soongsc said:
Problem though is that people want bling...I have posted links to Geddes speakers trying to explain the benefits of their designs and the three most common answers
1. They are ugly
2. They have to sit 45 degree angles
3. They are horns....no way.
SQ has its price.
I think there are lots of incredible choices out there still Danley, Seaton, JTR, Salk come to mind for Commercial choices. B&M is dead to me but the online world is surviving.....Don't know how long though small margins, supply/demand tells me many will not survive.
Anyways, If Usher was serious about this and spent less time worry about what emails the OP has sent them maybe they would realize that they should just remove the Be part of the marketing spin.
Well folks about 5-years ago my colleague, Mike Klasco wrote an article for Voice Coil magazine entitled "Bogus Beryllium". Unfortunately, it had little impact on the situation. The parts tested came from Sonic Electronics with offices in Taiwan. The test results at that time were "Painted Titanium".
http://www.audioxpress.com/magsdirx/voxcoil/addenda/media/BogusBeryllium.pdf
I have not even had my discussion article published yet; however, it will appear in a few publication I assure you and based on its merit, but companies of interest seem to be scrambling already to explain how they used a material with 6.1 grams of Be for every kilogram of material and marketed that as a beryllium speaker and even inscribed Beryllium right on the tweeter's faceplate and as a prefix to the model number, Be-616, Be-718, Be-10, Be-20 etc. The entire dome mass is about 0.100 grams (~100 mg), then there is approximately 0.00061 grams (0.61 mg) of beryllium per tweeter dome. Now remember in spite of the material analysis, the color of Usher's domes are a close match to beryllium's steel gray color. I have discussed this with material scientists and they say it's either painted on on vapor deposited.
Now if it is perceived as unprofessional to refer to this material from Sonic as Bogusium with its known history going back to 2004 as "Bogus Beryllium", then so be it. However, satire does have its place, while arrogance really does not. There is a difference.
Hi Earl,
Do you accept the "Be placebo" as a phychoacoustic phenomenon? Could you comment on this point?
http://www.audioxpress.com/magsdirx/voxcoil/addenda/media/BogusBeryllium.pdf
I have not even had my discussion article published yet; however, it will appear in a few publication I assure you and based on its merit, but companies of interest seem to be scrambling already to explain how they used a material with 6.1 grams of Be for every kilogram of material and marketed that as a beryllium speaker and even inscribed Beryllium right on the tweeter's faceplate and as a prefix to the model number, Be-616, Be-718, Be-10, Be-20 etc. The entire dome mass is about 0.100 grams (~100 mg), then there is approximately 0.00061 grams (0.61 mg) of beryllium per tweeter dome. Now remember in spite of the material analysis, the color of Usher's domes are a close match to beryllium's steel gray color. I have discussed this with material scientists and they say it's either painted on on vapor deposited.
Now if it is perceived as unprofessional to refer to this material from Sonic as Bogusium with its known history going back to 2004 as "Bogus Beryllium", then so be it. However, satire does have its place, while arrogance really does not. There is a difference.
Hi Earl,
Do you accept the "Be placebo" as a phychoacoustic phenomenon? Could you comment on this point?
DcibeL said:
I'm not surprised. If you look at the material properties listed in table 1., you will see that Bogusium is similar to aluminum in properties and especially the specific stiffness or speed of sound property. So in the limit the first bending mode that we see in the magnitude response at about 14 kHz is typical; however, if beryllium were to be substituted, than that first diaphragm bending mode would be at (12,500/5000 = 2.5 : 2.5(14 kHz)= 35kHz). In practice, unless the vice coil bobbin is also beryllium, it will bend well below 35 kHz and there are adhesive and surround interfaces that can induce vibration modes.
