Godzilla said:
That's an optical illusion. My initial impression was the same as yours, but after looking closer, I can see the cause. If you look at the other side of the driver, you should see the same indent where the screw/bolt go through a hole in the frame and secure the driver to the cabinet.
Knowing that, go back and look at it again, and you will understand that suddenly you see it in a different light.
Pioneer B20s . . . EnABLed
Yep, Dave at Planet10 has hotrodded my B20s. In fact, I’ve had them back in my rig for closing on two weeks and I’m just now coming up for air. Sorry for not checking in earlier, but can you blame me?
Anyway, lets cut right to it. I’ve had this pair of B20s for just over a year now, and I had modded them with P10 phase plugs some months ago, so that’s what I was accustomed to. They live in my office rig, which consists of a pair of 12”x18” bamboo open baffles hinge mounted to my desk, driven by an SI 2nd Gen T-Amp, fed by an E-Mu 0404 sound card, which also provides my necessary equalization functionality before anything hits the DACs. I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but the difference between just the phase plugs and the EnABLed/puzzlecoated version is not subtle.
I can characterize the EnABL treatment fairly simply. Before the treatment, even after the phaseplug mod, the B20s (and really any other speaker I've listened to recently enough to have a reliable recollection of the sound) presented a sound "image" by which I'm talking like a photograph, a recording if you will. Certainly there were plenty of cues that allowed my brain to reconstruct the reality of the image, but if focused upon, it was obviously just a flat projection of a recording. The EnABLed drivers seem to actually generate a sound "field" from the recording, something that you can hear down into, if you follow me. I suppose the elimination of Dave's "hall of mirrors" effect allows the recorded audio cues to be reassembled properly by the brain.
This, by itself is a wonderful experience, and mainly what I suppose everyone who's experienced EnABL is raving about. The treatment also smoothed the mids and extended the highs a bit. Pretreated, my EQ stack for the B20s had a couple of modest notches in the mids and lower treble and a good sized boost in the top half octave. Treated they only get a single very shallow dip in the upper mids and a modest boost above 16khz. So, basically they still have the laid back B20 character we've come to love, but its even more smooth and extended now.
Of course, Dave doesn't just EnABL drivers. He's got his own doping mods (especially for the FE12x drivers that he specializes in). For these B20s, I know he puzzlecoated them in some fashion before applying the EnABL treatment, and this, I believe is responsible for another performance boost that I discovered immediately upon firing them up. Bass performance in my setup has extended considerably and requires less EQ to get. Where I was struggling to get down to 55Hz before, I can get close to 35Hz now if I push the EQ settings.
Okay, sounds too good to be true, right. Sounds like a free lunch. Well, yes and no. This is an extensive treatment. It'll cost you a bit in materials and a ton of time. Or it'll probably cost a pretty penny to have Dave do it for you. It cost me a couple months without my primary speakers and $60 USD in shipping both ways. I engineering terms, though there are other "downsides" at work here.
First and foremost is the fact that this decluttering of the sound field, the smoothing and extending of mids and highs results in significantly increased detail reaching the ear. Again, sounds like a freebie, but realize that it reveals all the problems upstream of the speakers. My 0404 card seems to be the strong link of the chain, though its obvious that the source could be improved upon. Luckily I'd picked up the new T-amp for Christmas, as the drivers now reveal my JVC Hybrid Feedback amp as the mid grade shelf system component that it is. The new T-amp is exceptionally clear and present by comparison, and for the price, obviously as good as I can do, but that can be upgraded as well. Even so, many of my recordings, especially some of my cherished tracks that I only own as MP3s, have been revealed as cacaphonic messes of poor recording choices nasty compression. As you can see, this could easily lead one down a very expensive path.
