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Manger MSW Bending Wave Driver

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Joined 2004
jirka said:
For everyone who would like to try Manger but hate more directional designs:

The directionality of mids is better than from some conventional midwoofers. The directionality of frequencies from 6kHz and up is the weak point.

THE CURE IS SOUND DEFLECTOR
With somethink like Holoprofile you get the dispersion like from small tweeter.

The cure is worse than the disease though.

You effect phase and frequency response by placing such an object in the path of the loudspeaker. Call me a purist but I don't think that's the way to go about it.
 
Maybe you affect phase and frequency response a little but I dont hear any change to worse. Everythink is a little more focused, more detailed and real.

What I dont like is that there are less effects of sound reflected from both sides of the listener but maybe that is one of the things for improved imaging (which does not need improving).
 
ShinOBIWAN said:


The Manger is certainly the most sucessful implementation of this ideal and its time based performance is the best to be found in the world - the step response is damn near perfect and multiway speakers are terrible in comparison.

Not ALL multiway speakers have bad step/impulse reponse. Dunlavy's designs were all phase coherent and had excellent step response. So are (less known) VAF, which are incidently placed in the same area as Dunlavy's former Australian offshoot (Duntech) - in Adelaide, South Australia.

Bratislav
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Bratislav said:


Not ALL multiway speakers have bad step/impulse reponse. Dunlavy's designs were all phase coherent and had excellent step response. So are (less known) VAF, which are incidently placed in the same area as Dunlavy's former Australian offshoot (Duntech) - in Adelaide, South Australia.

Bratislav

True but the Dunlavy's still don't measure as good as the Manger and in 99.9% of multiway cases its significantly worse, actually I'd go as far as saying terrible!

Does it really make that much difference to the sound you ask? Definitely. You can hear this difference with the Manger and its why you'll hear a very natural and non fatigueing sound from them.

If I hadn't been thoroughly spoiled by high end drivers all ready the Mangers would have been a revelation despite my noted short comings.
 
ShinOBIWAN said:


True but the Dunlavy's still don't measure as good as the Manger and in 99.9% of multiway cases its significantly worse, actually I'd go as far as saying terrible!

Does it really make that much difference to the sound you ask? Definitely. You can hear this difference with the Manger and its why you'll hear a very natural and non fatigueing sound from them.

If I hadn't been thoroughly spoiled by high end drivers all ready the Mangers would have been a revelation despite my noted short comings.

Well ... I have phase coherent VAFs and not so phase coherent ATC SMC100 (with a 'super' mid) at home. And as far as 'natural' and 'not fatiguing' sound goes a nod would in fact get to ATCs. Where VAFs excel (when you are in the right spot!) is a superior stage instrument/placement.

Bottom line, I don't think it is the ability of Manger to have near perfect impulse/step response that makes them likeable. After all, Linkwitz Orions aren't phase coherent, yet I still prefer their sound to both ATCs and VAFs. By a long shot, in fact.
And their imaging ability is really on another level altogether, despite their poor impulse response.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
I've yet to hear Orions and probably never will so can't comment. My own implementation using ATC's drivers was similar to Dunlavy's approach and well behaved in the time domain. There's still very definite differences, so I agree with you. Its a combination of talents that make each driver what it is.

You've got to remember that the Manger is effectively a point source too, what it paints is uncanny realism and accuracy. I have no doubts this can be attributed to the time based behavior and the combination of a single membrane material covering the range from 200hz up as well as a point source character. Like I've said before the coherency and sheer see through clarity is startling. Nothing else does that with quite the same presentation. Its a real shame that the HF behavior is such a stumbling block for me.
 
I haven't heard Mangers, but I've heard many other coherent/point source designs (mainly electrostats). ESL63 probably best of them all, and indeed it was a speaker very very few would object to be living with. (Shame it was so expensive!)
But unless very large, ELSs (and I've heard truly gargatuan ones like Tolteque and Metaxas) have problem with lowest octaves, and again the larger they get, even smaller sweet spot becomes.
I found that very tiring. Bending the planar doesn't work for me (so Martin Logans are out), and noone today seem to be attempting Peter Walker's ESL63 trick (why !!!???). Shame, as ESLs in many ways can be as close as it gets to a 'perfect' driver. As it is, they really fall into another fundamentally flawed category, as far as I'm concerned. (for the same reason you didn't like the Manger - painful directivity in upper octaves)
Do try to hear well executed dipoles. It takes a bit of a leap of faith, but there are many good things to be found on the 'other side'.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Bratislav said:
I haven't heard Mangers, but I've heard many other coherent/point source designs (mainly electrostats). ESL63 probably best of them all, and indeed it was a speaker very very few would object to be living with. (Shame it was so expensive!)
But unless very large, ELSs (and I've heard truly gargatuan ones like Tolteque and Metaxas) have problem with lowest octaves, and again the larger they get, even smaller sweet spot becomes.
I found that very tiring. Bending the planar doesn't work for me (so Martin Logans are out), and noone today seem to be attempting Peter Walker's ESL63 trick (why !!!???). Shame, as ESLs in many ways can be as close as it gets to a 'perfect' driver. As it is, they really fall into another fundamentally flawed category, as far as I'm concerned. (for the same reason you didn't like the Manger - painful directivity in upper octaves)
Do try to hear well executed dipoles. It takes a bit of a leap of faith, but there are many good things to be found on the 'other side'.

