with all this talk i have to assume that driver distortion is inevitable and not much can be done about it so now i have to wonder if it simply comes down to picking a "distortion flavor" i can live with.
Distortion IS inevitable, but there are many many things that one can do to improve the situation. Understanding what is important is a major first step, but to do that you have to understand what distortion is and is not and how we perceive it. As much as we have talked about this, I sometimes wonder if your comments are serious.
Are you saying that there are still situations related to speaker distortion to improve? If we still have speakers with audible nonlinearity don't you think it makes sense to develop a programmable DSP linearizer? One adaptive cure for many.
You have assumed that I meant nonlinear distortion, but I did not. This is what I mean about being clear in these discussions. We read what we want to hear.
driver modification is not unknown territory for me in sound reinforcement. i've discovered and heard the effects of things like weather/moisture treating drivers and perceived response and wish i could go back in time with current measurement capabilities to confirm the suspicions of reduced distortion. the other driver tweak that i would like to re-investigate is the use of mesh screening on compression driver/ horn assemblies as those seemed to help control diffraction effects.
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Ted Jordan pretty much worked until he passed away. Not sure how much of his notes are available. Horns do have some benefit, however, I say of no way to get it to decay faster. The prototypes I measured seemed to suggest that they decay more uniformly across the bandwidth than direct radiating drivers though.
Yes please. Do be clear on which distortion you mean in your statements. We need to assume otherwise, and as you can see, I made bad ones.
Anyway I rephrase my question. When there are still situations related to speaker distortion to improve, don't you think it makes sense to develop a programmable DSP or software plugin to cancel the aforementioned distortion or current DSP technology is irrelevant to the observed case?
does lessons learned in re-coning drivers qualify as driver modification? i've always measured a recone when it's done and i have maybe been mislead by the fact that response and distortion numbers seemed to work together.
i've always been keen to controlling things like actual weight of glue and application method in order to control the influence these seemingly small things that can drastically change the final results.
i've always been keen to controlling things like actual weight of glue and application method in order to control the influence these seemingly small things that can drastically change the final results.
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Yes please. Do be clear on which distortion you mean in your statements. We need to assume otherwise, and as you can see, I made bad ones.
Anyway I rephrase my question. When there are still situations related to speaker distortion to improve, don't you think it makes sense to develop a programmable DSP or software plugin to cancel the aforementioned distortion or current DSP technology is irrelevant to the observed case?
Absolutely I believe that DSP can be used to correct many linear distortions, I use it myself. But as to it's correcting nonlinear distortions, I do not believe that is worth the effort.
What DSP cannot correct are linear distortions like diffraction that have a nonlinear perception. This is a point that I have tried to make over and over again, but it just seems to get lost. These kinds of distortion can only be corrected in good acoustical design. The kind that I seldom see done in most loudspeaker systems. Attention to diffraction, not only in the speaker systems, but the surrounding room itself, is something that I find exceedingly rare. Address these issues before you worry about using DSP to correct for nonlinear distortion.
"Faster decay" - also known as resonance damping since they are basically the same thing - is precisely why adding foam into my waveguides provides such a dramatic sonic improvement. The impulse response from one of my waveguides dies almost immediately with no ringing thanks to low diffraction and damping foam.
Lets say that you put a TV or equipment cabinet in between your two speakers, this is now a diffraction source and will mess up the image just as readily as sidewall reflections do. It may be lower in level that the sidewall reflections, but it occurs much sooner in time. Audibility of diffraction goes up with level (of course), but it also goes up as the delay become less.
In my setup, there is nothing anywhere near the speakers for several feet. The only diffraction objects are the speakers themselves which have wide rounded corners to minimize that effect.
These things all have a big effect on the linear distortions, but as long as the cone is centered, will have no effect on the nonlinear ones.