Damping TL - Killing it Softly with Stuffing

[7V]

I had been of the view that if you stuffed a TL until the lower resonance was completely damped, you'd overstuffed it - the speaker would lose 'life'.

However, someone on the AudioAsylum has posted that the lower resonance can be completely damped as long as the stuffing is not too close to the driver. Apparently, this is also the view of Bud Fried and I can see some sense in it.

What has been your experience?

[pinkmouse]

Before Martin's wonderful worksheets arrived I always used my ears to tune the stufffing, and I actually tried this once or twice, and I found it was very driver dependant. With some it worked, with some it didn't. But I must repeat, these were purely subjective, I never actually measured the results. Perhaps a theorist could have a ponder on this for us?

[kneadle]

I have to concur. Martin King has done some excellent research into the actual physics of stuffing, and my own TLs are proof, to boot.

Dave

[Dave Jones]

I didn't have Martin's worksheets when I built my Ariels. I stuffed them 4 or 5 times without success. The bass sounded very weak. I had been using progressively less stuffing on every attempt. Then I got some response measuring equipment, and it was immediately obvious what the problem was. The bass response was very uneven. What I had interpretted as weak bass was actually a huge suckout. Below the suckout, there was a big peak. I added a lot more stuffing, and things evened out nicely. The bass is now quite acceptable for most program material. However, I am using a Richter Scale Series III to boost the bass some, raising the 45 and 63 Hz sliders, and cutting just a tad at 90 and 125. The bass control on my amp, a Rotel RA-02, is centered too high, at 100 Hz. Turning that up mooshes up male vocals and even some female vocals. (Why don't preamp manufacturers center the bass control around 50Hz, where you usually need it?)

So, you might try just getting the bass as smooth as you can, then using some active EQ if you need it. Works for me.

[7V]

Originally posted by kneadle
I have to concur. Martin King has done some excellent research into the actual physics of stuffing, and my own TLs are proof, to boot.

I'm sure that this is the case. However, I've tried to download the MathsCad program and the MLK files but I can't get anything to work at all.

[Dave Jones]

Originally posted by 7V

I'm sure that this is the case. However, I've tried to download the MathsCad program and the MLK files but I can't get anything to work at all.

A few of us have had that problem. They work for me on one computer, but not on my office computer, which is where I want to run it. Both computers are running the MS 2000 Pro operating system. I had once installed a demo version on my office computer, so I tried uninstalling and re-installing MathCad. The first time I uninstalled it, there was a ton of cruft left over in the registry. I uninstalled it again and ran the script that MathCad provides that's supposed to clean all the junk out of the registry. That didn't help. I still can't run the worksheets on the desk computer in my office. I can create a new worksheet, which appears to be okay.

I am unimpressed with the quality of the MathCad program, and with MathCad's support. I bought a legal copy (of course), and registered it, but I couldn't get much help from them, even though I firmly believe the problem is due to a bug in their software. The version I have is now "unsupported", which is software vendor speak for "Up yours. Send us more money for a version that might work."

[Timn8ter]

I'm surprised. I've been using MathCAD Explorer 8 on Win2K Pro at home and at work with no problems.

Hi Steve!

[Chris8sirhC]

i had the same problem with mathcad, i'd love to try to mess around with martins tables, but no matter what I try, it wont ever load them, it just "loads them" but stays at the intro screen.

[Sherman]

Originally posted by Chris8sirhC
i had the same problem with mathcad, i'd love to try to mess around with martins tables, but no matter what I try, it wont ever load them, it just "loads them" but stays at the intro screen.

If you have anti-virus software that restricts scripts or macros from running you have to turn off that feature of the anti-virus software before the Mathcad worksheets will run.

I couldn't run the worksheets on my Win2K or WinXP machines, both with Norton AV. Going into the AV options screen and turning off the script blocking solved the problem on both machines.

BTW this is documented on MJK's website and has been discussed in the Audio Asylum forum. After emailing Martin I found the answer there and within an hour Martin replied with the same info!

[GM]

I had the NAV issues also, but upgrading to NAV 2004 solved them and now Mathcad V8 and 2k pro work.

GM