What causes listening "fatigue"?

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Than there is a fundamental question of TONE which is absent in most if not all modern drivers and especially rigid metal ones . They are just dead in that regards and all the added resolution is like make up on the dead body. This is also one of the main causes of fatigue -an alien, unnatural sound. To me, more the driver needs crossover help ,less useful it becomes. Then there is a cultural conditioning and what sounds right to westerner accustomed to scale of orchestra will sound suspect to jungle guy with bamboo flutes in musical DNA or Asian with one string crying eternally...
 
Than there is a fundamental question of TONE which is absent in most if not all modern drivers and especially rigid metal ones .

I have a thoery based on nothing more than subjective opinion (and years of trying different circuits and components) - I don't believe you can have anything for nothing (every action causes a reaction etc) and when trying to remove distortion from a speaker (and also hifi electronics), you can lose some of the good qualities as well as the distortion. The trick is to lose the bad qualities whilst keeping the good ones.
 
Hi Greebster that makes sense. Are there any details you would share?

When I do a comparison I'll look for the absolute minimal breakup. If it doesn't meet my expectations, it's disregarded and on to the next. Price doesn't play too much of a role in this decision. Recently I choose a $20 midbass over anything else. Since the only real difference between these drivers was in faraday shielding of the motor, I could not in good conscience choose a driver that costs $200 more. So I'll have those poles removed and turned down the street and do my own mods. Difference, 4 cost $80 whereas 4 of the others cost nearly $900. Plenty of money to do any mods and still save three quarters the cost at least. Even if one or two gets trashed, they're cheap enough and I have a dozen.
 
Than there is a fundamental question of TONE which is absent in most if not all modern drivers and especially rigid metal ones . They are just dead in that regards and all the added resolution is like make up on the dead body. This is also one of the main causes of fatigue -an alien, unnatural sound.

Yes I have observed the same thing. It is a tough job to work on such cone. But I still can justify my own works with rigid cones.

Resolution is the keyword for my justification. Usually resolution contributes to impressiveness, little to enjoyment. So I focus on resolution that will enhance enjoyment. I focus on how the speaker should be able to display the beauty of each instruments not only vocal.

I admire vifa p13. I still have similar driver. Very enjoyable. But no way it can give the resolution that I want. I even cannot decide which one I like more, Vifa P13 or PL14. If it is not because of the bass I may prefer P13

To me, more the driver needs crossover help ,less useful it becomes.

Yes. But $ is everything. Smooth drivers are usually expensive so we try to introduce our skill to be able to achieve similar outcome with less money. Those cheap drivers with smooth response should really become a benchmark when we look at more expensive drivers.

Then there is a cultural conditioning and what sounds right to westerner accustomed to scale of orchestra will sound suspect to jungle guy with bamboo flutes in musical DNA or Asian with one string crying eternally...

Thats why understanding of fatigue is important. Music exist because it is enjoyable. Who cares if it is not hifi if it is enjoyable :D
 
As little "tone" as possible from drivers please. Wow.
Than there is a fundamental question of TONE which is absent in most if not all modern drivers and especially rigid metal ones . They are just dead in that regards and all the added resolution is like make up on the dead body. This is also one of the main causes of fatigue -an alien, unnatural sound. To me, more the driver needs crossover help ,less useful it becomes. Then there is a cultural conditioning and what sounds right to westerner accustomed to scale of orchestra will sound suspect to jungle guy with bamboo flutes in musical DNA or Asian with one string crying eternally...
 
Think of a rap of a drum stick. It will be very fast rising with a slew of overtones produced by the skin of the head. The initial impact rises at a very high rate akin to the highest harmonic produced. If this rate of change (time) crosses the breakup modes (frequency) eg Time = Frequency will cause this issue and is propogated thoughout the lower band in a somewhat chaotic manner.
OK, slew rate is too specific a word. What I mean is my crossover filter will limit the rate at which the output can rise. It will rise faster given a louder transient, but the distribution of frequency components at the output will remain the same. So just as an antialiasing filter prevents components higher than the Nyquist limit from reaching an ADC, regardless of input signal type - transients or not, the crossover filter will do the same for the driver. What am I missing?

Unless, as I said before, you are saying that breakup is not a frequency-dependent phenomenon (related to simple harmonic motion), but something else e.g. "rate" dependent.
 
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As little "tone" as possible from drivers please. Wow.

You're still young ..:D Hi-Fi is an illusion. You just can't create illusion of orchestra with all it's complexity with two small cones without some trickery and "fake magic" like presence of TONE and other artifacts. It is a main reason so many modern high-end speakers sound so absent ; impressive but totally absent .It may less relate to playback of highly processed modern mixes where "punchy' midbass and detailed HF drive the musical message and tone is nowhere to find. I don't believe in universal speakers and I'm jealous of anybody who is happy with the ones he has. I pretty much hated all the speakers I bought or made and by far preferred my old Honda Civic crappy factory system to anything I had at home (different acoustics may play a role )
 
That is a decision based on price. If it is $100 instead of $20 you may have chosen other option. We all human. We think in $ :D

To produce the cleanest, most detailed bass, one must use a midbass that has a range to at least 2kHz. 5kHz is even better, while exhibiting a properly controlled breakup allowing it to naturally fall off.

...And I would do again in a skinny minute even at $100. So please don't belittle the facts with the farce that the decision alone was monetary.
 
OK, slew rate is too specific a word. What I mean is my crossover filter will limit the rate at which the output can rise. It will rise faster given a louder transient, but the distribution of frequency components at the output will remain the same. So just as an antialiasing filter prevents components higher than the Nyquist limit from reaching an ADC, regardless of input signal type - transients or not, the crossover filter will do the same for the driver. What am I missing?

Unless, as I said before, you are saying that breakup is not a frequency-dependent phenomenon (related to simple harmonic motion), but something else e.g. "rate" dependent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slew_rate
 
A lifetime of creating the illusion tells me that only speakers are the weak link in any current hifi. Not amps opamps etc, at this point we are tilting at windmills looking for bad electronica. Tone is coloration. It my job to make my masters as nuetral as possible to minimize any "tone" generated by speakers or rooms. Tone is the enemy. Colorarion is still the enemy. It always will be. Period. And oh yea you are right. Small speakers cant so it, unless it is simethom small and undynamic. This excludes orchestras rock jazz choirs, bigger than a breadbox.(-:
You're still young ..:D Hi-Fi is an illusion. You just can't create illusion of orchestra with all it's complexity with two small cones without some trickery and "fake magic" like presence of TONE and other artifacts. It is a main reason so many modern high-end speakers sound so absent ; impressive but totally absent .It may less relate to playback of highly processed modern mixes where "punchy' midbass and detailed HF drive the musical message and tone is nowhere to find. I don't believe in universal speakers and I'm jealous of anybody who is happy with the ones he has. I pretty much hated all the speakers I bought or made and by far preferred my old Honda Civic crappy factory system to anything I had at home (different acoustics may play a role )
 
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A lifetime of creating the illusion tells me that only speakers are the weak link in any current hifi. Not amps opamps etc, at this point we are tilting at windmills looking for bad electronica. Tone is coloration. It my job to make my masters as nuetral as possible to minimize any "tone" generated by speakers or rooms. Tone is the enemy. Colorarion is still the enemy. It always will be. Period. And oh yea you are right. Small speakers cant so it, unless it is simethom small and undynamic. This excludes orchestras rock jazz choirs, bigger than a breadbox.(-:

I envy your self assurance and confidence in your work. Every speaker cone material has it's sound ; paper , metal , plastic or any modern composite. Therefore it will color the sound no matter how much you will try to minimize it. Unless absurdly expensive electronica is relatively bad or very bad.(it doesn't mean it can't be pleasant or enjoyable ) Just take simple cheap SET amps and sympathetic speaker and try to match the strengths of this setup with "price no object Solid State electronica " good luck with that . Of course SET amp will have lots of problems with power , bandwidth , etc but it shows that electronica and opamps have long way to go. The only problem is that there are no customers for natural sound..
Regards, L
 
A lifetime of creating the illusion tells me that only speakers are the weak link in any current hifi. Not amps opamps etc, at this point we are tilting at windmills looking for bad electronica. Tone is coloration. It my job to make my masters as nuetral as possible to minimize any "tone" generated by speakers or rooms. Tone is the enemy. Colorarion is still the enemy. It always will be. Period. And oh yea you are right. Small speakers cant so it, unless it is simethom small and undynamic. This excludes orchestras rock jazz choirs, bigger than a breadbox.(-:
Completely disagree. The same period of time has demonstrated to me that it is always the electronics that hold back the quality - there will be a signature distortion to the electronic part of the chain, which then modulates with the characteristics of the speaker, to emphasise one aspect or another of that distortion. In other words, people use the speaker as a tone control, a filter, to adjust the audible spectrum of the distortion generated from earlier in the chain - perhaps not the smartest way of doing things ... ;)

Small speakers can certainly do it - I've had pathetic plastic, pygmy monitors punch out sound that fills the house with driving, intense SPLs, where you have to shout to get the other person to hear you ... but only because they are being driven by a very clean waveform ...
 
To me the key is getting the crucial midrange and higher to fill the space cleanly. Take a diminutive girl, playing a plaintive melody on a simple flute - put the real thing in a huge space, and her playing will dominate, overwhelm that space - no super muscular PA required to get the job done! That's exactly how an audio system should work, raw HP in the normal sense is not necessary ...
 
Speaker size is the same as amplification wattage. You do need enough to do the job linearly and have head room. But it is actually easy to design a poor speaker. You have to try pretty hard to make modern amps " fatigueable" Anyone can DB a/b speakers apart. Not really with modern electronics. Not in "real reality" which admittedly, I am partial to.
 
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I had a freind who did a major label record recently. Big names in the industry did production mix mastering. My freind was thrilled with the process until someone in that chain *deliberately* put what I would describe as a very fatiguing "old school slightly distorted compression" on it. My guess is there are people everywhere scratching their heads wondering why their speakers are fatiguing.
 
^ Yeah everywhere. Bog standard B&W Matrix 801 series 3. Not my favorite to listen to by any means but pretty damn logical to use for mastering in the right room. Some say the Nautilous are better now. I'll never know (-: I love Khorns warts and all lost ky set here in Katrina land.
 
Nautilus models are not better . Its not even a particularly good speaker and tweeter is just criminally bad for the price and I'm not presenting here snobbish attitude. My friend has a pair and with Mcintosh furnace it's a pretty decent match. K -horn has a phenomenal midbass with right drivers, really reference quality 50Hz -200Hz. I have altecs in mine. Some say Vitavox version is the ultimate one. I really disliked that k-33-E booming bastard but with altecs its out of this world (I never heard long ,straight tubas of comparable cut off fr .;)
 
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