A good background for my "Truth" discussion but 2 Part and dry reading are below.
http://www.audioxpress.com/magsdirx/voxcoil/addenda/media/mowry1208.pdf
http://www.audioxpress.com/magsdirx/voxcoil/addenda/media/mowry109.pdf
As someone who has been watching and in the audio scene for more than 4 decades now, I can reassure anyone reading that sound quality has never ever been truly a major factor in the business. Quite to the contrary.
While there have been some products that (perhaps inadvertently?) were of superior sound quality along the way, the marketing and perceived quality have always been the dominant factors.
Let's not kid anyone, the business of audio (be it high-end or mid-fi) is and is always likely to be one of marketing and perceived quality first and foremost.
It is important to note that very very few companies have survived for more than a decade in the audio business. The big conglomerates (Harmon being the biggest?) are really in the consumer commodity business because of the sheer scale of sales required to just stay afloat. Very few smaller companies seem to manage to stay afloat for very long compared to the ones that fall by the wayside. It's a tough tough competetive business that requires significant sales volume to turn a profit or to manufacture anything inexpensively. And you have to make it inexpensively because the margins are not nearly as large as the consumer would believe based on the retail price.
What it takes to get a product into a showroom is another story for another time...
The DIY community can be excepted from this - although it is not immune to the effect either.
_-_-bear
While there have been some products that (perhaps inadvertently?) were of superior sound quality along the way, the marketing and perceived quality have always been the dominant factors.
Let's not kid anyone, the business of audio (be it high-end or mid-fi) is and is always likely to be one of marketing and perceived quality first and foremost.
It is important to note that very very few companies have survived for more than a decade in the audio business. The big conglomerates (Harmon being the biggest?) are really in the consumer commodity business because of the sheer scale of sales required to just stay afloat. Very few smaller companies seem to manage to stay afloat for very long compared to the ones that fall by the wayside. It's a tough tough competetive business that requires significant sales volume to turn a profit or to manufacture anything inexpensively. And you have to make it inexpensively because the margins are not nearly as large as the consumer would believe based on the retail price.
What it takes to get a product into a showroom is another story for another time...
The DIY community can be excepted from this - although it is not immune to the effect either.
_-_-bear
mowry said:
Absolutely agree, as long it it says Be somewhere it will "sound better". SO there is a great marketing incentive to do this and a huge profit incentive to minimize the actual Be content because it is so expensive and doesn't actually improve anything.
This is precisely what happens when the market is ruled by marketing, as audio clearly is.
But I completely concur with you that companies that do not use a Be alloy (Be > 50%) must not state that they have "Be diaphragms". This is unethical and I suspect illegal (thats the next step that you should take). I appluad your efforts to resolve this.
bear said:
Hi Bear
Completely agree.
But one thing that I have noticed is that while sound qualty plays a very small role in success, it does play a role in longevity. The more a new company makes marketing a key ingredient to its success the faster they go out of business - out of vogue. Marketing has no longevity, but real capability to make good sound quality does.
Thats still makes for a very slippery slope. One cannot become successful based on sound quality, but yet, without it one is doomed to a short term existance.
I'm betting on SQ holding at least a small attraction in the marketplace and counting on it for enough longevity to sustain a market position. There is no point in my competing on anything but SQ as a product attribute because the big guys own everything else. But simply because they recognize SQ is such a small factor to success it is almost inevitable that they de-emphasize it in their organizations and loose the ability to do it over time. I have seen this happen to almost every loudspeaker company that I know.
Not to steal Steve's response (he can still respond) but the idea is a simple one.
Breakup is bad. Basically once a diaphrgam begins to break up it will start to color the sound - it can no longer be flat and smooth. This is very tru I think, but is most true in the frequency range of say 800 Hz - 8 kHz. Above about 8 kHz it seems to me to be a highly suspect argument.
I would never use a driver in the 800 - 8 k range if it had cone breakup there. Thats what crossovers are for.
The higher the speed of sound in the material the higher the breakup region will begin. But damping is more important than the frequency location. A well damped breakup will be much less audible than a underdamped one, even when a crossover is used. So a material with a high internal damping is best because add on damping lowers the breakup frequencies due to added mass. Paper and some plastics excell here.
