BudP said:
Practise, practise, practise... only about 30-31 years to catch up on (and a years worth are on the break-in bench for next week.
dave
Richard,
Thank you very much for the positive feedback.
In my designs I try to find a balance between form and function. You can probably see the influence of Rietveld and Mondriaan. I also very much like the natural look of wood and it doesn't have to be some exotic stuff. For furniture I use clear nitrocellulose laquer because of the durability, all the wood in the audio gear is coated with shellac. I also used shellac to protect the copper, works really well.
Bud,
Thanks, I was thinking of putting general templates for cones and phase plugs on the page.
I tried the ground loops, made them from litz wire for testleads, directly connected to the drivers. For evaluation I listened to Brahms piano concerto no. 1. It seems that with the loops in place the piano has indeed more 'tone' when surrounded by strings. Very strange indeed.
Dave,
Here's the CSD comparison for the fostex with phase plug and the EnABLed version with one coat of gloss. This time the time scale is the same.
Now it's time to see if I can get rid of those two nasty peaks in the 1-5KHz range.
Gerrit
Thank you very much for the positive feedback.
In my designs I try to find a balance between form and function. You can probably see the influence of Rietveld and Mondriaan. I also very much like the natural look of wood and it doesn't have to be some exotic stuff. For furniture I use clear nitrocellulose laquer because of the durability, all the wood in the audio gear is coated with shellac. I also used shellac to protect the copper, works really well.
Bud,
Thanks, I was thinking of putting general templates for cones and phase plugs on the page.
I tried the ground loops, made them from litz wire for testleads, directly connected to the drivers. For evaluation I listened to Brahms piano concerto no. 1. It seems that with the loops in place the piano has indeed more 'tone' when surrounded by strings. Very strange indeed.
Dave,
Here's the CSD comparison for the fostex with phase plug and the EnABLed version with one coat of gloss. This time the time scale is the same.
Now it's time to see if I can get rid of those two nasty peaks in the 1-5KHz range.
Gerrit
Hi Gerrit,
Really looks like the micro gloss is stiffening the cone structure which reduces resonance time at 3kHz and increases transduction efficiency above 8kHz.
Hi Bud,
Always wanted to ask these, but never got my fingers typing.
Do the patterns have greatest effect upon high frequencies, such that this is they way in which they affect mid frequency reproduction ?
Old type drivers with typical micro dimpled cambric cones (often being shaped for decent reproduction and not just plain conical) presumably had their own EnABL built in, though this being overall in nature and not specifically tuned ?
Given that we all have our own ways of thinking/imagining through aspects related to reproduction, and ideas which can be hard to express between individuals without being thought of as 'wired up', I can't help but think there is something still as yet unexplained or brought together relating to high audio frequency back-EMF and impedance with dynamic loudspeakers, and thus hf phase coherence related to 'electron pools' and Salabert's comments about MDI, etc.
http://www.phy-hp.com/English/Products/H21lb15_SAG_E.html
Interesting profile;-
http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatures/phy/phy.html
Cheers ........... Graham.
Really looks like the micro gloss is stiffening the cone structure which reduces resonance time at 3kHz and increases transduction efficiency above 8kHz.
Hi Bud,
Always wanted to ask these, but never got my fingers typing.
Do the patterns have greatest effect upon high frequencies, such that this is they way in which they affect mid frequency reproduction ?
Old type drivers with typical micro dimpled cambric cones (often being shaped for decent reproduction and not just plain conical) presumably had their own EnABL built in, though this being overall in nature and not specifically tuned ?
Given that we all have our own ways of thinking/imagining through aspects related to reproduction, and ideas which can be hard to express between individuals without being thought of as 'wired up', I can't help but think there is something still as yet unexplained or brought together relating to high audio frequency back-EMF and impedance with dynamic loudspeakers, and thus hf phase coherence related to 'electron pools' and Salabert's comments about MDI, etc.
http://www.phy-hp.com/English/Products/H21lb15_SAG_E.html
Interesting profile;-
http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatures/phy/phy.html
Cheers ........... Graham.
I'm afraid not, forgot to save the impulse response file. I still have a pair of stock drivers laying around so I can repeat the measurement.
It would appear that the measured sound level of the Enabled driver is ~1.5-2 dB lower than the nontreated (notice the hole @~750Hz, where the measurement drops through the -25dB floor). So, if you were to raise this up, some of the peaks that appear to fall below that of the untreated driver would probably be the same.
