dlr said:
I've not yet treated baffles. It is in the queue.
Still, everytime i set up or do a demo, i worry, "is this real, are they going to hear what i have heard... or is it in my imagination" (ie those little rust spots can't make that much difference can they?
After at least some 20 instances with no result that didn't reaffirm, i am starting to relax just a bit. And enuff of those were blind, and the reactions immediate and visible in the body language, that i'm pretty sure i'm not hallucinating or that results are due to pre-suggestion.
dave
planet10 said:
That's fully in keeping with what I said, some the same, some different. Of course, they were to expect differences and I'm sure that they would be expecting improvement, otherwise you wouldn't have provided them. So they should be predisposed to hear improvements. That's also in keeping with what I've said. Unless you would go through the effort to send them something that you believe might be inferior, but I doubt that. They were enabled drivers, right?
I still don't know if you discount all possibility of the placebo effect (baffles, not drivers), since that's where I really take issue. Perceptions of real changes (driver frequency response) vs. baffles (no change, just predisposition through power of suggestion).
Dave
planet10 said:
I take it that I'm the unknown 😀
Several reansons have contributed to my indecision.
First of all I must admit that really paying attention to the differences of right vs left channel on my setup has revealed a difference not relating to the speakers. As it turns out this was also true at at friends setup that I tried to tell the difference on. This has the positive effect that we are now both trying to figure out how to fix this.
RL have a way of slowing things down but I did manage to order some microscale gloss this weekend and it should now be in the mail.
Oh, if there is any of you guys that know where to find a volume potentiometer for my fisher 400c please let me know ... OK? 😀
planet10 said:
Sure they sound different. I'm not sure why you keep going there. If all audition the same driver, perceptions may be similar. The claim is always that these same perceptive differences apply to all drivers modified (not necessarily by you). I reject that claim out-of-hand.
Most people modifying their own drivers are doing so due to the claims and a desire to get the same results and put their own drivers at risk, therefore they are predisposed to accept the descriptions. Many believe it a priori.
Dave
planet10 said:
I'll do my own boxes. Simple sealed boxes should be good to about 125 Hz. Who's going to do the enabling? You or Bud?
dlr
Frequency response, in a general sense of the overall shape of a drivers individual frequency response provides the drivers "characteristic" response. Changes in FR a few hundred Hz wide add or remove an emphasis, within the octaves a particular musical instrument provides. Unless these changes are dramatic, most casual listeners ignore them, thinking they are just another applied emphasis by the person operating the instrument. Removal of these peaks and valleys is a good thing, usually. EnABL does appear to remove some, aggravate others and cause a slightly quicker decay, after artificial stimulation by a sharp transient signal, but in a general sense the overall frequency response is still intact. Those narrow bands of change are what you, in your research focus upon and to good effect.
Both of these frequency response areas are unrelated to what EnABL provides, in the same subjective sense, where the narrow bands of improvement you refer to. do apply. The changes EnABL brings, to the perceived sound, will be of the same nature and of the same quantity, regardless of the lack or addition of narrow bandwidth changes in the FR. They do not depend upon a change in FR to effect their "improvement". EnABL does not affect the general FR of a driver, regardless of how many very small changes you can point out, it does affect the information content and the level of coherent information content, across the dynamic range and across the frequency range, of every single driver but one, I have treated. In addition, it provides the same lack of driver emission specificity, baffle location specificity and removal of frequency dependent lobes that provide uneven sound fields and comb filtering, between two baffles as the listening position is changed, on all of the systems treated by me, to date.
I am not in anyway saying that FR is unimportant. I am not denigrating your focus upon narrow bands of FR that are flattened out. I am not criticizing attempts to flatten overall frequency response, or shorten decay times. These are all great areas to look into, with great benefits available. I cannot say that a perfectly flat, with great decay characteristics driver would respond to EnABL I can say that for anything other than an EV TH 350, EnABL has provided the very same characteristic changes in information I noted above. I have never claimed an improvement in some nebuluos group of "better" performance characteristics.
EnABL improves LOW LEVEL COHERENCE of both direct instrument notes, their decay, the resonances that arise within the body of the instrument and the reverberation of all those within a recorded space. It also provides a perception of even dynamic response, across the FR bandwidth, across a very wide included angle, usually determined by the angle of the drivers surfaces. And for dome drivers this is very close to 180 degrees, though for tweeter domes, with short horn loaded steps the highest frequencies angle of dispersion is controlled by the front plate shape. No doubt that all changes in FR change our individual responses to a driver, but EnABL provides this coherency regardless of how the frequency response is altered and to the same relative degree, with the one noted exception.
