Drivers and material have changed a lot over time. When GL did his experiments, there where less differences from a good to a cheaper construction. Both worked. Really cheap junk was not invented, as China was far away. Today you get a compression driver for 15$ and can spent 2000$ as well. Differences are astronomical.
For me anything changed with the CD player. Before that point you could not tell what was the cause for the auditioned sound: The record player or the speaker. Same with amps. amps sounded from ugly to fantastic, depending on what you had.
Today any child can measure respons curves and waterfall stuff GL only dreamed of. CD quality and D-amps cost only a few $.
So, what he did was great at his time, but may be seen with some tollerance today.
Today no one will say the driver does not matter. On the other hand, today you can build great speaker from selected low cost drivers that are better than anything around, 35 years ago. So the usual "it depends".
For me anything changed with the CD player. Before that point you could not tell what was the cause for the auditioned sound: The record player or the speaker. Same with amps. amps sounded from ugly to fantastic, depending on what you had.
Today any child can measure respons curves and waterfall stuff GL only dreamed of. CD quality and D-amps cost only a few $.
So, what he did was great at his time, but may be seen with some tollerance today.
Today no one will say the driver does not matter. On the other hand, today you can build great speaker from selected low cost drivers that are better than anything around, 35 years ago. So the usual "it depends".
I remember growing up with alot of Visaton and Monacor drivers having lived in Germany in the 80s at the time. The MRS13AW-NG was the 5 inch chassis I liked along with the Isophon model found in the Quadral Titan that had the Technics leaf tweeter. The Visaton stuff wasn't that consistent having been made in China back in those days.
We now have very consistent and decent quality drivers coming from China ie Peerless and Dayton audio. Measurement technology has come a long way and so has crossover sim software. I'm still surprised how many people don't take advantage of it and eyeball a 3 way design with off the shelf crossovers. The odds of ending up with a decent sounding 3 way using this approach is slim, but even some of those attempts sound better than a few ready made speskers on the market today.
The one main thing with running a small, inefficient mid down low is VC heat capacity with the resulting power compression. Most larger dome tweeters run out of mechanical excursion before this becomes an issue, but a mid 80s dB/w midrange with one inch or smaller VC will be struggling at high 90s dB crossed 200 - 250 hz. The shift in crossover response is significant enough to hear and the speaker's voicing changes audibly. My suggestion is to aim for at least a 30 to 35mm VC on a 5 inch mid unless its very efficient with enough xmax. This however dictates an efficient LF driver which after applying enough BSC in the xover will be even moreso of a demand to keep up with the mid, along with the bandpass gain from the xover pushing things to being even less in your favor. I find myself reaching for pro drivers nowadays because of all this, but the extreme LF suffers from this. The solution would be 2 LF drivers in a quasi parallel 2.5 way arrangement, so you can then use smaller lower efficiency woofers with more xmax capability.
We now have very consistent and decent quality drivers coming from China ie Peerless and Dayton audio. Measurement technology has come a long way and so has crossover sim software. I'm still surprised how many people don't take advantage of it and eyeball a 3 way design with off the shelf crossovers. The odds of ending up with a decent sounding 3 way using this approach is slim, but even some of those attempts sound better than a few ready made speskers on the market today.
The one main thing with running a small, inefficient mid down low is VC heat capacity with the resulting power compression. Most larger dome tweeters run out of mechanical excursion before this becomes an issue, but a mid 80s dB/w midrange with one inch or smaller VC will be struggling at high 90s dB crossed 200 - 250 hz. The shift in crossover response is significant enough to hear and the speaker's voicing changes audibly. My suggestion is to aim for at least a 30 to 35mm VC on a 5 inch mid unless its very efficient with enough xmax. This however dictates an efficient LF driver which after applying enough BSC in the xover will be even moreso of a demand to keep up with the mid, along with the bandpass gain from the xover pushing things to being even less in your favor. I find myself reaching for pro drivers nowadays because of all this, but the extreme LF suffers from this. The solution would be 2 LF drivers in a quasi parallel 2.5 way arrangement, so you can then use smaller lower efficiency woofers with more xmax capability.
ok but between plastic and metal the stiffness varies
i am sure that every thing can be measured by the way with the right equipment
so you think that the price paid for exotic drivers like Accuton has no basis?
because i still think that a premium price should buy premium performance
clearly a clever designer is able to extract the best from any driver using it rightly
i am asking seriously because I have already read in a discussion of a driver outperforming another costing 10 times more for same duties of course
they were both 8 inches woofers
this shocked me deeply and i still have not recovered completely
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Thanks for the kind reply
there is a point that is very obscure to me
horn loading
i think that a just decent driver horn loaded rightly can achieve astonishing performance much superior than the driver alone
one case is Avantgarde speakers
the mid is just an Audax cone but the horn loading elevates its performance in an amazing way
and i understand well the efforts for experimenting with horns lenses waveguides
distortion is a measure of stress
horns can lower the distortion of a driver for a same SPL
i wonder what Could be an Atc driver horn loaded
horn design is a mistery to me
can provide magic
You make the great mistake, apart from your belive in brands and subjective oppinion. You think a difference is a sign of quality.
