The dome mid for PMC is actually made by Volt and is a near copy of the ATC as you would know.
To the OP, I would be interested in seeing your testing results as well as the driver having a little more Xmax. The higher sensitivity is also interesting.
double suspension is good for very large woofers not required for the dome midrange as the dome suspension itself ( the integrated surround ) is good but just to stop the spurious motions of the dome and rocking modes one suspension is more than enough adding two will create another set of problems...
only the simplest thing can accommodate the most complicated thing!..
Looks like a ScanSpeak to me.
The big O500 used the ATC dome but somehow that model got deleted around the time Klein&Hummel became Neumann KH.
You seem confident but it seems counter to generally accepted wisdom. I wish you luck.
the frequency response looks decent but thats not the end of the story as for us the ratio of the harmonic distortion matters infact its dependent upon various factors but we want that natural decay of the instruments. Most of them look at the waterfall plots and say well we have got the fastest decay.. But not how good is the ratio of first second third and fourth harmonics work..
we do agree amplifier adds its own harmonic distortion but provided that our initial calculations are concluded with class A amps but we want to enter into practical world where most of them use class AB so we are studying various amplifiers and its harmonic characteristics and then control the harmonic ratio accordingly... its very tough as it even depends upon the material excitation and its damping properties and also energy residue properties but we are working hard on this...
The performance (115dB at 500Hz) does not look like the old Vifa/Scan-Speak to me. Given the absence of a waveguide it would appear to match the performance of the O500 and O410. It is a significant step up on the previous O300. Given the small size I expect it uses a Nd magnet and not a huge ATC-type arrangement.
some may argue that what if the THD of the driver is 0% so what you get is just the fundamental frequency... so the answer is does it sound good? The answer is yes and no.
This triggers things to basics like how is sound generated from the instruments?
why does a 440hz sounds different from the 440hz of saxophone?
why do speakers sound different when they have similar frequency response?
all the above has one answer Harmonics. Now lets consider the case as above
if you take flute consider it has till 8th harmonic (in reality its nth ) but in the example here we discuss about till the 8th. So if we eliminate all the harmonics in it and we are left with just the fundamental then we get one single tone just flat sounding one frequency and imagine how does the flute sounds that way?
what if we have till the second and max 3rd harmonic we would love it or its matter of choice....
Most of the drivers fail to perform well with the spontaneous harmonics so the result higher IMD which is far more perceivable than the THD.
Now if the same flute is recorded with nth harmonics then monitored with nth harmonics and if you listen to the same material with eliminating all the nth harmonics would you like it? it would be yes you might like it but thats not what the mix engineer has mixed...
answer is straight if you want to experience what a mix engineer has mixed you would rather use his system in atleast similarly treated room or partially treated room that would be end..
so now what if we eliminate the THD we would end up in much better driver but thats not what the mix engineer has done...!
My business partner is an acoustic engineer, Professor for acoustics, built some outstanding absorbing material and also from the family of guitar players.. so was the right guy to build a studio well he built something for himself and when I listened to it. It was like partial anechoic room.. I didnt like it. The point was it was mathematically correct studio but sonically it was not that great infact I said to him put some reflectors in the studio to have some reverb. Now its the same thing even with the driver construction that we need to have some harmonic distortion to get it right..
As our studio engineers almost all of them dont use neither High bias class A amps nor underhung super low distortion drivers...
so we are considering all these to build the drivers...
hope we endup with a decent one...
This triggers things to basics like how is sound generated from the instruments?
why does a 440hz sounds different from the 440hz of saxophone?
why do speakers sound different when they have similar frequency response?
all the above has one answer Harmonics. Now lets consider the case as above
if you take flute consider it has till 8th harmonic (in reality its nth ) but in the example here we discuss about till the 8th. So if we eliminate all the harmonics in it and we are left with just the fundamental then we get one single tone just flat sounding one frequency and imagine how does the flute sounds that way?
what if we have till the second and max 3rd harmonic we would love it or its matter of choice....
Most of the drivers fail to perform well with the spontaneous harmonics so the result higher IMD which is far more perceivable than the THD.
Now if the same flute is recorded with nth harmonics then monitored with nth harmonics and if you listen to the same material with eliminating all the nth harmonics would you like it? it would be yes you might like it but thats not what the mix engineer has mixed...
answer is straight if you want to experience what a mix engineer has mixed you would rather use his system in atleast similarly treated room or partially treated room that would be end..
so now what if we eliminate the THD we would end up in much better driver but thats not what the mix engineer has done...!
My business partner is an acoustic engineer, Professor for acoustics, built some outstanding absorbing material and also from the family of guitar players.. so was the right guy to build a studio well he built something for himself and when I listened to it. It was like partial anechoic room.. I didnt like it. The point was it was mathematically correct studio but sonically it was not that great infact I said to him put some reflectors in the studio to have some reverb. Now its the same thing even with the driver construction that we need to have some harmonic distortion to get it right..