That said, it definitely changed the response level in the higher frequencies.
That said, it definitely changed the response level in the higher frequencies.
I somehow get the feeling that the weaker modes are taken out, leaving the stronger modes more distinct. meaning the Fostex cones have pretty stiff paper, unlike some of the cheaper paper drivers. This means the pattern needs to be stiffer material, and the pattern cannot be so dense.planet10 said:
pedroskova said:
Dave: could it be the "apparent" discrepancy suggested above is an artifact of the method used to overlay the graphics?
Regardless, in all our comparative listening sessions between stock drivers and various levels of treatment along the way, reduced SPL from the treated drivers (if real) is certainly the last thing one notices.
While there may be slightly less steady state amplitude, the improvement in coherence, density, articulation and dynamics is what catches my attention every time. With a Trends T-amp and simple 2.0 video set-up, the soundtracks on HDTV movies or HDNet concerts can be quite revealing.
A buddy at work long described Joe Satriani as "a great technician, but lacking soul" - I didn't understand what he meant until I caught a recent broadcast. How do you describe missing emotional content in music, except by example?
The dialogue between Brian Hugh's guitar and Hugh Marsh's fiddling on Loreena McKennitt's Nights at Alhambra is the perfect counterpoint to soulless technical wizardry - so much more than just "fast for fast sake"
Hi all,
Actually I think we are beginning to get to the meat of the issue, with Gerrit's CSD plots and the overlay differences shown.
Since the various distortion tests I have run show little or no change from original to EnABL'd driver, the patterns are not changing the amount of signal energy that is causing resonances to be emitted, at other discreet frequencies. Meaning that the same amount of energy devolves to a second and other harmonic as was true before the driver was EnABL treated.
What I think is beginning to be shown is that energy that rings at the original frequency, but at a lower amplitude and a very slight to a somewhat longer period in time, is being eliminated, by forcing it to emit with the original excitation wave.
If you look at the physical distances involved, most of this same frequency ringing would only show up in a CSD plot of the 1st ms and might actually need to have the first 100 us as a time frame, to show what EnABL is actually doing.
Dave's "hall of mirrors" is exactly correct. A hall of mirrors reflects the same information, not an altered spectral or amplitude packet of information.
Our threat assessment correlator is fast enough to notice a dispersed in time frequency set, as it applies to the correlated "instrument" that we reconstruct mentally and assign the name tag "violin" to. I do not think that there is a mechanism, within the correlator, to comprehend random noise and an EnABL removal of same frequency ringing.
So, I really think what is being dealt with is also part of our cognitive process, as it applies to coherency of information, to a correlator comprehended model. A model built upon learned and likely evolved expectations of the world we live in.
I am fairly sure that all of you who have listened to an EnABL driver for the first time, ever, were struck by how much "quieter" the non interpreted signals were. Meaning that a group of frequencies that were describing a violin being played seemed to be more prominent and more "correct" and complete, but not actually louder. The ambient "noise", which is actually just uncorrelated energy, was dramatically less.
That the tiny signal structures also become much more apparent, as a part of the frequency signals that are describing the violin, shows that the energy that was being emitted as incoherent, uncorrelated noise before EnABL, has either been uncovered by removing short duration ringing or has been made to emit coherent to it's original information structure packet, as a violin, by not being allowed to become short duration ringing.
I am a bit unsure of my logical processes at the moment, due to some pretty strong antibiotics in my system, so if parts or all of this is just gibberish, I apologize. Please pick it apart and ask pointed questions. I will try to answer them and even make sense.
I also want to address the frequency/ phase applicable issue, but have run out of mental energy.
Bud
Actually I think we are beginning to get to the meat of the issue, with Gerrit's CSD plots and the overlay differences shown.
Since the various distortion tests I have run show little or no change from original to EnABL'd driver, the patterns are not changing the amount of signal energy that is causing resonances to be emitted, at other discreet frequencies. Meaning that the same amount of energy devolves to a second and other harmonic as was true before the driver was EnABL treated.
What I think is beginning to be shown is that energy that rings at the original frequency, but at a lower amplitude and a very slight to a somewhat longer period in time, is being eliminated, by forcing it to emit with the original excitation wave.
If you look at the physical distances involved, most of this same frequency ringing would only show up in a CSD plot of the 1st ms and might actually need to have the first 100 us as a time frame, to show what EnABL is actually doing.