If you put a typical horn driver in a closed box it will sound better in the horn. Take an open baffle optimised chassis and install it into a horn and the horn will only reproduce trumpet like sounds. So your ideas are complete nonsense, sorry.
If we give a pro 200$ for a 2-way speaker with a dome tweeter and a 6" mid woofer and you can spent 2000$ on the same size box, your result will sound like a 50$ China speaker, while the pro's will sell for 2000$ a pair. That is what it is all about, taking the right components in the right application and build the best possible x-over. Your search for the magic "best" speaker leads you nowhere.
If you put a typical horn driver in a closed box it will sound better in the horn. Take an open baffle optimised chassis and install it into a horn and the horn will only reproduce trumpet like sounds. So your ideas are complete nonsense, sorry.
If we give a pro 200$ for a 2-way speaker with a dome tweeter and a 6" mid woofer and you can spent 2000$ on the same size box, your result will sound like a 50$ China speaker, while the pro's will sell for 2000$ a pair. That is what it is all about, taking the right components in the right application and build the best possible x-over. Your search for the magic "best" speaker leads you nowhere.
The primary benefit of prestige drivers compared to decent standard drivers is a slightly larger comfortable operating range. A touch lower in frequency, higher in frequency, louder and smoother more easily compensated linear distortion within the operating range of negligible levels of audible nonlinear distortion. There is a characteristic sound following from the radiation pattern but that is more to do with types of driver rather than quality.
This means that if a driver is asked to work outside it's comfortable operating range a prestige driver will perform better than a decent standard driver. 2 ways are the most obvious example of this where it is reasonable to expect prestige drivers to bring noticeable benefits. The potential benefits of prestige drivers reduce significantly for 3 ways with appropriately sized drivers. For speakers following a pistonic approach with hard cones like the Accutons one probably needs to move to a 4 way if, say, aluminium cone standard drivers are to keep the motor nonlinearities from audibly driving resonances at higher SPLs. For a well designed 4 way speaker with Accuton drivers one can reasonably expect only very minor benefits if any compared to one, say, using standard range SB Acoustics aluminium drivers.
Price is not always concistent with performance. The mid in Kii praised monitor cost less than 20 neuros at Peereless for illustration (one more).
Briefly, x10 the cost is not given you x10 performance most of the time. I never liked the sound signature of a pure ceramic cone, some did, etc !
Indeed, acoustically mass loading a driver over all its movement does wonders for pace, rhythm, timing (PR&T) to the point where the pioneer's proved that its summed specs should be under damped to balance the horn's naturally high damping (over damped) to the point where in T/S theory, Vas is irrelevant. i.e. IME Altec/GPA compression drivers have a ~0.75 Qt/0.95 Qe on average with Vas too low/too hard to measure, so not spec'd.
My thanks to the late, great Dr. Leach for pointing this out to me among many other seemingly contradictory technical conundrums my math challenged mind 'wrestled' with in a '68 Ga. Tech chance meeting.
The art of building a speaker has noting to do with the cost of the used material. A lot is for show and marketing. Often chassis are build from expensive components which have nothing to do with the sound quality.
You may put diamonds on a tweeter, but a cheap (compared) berylium dome sounds better.
A cheap looking steel cage mid driver with the right components and a cone from a little aluminum foil and some foamed plastic, worth hardly nothing, may sound superior to any cast high tech driver. Look up "Podzus-Görlich". One of the best chassis I ever heard in a combination looked like a 3.99$ unit.
Some of the best tweeters of various high end names in chassis manufacturing, used in most expensive commercial speakers, have domes from Dr. Kurt Müller GmbH & Co. KG in Germany . Hardly anyone knows this company. Their customer list is top secret.
Your worshiped, high priced JBL speakers may be produced by the former SELENIUM in Brasil, known for cheap PA components. Harman bought them. Same product, multiplyed price.
Start using you ears to listen to speakers, not the talk about them.
You may put diamonds on a tweeter, but a cheap (compared) berylium dome sounds better.
A cheap looking steel cage mid driver with the right components and a cone from a little aluminum foil and some foamed plastic, worth hardly nothing, may sound superior to any cast high tech driver. Look up "Podzus-Görlich". One of the best chassis I ever heard in a combination looked like a 3.99$ unit.
Some of the best tweeters of various high end names in chassis manufacturing, used in most expensive commercial speakers, have domes from Dr. Kurt Müller GmbH & Co. KG in Germany . Hardly anyone knows this company. Their customer list is top secret.
Your worshiped, high priced JBL speakers may be produced by the former SELENIUM in Brasil, known for cheap PA components. Harman bought them. Same product, multiplyed price.
Start using you ears to listen to speakers, not the talk about them.
too bad we can not found some alumen sandwich unit from Görlich... was said to give good medium !
As the Beyrillium, wonder if they worth the price hassle if the cymbal of an alumen tweeter or a ribbon are better ?!
