Cone Preferences .... Paper-Alum-Titanium-poly.. etc..

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#101
KSTR - identical in every minute detail?

Tang Band has (at least) 2 variants of each of those model designations, which as attached PDF shows are not absolutely identical. While an argument could be made that such differences are ultimately negligible to a comparison of the net sonic performance of any of them in "appropriate enclosures" - in other words, in a controlled audition, you'd be only listening to the differences in the cone material itself - the same could be said of several models in the Mark Audio line - Alpair10.3 and 10P, Alpair7.3 and MAOP7- and most recently the A7P.

I've heard all of the Alpairs except the 7P, and they certainly have their differences. While as I've probably mentioned earlier, I thought I had a definite preference for paper, but after some recent and very unscientific listening tests in 3 different systems in my home, I'm not so sure.
 

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#103
And IINM, my point was that the drivers cited by KSTR are not exactly precisely "really identical in every minute detail except for the cone" . T/S parameter wise they were not, and further there are at least 2 versions of each model number which aren't precisely the same - would mean several factors to include in the calculus of designing enclosures, filters, etc that would completely isolate those differences to ensure that any comparison is of only the "sound" of the cone material itself. IOW, not as easy to accomplish as one might wish?


Pedantic hair splitting on my part to be sure, but I thought the particular phrasing quoted above needed addressing. - i.e.- well, no they're not, exactly.
 
#104
You are right, I should have been more specific. I was talking about W4-1337SDF vs. W4-1320SIF which have ferrite magnets. Except for a different x-max (which might be just a typo because BL and Rdc are identical) they have really close to identical T/S parameters, the deviations are not any larger than what is usually seen within typical part-to-part tolerances. Also, their published SPL plots are really extremely similar up to 3kHz.
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Distortion is really low due to the underhung motor as long as you don't overdrive them.
 
#105
Fair enough - and of the small handful of TB badged drivers I've heard (none of these particular W4s) - my preference would be for the bamboo paper W4 1879 . Too bad they elected to not make a ferrite version of this one - I'm not yet convinced that Neo magnets have any great sonic advantage in drivers of this size - great for tweeters, and perhaps car audio where motor size may be a big issue, but otherwise - meh?
 
#111
To be fair he might hear a difference anyway.

When I tried the Beyerdynamic DT-48E I thought it "sounded like Aluminium". Sure enough, when I looked it up online later, the driver was indeed Aluminium.

You could say I may be barking up the wrong tree thinking it's time / speed, I.e. ADSR envelope, it could be FR or THD as well, like second harmonic, seventh harmonic and so forth, I don't know for sure but this has happened to me several times that I can correctly identify a cone material, yes it could be chance statistically speaking but no errors yet. 🙂

When I was younger I just played with equalizers all day but this last year or so my preference has changed and I very much "listen to the driver", then every now and then I listen to the music as well. 🙂

It's enlightening though, when you realise the DT-48E for example sounds "this can not be plastic, no way".

Kouiky had some comments on harmonics and "velocity" earlier in this thread.
 
#117
chrisb said:
I wanna compare a Bugatti Veyron to a Mini Countryman
Click to expand...

The point which quite a few are defending is if you can equalize two speakers to nearly identical FR and they have similar harmonics, then they will sound identical, since time does not exist separate from FR.

KSTR and the other user here later wrote that you can't transfer FR to CSD without time / phase information, which is called IR.

Thus, FR and IR are completely different, completely separate.

It's like photo and video imho.

Some people, such as in this thread http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/104500-curious-about-zaphs-designs-seas-l18-p18rnxp.html, say we can't hear FR and time information very well at the same time.

ADSR under 4ms is apparently an atonal click as well.

As for harmonics and break-up frequency, Kouiky wrote some information in these posts.

Anyway yes, Veyron to Veyron, different windows / tires / paint, isolate the difference.

I think most people believe or not believe and the experiment ends there, in the belief phase.

A few are neutral as well, just follow the industry standard or the marketing.


kouiky said:
This is one of the more level posts I've read on DIYaudio in some time. It's good to see another critical thinker here who looks beyond the obvious and considers the factors and conditions.

Some metal drivers, such as Yamaha's beryllium domes were predominently second order harmonic, and carbon fiber weave drivers from Morel were third ordered. Some Aluminum tweeters begin to break up at 20kHz, others closer to 30kHz, while berylium theoretically breaks up at around 45khz, I also recall the berylium domes didn't exhibit any upper mode ringing, which was odd.
Click to expand...

kouiky said:
Thank you for your reply. Carbon nanotube and Carbocon were of great interest to me. The impulse response, step response and settling are largely influenced by the nature of the suspension and motor. The big advantages of berylium, diamond and other materials was their rigidity, low mass, and propagation velocities. For an equivalent dome and equal rigidity, berylium is much lighter, something to the order of twelve times lighter than a silk dome tweeter. This helps move breakup above the playback range. Depending on the geometry of the piston diaphragm, these properties can be put to great use.

I'm very curious to see what the future holds as materials and compositions enter driver design. I recall ATD was producing carbon nanotube sandwich woofer diaphrams with an outer layer of titanium film. Harmonic distortion was merely average, but its damping properties of cabinet reflections were interesting. They were still expensive at around $600 each for a 6" mid-woofer. I never got to try and measure its various performance attributes, as the distributor ceased to carry them just before I tried to buy one. At that point, all I had were third party tests.
Click to expand...

5th element said:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/104500-curious-about-zaphs-designs-seas-l18-p18rnxp.html
Click to expand...
 
#118
Well here's my 2 cents on cone materials: It all comes down to how hard a cone is because the biggest difference, all other variables being optimized and normalized, is how severe the resonances at the high end of the frequency response will be. Hard cones generally have the more severe upper midrange resonance, or break up, or whatever you want to call it.

Many people believe that the harder cones have better "resolution", and they may well, but I think a significant amount of why they think that is because of the upper mid FR peaks that are rarely hammered down enough with the electronics.

Polypropylene cones usually have the smoothest rolloffs at the high end of the FR. Paper can vary a lot because the paper itself is no more than a "substrate" for whatever plastic or glue type material is invariably impregnated into it (which means they can fine tune it's stiffness). Aluminum or Kevlar (the hard stuff) is real good for woofers that are well BW limited down low (below 500HZ IMO). The frequency response graph is arguably the best way to judge a particular cone. For beginners I always rec polyprop since the smooth high end rolloff keeps things simple.
 
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