have to deal with the out-out-phase energy released behind the speaker. It is obviously problematic in a small room but it's often very beneficial in a large room.
I always found it odd that people were shocked that the Linkwitz speakers were beaten by a $150 set of Behringer studio speakers in a blind listening test here on diyaudio, but nearly everyone ignored the fact that the speaker that beat them both was an omnipolar design inspired by Bose. The creator of that speaker was routinely getting trashed on rec.audio way back in the 90s before the World Wide Web even existed.
https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4529750216/photos/2931560/
Didn’t try that, but tried something ridiculous.
You know how sometimes the shop will attach small weights to rebalance your tires…well, I toyed with this idea and attached small weights of various sizes to various parts of the whizzer cones…
It does things.
PLEASE do not go down that rabbit hole, it’s a fool’s errand.
You know how sometimes the shop will attach small weights to rebalance your tires…well, I toyed with this idea and attached small weights of various sizes to various parts of the whizzer cones…
It does things.
PLEASE do not go down that rabbit hole, it’s a fool’s errand.
The lip of a bell has 4 nodes and 4 anti-nodes, if you want to stop a whizzer cone "ringing" you could try three (or possibly any odd number) of weights (blobs of PVA?) or weaknesses (slits?) or a slight petal shape on the edge to reduce this effect. I honestly haven't heard anything wrong with my BG17 drivers, but then my system is rather basic.
Now, let's say you have a full range driver in an open baffle, and you EQ it to boost the bass, now you need a more powerful amp to drive it, and the highly sensitive mid range will be victim to the distortion of the amp driving the bass, and the distortion of the driver working hard to do something it can't. If you have a speaker that does nothing below 100 Hz, doubling the power below 100Hz will just produce double nothing. I learned what sound the voice coil makes hitting the pole piece finding this out.
Box noise has been covered on this forum before, you've got the back wave reflected through the cone, the back wave "leaking" through the enclosure, and the mechanical vibration from the driver vibrating the enclosure like the sound box on a violin, with diffraction as a side issue. All these issues can be delt with.
I'm not against open baffles, but I think they're best used in a WAW configuration, with a closed box woofer.
Now, let's say you have a full range driver in an open baffle, and you EQ it to boost the bass, now you need a more powerful amp to drive it, and the highly sensitive mid range will be victim to the distortion of the amp driving the bass, and the distortion of the driver working hard to do something it can't. If you have a speaker that does nothing below 100 Hz, doubling the power below 100Hz will just produce double nothing. I learned what sound the voice coil makes hitting the pole piece finding this out.
Box noise has been covered on this forum before, you've got the back wave reflected through the cone, the back wave "leaking" through the enclosure, and the mechanical vibration from the driver vibrating the enclosure like the sound box on a violin, with diffraction as a side issue. All these issues can be delt with.
I'm not against open baffles, but I think they're best used in a WAW configuration, with a closed box woofer.
Whizzers are a PITA.
Some have lips/flat edges, some are unterminated. I have seen some nice oval ones. Some came with felt spots on the back (Sansui F10 — a decent little FR), doing GMs massage treatment on the edge helps as does a couple coats of ZIG glue. And don’t forget the 98¢ tweak.
A whizzer makes a FR in essence a 2-way with a mechanical XO.
dave
Some have lips/flat edges, some are unterminated. I have seen some nice oval ones. Some came with felt spots on the back (Sansui F10 — a decent little FR), doing GMs massage treatment on the edge helps as does a couple coats of ZIG glue. And don’t forget the 98¢ tweak.
A whizzer makes a FR in essence a 2-way with a mechanical XO.
dave
The French Triangle T17FL2 from 1985 - the sole serious and affordable Full-Range speaker available here at that time - had a small whizzer cone without lips nor flat edges, and the center of the cone is a wide-structure foam, letting the treble sound coming from the center core, while venting the moving coil. So according to @planet10 , it would even be a "3-way" : main cone, whizzer cone, center foam...
I still have them since, fully operational, but in a Bass-Reflex 22mm thick Beechwood enclosure of 32L...
I tested them in OB but they did not wanted to work satisfactorily - at least for reasonable baffle dimensions !
T
I still have them since, fully operational, but in a Bass-Reflex 22mm thick Beechwood enclosure of 32L...
I tested them in OB but they did not wanted to work satisfactorily - at least for reasonable baffle dimensions !
T
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Yes... The size of the baffle. That's the same old story for a single, standalone-use Full-Range loudspeaker, if you want it to offer a credible bass range !
Otherwise, you can give it assistance with a sub, like @ElArte did, to compensate the lack of bass extension due to its compact plane Open Baffles - while having 15" cones, which is already a plus in the bass direction.
Personally, this would be the solution that I would go for - with a Ripole sub - just for a matter of place available, and for saving the best of two worlds : OB-FR and Bass...
T
reminds me. Phase plugs. I have not run into a whizzer cone that doies not benefit from a phase plug.
dave
With these, I have the sub kick in at either 80 or 100Hz with a 12 dB slope.
It's probably a little warmer than it should be, but when driving with 300Bs, it blends quite well. Very well.
Again, I will repeat that I am confounded that it works so well. Since I turned 50, my ears have improved a lot, so maybe that's the trick.
No, it does not depends on the driver used or its cost, it depends primarily on the width of the open baffle.
Driver with lower Fs, higher Qts and longer Xmax is the best for reproducing low bass on the OB. Higher Qts is mostly associated with low-costs drivers.
Experiment: Use two identical drivers - one on wide (open) baffle, the other on narrow (open) baffle. The driver on the narrow open baffle will have much less bass.
Thank you for your experience. Can anyone comment Sonce's experience? I am using horn I have no ability to comment his claim..