Help me kill a fostex artifact.

[rjbond3rd]

One person's opinion: in my very limited experience, it's an audible, but ultimately I'd say subtle, tweak which (apparently) alters the time domain behavior, rather than the frequency response.

It's not going to transform a $40 Fostex into a $3,000 Feastrex (not that price means quality -- it certainly doesn't). If you want a tweak that will make a -huge- difference immediately, try digital EQ (e.g., using your computer as a source -- it's free, it's infinitely customizable, and it's fun). After that, improve your system's source as much as possible. Then try room treatments and positioning. Get some measurement gear, deal with room modes, etc. And after that, if you are so inclined, try whatever tweaks which may now (finally) be audible.

It's important, in my limited experience, to try things in order of greatest to least significance. Once you have a system which is dialed in "grossly," you might try the subtler tweaks. But trying the subtler tweaks first makes no sense and will have little impact (in my opinion).

[Alex from Oz]

Originally Posted by doubtingthomas

Are you saying that no one knows how it works? How do the people who apply the process do so? Is it an intuitive thing or do they have some special gift like Witch Doctors?

Try reading the EnABL Listening impressions & techniques thread.
This will give you the 'how to' information.

Cheers,

Alex

[planet10]

There are algorithms to determine where rings are placed... do't need to know how it works to make it work. Will need to know how it works to get the most out of it.

dave

[BudP]

Why would they care? And besides, they already stuck En on the end of their driver names, I'm sure the marketing department felt that was all that was needed. If you get those engineer guys involved there is just no telling how much money they would waste. Marketeers all know that specs are meaningless and BS is what sells, along with striking women with scant clothing. Been proven time after time after time.

Bud

[chrisb]

Originally Posted by doubtingthomas

Are you saying that no one knows how it works? How do the people who apply the process do so? Is it an intuitive thing or do they have some special gift like Witch Doctors? Fostex need to hire these people whatever the cost, they wouldn't need to bother with limited production runs of fancy speakers, all there products would make a quantum leap in quality and they would dominate the market.
Someone tell them.

Perhaps you focused too much on the sardonic quip in the first part of my prior post, and missed the overarching sentiment.

My points were that -
1) it could be that the costs of any manufacturer implementing EnABL techniques in production would be more than "trifling"
2) does Fostex ( a division of a pretty big company that manufactures a lot of audio transducers, and obviously "understands the loudspeaker business" ) actually pay attention to or care about what its customers outside of the domestic Japanense market think of the sound of its products?



All that said, I'm still quite fond of many of their speakers - hell if it wasn't for the FE126/7 and FE167, I'd probably have long ago been enticed back to the "fine" commercial mainstream offerings available my area, and missed out on the most fun 10 years in over 45yrs in this hobby (I was a very late bloomer to DIY) . Of course, like a lot of new addicts to this life-style, I could (actually, have) build(t) more than a few pairs of very nice systems for myself and siblings for the cost of sales tax on anything that I'd even care to borrow from the local dealer for an in-home demo.

oh, the humanity

[doubtingthomas]

Someone needs to do a double blind trial.

[doubtingthomas]

Originally Posted by rjbond3rd

One person's opinion: in my very limited experience, it's an audible, but ultimately I'd say subtle, tweak which (apparently) alters the time domain behavior, rather than the frequency response.

It's not going to transform a $40 Fostex into a $3,000 Feastrex (not that price means quality -- it certainly doesn't). If you want a tweak that will make a -huge- difference immediately, try digital EQ (e.g., using your computer as a source -- it's free, it's infinitely customizable, and it's fun). After that, improve your system's source as much as possible. Then try room treatments and positioning. Get some measurement gear, deal with room modes, etc. And after that, if you are so inclined, try whatever tweaks which may now (finally) be audible.

It's important, in my limited experience, to try things in order of greatest to least significance. Once you have a system which is dialed in "grossly," you might try the subtler tweaks. But trying the subtler tweaks first makes no sense and will have little impact (in my opinion).

This makes a lot of sense to me. What in your opinion is a good digital EQ program?

[tade]

"If you get those engineer guys involved there is just no telling how much money they would waste." Just wow.

Would somebody please give me the definition of "skin effect energy density". This phrase was used in this thread, and I am sure it is too fancy to be just made up gibberish...

[doubtingthomas]

Originally Posted by tade

"If you get those engineer guys involved there is just no telling how much money they would waste." Just wow.

Would somebody please give me the definition of "skin effect energy density". This phrase was used in this thread, and I am sure it is too fancy to be just made up gibberish...

So you believe it because you don't understand it, or are you making a joke?