I don't think John has presented anything that explains anything. Just explaining what can be found in textbooks without relation directly explaining the aspects of any test results. Of course for believers of his explanation, the link is formed in the mind without any substantial evidence in relation to the data presented. I have yet to see anyone link the physical theories presented with the test data presented.dlr said:
"yet you concentrate on distortion or other mechanisms which are 20 dB down or more in level"
What is wrong with that? 20 dB down is audible. Changes at that level certainly are audible, especially with regard to musical information.
It might be worthwhile to assume that Buds powers of description are competent, whatever your opinion of his theorizing. His descriptions are very exacting.
Gotta keep description and theory separate or the phenomenae will turn around and bite us in tender places.
Have to hang up puter behaving oddly
What is wrong with that? 20 dB down is audible. Changes at that level certainly are audible, especially with regard to musical information.
It might be worthwhile to assume that Buds powers of description are competent, whatever your opinion of his theorizing. His descriptions are very exacting.
Gotta keep description and theory separate or the phenomenae will turn around and bite us in tender places.
Have to hang up puter behaving oddly
soongsc said:
I think then that you should re-read his posts. The applicability is clear to me.
First if it applies and I accept that it does, there will not be any substantial evidence. Quite the contrary, the fact that there is nothing in the data to support the specifics in the enabl claim is in keeping with the theory. Why would there be evidence of some influence that should not exist to any significant magnitude?
Yet you are willing to accept the hypothesis of undocumented, unsupported and unconventional physics based on perceptions by ear? Because that is ALL there is to date.
I only know that I'm not. Until there is substantiation, and so far there is none, I will accept the documented, supported and accepted conventional physics. Occam's Razor says it best.
Dave
Warning: :bs: below.
There is a substantial difference between NO molecular motion and the molecules do not move a significant distance.
You are confusing pressure forces applied to surfacers, etc with wave transmission across boundaries. Sound is very similar to light in that depending on the angle of incidence a wave of light will be reflected from the surface or transmitted into the new material. For light we have Snell's law which relates the reflected and transmitted components to the difference in the index of refraction of the two mediums. For sound we have an equivalent of Snell's laws based on the differences in acoustic impedance on each side of the interface. This is pretty standard stuff. But you won't find it in something like Beranek becuase Beranek is not a book on wave mechanics, acoustic or otherwise.
So apparently you agree that the acoustic boundary layer is irrelevant. Thus rather than use the term, boundary layer, mabe it would be clearer is we just called it what is, a material interface. Now we are back to arguing a well developed field of the transmission of acoustic wave between dissimilar materials with different acoustic impedances.
Fine, and yes the speed of sound in the cone can vary with frequency, although it makes little difference. If it varies the we have a dispersive medium.
The CAD and FR plots have shown that enable doesn't do much of anything to change that.
You discribe a lot of things that are more the way you would like them to be envisioned than they really are. It goes back to what I said about analysis, ask what the possibilities are, but then you have to embark on a path that assignes relavance to each. You are very good at providing lists of all types of possible actions, both real and imagined, but provide no insight as to whcih are significant and which are not.
These subjective observations are in direct contradiction to objective measurements. That doesn't means that subjectively there isn't a difference. It means you assessment of the subjective result is in error. If subectively to think you hear smoother FR but objectively the FR isn't smoother, where is the error? What ever you hear isn't smoother FR. Maybe something else, but not smoother FR. So the subjective conclusion can't be trusted.
Or perhaps this has nothing to do with what you hear at all.
What you have is evidence of altered FR, noting more. Of course, I can't stop you from spinning things anyway you choose.
Interstingly you have diverted the discussion away from the roll of enable in baffle diffraction and back to the driver.
As an aside, for consideration of what an acoustic BL does consider the problem of ultrasonic cleaning. I would assume that many of you have seen this in jewelry stores. The principle is simple: submerse a dirty item in a solution and then stimulate the solution with acoustic wave at high frequency. The resulting motion of the fluid particle (yes, molecular motion) impacts on the dirt particles and dislodges them from the surface. But why ultrasonic frequencies? Recall that in a previous post I indicated that the acoustic BL thickness varied a sqrt(1/f). The higher the frequency the thinner the BL. And if you looked at my crude animations you would noticed that when the acoustic BL is considered the motion of the fluid goes to zero at the surface. Thus, if we want to knock the dirt particles off the item the impact of the fluid particles on them would be greater outside the BL where the fluid particle velocity is greater. Thus we would like to dirt particles to protrude above the acoustic BL. The way to do that is to make the BL very thin by using very high, ultrasonic frequency.
BudP said:
There is a substantial difference between NO molecular motion and the molecules do not move a significant distance.