I had the Manger in OB at one point, very nice if somewhat less natural than a good dead cabinet offers. I don't have the room for dipoles so I hear the negatives. My opinion may change given a similar change of room.

I've heard both ESL 57's and 63's, the 57's a couple of times in a really well sorted setup. Impressive stuff but soft edged and lacking getup. As you've noted they're bass shy but can put out a drum kit albeit not in quite the same manner as what could be possible.

The Manger is estat-like in some respects. But it certainly has more impetus to the sound, it still is afterall a moving coil design. It doesn't attempt to do the lowest ranges so consider a 2-way mandatory. Its definitely more of a crossover between estats and cones. You don't get that wall of sound with exaggerated images on the Manger, its definitely more pin point and in proportion similar to a good cone and dome design. Its only real weaknesses are power response, SPL and directivity. If they could magically solve those I seriously question whether I'd looking at another driver again.

The Manger isn't a driver that you can pidgeon hole so drawing comparison to other similar but still significantly different should be done caution, even better if you've heard the Manger as its then easier to articulate the differences. So to sum up; in the area's it excels in, the Manger offers a new perspective into potential performance realisations. I'd suggest you have a listen as its certainly an eye opener and for what they do well, the likes of what you or I have heard before will struggle hard to compete with.

PS. the driver doesn't have painful directivity in the highs, its not quite a 4ftx3ft panel ;), so even when listening offaxis you still feel a good amount of treble and below 7Khz you've got offaxis performance that is every bit as good as the ATC mid. What you do miss is the stuff above 10Khz if you shift your head a few inch though.

In my eyes the Manger has already surpassed other technologies in a few important areas and offers the most complete picture from its particular page of the book. Given a continuing evolution of the principles I expect that it has the opportunity to offer a solution with benefits that strongly outweigh the deficits and finally provide a 'fullrange' solution that not only still has the lead over multiways in the area's that they have always excelled in but also catchup and equal in the area's that have been found lacking in the past. Given the extremely slow technological progress in loudspeaker design vs. commercially viable products I'd expect we're another 20-30 years away from that however.
 
For those who dont want to use Holoprofile, there is ANOTHER CURE for the HF directivity.

It is based on the principle that Ted Jordan uses with his drivers.
The driver should have increasing on-axis response in the highs and the listener ear should be placed slightly off-axis.

With the Manger this is dome with the help of smaller capacitor (around 50 mikroF). I have done this too and with this setup I can listen everywhere. In adition for overly dull recordings I can direct the drivers on my head and listen with slight equalisation. Nice trick.
 
I have found many my CDs having problems with strong cracking. Sometimes I heard small cracking through Excel tweeter, but on Manger the cracking is so strong and frequent that I can not enjoy some music anymore. Absolute majority of those discs are the Platinum CD-Rs but I also hear many defects on original CDs.

Here is one interesting experiment with Manger transducer...
executed by Andre Perreault from e-speakers.com

"Greetings to all,
I received many inquiries regarding the maximum output capabilities of the Manger driver so I decided to experiment and document the findings. The results are quite surprising...

Equipment and test conditions:
Meter: calibrated Quest 2700 Impulse SPL Meter .83" precision microphone
Distance: Horizontally on axis with center of Mangers transducers 38"
off ground at apex of triangle, 9ft from base of triangle (front of
cabinets)
Measurement settings: Linear response, 50 microsecond attack.
Playback settings: Manger 100Hz high pass filtered 96db/oct DSP -
Velodyne HGS15 low passed 100HZ 96db/Oct DSP placed 1 meter behind each
Manger in left/right back corner of music room.
Program: Classical SACD large orchestral work. "1812 Overture" Stereo
format

Results:
1. A pair of Manger could produce 110db/spl (peak hold) comfortably without any apparent compression. Peak to RMS value was in excess of 12db. I had a feeling that the manger had at least 3b of headroom above this level.
2. As a test, a pair of MT 8" - 1" dome system of similar 90db sensitivity was swapped into position. Volume was adjusted to produce 110dB/spl but it could only be achieved with a very noticeable compression and stress level. The funny thing was the peak to RMS value was less than 6db.

Interesting observations:
Although the Manger system sounded noticeably lower in volume compared to the conventional MT system (which was screaming at me by the way...), when both were setup to produce 110db peak. Switching to a slow 1 sec read on the meter showed that the Manger "RMS" output was between 94 to 96dB while the MT system was close to 102-104dB/spl.

I will spend more time with this experiment but it appears that the Manger is much faster and can put out peak level unmatched by any conventional dynamic driver.

Please don't react to wildly to this post as it is only preliminary and not meant as a definitive statement yet".
 
Here is the example of optimal enclosure for MSW. We made it from MDF and various damping. It is like very heavy dinosaur egg. Sure the capacitor must be high-quality. We will use Mundorf Supreme Silver/Gold.
 

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