Hello everyone - Something of a weird question...if you could design a purposefully terrible system, how would you go about it?
This idea, or concept, came about from my studio environment/production background - where things like (Yamaha) NS10s and (Auratone) 5cs are used as "Terrible" speakers/"grotboxes" - as an attempt to give engineers a taste of what their mixes would sound on "the average system"
(Now I understand that there is more than simply the premise of them simply sounding "Bad," humorously enough, they actually possessed certain qualities that made them quite desirable as mixing tools - with the NS10 being that it had some nice time-domain responses allowing one to focus on transients in the mix, and the 5c being that it was a single driver/crossoverless design allowed one to really focus and dial in on the midrange...Now I know that most likely missing a few extra details here and such, but the premise was what was important)
As such, it got me thinking...in America, the primary mixing philosophy is to essentially mix down to the lowest possible denominator; while in the UK (the BBC's philosophy, if I can recall correctly...), the philosophy is to mix on the most accurate/high-fidelity system you can get your hands on (being that a better tool would allow one to hopefully produce a better result - which would be potentially appreciated on just about every system from there and down)
Thus, I'm curious (as more of a thought experiment, than anything - though, if you guys catch on to something, that'd be cool to see as well)...if you could purposefully design a terrible loudspeaker - or the system which would everyone be able to have access to (like, say, laptop or phone speakers), how would you do it?
(I recognize as well that the speakers I had alluded to earlier in the post were more along the lines of "happy accidents," where they just so happened to be good mixing tools that people took a notice to)
One caveat, if I may add...I'm not really looking for a matter of, "Well, just use cheap transducers" - as what can be noted is that expensive/nice parts != expensive/nice sound, I really am looking for terrible implementation
But I digress, much love/many thanks for your guys' time and thoughts
(Hopefully, this question isn't too horrible of a thing to ponder...)
This idea, or concept, came about from my studio environment/production background - where things like (Yamaha) NS10s and (Auratone) 5cs are used as "Terrible" speakers/"grotboxes" - as an attempt to give engineers a taste of what their mixes would sound on "the average system"
(Now I understand that there is more than simply the premise of them simply sounding "Bad," humorously enough, they actually possessed certain qualities that made them quite desirable as mixing tools - with the NS10 being that it had some nice time-domain responses allowing one to focus on transients in the mix, and the 5c being that it was a single driver/crossoverless design allowed one to really focus and dial in on the midrange...Now I know that most likely missing a few extra details here and such, but the premise was what was important)
As such, it got me thinking...in America, the primary mixing philosophy is to essentially mix down to the lowest possible denominator; while in the UK (the BBC's philosophy, if I can recall correctly...), the philosophy is to mix on the most accurate/high-fidelity system you can get your hands on (being that a better tool would allow one to hopefully produce a better result - which would be potentially appreciated on just about every system from there and down)
Thus, I'm curious (as more of a thought experiment, than anything - though, if you guys catch on to something, that'd be cool to see as well)...if you could purposefully design a terrible loudspeaker - or the system which would everyone be able to have access to (like, say, laptop or phone speakers), how would you do it?
(I recognize as well that the speakers I had alluded to earlier in the post were more along the lines of "happy accidents," where they just so happened to be good mixing tools that people took a notice to)
One caveat, if I may add...I'm not really looking for a matter of, "Well, just use cheap transducers" - as what can be noted is that expensive/nice parts != expensive/nice sound, I really am looking for terrible implementation
But I digress, much love/many thanks for your guys' time and thoughts
(Hopefully, this question isn't too horrible of a thing to ponder...)
for the cheap
i would round up some terrible and cheap drivers - perhaps "Zebra" has a cheap phenolic compression driver with a simple phase plug and ear-splitting rough response for about $15. That would feed a steel food can about 3" in diameter as a wavegudie. The woofer would be whatever 12" buyout can be bought for $15 maximum and its enclosure would be a a 33-50 gallon galvanized garbage can (as an end driven planar horn) - I'm sure there are some truly rank piezo tweeters which only have output around 5K. A cheap and cheerless 5-6 inch speaker could be added with a #10 steel can as its waveguide..
that should be reasonably terrible
ditto enclosures with Scanspeak Revelator for the $$$ - those steel cans would enhance their qualities. Feastrex could be used for the midrange, a field coil 15 on the bottom of the galvanized steel garbage can.