Dave's "hall of mirrors" is exactly correct. A hall of mirrors reflects the same information, not an altered spectral or amplitude packet of information.
Our threat assessment correlator is fast enough to notice a dispersed in time frequency set, as it applies to the correlated "instrument" that we reconstruct mentally and assign the name tag "violin" to. I do not think that there is a mechanism, within the correlator, to comprehend random noise and an EnABL removal of same frequency ringing.
So, I really think what is being dealt with is also part of our cognitive process, as it applies to coherency of information, to a correlator comprehended model. A model built upon learned and likely evolved expectations of the world we live in.
I am fairly sure that all of you who have listened to an EnABL driver for the first time, ever, were struck by how much "quieter" the non interpreted signals were. Meaning that a group of frequencies that were describing a violin being played seemed to be more prominent and more "correct" and complete, but not actually louder. The ambient "noise", which is actually just uncorrelated energy, was dramatically less.
That the tiny signal structures also become much more apparent, as a part of the frequency signals that are describing the violin, shows that the energy that was being emitted as incoherent, uncorrelated noise before EnABL, has either been uncovered by removing short duration ringing or has been made to emit coherent to it's original information structure packet, as a violin, by not being allowed to become short duration ringing.
I am a bit unsure of my logical processes at the moment, due to some pretty strong antibiotics in my system, so if parts or all of this is just gibberish, I apologize. Please pick it apart and ask pointed questions. I will try to answer them and even make sense.
I also want to address the frequency/ phase applicable issue, but have run out of mental energy.
Bud
Gerrit Boers said:
It may be indicative, but we would also have to leave room in the interpretation for driver to driver sifferences.
dave
chrisb said:
The 1st chart lines the plots up using the grids. One would expect the EnABLed driver to be a tiny bit less efficient due to the small amount of extra mass from the gloss coat. I don't know if it can account for the we are seeing. (on an FE126/127 i usually see about 1/2 a dB and that is with both puzzlecoat & gloss.
If ialign the chart using the 1st bump in the response, you can see that the clearly visible lumps are decaying faster on the EnABLed driver. This is the kind of thing we would hope to see based on the theory althou i strongly suspect that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg and the real relevant stuff is still at the bottom of the wave where we can't see it in the measures.
Of course this is only one measure so we need to take it with a grain of salt. It does show some area for exploration. A greater amplitude capture, and a time scale in cycles would really help.
dave
Attachments
Clio uses the highest peak as a 0dB reference for the CSD plot, this makes comparison a little awkward. With the untreated driver the peaks in the mid range are predominant, while with the treated driver the peaks above 10KHz are dominant.
You might be on to something there. I really would like to understand what causes those two peaks in the mid range. As an experiment I stuffed the junction between the main cone and the whizzer with a rol (1.6g) made of a piece of some old t-shirt, this reduces the peaks above 10Khz by about 5dB. There was no effect on the peaks in the mid range.
I very much agree with this description and in my opinon the essence of the improvement is not visible in the CSD plots. It's a bit like the story of the blind men and the elephant. We're performing al kinds of measurements to 'surround the problem' in the hope to get a better understanding of the core issues.
You'll get no argument from me there. A serious study would require much better controlled conditions and should be performed using some kind of protocol.
I perform these measurements mainly to see if I'm not heading in the wrong direction.
The big question I'm struggling with is this: Why does the system sound so good? To put it another way, what does it do right? It's certainly not the frequency response, that's a mess.
On the other hand, irregularities in the frequency response are considered to be linear distortion, maybe this is not as serious as the non-linear distortion components.
THD at 1Khz (continuous tone, 1m, in room, 90dBSPL) is 0.5%, this is not bad at all.
Gerrit Boers said:
Cleaner sound is always better when the higher frequency resonant energy is damped. I've never been able to get CLIO to generate CSDs like some of the other packages. I wonder what CLIO would show when testing amplifiers. If it doesn't drop really fast, then there might be somthing funny about the algorythm it uses.
Thanks for the tip, I will try that. I'm also glad to hear that I'm not alone in this.