This coherence is made up of time corrections and a lack of "masking" from emitted signals that are no longer coherent to the signal, in such a manner as to be discarded as "information", by our correlator. Instead what is being generated, with ANY alterations provided by changes in distributed mass, just arrive within the time envelope, in a much more deeply ordered array, than without the EnABL pattern. It is not a frequency response dependent event.
Bud
Frequency response, in a general sense of the overall shape of a drivers individual frequency response provides the drivers "characteristic" response. Changes in FR a few hundred Hz wide add or remove an emphasis, within the octaves a particular musical instrument provides. Unless these changes are dramatic, most casual listeners ignore them, thinking they are just another applied emphasis by the person operating the instrument. Removal of these peaks and valleys is a good thing, usually. EnABL does appear to remove some, aggravate others and cause a slightly quicker decay, after artificial stimulation by a sharp transient signal, but in a general sense the overall frequency response is still intact. Those narrow bands of change are what you, in your research focus upon and to good effect.
Both of these frequency response areas are unrelated to what EnABL provides, in the same subjective sense, where the narrow bands of improvement you refer to. do apply. The changes EnABL brings, to the perceived sound, will be of the same nature and of the same quantity, regardless of the lack or addition of narrow bandwidth changes in the FR. They do not depend upon a change in FR to effect their "improvement". EnABL does not affect the general FR of a driver, regardless of how many very small changes you can point out, it does affect the information content and the level of coherent information content, across the dynamic range and across the frequency range, of every single driver but one, I have treated. In addition, it provides the same lack of driver emission specificity, baffle location specificity and removal of frequency dependent lobes that provide uneven sound fields and comb filtering, between two baffles as the listening position is changed, on all of the systems treated by me, to date.
I am not in anyway saying that FR is unimportant. I am not denigrating your focus upon narrow bands of FR that are flattened out. I am not criticizing attempts to flatten overall frequency response, or shorten decay times. These are all great areas to look into, with great benefits available. I cannot say that a perfectly flat, with great decay characteristics driver would respond to EnABL I can say that for anything other than an EV TH 350, EnABL has provided the very same characteristic changes in information I noted above. I have never claimed an improvement in some nebuluos group of "better" performance characteristics.
EnABL improves LOW LEVEL COHERENCE of both direct instrument notes, their decay, the resonances that arise within the body of the instrument and the reverberation of all those within a recorded space. It also provides a perception of even dynamic response, across the FR bandwidth, across a very wide included angle, usually determined by the angle of the drivers surfaces. And for dome drivers this is very close to 180 degrees, though for tweeter domes, with short horn loaded steps the highest frequencies angle of dispersion is controlled by the front plate shape. No doubt that all changes in FR change our individual responses to a driver, but EnABL provides this coherency regardless of how the frequency response is altered and to the same relative degree, with the one noted exception.
This coherence is made up of time corrections and a lack of "masking" from emitted signals that are no longer coherent to the signal, in such a manner as to be discarded as "information", by our correlator. Instead what is being generated, with ANY alterations provided by changes in distributed mass, just arrive within the time envelope, in a much more deeply ordered array, than without the EnABL pattern. It is not a frequency response dependent event.
Bud
John K,
It will not matter which of us does the patterns. We just have to keep Dave from providing his own very worthwhile mass loading, surface alteration scheme. I might have some influence.
The Fonken boxes with resistive ports, will be important. They will allow you to also observe what EnABL provides, in frequencies below 100 Hz, and these are just as important and are altered in the same fashion as frequencies above 100 Hz. You certainly can build your own boxes, to eliminate these frequencies, but you should be aware of them, first hand.
I would also strongly suggest listening, and testing that seems pertinent to them when nude on a pedestal, without any sort of baffle.
Bud
It will not matter which of us does the patterns. We just have to keep Dave from providing his own very worthwhile mass loading, surface alteration scheme. I might have some influence.
The Fonken boxes with resistive ports, will be important. They will allow you to also observe what EnABL provides, in frequencies below 100 Hz, and these are just as important and are altered in the same fashion as frequencies above 100 Hz. You certainly can build your own boxes, to eliminate these frequencies, but you should be aware of them, first hand.
I would also strongly suggest listening, and testing that seems pertinent to them when nude on a pedestal, without any sort of baffle.
Bud
john k... said:
Bud. I'll ship him 4 drivers -- new other than being on the breakin bench for 200 hours (or you, if you are going to characterize all 4 before Bud does a pair)
dave
BudP said:
It is ALL a frequency response dependent event (to include the power response) for any driver that is minimum-phase with the exception of the non-linear distortion profile.
The impulse response, the frequency response, the step response, the CSD, all are simply mathematical transformations of the same event. Given any one of them, all of the others can be derived.
This is pure nonsense.
