Greetings,
I have an Alpair 11ms in a bass reflex enclosure and its sounding good however it feels like sounding bit Metallic. Anything I can do to reduce the metallic sounding?
I have an Alpair 11ms in a bass reflex enclosure and its sounding good however it feels like sounding bit Metallic. Anything I can do to reduce the metallic sounding?
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I am using Kuartlotron pre and ampcampamp has power and yes the drivers are properly burned in by now
Yes well the wall would only make it more difficult to tell. OK, turning the speaker and getting the highs to roll off might give you a clue. Another thing that can happen is it sounds different beyond the highs being rolled off, which may or may not fix the problem depending on what it is.. it could also be a resonance. It may be due to unbalanced sound which means either too much or too little.
I'm not saying the position is bad, I'm only suggesting it complicates the process of finding your resonances.
I've had a two-way speaker with a metallic sound. The culprit was the aluminium cone resonance of the bass midrange, at 9 kHz. Adding a notch filter removed the metallic sound.
Your Alpair has an aluminum cone with a 10 dB resonance spike at 8 kHz, so I suspect that that these have the same issue. Notching must be performed more carefully here, as there is no tweeter to reproduce the high frequencies. Nuking the resonances will leave you with no high frequency sound at all. If you want to go this way, first measure the frequency response. A passive implementation of a notch filter is a parallel LCR network, connected in series to the driver. It must be carefully tuned.
Your Alpair has an aluminum cone with a 10 dB resonance spike at 8 kHz, so I suspect that that these have the same issue. Notching must be performed more carefully here, as there is no tweeter to reproduce the high frequencies. Nuking the resonances will leave you with no high frequency sound at all. If you want to go this way, first measure the frequency response. A passive implementation of a notch filter is a parallel LCR network, connected in series to the driver. It must be carefully tuned.
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I have visited a friend of mine who is using same driver in a sealed enclosure in his fully treated room. Same songs sounded metallic there has well. He also has the same impression and he is planning to upgrade to MAOP-11.
Seems nothing much can be done, I should also think in that line 😕
Seems nothing much can be done, I should also think in that line 😕
The Alpair 11MS just like all Mark Audio speakers need a long run in to remove that sound, Mark Audio says +100H (and that works altough it still improves after that). This is because of the cone and mostly because of the spider. How many hours do you have on the speaker?
Straight out of the box they indeed sound metallic, but that improves a lot during the run in.
Straight out of the box they indeed sound metallic, but that improves a lot during the run in.
Are you planning to work on this through listening experiments or will you be using measurements?
6000 to around 9000 hz can sound harsh for some if this area is lifted, here break-ups as already noticed. That certainly happen in the center area of the cone at those frequencies.
For the experiment or to confirm that over else possibilities (nasty rooms resonances, floor bounce, etc) you can try to ad a little rod frame (pencil, chop stick ?) with coton on a tape in front of the Alpair dust cap, not more than 1 or 2 cm diameter. it will act as a sorta of passive filter. mCan be T-shirt round sheet, round pad you put below chairs, etc.
It is not pretty but it helps to identify if it is the highs break-ups that are the culpritt or not- simplier if you have a pre with a treble level plot. If yes a dust cap "cure" can be made : foam, sticky patafix for poster aka bluetack...
For the experiment or to confirm that over else possibilities (nasty rooms resonances, floor bounce, etc) you can try to ad a little rod frame (pencil, chop stick ?) with coton on a tape in front of the Alpair dust cap, not more than 1 or 2 cm diameter. it will act as a sorta of passive filter. mCan be T-shirt round sheet, round pad you put below chairs, etc.
It is not pretty but it helps to identify if it is the highs break-ups that are the culpritt or not- simplier if you have a pre with a treble level plot. If yes a dust cap "cure" can be made : foam, sticky patafix for poster aka bluetack...
