The dome midrange thread

A friend of mine built himself a couple of full-range speakers, one per speaker, quite expensive drivers. He was very proud of them and the way they sounded. He is a bit older, around 55-57 years old. On my recommendation, he also did some tests adding 2 tweeters cut very high above 8Khz. Although he doesn't hear anything coming from the tweeters when he only has the tweeters connected, he immediately recognizes when the tweeters are connected and when not to the full speaker.
In the end he chose two better supertweeters which he attached to the speakers because he had the boxes completed. The supertweeters are connected through a 1st order filter made of a capacitor and maybe a resistor.
 
It is interesting how little a tweeter seems to be doing when you listen to it by itself, but then how much is missing from the sound when you don't include it with the other drivers. Also interesting is how bad a good tweeter can seem to sound if the lower frequencies aren't being produced well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: friendly1uk
https://www.audioholics.com/tower-speaker-reviews/yamaha-ns-2000a

1737490839136.png


A large waveguide in a narrow cabinet!
 
A large waveguide in a narrow cabinet!
Very interesting. Dome midranges live on! I see they didn't make any attempt to enclose the surround. I've been experimenting with that a little, and some initial tests showed improved dispersion up to a certain point before a notch in the frequency response happens on my Dayton.
They also didn't try to smooth over the transition between the waveguide and the baffle. Just a cone with a nice, crisp edge.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Juhazi
I've been pondering making a phase plug for my Dayton 2" aluminum dome. To visualize how the waves come off a dome surfaced piston I used Falstad's ripple tank simulator.
https://www.falstad.com/ripple/

He doesn't include an option for curved radiating surfaces, so I drew a circle and then decorated a segment of it's surface with about 15 point sources, as evenly as I could get them across it's surface. I think this does a good job, and shows the narrowing dispersion at higher frequencies. What it seems to be suggesting is that for higher frequencies there is no good way to make a phase plug that will actually result in a spherical wave front with smooth dispersion. That, in turn, means that if a narrower flare horn is used, there are going to be dispersion problems without a phase plug, and the phase plug is going to be upper frequenc limited because of the 2" diameter, so there's an upper limit to how narrow the horn flare can be while still getting smooth dispersion at higher frequencies.

The simulation suggests that the best thing to do is to get the walls of the horn/waveguide close to the radiating surface, and make the horn fairly wide flare, like 90 degrees. So that means a "phase plug" can be as simple as closing down on the driver just enough to cover the surround, and use a conical flare rate of 45 degrees. One potential concern is a resonance forming in the small enclosed space covering the surround. I suppose a little venting in there and maybe some absoprtion could mitigate any issue there.

I was going to buy a 3D printer to build a phase plug, but it looks like it's not needed. Or, if a good phase plug for this driver could actually be made, I don't know how to do it. The 3D printer could still be useful in making a throat adapter. But I might be able to do it with wood about as easily.

The let down here is that I don't see a way to smoothly improve the dispersion at higher frequencies. I can only control the dispersion at lower frequencies, and not much narrower than to 90 degrees, and get a little loading efficiency benefits near it's lower frequency limit from the waveguide.
 
Last edited:
Thinking about a dome, it has occurred to me that a spherical surface like that should launch a spherical section wave. So it shouldn't beam up top. But domes do because they move pistonically rather than expanding and contracting spherically. So that got me wondering what an angled surface on a piston creates. As far as I can conceptualize, a sound wave will still launch off perpendicular to the surface. What goes wrong with a dome is the fact that the center of the dome is most perpendicular to the pistonic action of the driver, so it's louder than the sound coming off the sides. And since a center section of a dome is relatively flatter than the entire curve of the dome, the high frequencies get focused forward. To make the dome driver create a spherical wave front up at high frequencies and maintain dispersion, the center needs to be less efficient, or the edges need to be more efficient. This efficiency change must somehow be accomplished without warping the wave front in the process. One idea that occured to me is to drill small holes into the dome near it's center, and gradually decrease the number of holes per area away from the center. This should decrease the efficieny of the driver in the center by making the membrane more leaky there. What other undesirable effects might come out of this, besides the obvious loss in efficiency, I can't say for certain.

Nobody is putting holes in their domes as far as I can tell. If it worked as I imagine, there'd be a drooping top end on axis that would match the drooping top end off axis. It could be EQ'd back up, but I could see why that kind of on-axis performance might be a hard sell. Would it be worth it to have a single driver with good dispersion from say 600 Hz up to 10 kHz or more? Do we even want dispersion to stay wide up that high?
 
Actually most "normal" people like smiley loudness-like on-axis response more than flat. They don't play loud either.

Since this is a Yamaha, there is no scientology or accident hiding! I bet they did this on purpose. NS-5000 is voiced differently.

https://www.audioholics.com/tower-speaker-reviews/yamaha-ns-5000
View attachment 1411097

I had the great fortune of being able to listen to the Yamaha NS-5000 speakers last August whilst visiting my home town, by the gentleman @Al.M , who first introduced me to speaker building 2 decades ago

It’s was to fault this speaker- tonal balance the top to bottom was just right and wide dynamic range, suitable for for all kinds of music.

Future classic, no doubt.
 
Is it me or this does not measure $8k great?
No, it's not just you. The big dip in the mids centered between 2 - 2.5 k along with the rapidly changing vertical directivity peaking at 5k makes these speakers sound too upper midrange forward. Comparing this to more expensive B&W, which also tend to measure poorly, the directivity change in the upper mids isn't placed in a benign frequency range. Most higher end B&Ws however are crossed in the mid 3 -4 k, right where the ear is more sensitive. This chosen crossover works better because of the ear's loudness curve centered around 3 - 4 k. A dip in this range sounds pleasant and relaxed, especially with louder music. This is a reason why many B&Ws sound good at higher SPLs, plus they can be tuned with toe-in or out at the listening position. This theory doesn't work with the Yamahas due to the suboptimal 5k directivity jump and unpleasant lower midrange wandering scoop. ListenIng above the tweeter axis helps but indicates poor crossover phase response throughout the entire mids. The average elevated 5k gives a false sense of detail and makes it difficult to listen to most contemporary style music.
 
Last edited: