And?I know the NS -10. It was used as a nearfield monitor stood sideways on the meter bridge. So, what, 2 or 3 ft from the listener? That's not how most home users listen to their speakers. And the bass response wasn't good.
Here is Newell's paper on it
http://www.soundonsound.com/pdfs/ns10m.pdf
It was apparently not a successful consumer product.
The SOS article is interesting, also
The Yamaha NS10 Story
Yamaha has them proudly displayed in their "History of Yamaha" room or at least they did in 1988. They were one of the first speakers that drove me to put my hands over my ears at normal listening levels, why I don't know. Is there a clue in all those measurements? BTW I only heard them with the grills removed.
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Hi,
My experience is that literally there is no limit to which increasing speaker efficiency improves things, honest. And it has zip to do with low powered amplifiers.
A good friend of mine has a pair of Altec VOTT A7's with the bigger HF horn in his fairly modest size living room. These are 101dB/1W/1m. He drives them with a pair of 110W Air Tight ATM-3 Monoblocks and complained that the Air Tight 300B SE Amplifier had "bad dynamics"...
I would not necessarily agree with the "bad dynamics" bit, but my listening habits differ.
Yep.
And they completely KILL on Macrodynamics and all dynamics inbetween.
BTW, you can make a lowish efficiency speaker behave very much the same.
You must avoid surrounds with too much hysteresis, have a similar Mms/BL ratio as the large systems woofer, avoid cones with too low breakup frequency and minimise both distortion and compression to levels similar to the higher efficiency system for a given SPL...
Ciao T
My experience is that literally there is no limit to which increasing speaker efficiency improves things, honest. And it has zip to do with low powered amplifiers.
A good friend of mine has a pair of Altec VOTT A7's with the bigger HF horn in his fairly modest size living room. These are 101dB/1W/1m. He drives them with a pair of 110W Air Tight ATM-3 Monoblocks and complained that the Air Tight 300B SE Amplifier had "bad dynamics"...
I would not necessarily agree with the "bad dynamics" bit, but my listening habits differ.
Yep.
And they completely KILL on Macrodynamics and all dynamics inbetween.
BTW, you can make a lowish efficiency speaker behave very much the same.
You must avoid surrounds with too much hysteresis, have a similar Mms/BL ratio as the large systems woofer, avoid cones with too low breakup frequency and minimise both distortion and compression to levels similar to the higher efficiency system for a given SPL...
Ciao T
So Sy,
Instead of the audiophile cliche "my wife could tell the difference from the other room ..." you've upped the ante to "my dog could tell the difference from the other room ..."
You should make some recordings of the dog park and have her really go nuts!
Or some nice outdoor nature sounds ... and she'll poop on the floor!
Cheers,
Jeff
Instead of the audiophile cliche "my wife could tell the difference from the other room ..." you've upped the ante to "my dog could tell the difference from the other room ..."
You should make some recordings of the dog park and have her really go nuts!
Or some nice outdoor nature sounds ... and she'll poop on the floor!
Cheers,
Jeff
Hi,
Yet they NEVER EVER where the main monitors nor, where they really much used for mastering, except to check how the mix would sound on a crappy japanese stereo. Their near ubiquitousness however turned them into a "Standard", as everyone knew how their mixes would sound on NS-10, so they could bridge the differences in the sound of the large monitors easier. It did not matter that they where a very crooked straight edge, the point was that you had them everywhere...
Personally I thought they approached "worst speaker" ever, but that honour is held by products from a company who's name is a four letter swearword of the worst kind in India...
Ciao T
Yet they NEVER EVER where the main monitors nor, where they really much used for mastering, except to check how the mix would sound on a crappy japanese stereo. Their near ubiquitousness however turned them into a "Standard", as everyone knew how their mixes would sound on NS-10, so they could bridge the differences in the sound of the large monitors easier. It did not matter that they where a very crooked straight edge, the point was that you had them everywhere...
Personally I thought they approached "worst speaker" ever, but that honour is held by products from a company who's name is a four letter swearword of the worst kind in India...
Ciao T
With the advent of a cat, now a dog, my audio junk (now esl2905) had to move to the 2nd level.
Both could be fooled from above, but so still does any cat or dog sound on TV.
Speaking of waveguides and 2-ways, i recently audited B&W's Prestige Monitor, not in Utopia Diablo price league, but >>90dB/W/m JBL monitors, nèèèh. (me living on a boat in a few year's time, hard choices)
Hey, careful there, my neighbor has 901's in his horrible decorated livingroom.
Hi,
You are confusing many different issues.
High Efficiency does not necessarily means "Horns".
Past that, you are suggesting the HE Speakers are always loud, that is, that they play low level sounds louder than lower efficiency ones. Now with respect, there is simply no physical mechanism in the kind of electromechanical system represented by a loudspeaker.