Dave
Oh, yes, I do believe in the placebo syndrome (specially as proscribed by Parliament on Funkentelechy 🙂 ). In fact, frankly, I'm QUITE skeptical of the claims. I'm no scientist nor engineer (despite some training in both) but it just intuitively seems a bit unbelievable that such a seemingly insignificant change could create much of a noticeable effect.
But I'm sufficiently curious due to the extent of the hullabaloo that I want to try it out. I keep in mind that there are no shortage of "great" ideas out there, thus plenty of potential placebos. Few if any generate this level of response, much less positive. Besides, I'm just a curious guy.
Carl
I should be nude on a pedestal to properly listen to EnABL'ed drivers? OK, so now I'm REALLY skeptical (😉 )
CarlP.
You and the drivers can both be nude on pedestals, but only you are allowed to be baffled, and only some of the drivers are allowed to be spotted, by you or any other individual on a pedestal, visually or otherwise.
Bud
You and the drivers can both be nude on pedestals, but only you are allowed to be baffled, and only some of the drivers are allowed to be spotted, by you or any other individual on a pedestal, visually or otherwise.
Bud
I didn't read every post in this thread. has anyone compared phase response before and after mods?
http://www.timedomain.co.jp/tech/hifi02/hifi02_e.html#CHANGE
http://www.timedomain.co.jp/tech/hifi02/hifi02_e.html#CHANGE
Dave (dlr), I tried posting replies to you a couple of times but the browser ate them.
I think folk might be underestimating or just don't know about damping with layers.
PMMA, polymethlmethacrylate, which basically what you got when high quality acrylic paint dries, is pretty neat stuff:
SPECIFIC DENSITY: 1.16
ELONGATION (%): 48
TENSILE STRENGTH (psi): 7000
COMPRESSION STRENGTH (psi): 11500
FLEXURAL STRENGTH (psi): 10500
FLEXURAL MODULUS (psi): 310000
IMPACT (IZOD ft. lbs/in): 1.1
HARDNESS: R120
http://www.polymerweb.com/_datash/pmma.html
SPEED OF SOUND: ACRYLIC 2 870 m/s ACRYLIC RESIN 2 730 - 2870 m/s
http://www.bamr.co.za/velocity of materials.shtml
POISSON'S RATIO: about .3 to .4 depending on formulation.
And it's a terrific adhesive.
With clever distribution you may well get reasonable damping from its use in patterns on paper cones and and wooden panels. And perhaps without a very large application of mass.
If a person is lucky with their pattern(s) they might get, (accidently), an imperfect phononic crystal(s) and some serious, but not necessarily complete, bandgaps in the device's response. (You heard it here first 😉 .
If the device happens to be a radiating panel or diaphragm, the lucky experimenter feels like a winner because he got a big boost in quality of aural spacial and/or stereo illusion because he blew away a good chunk of noise.
I think Alex from Oz may be a sleeper. His enabl damper is a constrained layer: glue/cellulose/glue/aluminum, and scotch tape glue remains permanently tacky. He may be getting a good effect on his baffles but it might not have a whole lot to do directly with diffraction.
I think folk might be underestimating or just don't know about damping with layers.
PMMA, polymethlmethacrylate, which basically what you got when high quality acrylic paint dries, is pretty neat stuff:
SPECIFIC DENSITY: 1.16
ELONGATION (%): 48
TENSILE STRENGTH (psi): 7000
COMPRESSION STRENGTH (psi): 11500
FLEXURAL STRENGTH (psi): 10500
FLEXURAL MODULUS (psi): 310000
IMPACT (IZOD ft. lbs/in): 1.1
HARDNESS: R120
http://www.polymerweb.com/_datash/pmma.html
SPEED OF SOUND: ACRYLIC 2 870 m/s ACRYLIC RESIN 2 730 - 2870 m/s
http://www.bamr.co.za/velocity of materials.shtml
POISSON'S RATIO: about .3 to .4 depending on formulation.
And it's a terrific adhesive.
With clever distribution you may well get reasonable damping from its use in patterns on paper cones and and wooden panels. And perhaps without a very large application of mass.
If a person is lucky with their pattern(s) they might get, (accidently), an imperfect phononic crystal(s) and some serious, but not necessarily complete, bandgaps in the device's response. (You heard it here first 😉 .
If the device happens to be a radiating panel or diaphragm, the lucky experimenter feels like a winner because he got a big boost in quality of aural spacial and/or stereo illusion because he blew away a good chunk of noise.
I think Alex from Oz may be a sleeper. His enabl damper is a constrained layer: glue/cellulose/glue/aluminum, and scotch tape glue remains permanently tacky. He may be getting a good effect on his baffles but it might not have a whole lot to do directly with diffraction.
If the Enabl process were just a case of mass damping, wouldn't applying the pattern to the only back side have exactly the same affect as applying it only to the front side of a cone?
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