i would round up some terrible and cheap drivers - perhaps "Zebra" has a cheap phenolic compression driver with a simple phase plug and ear-splitting rough response for about $15. That would feed a steel food can about 3" in diameter as a wavegudie. The woofer would be whatever 12" buyout can be bought for $15 maximum and its enclosure would be a a 33-50 gallon galvanized garbage can (as an end driven planar horn) - I'm sure there are some truly rank piezo tweeters which only have output around 5K. A cheap and cheerless 5-6 inch speaker could be added with a #10 steel can as its waveguide..
that should be reasonably terrible
ditto enclosures with Scanspeak Revelator for the $$$ - those steel cans would enhance their qualities. Feastrex could be used for the midrange, a field coil 15 on the bottom of the galvanized steel garbage can.
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Good point, cheap drivers are not necessarily a problem to get to sound good.. if you can get the best out of them and also meet the needs of the speaker at the same time.
I would start with a couple of things. Try to spill as much of the sound around and back as possible and place the speakers near things that add troublesome reflections, and I'd throw in some extra resonances in awkward places.
Could you explain how this is a point of interest?
Having measured some Auratones, I can say this - the reason they "let" you focus in on the midrange is because they produce basically nothing else. There's nothing really below 150Hz or above 6kHz.
IME, the following second-reference speakers are useful:
- Middle-spec bluetooth speaker. I use an older Philips ShoqBox with 4x 1" drivers and a passive radiator. Others are available.
- Built-in laptop speakers
- Car stereo (while driving)
None of those are necessarily bad, but they are limited by their purpose. A lot of people have at least one of those systems available for listening, so when mastering I try to make sure the music sounds good on all of those systems.
If I wanted to design a speaker that's just plain bad, I'd get a pair of Behringer DCX2496, a 12-channel amplifier, a big box of crossover parts, a bunch of random drivers in varying sizes and operational states, a few piezo tweeters, and then connect random drivers to random amplifier channels, apply arbitrary but large delays, random crossover slopes and EQ, and slap all the drivers on random sides of a cube with no regards to wiring polarity or, indeed, which way the drivers are facing. Symmetry between the two speakers is not an option. Each driver must be held down with no more than two screws, or perhaps one screw and some old tape. New tape is unacceptable. Two of the larger drivers must rattle at distinct frequencies so as to cause maximum listener annoyance - most of the time, it'll go undetected until one particular note. The rattle frequency must be different between the left and right speakers.
If this setup is deemed to "sound bad", the user may rotate the cubes until a better perceived balance is found. Note that there must be drivers on all sides, and it's perfectly acceptable to have one of the drivers firing into (or crushed by) the stand. As the crushed driver attempts to lift the cabinet up and down, the listening height effectively varies, allowing the user to evaluate many listening positions at once.
That's enough silliness for one day.
Chris
IME, the following second-reference speakers are useful:
- Middle-spec bluetooth speaker. I use an older Philips ShoqBox with 4x 1" drivers and a passive radiator. Others are available.
- Built-in laptop speakers
- Car stereo (while driving)
None of those are necessarily bad, but they are limited by their purpose. A lot of people have at least one of those systems available for listening, so when mastering I try to make sure the music sounds good on all of those systems.
If I wanted to design a speaker that's just plain bad, I'd get a pair of Behringer DCX2496, a 12-channel amplifier, a big box of crossover parts, a bunch of random drivers in varying sizes and operational states, a few piezo tweeters, and then connect random drivers to random amplifier channels, apply arbitrary but large delays, random crossover slopes and EQ, and slap all the drivers on random sides of a cube with no regards to wiring polarity or, indeed, which way the drivers are facing. Symmetry between the two speakers is not an option. Each driver must be held down with no more than two screws, or perhaps one screw and some old tape. New tape is unacceptable. Two of the larger drivers must rattle at distinct frequencies so as to cause maximum listener annoyance - most of the time, it'll go undetected until one particular note. The rattle frequency must be different between the left and right speakers.
If this setup is deemed to "sound bad", the user may rotate the cubes until a better perceived balance is found. Note that there must be drivers on all sides, and it's perfectly acceptable to have one of the drivers firing into (or crushed by) the stand. As the crushed driver attempts to lift the cabinet up and down, the listening height effectively varies, allowing the user to evaluate many listening positions at once.
