EnABL - Listening impressions & techniques

[planet10]

Bud's posting of the Jordan template reminds me to post the linear template -- this is one i developed for doing phase plugs but is also useful for doing the block rows at the dustcap juncture (and the bass of the whizzer in a phase plugged driver)

The template (a vector pdf is in the CSS FR125 templates)

dave

[planet10]

On the dustcap of an FE127

[planet10]

And reversed and used inside the voice coil...

[soongsc]

Originally posted by BudP
Dave,



Tang Band W3-3195 F.

Soongsc.

I will put together a list over the next few days. I have a few thousand CD's and records and a few dozens of SACD and reel to reel tapes. All of music I find important, across all genre's, because they are Art manifest, and that is what interests my ear.

I have only a few "test" CD's and SACD's, and I assume this is what you are asking after?

I really can't thank you enough for the middle position rings. I doubt it would have ever occurred to me to try it. So far, the Jordan's were actually the least responsive to that ring set. When I post on the Fostex 126, in a week or so, you will find out an interesting detail, about the usage of the rings.

Bud

Yes, the test CDs are what I'm talking about. Just line them up and take a picture would be easiest to identify. I tend to use almost any CD at hand, but it's always good to post CDs used for listening impression so that others may listen using CDs they already have in common to get a feeling what's involved.

Just a few nights ago, I was at a friends home and we were listing to the latest active speaker we are finalizing on. He was amazed how absolute polarity made a difference. Most of the older classical brands have recording polarity inverted for most classical music, so I expect if you were listening with non-inverting polarity with these, you will be amazed what you were missing with the correct polarity. Bear in mind that the speakers we listed to were driven by LM3886 chip amps only.

I believe that chip amps are quite good to a certain point where measureable speaker improvements are not so obvious any more.

[Pano]

How about some of us who heard the EnABL demo in the Lowther suite in Denver reporting impressions?

Is Lynn here?

[Graham Maynard]

Hi Bud,

Good to see the thread split in order to allow further evaluation, optimisation and discussion without necessary theory, the unrestrained defense of which led to overload of your original thread.

You have told us how you 'sound out' different areas of a cone by scratching them at different radii in order to make an estimation of frequency/energy abberations which EnABL might tame.

From reading I think you do this on unmounted drivers, so I wonder if different results would be perceived, and thus different treatments come to mind, if you made these estimations with the driver mounted on a baffle or in a cabinet with sonically modified rear to front interaction, and damping materials or reflective cabinet peaking having an influence upon your judgement ?


Cheers .......... Graham.

[BudP]

Hi Graham,

Hmmmm, good question. I don't remember ever removing a boxed driver, to see how it works in free air, with the patterns and amount of gloss coat required for the box location applied.

Conversely, I have yet to put a FR driver in a box, though when the Northern Barbarians invaded last summer, they brought wooden coffins for a pair of 127 slaves I had waiting for them. That seemed a fortuitous joining, so no alert buzzers went off. They drug the lot off and I hadn't heard much about them, until a late night phone call informed me that an industrial accident had wasted both drivers.

Scratching for a match is not quite the whole story, when dealing with a boxed driver. Most are multiway, pretend piston band limited, emitters. EnABL opens up the uncorrupted bandwidth from 3 discrete frequencies to whatever their crossover imposes, but care with the Gloss coat application becomes extremely important.

For instance, a paper cone 6 1/2 inch mid woofer, crossed over to a doped fabric dome tweeter, at about 2 k. The crossover will provide some "steering" to the phase of the mid woofer as it approaches cross over and this usually has to be defeated by relative amounts of Gloss coat, applied to center dome, Vs what is applied to the cone.

The patterns here are always stock ones, with a three ring, condensed set, at the dust cover / cone joint and the typical two ring set out at the surround joint. We now have a third ring to add, and it might very well also need to be tested in situ, for proper location.

Testing here, most likely being light tapping in a radial format, to determine the point where the tone emitted and it's decay sounds become very different, across a very short distance. I do not have a lot of experience here yet, but the half dozen different drivers these have gone on, have all responded in a similar fashion. The ring location has hovered around 2/5's of the distance from voice coil to surround, in placement. Since these have all gone on after the gloss coat, that application is not an issue here.

For a woven dome tweeter, the patterns are usually applied to both sides of the dome, right above the join with the spider on the outside and the voice coil former on the inside. The small pattern shown on FR dust caps is also applied, along with a drop of PVA. Then Gloss is applied, to taste basically. Just a single coat of50 % cut material will typically bring overall SPL back to it's original level. Another coat will provide a noticeable boost to this level and a third coat will begin to create extended dynamic peaks and a somewhat irregular FR .

And then, of course, there is the baffle treatment, already fought over.

So. Your question has yet to be answered in any slightest statistically valid way. I suspect that for full range drivers, in baffle testing as you apply the gloss, will not provide much, if any, benefit.

In a box with cross over, I think it will be crucial, as this is a much more complex system. I will say that I have yet to have to modify crossover's any more extensively, than to add a 0.3 to 2.2 ohm series resistor to the tweeter, to calm it back down. This does not detract from the improvements in quality EnABL brings about, so long as it is a slightly inductive wire wound device. Using a carbon comp or a multiple metal foil group does color the resulting sound, noticeably.

Bud

[marce]

Hello again Gentlemen, after a few months of sporadic following of the enable thread (and others) life is finaly settling down so I can now pursuesome fun things in life.
I have been a following the enable phenonema for a while, and was lucky enough to get a pair of Planet10 FE207's last year, that went in the Curvy Chang cabinets, both totaly uncharted waters for me.
I was not disapointed, and have been quite vocular about my listening experience (on the CC thread) and the total involvment in the music I listen to and probably more important the music I dont normaly listen to. The combination to my ears is the most satisfying I have ever listened to, allowing long listening sessions with no fatigue and as the night draws in and the volume has to decrease (the joys of UK terraced houses, nieghbours, and draconian noise pollution laws) the pleasure does not abate.
I cannot give a scientific explanation for what I hear, a more correct term would be what I DONT hear, but I am lucky to have two very good transducers either side of my head (a few hundred million years in development), linked directly to my brain, and what I hear is the music, and the emotion that the music ivokes in me. I am not a clinical listener, I have tried but tend to drift off following some stanza, or following a paticular instrument as the mood takes me. And therin lies the beauty of what this combination of EnABLed FE207 in the Curvy Chang cabinets gives me, audio nivarna.
Before I am accused of sycophanic warbling, I also have other speaker systems that I use, and enjoy, like the more forward presentation of some Tannoy active monitors great for a 'dance music session' or NXT flat panels, good for TV, untreated FE166's, but out of all the treated FE207 are the most listenable to, there is a certian subtle difference that alows the music through.

[Cal Weldon]

Originally posted by marce
there is a certian subtle difference that alows the music through.

Those are my impressions also. I guess we're not alone.

[ronc]

Far be it from me to have a subjective opinion. But i am mounting the EnAble drivers in my old Dallas horns to see what they sound like.I expect very little low end due to the fact is the horns were designed around the 206 and its antiquated programming.

ron

ron