You are confusing pressure forces applied to surfacers, etc with wave transmission across boundaries. Sound is very similar to light in that depending on the angle of incidence a wave of light will be reflected from the surface or transmitted into the new material. For light we have Snell's law which relates the reflected and transmitted components to the difference in the index of refraction of the two mediums. For sound we have an equivalent of Snell's laws based on the differences in acoustic impedance on each side of the interface. This is pretty standard stuff. But you won't find it in something like Beranek becuase Beranek is not a book on wave mechanics, acoustic or otherwise.
So apparently you agree that the acoustic boundary layer is irrelevant. Thus rather than use the term, boundary layer, mabe it would be clearer is we just called it what is, a material interface. Now we are back to arguing a well developed field of the transmission of acoustic wave between dissimilar materials with different acoustic impedances.
Fine, and yes the speed of sound in the cone can vary with frequency, although it makes little difference. If it varies the we have a dispersive medium.
Unfortunately this is not the case. Just because the velocity of wave propagation in the cone is greater than that in air doesn't mean anything is chaotic. The radiated wave is very well defined and organized as long as the cone vibration is such. And let's stop taking about compression waves. We are dealing with periodic wave.
The CAD and FR plots have shown that enable doesn't do much of anything to change that.
You discribe a lot of things that are more the way you would like them to be envisioned than they really are. It goes back to what I said about analysis, ask what the possibilities are, but then you have to embark on a path that assignes relavance to each. You are very good at providing lists of all types of possible actions, both real and imagined, but provide no insight as to whcih are significant and which are not.
These subjective observations are in direct contradiction to objective measurements. That doesn't means that subjectively there isn't a difference. It means you assessment of the subjective result is in error. If subectively to think you hear smoother FR but objectively the FR isn't smoother, where is the error? What ever you hear isn't smoother FR. Maybe something else, but not smoother FR. So the subjective conclusion can't be trusted.
Or perhaps this has nothing to do with what you hear at all.
What you have is evidence of altered FR, noting more. Of course, I can't stop you from spinning things anyway you choose.
Interstingly you have diverted the discussion away from the roll of enable in baffle diffraction and back to the driver.
As an aside, for consideration of what an acoustic BL does consider the problem of ultrasonic cleaning. I would assume that many of you have seen this in jewelry stores. The principle is simple: submerse a dirty item in a solution and then stimulate the solution with acoustic wave at high frequency. The resulting motion of the fluid particle (yes, molecular motion) impacts on the dirt particles and dislodges them from the surface. But why ultrasonic frequencies? Recall that in a previous post I indicated that the acoustic BL thickness varied a sqrt(1/f). The higher the frequency the thinner the BL. And if you looked at my crude animations you would noticed that when the acoustic BL is considered the motion of the fluid goes to zero at the surface. Thus, if we want to knock the dirt particles off the item the impact of the fluid particles on them would be greater outside the BL where the fluid particle velocity is greater. Thus we would like to dirt particles to protrude above the acoustic BL. The way to do that is to make the BL very thin by using very high, ultrasonic frequency.
FrankWW said:
Nothing is wrong with that in isolation. There is a contradiction in that changes in frequency response on the order of 2-3db are not considered audible. A totally unacceptable premise as I see it. Utter and complete contradiction.
I would not call any of his descriptions exacting. They are at times meandering, verbose, contradictory and purely conjecture based on ears and hearsay. There's nothing scientific in evidence, yet the descriptions are attempts to be scientific. It is all counter to the science.
Dave
I have supported what I explain with test data. If we really want to find the relationship, I don't mind pulling out any explanations that I made in this thead with the associated data presented, if anyone is willing to do the same, then let's do it. You are the only other person in this thread that I see has done tests that show quite significant results, but these were not with any appropriate application that even ressemble EnABL, furhtermore, the material used does not even meet the criteria that was described very early in the discussion, "the pattern material must have a sound velocity faster than the cone". So I really don't see anything that has to do with the EnABL process.dlr said:
Re: Re: EnAB**
you clearly don't understand "blind" and "double blind" testing methodology" and controls. You seem to imply that adequate "blind" studies have been performed. They haven't, despite proponents claims to the contrary. Do some reading , apply rigourous standards, and report back.
John L.
Alex from Oz said:
you clearly don't understand "blind" and "double blind" testing methodology" and controls. You seem to imply that adequate "blind" studies have been performed. They haven't, despite proponents claims to the contrary. Do some reading , apply rigourous standards, and report back.
John L.
There are lots of ways to accomplish results in a similar fasion as EnABL, but talking about other methods really are off-topic.
I donlt know that Bud thinks about off topic issues, but I always was under the impression that people would share experiences with the EnABL pattern and figure out ways to bring the most out of it in a productive manner.
I donlt know that Bud thinks about off topic issues, but I always was under the impression that people would share experiences with the EnABL pattern and figure out ways to bring the most out of it in a productive manner.
soongsc said:
Nothing in the data you presented is supporting in any way of any sort of boundary layer issue nor any others of the original claims in the early posts of the thread. Quite, the contrary, until I pointed out the discrepancies between the claim of no alteration of FR and the clear alteration of it in your own measurements, everyone just glibly accepted the contradictory statements.
My data shows what happens with distribute added mass and correlates to what one would expect with ANY added mass, including that of the enabl treatment. If that added mass can change the FR, now proven that it does, then there is no way to separate the FR influence from any other in the test data as presented to date.
Dave
This is true if one assumes the driver is ideally linear, which in reality is far from being linear.dlr said:
However, the alternation of the FR is in no way associated with the change in phase. Therefore is explained in relation with boundary layer or separation.
Anyway, I post patterns that resemble the EnABL patterns and only modify with the reasoning explained.
I would ask about the weight of your dots if it ressembled the EnABL pattern.
The first sonic change I noticed in my freshly EnABL'd speakers was the impression that the sound (listened to at about 30° off axis) no longer came from the middle of the driver, but from about 2 feet behind it. I can't see how FR / damping effects can explain that. (nb This effect was evident blinded, and in my keyboard combo driver as well as my Fostexes).
Can any of you scientific types explain how this effect might be caused? At least 3 people have reported it in similar terms.
Can any of you scientific types explain how this effect might be caused? At least 3 people have reported it in similar terms.
This is what I normally experience every time I increase the decay rate of CSD. If there is a particular note that is on a resonant point, then that point would lose depth.Alan Hope said:
soongsc said:
Drivers ARE linear devices and minimum-phase with the exception of the motor non-linearity for any reasonable purposes.
But I must assume, then, that you do not use any CAD software to design and simply work by ear or trial-and-error testing, because essentially all CAD software works on the basis that drivers are linear devices and minimum-phase. In addition, I have always found excellent correlation between raw measurements and the CAD crossover results. The only area where this might not be quite as close would be between low and very high outputs.
If you compared non-enabled and enable response at different test signal levels, your test methodology is flawed.
Baloney. A driver with ANY added mass is still a minimum-phase device. The phase and FR, if testing is done correctly, will always be related by the Hilbert-Bode Transform. There is error in your testing if you found otherwise.
Dave
Re: Re: Re: EnAB**
I make no implication about adequate blind studies.
It seems to me that people who argue most vigorously against EnABL in this thread have not actually listened to an EnABL’d driver.
Have you actually listened to a properly EnABL’d driver?
auplater said:
I make no implication about adequate blind studies.
It seems to me that people who argue most vigorously against EnABL in this thread have not actually listened to an EnABL’d driver.
Have you actually listened to a properly EnABL’d driver?
This is a most interesting thread to read as I find a lot of hot air being blown around. There would seem to me to be a reasonable and rational approach to this problem. Briefly:
1.) Have the two obvious sides both COOPERATE on a double blind listening test (e.g. everyone agree to methodology, etc.). Repeated and statistically accurate.
2.) Jointly analyze the results and try to determine the mechanisms that might be involved - BL or no.
3.) Start to analyze the data thus far gathered and determine what other data and studies need to be gathered or done.
4.) Do those studies jointly and analyze them together.
5.) Keep an open and creative mind toward possible explanations - all great scientific discoveries I can think of have required a very creative thought process that diverges in some way from the conventional wisdom. Otherwise it isn't a great discovery! (Yeah, I understand those are backed by lots of hard work, but the discovery process doesn't happen without someone being open minded.)
6.) The most important step: Sit down together and have a beer in front of an operating EnABLed system and laugh about all the silly arguments that have been made and repeated with little or no progress - and just enjoy the music. As far as I'm concerned, that is, after all, what it's all about.
I find it strange how people who claim to be so objective can't seem to get beyond the emotions and judgements that FILL this thread. I for one am an eeensy bit tired of all the rhetoric. Time for me to play around with these ideas. I don't care if there's an explanation or not if I like what I hear.
Carl
1.) Have the two obvious sides both COOPERATE on a double blind listening test (e.g. everyone agree to methodology, etc.). Repeated and statistically accurate.
2.) Jointly analyze the results and try to determine the mechanisms that might be involved - BL or no.
3.) Start to analyze the data thus far gathered and determine what other data and studies need to be gathered or done.
4.) Do those studies jointly and analyze them together.
5.) Keep an open and creative mind toward possible explanations - all great scientific discoveries I can think of have required a very creative thought process that diverges in some way from the conventional wisdom. Otherwise it isn't a great discovery! (Yeah, I understand those are backed by lots of hard work, but the discovery process doesn't happen without someone being open minded.)
6.) The most important step: Sit down together and have a beer in front of an operating EnABLed system and laugh about all the silly arguments that have been made and repeated with little or no progress - and just enjoy the music. As far as I'm concerned, that is, after all, what it's all about.
I find it strange how people who claim to be so objective can't seem to get beyond the emotions and judgements that FILL this thread. I for one am an eeensy bit tired of all the rhetoric. Time for me to play around with these ideas. I don't care if there's an explanation or not if I like what I hear.
Carl
Carl,
I agree.
I think the best way forward is for ALL protagonists to listen to an EnABL'd driver and then argue the science behind what EnABL does or does not do and the processes involved.
I posted this earlier, it is a reversable way to try EnABL:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116773&highlight=
Let us know what you 'hear'.
Cheers,
Alex
I agree.
I think the best way forward is for ALL protagonists to listen to an EnABL'd driver and then argue the science behind what EnABL does or does not do and the processes involved.
I posted this earlier, it is a reversable way to try EnABL:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116773&highlight=
Let us know what you 'hear'.
Cheers,
Alex
Carlp,
There is a standing offer to provide stock and EnABLed drivers to anyone who will seriously pursue testing. Months ago MLKxzxxx and others were to do this but it frazzled out. The people using 'science' to discredit Bud and the rest of us, refuse to listen to EnABLed drivers for some reason known only to them. JohnK purportedly ran extensive tests but has declined to reveal all the results...You are beating a very tired horse. I suggest you try it yourself. Any questions concerning materials and methodology will be cheerfully answered. There are many more people happy with their EnABLed drivers than post here. Many prefer to remain out of the scathing condemnation heaped on by people too lazy to simply experiment themselves. Good Luck and enjoy the music, revealed more clearly with EnABL. Extensive testing will not change the outcome...
t (Richard)
There is a standing offer to provide stock and EnABLed drivers to anyone who will seriously pursue testing. Months ago MLKxzxxx and others were to do this but it frazzled out. The people using 'science' to discredit Bud and the rest of us, refuse to listen to EnABLed drivers for some reason known only to them. JohnK purportedly ran extensive tests but has declined to reveal all the results...You are beating a very tired horse. I suggest you try it yourself. Any questions concerning materials and methodology will be cheerfully answered. There are many more people happy with their EnABLed drivers than post here. Many prefer to remain out of the scathing condemnation heaped on by people too lazy to simply experiment themselves. Good Luck and enjoy the music, revealed more clearly with EnABL. Extensive testing will not change the outcome...
t (Richard)
1. Obviously you had not read the thread regarding my previous tests to suggest that test signal levels are different.dlr said:
2. Regarding FR and Phase, I was referring to my initial series of tests. I do not see any relation between the shifting of phase and the FR change. John K thought there might be a change in distance which I already explained my procedure.
3. Drivers are "assumed" to be linear devices for the purpose of simplifying the design process with acceptable results. This is common practice throughout engineering. For information about non-linearity, please read Mr. Klippel's papers explaining driver non-linearity.
I certainly don't know what CAD has to do with this. So I would rather discuss this in another thread if you wish. But not here. If anyone is using CAD software in analyze the EnABL pattern, then I would be interested. However, I know of no CAD software that can do this fully.
t-head said:
This would prove absolutely nothing. To point out (again), adding distributed mass, as is the case for enabl and regardless of any other possible effects, the FR will change. At least that's now accepted as a given. Since there is a demonstrated change in the FR, no amount of auditioning will be able to differentiate the change in perception due to the proven change in the FR and any other mechanisms hypothesized. It's a test that cannot prove what is desired.
Add to that the contradiction of supposedly easily detectable differences that are 20db down or more, but no audible differences for FR changes 2-3db in level. Each time this is pointed out, there's silence. All I can do is make the observation that as has repeatedly been the case, glaring contradictions are ignored.
Dave
Thanks, Alex and Richard. What I think is most important is that there be agreement about how to proceed, then take all of this obvious passion and direct it toward that mutually agreed upon approach. But as I said, I won't be investing any time in that pursuit as I frankly don't care. I'm very interested in trying it for myself, and I don't have any preconceived notions about any tweaks, as I tend to be fairly objective about audio equipment (with the exception that since I work for a non-profit, I DO bias toward the CHEAP and DIY!). I just want to find what I like.
I did see your reversible approach, Alex, and will probably start with that (though it doesn't sound simple...). Thanks for reposting the link.
Which brings up a much more important question for me. Anyone know of a digest version of this thread with the key DIY posts ID'ed? Or a website with the key points? I suspect there might be a lot of folks willing to try this but for this long and often not very useful thread.
Carl
I did see your reversible approach, Alex, and will probably start with that (though it doesn't sound simple...). Thanks for reposting the link.
Which brings up a much more important question for me. Anyone know of a digest version of this thread with the key DIY posts ID'ed? Or a website with the key points? I suspect there might be a lot of folks willing to try this but for this long and often not very useful thread.
Carl
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