Luckilly we are more talking about sound radiation paterns from few years now in spite of cone materials only. Unfornatully exotic prices must be seen and justified : have you seen the Rockport Tech. loudspeakers high end enclosures ??? or YG drivers drilled in a bloc of metal ? Those guys are marketing genious for solding loudspeakers more expensive than a sport car !
As the Beyrillium, wonder if they worth the price hassle if the cymbal of an alumen tweeter or a ribbon are better ?!
Luckilly we are more talking about sound radiation paterns from few years now in spite of cone materials only. Unfornatully exotic prices must be seen and justified : have you seen the Rockport Tech. loudspeakers high end enclosures ??? or YG drivers drilled in a bloc of metal ? Those guys are marketing genious for solding loudspeakers more expensive than a sport car !
my point was another one
a just decent cone mid loaded with a right horn can gain like 15dB keeping same distortion
becoming also a much easier load for an amp
i think that many people have never heard a really high efficiency system
you get a sense of livelyness that is exciting
that medium to low efficiency speakers have no hope to provide
Moreover i see lenses and wave guide like shallow horns
i am sure they have an effect on driver efficiency
and limiting dispersion can be a good thing especially in some situations where the acoustic treatment is poor
Thanks for the very valuable advice
but I can't listen every thing
and i have to buy before listening
Thanks a lot for the very helpful explanation
i mentioned that brand because it's one of the few that report distortion plots in their drivers data sheets. And of course are low distortions
i get the point about 3 ways that is the solution i have in mind
Hi Turbowatch2,
Without trying to discount your knowledge, would you not think that JBL would require the former Selenium to build the drivers to the JBL's standards?
Kindest regards,
M
Without trying to discount your knowledge, would you not think that JBL would require the former Selenium to build the drivers to the JBL's standards?
Kindest regards,
M
I believe the acquisition of Selenium by JBL (Harman) has dumbed them down a bit. They got rid of quite a few decent drivers and WGs, which perhaps competed a little too favorable compared to some of the JBL offerings. Not everything with the name JBL on it is all that great. I do appreciate their work in many of their older model drivers. My LE8s were amazing drivers and I miss them alot. I don't however worship many of their newer creations ie. the M2.
Todays JBL speaker do not have a fraction of the class they had in the 80s. They got the name, but have become a consumer class brand. They are produced as cheap as possible. I don't like how they sound today.
In my youth JBL was one of the brands that showed me that the usual Heco, Isophon, Braun 3-way speakers, made from a small dome, large dome, woofer combination, where not what my ears expected to reproduce music. The proverbial "eye opener".
Rockport builds funny housings and uses SB Acoustics Satori TeXtreme drivers. Very good, not even over expensive chassis.
Masters of marketing. I do not doubt they sound nice, but starting at something like a new car for a pair, the price is a "little elevated".
They are made quite costly, but does a polished, 5 layer clear coat finsh help anything with sound? Definetly not. So for me such examples are not good speakers, but simply made for bragging about your wealth. The design is just ugly to my eye. Sure, personal opinion.
PS Many Selenium drivers were very well made and exeptional nice priced. I'm sure JBL doesn't build it's worst drivers in Brasil. In fact I'm sure some of the better JBL drivers come from there.
In my youth JBL was one of the brands that showed me that the usual Heco, Isophon, Braun 3-way speakers, made from a small dome, large dome, woofer combination, where not what my ears expected to reproduce music. The proverbial "eye opener".
Rockport builds funny housings and uses SB Acoustics Satori TeXtreme drivers. Very good, not even over expensive chassis.
Masters of marketing. I do not doubt they sound nice, but starting at something like a new car for a pair, the price is a "little elevated".
They are made quite costly, but does a polished, 5 layer clear coat finsh help anything with sound? Definetly not. So for me such examples are not good speakers, but simply made for bragging about your wealth. The design is just ugly to my eye. Sure, personal opinion.
PS Many Selenium drivers were very well made and exeptional nice priced. I'm sure JBL doesn't build it's worst drivers in Brasil. In fact I'm sure some of the better JBL drivers come from there.
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Thanks a lot for the very helpful explanation
i mentioned that brand because it's one of the few that report distortion plots in their drivers data sheets. And of course are low distortions
i get the point about 3 ways that is the solution i have in
I mentioned the Heil tweeter because it looks to be a cult driver
Clearly it will have some limits but it must have also some precut qualities
Anyway i am always willing to accept less saving cash
Thank you for the very valuable and interesting advice
Let me elaborate a little I am trying to put pieces of information together now
Many manufacturers of midfield monitors (my situation) use lenses or waveguides
Even single drivers like Atc come with a sort of lens I guess for some reasons
A correct horn loading could exalt even a normal driver that can gain 10-15dB of SPL for a same distortion level
Problem is that horn design is extremely tricky but at this point i don't understand why people are not more interested in the topic
Maybe a great horn can make a 2" driver intended for pc plastic speakers an excellent unit from 1kHz up to above 10kHz with decent FR and excellent distortion performance
This is the kind of challenges that make me dream
I think i will study horns
Even GL uses horn loaded tweeters again i guess for a reason
For sure not only to control dispersion
I have listened to horns The feeling is completely different than with normal drivers
The design is a challenge