Criticism accepted!I bad!
Hey - start a thread on room acoustics, I'll join. Its a critical topic and one that does need to be discussed in a loudspeaker context.
Why don't we have a FORUM about it in the first place ? Even i have a forum about it on my site and i don't even have any users
Thats a guess - since you couldn't know that. I'm not talking about sensitivity I am talking about perceived dynamics which I think is more closely aligned with thermal performance - admitedly closely associated with sensitivity but not completely.
dynamics could be associated with many things.
when i was an idiot i used to think that a car's performance was equal to its power to weight ratio. but it turns out there are more factors at play than i probably care to know about.
directivity could very well have a HUGE effect on dynamics for example. high efficiency speakers tend to be more directional as well as more dynamic. it is customary to assume that dynamics come from efficiency ... when in fact they might be coming from directivity.
just name one highly directional speaker that isn't dynamic !
i am too brilliant
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They differ in that one is proportional to the square of the other (power versus SPL), so that wouldn't really affect my comment.
Well in terms of perception I think distortion/compression can be often misinterpreted for dynamics. That basically a system which doesn't distort at a certain threshold somehow subjectively is perceived as not being as loud as the system which distorts before your ears do. But I think this is probably because people listen to speakers too much and doesn't have much to do with a realistic reproduction. But still if we are talking about perception of dynamic range it does seem to be worth noting.
It's a little more than a guess, but not worth arguing about because that comes down to driver choices more the format of the speaker. I could pop a high efficiency mid like the B&C 8MDN51 in there if I felt dynamics were suffering from thermal compression. Same for the tweeter.
We studied this at Ford some years back and its true that people equat distortion with level. We deliberately distorted the amps near the top end so that people realized that they could play loud. We found that people would complain if they DIDN'T distort - said that they didn't play loud enough. Take the same amp and make sure that it distorts at full volume and they won't complain.
But I know the difference and what I am talking about is not nonlinear distortion. In fact, in a loudspeaker, nonlinear distortion has not been shown to be a significant audible effect and particularly not at mid levels on my speakers. But yet they sound very dynamic. It's my opinion that classical nonlinearity, ala THD and IMD, have nothing to do with the effect that I am talking about.
It's not that simple, unless the tweeter that you are talking about is a compression driver. A normal Hi-Fi 1" tweeter is never going to have the thermal capacity of a compression driver. Again, thermal compression is a different topic - a long term effect, and I'm talking about short term transient thermal problems. The two things are quite different.
I knew this would come up.
There are three types of "distortion"
1) linear, time invarient; which is also called "frequency response"
2) non-linear, time-invarient; such as clipping or crossover distortion. It is signal dependent, but the paramters that define it do not change with time.
3) time-varient; this is where the parameters of the system can change with time, such as the Re of a driver that changes with temperature.
The later case is by far the most complex and virtually ignored in the lterature. Further, there are two subsets of this case 3a) where the time constants are slower than the signal and 3b) where the time constants are on the same order as the signal. Thermal compression assumes case 3a) is the only effect, but my studies have shown that case 3b) is also significant. The two cases will have completely different effects, but of course are closely related, the time constants actually forming a continuum. Some day I hope to get some more time to further develop these concepts.
When I speak of "dynamics" I mean case 3b and NOT case 3a, or 1 or 2.
There are three types of "distortion"
1) linear, time invarient; which is also called "frequency response"
2) non-linear, time-invarient; such as clipping or crossover distortion. It is signal dependent, but the paramters that define it do not change with time.
3) time-varient; this is where the parameters of the system can change with time, such as the Re of a driver that changes with temperature.
The later case is by far the most complex and virtually ignored in the lterature. Further, there are two subsets of this case 3a) where the time constants are slower than the signal and 3b) where the time constants are on the same order as the signal. Thermal compression assumes case 3a) is the only effect, but my studies have shown that case 3b) is also significant. The two cases will have completely different effects, but of course are closely related, the time constants actually forming a continuum. Some day I hope to get some more time to further develop these concepts.
When I speak of "dynamics" I mean case 3b and NOT case 3a, or 1 or 2.
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