That's enough silliness for one day.
Chris
shop for a kid's DJ set, with leds inside the speakers. once had to repair a proud dj set, that had an impressive size piezo 1 3/8driver coupled to a large horn, to supplement the tiny magnet woofer. sold as a kilowatt power unit. a poerfect source of low level distortion.
another option is a widely sold wharfedale 2way system denton2 sold in the seventies. at first it sounded nice, but after 15 minutes of listening the tweeter made you so annoyed, you could trash a busstop.
another option is a widely sold wharfedale 2way system denton2 sold in the seventies. at first it sounded nice, but after 15 minutes of listening the tweeter made you so annoyed, you could trash a busstop.
The NS10 has some very specific characteristics that make it extreemly revealing, so its not really fair to call it a nasty speaker. The following rather long article explains that its very good transient response and suitability for placing on a console where its lower mid and bass are enhanced (combined with a very distinctive white cone) are probably the reasons it became a defacto standard.
The Yamaha NS10 Story |
The Yamaha NS10 Story |
I wonder if anyone could do worse than this commercial product Delaware Acoustics DELAC S10 loudspeaker | Stereophile.com
Obviously baffle step compensation was neglected and woofer-tweeter distance is so big that it creates deep recession in treble upwards/power response
This is measured room response
Obviously baffle step compensation was neglected and woofer-tweeter distance is so big that it creates deep recession in treble upwards/power response
This is measured room response
If we get back to possibly the intent of this post. If I was looking to make a set of Studio monitors to provide Laptop sound but in a repeatable format. Some of these Visaton drivers mounted in a nice looking wooden enclosure, with some low frequency filtering to prevent over excursion and a polyswitch to prevent them getting burnt out. This might provide a useful extra mixing reference.
https://www.rapidonline.com/pdf/35-2948.pdf
https://www.rapidonline.com/pdf/35-2948.pdf
Not sure im gonna sign this, some fullranges deliver very coherent sound, at least my l cao is very good speaker delivering speech, i use it on tv speaker
sure you can mess it up if threat it like this thread obligate
Talking about Yamaha NS10, Danny Richie
Upgrading some Yamaha studio monitors
Original Yamaha Studio NS-10M
With a new filter
Upgrading some Yamaha studio monitors
Original Yamaha Studio NS-10M
With a new filter
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Okay, try this, it should sound glorious.
Tweeter - 1" compression driver without a horn (on a wide baffle) playing into a JBL diffraction lens, or just some rumpled aluminum foil if you don't one available.
Midrange - 12" thin paper full range driver (we want that HF to beam) mounted in a perfectly square un-damped box (so all internal reflections will come back through the cone.)
Woofer - 3" tangband long throw mounted in a double chamber bass reflex with undersized ports (6 straws), tune the length of straws so they whistle when driven at Fb. Two note bass is possible with this alignment, but it may be hard to model, just trim the straws until it sounds right.
Alignment:
Instead of the normal vertical format, put these drivers on a horizontal line next to each other and make sure the left and right speakers (you are doing stereo yeah?) are both configured with the tweeter on the right and bass on the left.
Crossover:
Employ a Mini-DSP for your crossover and use 1st order crossovers on everything (or better yet, run each driver full range!) Okay, now this is a big design decision:
- Do you run all drivers together or put a delay of 8msec between each driver so the treble comes from another dimension? Either way add some Haas-delays on one side to make sure the Mids have that nice Squash Court vibe.
If this is not "euphonic" enough, make 4 more of these and array them, like a line array, except horizontal across the front of your listening space. Finally, put a double karlson all-seeing-&-all-hearing-eye-slot in front of the entire thing (yes over 9ft long), (to blend it all together) and then throw convolution based room correction software at it. Maybe add a center channel facing the ceiling for increased intelligibility. Oh lastly, use a light bulb as a peak limiter and drive it hard until it lights up (or go next level and use LEDs & Diodes). Perhaps wire each driver with diodes reversed so that you get opposite phase rectification for even more euphonic detail. Finally, post about how it's the best speaker you've ever heard and pay to have it put on a Lifestyle Advertising "What's Best" Site showing a list price of more than $100K.