Second, its become quite obvious that my desktop rig is totally inadequate for these driver to be situated in. The baffles mounted to the desk bring the drivers too close to my ears. I'd never had a problem with that before, and the distance used to be perfect, allowing me to very accurately aim the units where I wanted them. Now, I need to move back at least 2-3 feet from my normal position to allow the sound field to coalesce. When sitting too close, in my normal position, the natural 3D character of the new sound field feels more like a pair of vortices of sound that are streaming past my ears. Sure, I get the illusion that I can look way "down" into them which is fun and kinda cool, but still disorienting and very distracting from the music. I am wondering, however, if this might be unique to drivers with whizzer cones, and if maybe something like the FE126/7, 168, 208 or the FF series might not eliminate this issue.
Third, the new bass capacity has not been accompanied by any greater Xmax, so even though I can play most music with the hotrodded EQ settings, just about any DVD will cause them to distort, pretty much constantly. So, my default EQ stack has really very little boost at the bottom end. In fact the bulk of the EQ used, top to bottom, is the about ~36dB cut below 50Hz that I use to keep any of the infrasonics from getting to the B20. I'm still getting better audible bass performance, but I so obviously not getting this driver's full potential that it hurts, which has lead me, once again, to contemplating building enclosures, which as we all know here can be a bottomless pit of study, indecision, and budgetary shortfalls.
So, I can fully endorse the benefits of EnABLing/puzzlecoating/phaseplugging, though I have to warn, it will be another step stringing you down the audiophile path, always looking for more.
Kensai
Yep, Dave at Planet10 has hotrodded my B20s. In fact, I’ve had them back in my rig for closing on two weeks and I’m just now coming up for air. Sorry for not checking in earlier, but can you blame me?
Anyway, lets cut right to it. I’ve had this pair of B20s for just over a year now, and I had modded them with P10 phase plugs some months ago, so that’s what I was accustomed to. They live in my office rig, which consists of a pair of 12”x18” bamboo open baffles hinge mounted to my desk, driven by an SI 2nd Gen T-Amp, fed by an E-Mu 0404 sound card, which also provides my necessary equalization functionality before anything hits the DACs. I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but the difference between just the phase plugs and the EnABLed/puzzlecoated version is not subtle.
I can characterize the EnABL treatment fairly simply. Before the treatment, even after the phaseplug mod, the B20s (and really any other speaker I've listened to recently enough to have a reliable recollection of the sound) presented a sound "image" by which I'm talking like a photograph, a recording if you will. Certainly there were plenty of cues that allowed my brain to reconstruct the reality of the image, but if focused upon, it was obviously just a flat projection of a recording. The EnABLed drivers seem to actually generate a sound "field" from the recording, something that you can hear down into, if you follow me. I suppose the elimination of Dave's "hall of mirrors" effect allows the recorded audio cues to be reassembled properly by the brain.
This, by itself is a wonderful experience, and mainly what I suppose everyone who's experienced EnABL is raving about. The treatment also smoothed the mids and extended the highs a bit. Pretreated, my EQ stack for the B20s had a couple of modest notches in the mids and lower treble and a good sized boost in the top half octave. Treated they only get a single very shallow dip in the upper mids and a modest boost above 16khz. So, basically they still have the laid back B20 character we've come to love, but its even more smooth and extended now.
Of course, Dave doesn't just EnABL drivers. He's got his own doping mods (especially for the FE12x drivers that he specializes in). For these B20s, I know he puzzlecoated them in some fashion before applying the EnABL treatment, and this, I believe is responsible for another performance boost that I discovered immediately upon firing them up. Bass performance in my setup has extended considerably and requires less EQ to get. Where I was struggling to get down to 55Hz before, I can get close to 35Hz now if I push the EQ settings.
Okay, sounds too good to be true, right. Sounds like a free lunch. Well, yes and no. This is an extensive treatment. It'll cost you a bit in materials and a ton of time. Or it'll probably cost a pretty penny to have Dave do it for you. It cost me a couple months without my primary speakers and $60 USD in shipping both ways. I engineering terms, though there are other "downsides" at work here.