I'm just performing a series of measurements, here are some results for THD at 1m on axis in room with continuous tone measurements:
50Hz 107.7 dBSPL 2.2%
100Hz 102.3 dBSPL 6.3%
200Hz 99.3 dBSPL 1.7%
500Hz 108.5 dBSPL 1.6%
1000Hz 103.3 dBSPL 0.68%
2000Hz 98.9dBSPL 1.7%
4000Hz 100.5 dBSPL 2.0%
and for IMD:
two tone 100Hz 2000Hz 50%/50% : 100.3 dBSPL IMD 1.32%
two tone 100Hz/2000Hz 90%/10% : 98.7 dBSPL IMD 0.70%
two tone 50Hz/2000Hz 50%/50% : 103.1 dBSPL IMD 2.3%
IMHO this is not bad for a single driver with a whizzer.
Neo Dots..???
Trying to decide if the silkscreened pattern of dots on these 25" neoplanars are mode suppression patterns...
Something must account for the extraodinary inner detail and lack of distortion I'm getting running these from 500 Hz to 20,000+
I'm listening to a rtr tape made 12+ years ago from records and fm for the first time through these, and I hear stuff I don't recall being as clear on any other system... individual voices and second guitar lines, snare drums, cymbal shimmer, etc. sound like separate performances, not some veiled blur one gets used to from mass market systems. It's really an uncannily real and lifelike sound.
Supposedly these were designed by finite element methods to suppress distortion, but it's tough to get any info on them...
Any thoughts?
John L.
Trying to decide if the silkscreened pattern of dots on these 25" neoplanars are mode suppression patterns...
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Something must account for the extraodinary inner detail and lack of distortion I'm getting running these from 500 Hz to 20,000+
I'm listening to a rtr tape made 12+ years ago from records and fm for the first time through these, and I hear stuff I don't recall being as clear on any other system... individual voices and second guitar lines, snare drums, cymbal shimmer, etc. sound like separate performances, not some veiled blur one gets used to from mass market systems. It's really an uncannily real and lifelike sound.
Supposedly these were designed by finite element methods to suppress distortion, but it's tough to get any info on them...
Any thoughts?
John L.
John,
Looks feasible to me. Soongsc has pointed out that any pattern should work to some degree or other and certainly round dots work for high frequency drivers, where rectangles are just not possible, with the tools we have.
Soongsc also pointed out that the inner pattern rings on a cone loft the transverse wave to compression wave transform zone off of the actual driver surface, at least in a hard chine boundary layer, like a Jordon metal driver.
So, likely, here is just another example of an idea springing up in more than one place, about when it is needed too, oddly.
Have you treated the bass driver for this system with EnABL yet? If not, you should, as that will aid clarity even further.
Bud
Looks feasible to me. Soongsc has pointed out that any pattern should work to some degree or other and certainly round dots work for high frequency drivers, where rectangles are just not possible, with the tools we have.
Soongsc also pointed out that the inner pattern rings on a cone loft the transverse wave to compression wave transform zone off of the actual driver surface, at least in a hard chine boundary layer, like a Jordon metal driver.
So, likely, here is just another example of an idea springing up in more than one place, about when it is needed too, oddly.
Have you treated the bass driver for this system with EnABL yet? If not, you should, as that will aid clarity even further.
Bud
CSD comparisons..
Seems kinda futile (at least from a CSD perspective) trying to improve this:
http://gboers.xs4all.nl/daisy/home/458/version/default/part/ImageData/data/CSD-comparisonB.png
when one can get a driver (albeit a tweeter) for ~$19 that looks alot better (w/o EnABL no less) ...
http://ldsg.snippets.org/graphics/peerless/Peerless_811815_Waterfall.gif
That's why I don't much care for the "full range" approach.. at least not using cone drivers...
John L.
planet10 said:
Seems kinda futile (at least from a CSD perspective) trying to improve this:
http://gboers.xs4all.nl/daisy/home/458/version/default/part/ImageData/data/CSD-comparisonB.png
when one can get a driver (albeit a tweeter) for ~$19 that looks alot better (w/o EnABL no less) ...
http://ldsg.snippets.org/graphics/peerless/Peerless_811815_Waterfall.gif
That's why I don't much care for the "full range" approach.. at least not using cone drivers...
John L.
Re: CSD comparisons..
Wouldn't life be so much simplier if the measurements could actually tell us what something sounds like?
We know that EnABL makes a big improvement. We are just trying to tease a difference out of the measures. It is so far proving to be a significant improvement that seems to be impervious to any measures taken so far.
dave
auplater said:
Wouldn't life be so much simplier if the measurements could actually tell us what something sounds like?
We know that EnABL makes a big improvement. We are just trying to tease a difference out of the measures. It is so far proving to be a significant improvement that seems to be impervious to any measures taken so far.
dave
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