As an alternative you could build what I call the "everyspeaker". To make this gem (and we're talking scale junky territory here), you need to harvest speakers at your local thrift store. Get as many different types as you can, and remove them from their enclosures then mount them open-baffle style on a hollow-core door (get a friend to help you play "Pin the Speaker on the Door" in order to determine the freshest layout). Now, wire the drivers up in series and parallel until all of them are just shy of appropriate for an amp you have laying around, then starve the amp (variac) or just use a cheap DC supply and starve a tda3116. Your clients will be impressed with the tone color and amazing translation (I guarantee mixes will sound 10x better everywhere else, it's astounding how well this works.) Use generous amounts of EQ to get the response flat and rest assured, this many speakers can't be that wrong. If you find it too resolving and low in distortion, you can always cut away half the surround on half the drivers, but only half!
Tweeter - 1" compression driver without a horn (on a wide baffle) playing into a JBL diffraction lens, or just some rumpled aluminum foil if you don't one available.
Midrange - 12" thin paper full range driver (we want that HF to beam) mounted in a perfectly square un-damped box (so all internal reflections will come back through the cone.)
Woofer - 3" tangband long throw mounted in a double chamber bass reflex with undersized ports (6 straws), tune the length of straws so they whistle when driven at Fb. Two note bass is possible with this alignment, but it may be hard to model, just trim the straws until it sounds right.
Alignment:
Instead of the normal vertical format, put these drivers on a horizontal line next to each other and make sure the left and right speakers (you are doing stereo yeah?) are both configured with the tweeter on the right and bass on the left.
Crossover:
Employ a Mini-DSP for your crossover and use 1st order crossovers on everything (or better yet, run each driver full range!) Okay, now this is a big design decision:
- Do you run all drivers together or put a delay of 8msec between each driver so the treble comes from another dimension? Either way add some Haas-delays on one side to make sure the Mids have that nice Squash Court vibe.
If this is not "euphonic" enough, make 4 more of these and array them, like a line array, except horizontal across the front of your listening space. Finally, put a double karlson all-seeing-&-all-hearing-eye-slot in front of the entire thing (yes over 9ft long), (to blend it all together) and then throw convolution based room correction software at it. Maybe add a center channel facing the ceiling for increased intelligibility. Oh lastly, use a light bulb as a peak limiter and drive it hard until it lights up (or go next level and use LEDs & Diodes). Perhaps wire each driver with diodes reversed so that you get opposite phase rectification for even more euphonic detail. Finally, post about how it's the best speaker you've ever heard and pay to have it put on a Lifestyle Advertising "What's Best" Site showing a list price of more than $100K.
As an alternative you could build what I call the "everyspeaker". To make this gem (and we're talking scale junky territory here), you need to harvest speakers at your local thrift store. Get as many different types as you can, and remove them from their enclosures then mount them open-baffle style on a hollow-core door (get a friend to help you play "Pin the Speaker on the Door" in order to determine the freshest layout). Now, wire the drivers up in series and parallel until all of them are just shy of appropriate for an amp you have laying around, then starve the amp (variac) or just use a cheap DC supply and starve a tda3116. Your clients will be impressed with the tone color and amazing translation (I guarantee mixes will sound 10x better everywhere else, it's astounding how well this works.) Use generous amounts of EQ to get the response flat and rest assured, this many speakers can't be that wrong. If you find it too resolving and low in distortion, you can always cut away half the surround on half the drivers, but only half!
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Actually this task is impossible, there are too many ways of failing.The c-casette radios of '70s were total disasters, leaky plastic resonators with distorting drivers and amps.
There are some other commercial disasters than my previous example - remarkable effort without real understanding or poor combination of special features. Add ofcourse a shiny sales brochure with some technical gibberish. I take my hat off for these!
Actually after posting that Delac S10 I started to think that perhaps the guy at assembly line was "fixing" the polarity of rearside woofer, resulting in dipole operation.
There are some other commercial disasters than my previous example - remarkable effort without real understanding or poor combination of special features. Add ofcourse a shiny sales brochure with some technical gibberish. I take my hat off for these!
Actually after posting that Delac S10 I started to think that perhaps the guy at assembly line was "fixing" the polarity of rearside woofer, resulting in dipole operation.
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