First and foremost is the fact that this decluttering of the sound field, the smoothing and extending of mids and highs results in significantly increased detail reaching the ear. Again, sounds like a freebie, but realize that it reveals all the problems upstream of the speakers. My 0404 card seems to be the strong link of the chain, though its obvious that the source could be improved upon. Luckily I'd picked up the new T-amp for Christmas, as the drivers now reveal my JVC Hybrid Feedback amp as the mid grade shelf system component that it is. The new T-amp is exceptionally clear and present by comparison, and for the price, obviously as good as I can do, but that can be upgraded as well. Even so, many of my recordings, especially some of my cherished tracks that I only own as MP3s, have been revealed as cacaphonic messes of poor recording choices nasty compression. As you can see, this could easily lead one down a very expensive path.
Second, its become quite obvious that my desktop rig is totally inadequate for these driver to be situated in. The baffles mounted to the desk bring the drivers too close to my ears. I'd never had a problem with that before, and the distance used to be perfect, allowing me to very accurately aim the units where I wanted them. Now, I need to move back at least 2-3 feet from my normal position to allow the sound field to coalesce. When sitting too close, in my normal position, the natural 3D character of the new sound field feels more like a pair of vortices of sound that are streaming past my ears. Sure, I get the illusion that I can look way "down" into them which is fun and kinda cool, but still disorienting and very distracting from the music. I am wondering, however, if this might be unique to drivers with whizzer cones, and if maybe something like the FE126/7, 168, 208 or the FF series might not eliminate this issue.
Third, the new bass capacity has not been accompanied by any greater Xmax, so even though I can play most music with the hotrodded EQ settings, just about any DVD will cause them to distort, pretty much constantly. So, my default EQ stack has really very little boost at the bottom end. In fact the bulk of the EQ used, top to bottom, is the about ~36dB cut below 50Hz that I use to keep any of the infrasonics from getting to the B20. I'm still getting better audible bass performance, but I so obviously not getting this driver's full potential that it hurts, which has lead me, once again, to contemplating building enclosures, which as we all know here can be a bottomless pit of study, indecision, and budgetary shortfalls.
So, I can fully endorse the benefits of EnABLing/puzzlecoating/phaseplugging, though I have to warn, it will be another step stringing you down the audiophile path, always looking for more.
Kensai
I've been a beginner on the budget audiophile path up to this point. I think I've pretty much got the ultimate in cheap components so far. $60 sound card, $60 amp, maybe $12 each for my "enclosures" . . . see what I mean? Of course, this is orders of magnitude away from where I'd started, with a SoundBlaster Live! Platinum and a cheap 2.1 set of Altec Lansings back in '99. I think enclosures, cheap as only I can make them, will be the next order of business when I get a moment.
Haven't messed with the tweeter yet, though I do have a pair of the 5/8" Dayton domes and a 2uF caps for some eventual experimentation. Its possible we'll be needing to move the xo point up a bit, but it may be fine as is.
Kensai
Haven't messed with the tweeter yet, though I do have a pair of the 5/8" Dayton domes and a 2uF caps for some eventual experimentation. Its possible we'll be needing to move the xo point up a bit, but it may be fine as is.
Kensai
I can see this whole B20 issue turning into a Real Fetish before all the dust clears. For the money, you just can't beat the driver. Even Nelson thinks it's a great product, and it is highly customizeable. Amazing what a little work can do for this thing.
BTY ken, can you provide some pictures of the job? I'm definately interested, for obvious reasons.
BTY ken, can you provide some pictures of the job? I'm definately interested, for obvious reasons.
Kensai said:
Got you. Oh, a little bit of info for you. If you want to refer to a post, all you have to do is just move your cursor over the post number, and right click it. Then you can copy the link address and then paste it to the post, and it will link to that exact post.
Like this. Now, I must confess that I am using Opera, the fastest and best browser in the world, so I can't speak for that antiquated IE, if that is what you are using.
Kensai said:
It was a bit of a pain to apply in some places especially under the whizzer cone. I was expecting much higher contrast when you chose it as well. Also, i don't know if it is in my mind, but the application behaviour of the pollyscales varies depending on colour -- and blue is one of the harder ones to work with.
dave
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.