Breakup is bad. Basically once a diaphrgam begins to break up it will start to color the sound - it can no longer be flat and smooth. This is very tru I think, but is most true in the frequency range of say 800 Hz - 8 kHz. Above about 8 kHz it seems to me to be a highly suspect argument.
I would never use a driver in the 800 - 8 k range if it had cone breakup there. Thats what crossovers are for.
The higher the speed of sound in the material the higher the breakup region will begin. But damping is more important than the frequency location. A well damped breakup will be much less audible than a underdamped one, even when a crossover is used. So a material with a high internal damping is best because add on damping lowers the breakup frequencies due to added mass. Paper and some plastics excell here.
Earl,
You are totally wrong in stating that a Yamaha beryllium dome-clone could be made for a few dollars.
At the time Yamaha built their own equipment to manufacture these domes. Google a bit and you will find a picture of equipment that will not fit in your garage. The beryllium was vaporized and vacuum deposited. A very dangerous procedure because vaporized beryllium is very poisonous (beryllose kills much faster than asbestose, and the technique is forbidden in most western countries).
Up to this day these transducers are state-of-the-art.
It is no coincidence that JM Labs/Focal and now Usher try to pick their grain of beryllium.
In my opinion and experience much innovation in audio is done in Japan in the seventies and eighties, and quality was at a very high level. Not only loudspeakers, also electronics. Think of Sony and Yamaha with their VFet amplifiers; Nakamichi made cassette a listenable medium; Luxman; Accuphase. Each of the major Japanese brands had their flagship models at the time. Many of these did not make it into western markets.
I totally agree with you that audio in general took the wrong direction. Yamaha now is not Yamaha thirty years ago and the same is true for many more brands. Like you I am professionally active in the DIY market so I know what you mean.
Comparing beryllium and non-beryllium drivers attached to horns or waveguides does not tell much about differences in transducers, agree, because much of the sound will be blurred by horn colorations.
Comparing a direct radiating Yamaha midrange dome to some other direct radiating midrange dome or cone tells a lot more but I guess that only NS1000 owners understand what I mean.
Pieter
You are totally wrong in stating that a Yamaha beryllium dome-clone could be made for a few dollars.
At the time Yamaha built their own equipment to manufacture these domes. Google a bit and you will find a picture of equipment that will not fit in your garage. The beryllium was vaporized and vacuum deposited. A very dangerous procedure because vaporized beryllium is very poisonous (beryllose kills much faster than asbestose, and the technique is forbidden in most western countries).
Up to this day these transducers are state-of-the-art.
It is no coincidence that JM Labs/Focal and now Usher try to pick their grain of beryllium.
In my opinion and experience much innovation in audio is done in Japan in the seventies and eighties, and quality was at a very high level. Not only loudspeakers, also electronics. Think of Sony and Yamaha with their VFet amplifiers; Nakamichi made cassette a listenable medium; Luxman; Accuphase. Each of the major Japanese brands had their flagship models at the time. Many of these did not make it into western markets.
I totally agree with you that audio in general took the wrong direction. Yamaha now is not Yamaha thirty years ago and the same is true for many more brands. Like you I am professionally active in the DIY market so I know what you mean.
Comparing beryllium and non-beryllium drivers attached to horns or waveguides does not tell much about differences in transducers, agree, because much of the sound will be blurred by horn colorations.
Comparing a direct radiating Yamaha midrange dome to some other direct radiating midrange dome or cone tells a lot more but I guess that only NS1000 owners understand what I mean.
Pieter
If Scanspeak uses a so called pure Beryllium diaphragm in ther driver shown below, I certainly can't see much change in breakup frequency location, let alone damping.gedlee said:
http://www.scan-speak.dk/datasheet/pdf/d3004_664000.pdf
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