What exists however is a mechanism that produces attenuation at very low signal levels, namely hysteresis in the suspension. For high efficiency speakers lossy and high hysteresis surrounds and spiders are a no-no, you loose too much efficiency in the process, so one has to either live with the resulting un-damped cone resonances or find different ways to solve them.
In contrast, in current low efficiency "HiFi" Speakers Spider and Surround are often deliberately made lossy, to damp out resonances. In the process they also often acquire hysteresis.
Hysteresis just as thermal compression is quite easy to measure if you have a anechoic chamber with sufficiently low noise level. Simply use sweeps starting from a level just below your measurement limit (often microphone imposed), like 20dB SPL and run each sweep with precisely 10dB increase in SPL. Normalising the 10dB steps out is easy. Then you can very easily see compression and hysteresis losses at low and high SPL's.
One thing that is often true is that high efficiency systems have a better linearity with SPL/power changes than low efficiency ones, though it is not an absolute truth, more a 70/30 kind of gig.
Another issue is the way resonances are treated. If you resort to heavy handed damping them out (pretty much staple for HiFi Drivers) you reduce not only amplitude but also Q of the resonances, so they are lower in level but much easier excited.
In the end driver design is an extremely complex discipline (and few designers are consciously aware of all the different angles). Funnily enough, most of the issues with Speakers are comparably easily to measure (passing nod to Mr. Klippel) and to correlate to listening experience.
Yet most of those who constantly strain at minor issues in electronics performance routinely swallow the whole camel of speaker performance and deny that it's a camel or that they swallowed it too...
Oh well. As Charles Lutwidge Dodgson once wrote: "Such is Human Perversity".
Ciao T
You are confusing many different issues.
High Efficiency does not necessarily means "Horns".
Past that, you are suggesting the HE Speakers are always loud, that is, that they play low level sounds louder than lower efficiency ones. Now with respect, there is simply no physical mechanism in the kind of electromechanical system represented by a loudspeaker.
What exists however is a mechanism that produces attenuation at very low signal levels, namely hysteresis in the suspension. For high efficiency speakers lossy and high hysteresis surrounds and spiders are a no-no, you loose too much efficiency in the process, so one has to either live with the resulting un-damped cone resonances or find different ways to solve them.
In contrast, in current low efficiency "HiFi" Speakers Spider and Surround are often deliberately made lossy, to damp out resonances. In the process they also often acquire hysteresis.
Hysteresis just as thermal compression is quite easy to measure if you have a anechoic chamber with sufficiently low noise level. Simply use sweeps starting from a level just below your measurement limit (often microphone imposed), like 20dB SPL and run each sweep with precisely 10dB increase in SPL. Normalising the 10dB steps out is easy. Then you can very easily see compression and hysteresis losses at low and high SPL's.
One thing that is often true is that high efficiency systems have a better linearity with SPL/power changes than low efficiency ones, though it is not an absolute truth, more a 70/30 kind of gig.
Another issue is the way resonances are treated. If you resort to heavy handed damping them out (pretty much staple for HiFi Drivers) you reduce not only amplitude but also Q of the resonances, so they are lower in level but much easier excited.
In the end driver design is an extremely complex discipline (and few designers are consciously aware of all the different angles). Funnily enough, most of the issues with Speakers are comparably easily to measure (passing nod to Mr. Klippel) and to correlate to listening experience.
Yet most of those who constantly strain at minor issues in electronics performance routinely swallow the whole camel of speaker performance and deny that it's a camel or that they swallowed it too...
Oh well. As Charles Lutwidge Dodgson once wrote: "Such is Human Perversity".
Ciao T
Didn't need the toilet paper with the grills left on.
As far as I can tell, the speaker had utility for studio use because the "woofer" cone damped very quickly due to the glued seam, (It wasn't pressed out), and matched the tweeter that way, and the mixes derived using it had enough HF.
I don't think it was used for classical recordings but I could be wrong about that.
Thorsten,
I can remember not too long ago you were taking the position that low Qms in a driver is a good thing (which it is not). So, have you rethought that position?
Hi,
It is a good thing and no, I have not rethought that position.
But I agree that achieving low Qm through heavy non-linear, hysteresis loaded damped suspension is not an advantage. Thankfully we have known better methods since the 1930's...
Ciao T
It is a good thing and no, I have not rethought that position.
But I agree that achieving low Qm through heavy non-linear, hysteresis loaded damped suspension is not an advantage. Thankfully we have known better methods since the 1930's...
Ciao T
Actually, the whole discussion is totally pointless.
If we know that each and every person attending a live performance will hear it his/her way, then we must accept that the same will happen with loudspeakers. And, in addition to different hearing per se, we also have the factor of personal taste.
In all honesty, I am not convinced that more efficient speakers are better almost by default, although I do not deny that efficiency is an important factor overall. But it's not the only one, there are too many "ifs" in the process of producing a good loudspeaker.
And a "good loudspeaker" to me is very simply one the sound of which I like. I don't give a damn whether it's a bass reflex, acoustic suspension or whatever technology. I don't care if it's tweeter is made of horse manure, so long as I like it. And EVERYTHING else ends with "... as long as I like it."
I feel absolutely zero need to have whichever speakers I use acclaimed by one and all to be the best ever. I don't really care what other people think of my speakers or the whole system, all that matters is that I like it. I am the one who lives with it.
Ditto for the rest of my many pieces system (it's dynamic, components change from time to time, only the speakers are a constant).
So, pray tell, exactly what is the argument on about now - Thorsten likes very efficient loudspeakers, I don't care so long as they sound well to me, etc, does it not appear to you that we are in fact comparing entire sound philosophies, embodied in the speakers, which always come up last?
What are the chances of anyone here changing his sound philosophy?
Nil. As always. So, what's the discussion about?
If we know that each and every person attending a live performance will hear it his/her way, then we must accept that the same will happen with loudspeakers. And, in addition to different hearing per se, we also have the factor of personal taste.
In all honesty, I am not convinced that more efficient speakers are better almost by default, although I do not deny that efficiency is an important factor overall. But it's not the only one, there are too many "ifs" in the process of producing a good loudspeaker.
And a "good loudspeaker" to me is very simply one the sound of which I like. I don't give a damn whether it's a bass reflex, acoustic suspension or whatever technology. I don't care if it's tweeter is made of horse manure, so long as I like it. And EVERYTHING else ends with "... as long as I like it."
I feel absolutely zero need to have whichever speakers I use acclaimed by one and all to be the best ever. I don't really care what other people think of my speakers or the whole system, all that matters is that I like it. I am the one who lives with it.
Ditto for the rest of my many pieces system (it's dynamic, components change from time to time, only the speakers are a constant).
So, pray tell, exactly what is the argument on about now - Thorsten likes very efficient loudspeakers, I don't care so long as they sound well to me, etc, does it not appear to you that we are in fact comparing entire sound philosophies, embodied in the speakers, which always come up last?
What are the chances of anyone here changing his sound philosophy?
Nil. As always. So, what's the discussion about?
DVV,
You are absolutely right, it is horses for courses, and with drivers, there are always trade-offs. That's the point I was trying to make; you can't just disqualify whole classes of drivers just because their basic technology. It all depends on situation and implementation.
vac
Dejan,
Absolutely.
However we are also dealing here with a philosophical ideal ("High Fidelity") which is defined in terms of abstract technical specification.
As far as I am concerned "I like it" is good enough for me and always has been, as you know.
However Engineering desires specifications that can be verified by independent and "mechanical" means and where "measures better" reliably equals "sounds better".
It originally started as an attempt by tvrgeek to gain a better understanding of the importance of measurements in Amplifiers, so he could easily make his amplifiers "sound good".
Unsurprisingly, such a well intended but thoroughly naive question started "YAMT" (Yet Another Meta Thread).
I am sure tvrgeek has learned much in the progress of this thread.
Yet as with all such snark hunts, we usually just find that we have learned much and yet are actually more ignorant (or perhaps more acutely aware of our ignorance) on the answer to the question we actually started with.
Ciao T
Absolutely.
However we are also dealing here with a philosophical ideal ("High Fidelity") which is defined in terms of abstract technical specification.
As far as I am concerned "I like it" is good enough for me and always has been, as you know.
However Engineering desires specifications that can be verified by independent and "mechanical" means and where "measures better" reliably equals "sounds better".
It originally started as an attempt by tvrgeek to gain a better understanding of the importance of measurements in Amplifiers, so he could easily make his amplifiers "sound good".
Unsurprisingly, such a well intended but thoroughly naive question started "YAMT" (Yet Another Meta Thread).
I am sure tvrgeek has learned much in the progress of this thread.
Yet as with all such snark hunts, we usually just find that we have learned much and yet are actually more ignorant (or perhaps more acutely aware of our ignorance) on the answer to the question we actually started with.
Ciao T
Absolutely agreed.
There isn't a type of component in this world with which one cannot make a good product or a bad one, be they tubes, transistors, dome tweeters or whatever.
For example, I don't much like the sound of typical tube audio, but in all truth, I have heard a few awesome tube based products. "Awesome" according to my taste, of course.
I could now vary this statement for transistors, dome tweeters or whatever you like.
I am NOT saying that it's all the same, but I am saying that 90% of the sound quality is in the heads and minds of the designers. They make it sound good, or they don't.
Thorsten and everybody,
I am definitely NOT complaining at the fact that a discussion has come to life, in fact I find it to be a very interesting discussion.
I understand that you don't like dome tweeters, and that's just fine, everybody's got a right to like or not like whatever. But saying that ALL dome tweeters are junk is not being reasonable. Reason flies out of the window the moment the word "ALL" walks in through the door.
That shoves any discussion into the field of absolutes, and that is a sure fire mine field for one an all. Especially in audio.
Only my very first loudspeakers, badged as "Uher" but probably made for them, had an oval cone for a tweeter. Ever since that day, all my other loudspeakers had domes, AR once (AR5), AR twice (AR94, still with me), JBL (Ti600 floorstanders) and now the B&M Monitors. Thus, I was in a relatively good position to follow the evolution of the dome, from AR's ex-soft-but-now-hardened domes, to titanium domes.
None of these speakers was ever offensive to me, but the clarity and overall quality of the treble as I percieve it has steadily improved over the decades (1974-2003). I know for a fact, and can prove it with the speakers I have right now at home (AR94, JBL Ti600, B&M, everybody at home has their own speaker system), that the sound of even the much denounced titanium domes CAN be made to sound good, fast and well defined.
On blind faith, I accept your opinion that if the same money was dedicated to say ribbon speakers (as an example), they would be better than they are today and definitely much cheaper, because they would be made not by hand as today, but by industrial robots in millions, just as the domes are. Nobody ever claimed that a dome tweeter was the pinnacle of technology.
Briefly, this is a good discussion in terms of bringing some less well known technologies to light, the ones I and probably others here are merely just aware of and no more.
But only so long as we leave out the absolutes.
You are quite right in mentioning tvrgeek, he has made very obvious progress, and in fact, so have I. I imagine there are silent readers here ("the lurkers") who have also profited from it. Just how, I'll post tomorrow, there have been quite some changes in my amp, as per the ideas I got from this discussion, and I have taken your advice on some matters.
So - this works rather well. Instead of grinding axes aout types of tweeters, I'd like to hear some hard advice from all of you, regarding a question which I have never seen discussed anywhere (though statistically, it must have been), and that is:
When designing something, whatever, when is the time to call it a day? How do you decide when to stop with designing and start making it?
Obviously, this assumes you are not working to a deadline, or a price point, rather that you are free to go anywhere you feel like going.
I am definitely NOT complaining at the fact that a discussion has come to life, in fact I find it to be a very interesting discussion.
I understand that you don't like dome tweeters, and that's just fine, everybody's got a right to like or not like whatever. But saying that ALL dome tweeters are junk is not being reasonable. Reason flies out of the window the moment the word "ALL" walks in through the door.
That shoves any discussion into the field of absolutes, and that is a sure fire mine field for one an all. Especially in audio.
Only my very first loudspeakers, badged as "Uher" but probably made for them, had an oval cone for a tweeter. Ever since that day, all my other loudspeakers had domes, AR once (AR5), AR twice (AR94, still with me), JBL (Ti600 floorstanders) and now the B&M Monitors. Thus, I was in a relatively good position to follow the evolution of the dome, from AR's ex-soft-but-now-hardened domes, to titanium domes.
None of these speakers was ever offensive to me, but the clarity and overall quality of the treble as I percieve it has steadily improved over the decades (1974-2003). I know for a fact, and can prove it with the speakers I have right now at home (AR94, JBL Ti600, B&M, everybody at home has their own speaker system), that the sound of even the much denounced titanium domes CAN be made to sound good, fast and well defined.
On blind faith, I accept your opinion that if the same money was dedicated to say ribbon speakers (as an example), they would be better than they are today and definitely much cheaper, because they would be made not by hand as today, but by industrial robots in millions, just as the domes are. Nobody ever claimed that a dome tweeter was the pinnacle of technology.
Briefly, this is a good discussion in terms of bringing some less well known technologies to light, the ones I and probably others here are merely just aware of and no more.
But only so long as we leave out the absolutes.
You are quite right in mentioning tvrgeek, he has made very obvious progress, and in fact, so have I. I imagine there are silent readers here ("the lurkers") who have also profited from it. Just how, I'll post tomorrow, there have been quite some changes in my amp, as per the ideas I got from this discussion, and I have taken your advice on some matters.
So - this works rather well. Instead of grinding axes aout types of tweeters, I'd like to hear some hard advice from all of you, regarding a question which I have never seen discussed anywhere (though statistically, it must have been), and that is:
When designing something, whatever, when is the time to call it a day? How do you decide when to stop with designing and start making it?
Obviously, this assumes you are not working to a deadline, or a price point, rather that you are free to go anywhere you feel like going.
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