As our studio engineers almost all of them dont use neither High bias class A amps nor underhung super low distortion drivers...
so we are considering all these to build the drivers...
hope we endup with a decent one...
According to Neumann they do 110dB max at 3%THD, 3dB more than the O300.
The dome is crossed in between 650Hz and 2k.
This does not seem improbable with ScanSpeaks, a little bit beyond their linear excursion but well below the mechanical limit.
At least now we know that your engineers do not use ATC monitors! ;-)
Joking aside it is pretty much Studio Design 101 that the control should neither be dead nor too lively. There is a certain range of RT60 times which are preferred. Too long (lively) and the engineer won't be able to hear enough details to produce a good mix, too short and the mix will sound really bad in any normal (living) room ie it doesn't translate well.
As for THD in speakers: The generally preferred monitors also tend to be the ones with the lowest measured THD.
Unfortunately very few manufacturers give THD figures but I have not heard a bad word about ME Geithain monitors and they are pretty low THD-wise (<0.3% at 96dBspl).
Linear distortion is one absolute considerable factor which depends upon the suspension. Infact suspension is much critical part than the cone itself. Most of the non linear distortion happens because of the suspension. Thats why we have chosen the best of the suspension available till date. The material has very low twisting tendencies which is hot pressed with a resin to stiffen it according. I really didnt understand what is the principle of atc in using a very short suspension which in general eliminates one rocking prob but introduces another non linear distortion like a tradeoff I would be rather considering to use a larger suspension to get the distortion low.
yeah room has to be semi treated I would rather prefer the room with some wooden flooring to get the RT60 to some decent levels.
yeah room has to be semi treated I would rather prefer the room with some wooden flooring to get the RT60 to some decent levels.
This is a flawed sophomoric argument.
If I understand what you are saying, the driver should generate harmonics because desirable instruments like a flute have lots of harmonics???
The harmonics of anything that is making sound is already captured by the recording, including all the flute harmonics of your example. If the drivers in the loudspeaker add "extra" harmonics, then this is called distortion. What you want is to reproduce the recording exactly, not add more harmonics. A loudspeaker is not MAKING music like a flute or guitar, it is REPRODUCING music. Big difference my friend.
The reflections from the room are a completely different topic, and they do add a sense of realism by helping to build the acoustic scene (to borrow SL's vocabulary) in your brain. An overdamped room is not pleasant as a listening space. But there is a big difference between harmonic distortion (added by the driver) and delayed copies of the undistorted direct sound (reflections from room boundaries that arrive later than the direct sound).
Good luck with your super-duper dome... you had me interested there for awhile. But I see you are just playing around.
On the Neumann site the published measurements for the passband of the midrange shows the 3% distortion level to be around 103dB for the 0300 and around 114dB for the KH310. This is not a small difference. If you were to claim the midrange in the 0300 was based on the old Vifa/Scan-Speak that would seem plausible to me. But not the KH310 which is a recent Neumann design according to the somewhat unreliable chatter on the internet. Quibbling aside, the 3" dome in KH310 appears to be approaching "ATC levels" of performance but in a smaller Nd package. I would like to know more about it and particularly the suspension arrangement and how well it controls the rocking motion.
Neumann KH O310: Max. SPL in full space / calc. in half space
at 3% THD at 1m 110.3 / 116.3 dB SPL
Klein&Hummel O300:Max. SPL in full space / calc. in half space
at 3% THD at 1m 106.8 / 112.8 dB SPL
(averaged between 100 Hz and 6 kHz)
Copied and pasted from Neumann's site, not sure where you get the 9dB difference from as I can't see it in their published measurements (THD only measured at 95dBspl for either) nor in the figures they've posted.
On the other hand THD above 2kHz has actually gone up since they changed the treble xover from 3.3khz (O300) to 2kHz (O310).
at 3% THD at 1m 110.3 / 116.3 dB SPL
Klein&Hummel O300:Max. SPL in full space / calc. in half space
at 3% THD at 1m 106.8 / 112.8 dB SPL
(averaged between 100 Hz and 6 kHz)
Copied and pasted from Neumann's site, not sure where you get the 9dB difference from as I can't see it in their published measurements (THD only measured at 95dBspl for either) nor in the figures they've posted.
On the other hand THD above 2kHz has actually gone up since they changed the treble xover from 3.3khz (O300) to 2kHz (O310).
I was reading the levels for the midrange off the Max SPL chart in the measurements section for the two speakers on the Neumann web site.
Hi,
Nice line in meaningless waffle. As much of this thread is.
rgds, sreten.
I doubt you've got ATC, or anyone else remotely worried.
PMC use a version of the ancient Vifa 3" which still works.
Last edited:
