The Whole Truth About Beryllium Diaphragms

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jump to Latest
#84
doug20 said:
The discussions and people involved would be very enlightening.
Click to expand...

I think that the realities of audio would be more of a disppointment than an enlightenment.

I have lunch with my friend regularly and we talk audio. Its very disappointing to see where the industry is going, how it has gone down hill for years. How sound quality is all but irrelavent in the marketplace and how its all about marketing and distribution. Its about what consumers want and sound quality isn't big on the list. Its a fashion driven industry where flash and glitz sells (like Be diaphragms.) If I weren't trapped in this industry I would be somewhere else. Its not like it used to be, its very sad.
 
#85
gedlee said:
I think that the realities of audio would be more of a disppointment than an enlightenment.
Click to expand...
Not only in audio field, but business in general.

In my electronics education, we had a class on writing technical documents. A very small portion of this class included marketing documents. Our first assignment was about misleading the customer/reader. I can only imagine what kind of practises might be taught if I went to an entire course on marketing.
 
#87
Re: Re: Be or not to Be

doug20 said:



lol, Its cool to read the other side but to me Usher should just stop marketing with the term Be?

If they acknowledge the speaker performs great without Be then just come clean, apologize and remove it from all documentation.

Mr. Mowry's claim is a simple one and its based on false advertising which Usher still seems to commit...sigh.
Click to expand...
This is the point that reveals an interesting story:
"5. Usher has obtained one of the ¡§pure¡¨ or ¡§legitimate¡¨ Be drivers offered by one of the manufacturers Mr. Mowry endorses, and had it tested for material content. The result: it turned out the diaphragm contained less than 14% Beryllium. Our point: it would appear that even the diaphragms Mr. Mowry suggests are made of pure Beryllium are, in fact, alloys of one sort or another.
"

In the past, Mr. Mowry had been inquired about the capability of some software shown on his web site, to make things short, there was never a straight answer when it came to some of the critical aspects. Sort of "danced around" the issues.
 
#89
Robh3606 said:
"During my search for data on beryllium based driver/speaker performance"

Hello Soongsc

In case you missed this we have measurements for the JBL K2 drivers over at Lansing Heritage. The 045be is a horn loaded compression driver and goes out to 40K+ Definately a "bat killer"

Rob🙂

http://www.audioheritage.org/html/projectmay/data/factory-measure.htm
Click to expand...
Talk about 40KHz, this one goes pretty high as well, and much better sensitivity when equalized.

This is what I consider a bat killer.
 

Attachments

  • commercial super tweeter.gif
    commercial super tweeter.gif
    18.9 KB · Views: 363
#90
Its very disappointing to see where the industry is going, how it has gone down hill for years. How sound quality is all but irrelavent in the marketplace and how its all about marketing and distribution. Its about what consumers want and sound quality isn't big on the list. Its a fashion driven industry where flash and glitz sells (like Be diaphragms.) If I weren't trapped in this industry I would be somewhere else. Its not like it used to be, its very sad.
Click to expand...

this might be true for the main stream audio industry, where profit is all what counts. In that case, the consumer is getting, what he wants, and what he deserves. And there are also enough people around, which know it better than TAS, and Stereophile, and stick around at DIY audio, and build their gear by their own, at a fraction of the cost of industry products, and in many cases, with excellent results. We had never so many speakers and raw parts, we could choose from, of all kind and sort of. Knowledge was also never easyer obtainable. Thanks the internet. So this are glory times.
 
#91
gedlee said:


I think that the realities of audio would be more of a disppointment than an enlightenment.

I have lunch with my friend regularly and we talk audio. Its very disappointing to see where the industry is going, how it has gone down hill for years. How sound quality is all but irrelavent in the marketplace and how its all about marketing and distribution. Its about what consumers want and sound quality isn't big on the list. Its a fashion driven industry where flash and glitz sells (like Be diaphragms.) If I weren't trapped in this industry I would be somewhere else. Its not like it used to be, its very sad.
Click to expand...
Earl, you make it sound like there is no hope. I think this is an opportunity to differentiate and focus on specific consumers that are willing to pay for what others cannot provide.
 
#93
Zilchlab,

Thanks for the kind words 🙁
It is a personal, subjective opinion based on almost 40 years experience in consumer audio, professional audio and sound recording.
The NS1000 let me hear easily into the recording, sounds great in my not very large room, delivers an open window into the musical event.
If that is not enough, check some physics and see that beryllium is easily the best in terms of mass and stiffness.
That is not a guarantee for a good loudspeaker but Yamaha did a very good job with the NS1000. Over 150.000 pairs were made over a period of almost twenty years. Please come up with a loudspeaker of comparable pedigree!!
Right at this forum you can find NS1000 threads of people (re)discovering the qualities.

Earl,

Please come up with examples of real breakthrough loudspeaker developments.
I mean transducer technology, not acoustic matters.

Pieter
 
#94
angeloitacare said:


this might be true for the main stream audio industry, where profit is all what counts. In that case, the consumer is getting, what he wants, and what he deserves. And there are also enough people around, which know it better than TAS, and Stereophile, and stick around at DIY audio, and build their gear by their own, at a fraction of the cost of industry products, and in many cases, with excellent results. We had never so many speakers and raw parts, we could choose from, of all kind and sort of. Knowledge was also never easyer obtainable. Thanks the internet. So this are glory times.
Click to expand...

From that perspective I would agree. But the DIY speaker business isn't doing that well these days and so that matket is in trouble too. I was mostly refering to the grand days of Hi-Fi where sound quality really mattered.
 
#95
soongsc said:

Earl, you make it sound like there is no hope. I think this is an opportunity to differentiate and focus on specific consumers that are willing to pay for what others cannot provide.
Click to expand...

No, I think that there is hope, but first some sanity has to come back to the market. The market was seriuosly hurt by the scams of cables and the like and many people got burned. Now no one trusts audio and everybody really believes that "its what you like that counts" and they like whats cheap and sounds "good enough". It may change, but for now "good enough" rules.
 
#96
pieter t said:

Earl,

Please come up with examples of real breakthrough loudspeaker developments.
I mean transducer technology, not acoustic matters.

Pieter
Click to expand...

But its not about the transducers, its the acoustics that matters - recognition of that alone is revolutionary. The transducers are basically a commodity, they aren't going to get any better, because those things don't really matter in the big picture of sound quality. The acoustics problems are all that matters anymore - they are not correctable with electronics, they tend not to be fashionable, they have to encompass the entire design including the room and placement, but they make all the difference. Your Yamaha drivers were revolutionary and state-of-the-art when they came out. Today you can buy a comparable driver in China for about $20, $30 tops, with the Be diaphragm (or something close enough).
 
#97
gedlee said:
Today you can buy a comparable driver in China for about $20, $30 tops, with the Be diaphragm (or something close enough).
Click to expand...

That is a very bold statement. Or you don't know the NS1000 (in which case it would be a careless statement). The Yamaha beryllium tweeter does start to roll off early-ish. But the magic of this a speaker is the beryllium mid-range unit. It is an extremely detailed and low distortion unit, built with a bigger magnet than most woofers and with excellent build quality. Please give me some leads to suppliers who can do this one for $20-$30!
 
#98
Your taking my point a little too litterally, but I'll stand behind it. I could have a clone of the Yamaha driver built that measured the same and was indistinguishable in a blind listening test made in China for, seriously, about $30. A B&C DE250 clone, about $15. Boke Audio in Guanzhou comes to mind, but there just one in a sea of loudspeaker companies in China. You'd have to buy about 1000 to get this price, but the design isn't a problem at all. Magnets are magenets and flux is flux. Once you get the maximum in the gap its capped out, magnet type doesn't matter. Diaphragms are about $2.50, in Titanium (or even Be at a premium), with voice coil attached from Aton in Bangkok - they make most of the worlds compression driver diaphragms these days. The rest of your data is subjective.

I'm sorry, but drivers these days are pretty much a commodity. I can get one made to any spec at any number of suppliers. I'd have to design it of course because none of those suppleiers has an engineer who could do it.

In case you don't know it a study was done comparing an identical design speaker system (but optimized for the transducers) using mega buck TADs and off the shelf B&Cs. In a blind listening test of some 20 listeners the results were indeterminate, there was no clear winner. But one speaker would cost almost five times as much as the other. Now of course if the listeners could have seen those gorgeous TADs the results would have been completely different I assure you.

Just ask Steve Mowry! our tireless thread starter. Does Aton make good diaphragms and Voice Coils? Could they do one in Be? Kind of a no brainer I think.
 
#99
gedlee said:


I think that the realities of audio would be more of a disppointment than an enlightenment.

I have lunch with my friend regularly and we talk audio. Its very disappointing to see where the industry is going, how it has gone down hill for years. How sound quality is all but irrelavent in the marketplace and how its all about marketing and distribution. Its about what consumers want and sound quality isn't big on the list. Its a fashion driven industry where flash and glitz sells (like Be diaphragms.) If I weren't trapped in this industry I would be somewhere else. Its not like it used to be, its very sad.
Click to expand...

Very interesting point of view.

Maybe the commercial side is going that way but DIY is incredible simply because we have sites like this one with worldly (litterly) experience and input.
 
#100
From ZaphAudio:
Steve Mowry, a well known consultant in the speaker industry, has been a proponent of what he considers to be "pure" or "real" beryllium diaphragms all while pointing out what he considers fake based on a percentage of beryllium content. He's recently raised some additional awareness by writing and widely distributing a document called THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT BERYLLIUM DIAPHRAGMS.

Steve's paper points out what he considers are manufacturers using "fake" beryllium. Tangband uses a copper and beryllium alloy that has less than 2% beryllium content. Usher uses a dome manufactured by a company called Sonic that is primarily Titanium with less than 1% beryllium content. I don't doubt that those numbers are true. Steve throws around terms like counterfeit and fraudulent, and even goes so far as to invent new material names of Bogusium and Deceptium. I think this is very unprofessional behavior, especially when you consider that Steve's got his own products that use high beryllium content diaphragms. His paper reads like an advertisement for Brush Wellman, a beryllium foil manufacturer. A direct and accurate quote, he says "Brush Wellman Electrofusion Products’ Truextent® is simply the “best” diaphragm material on the planet." It's obvious Steve has a vested interest in Brush Wellman products and/or pure beryllium diaphragms and this article should not be held as any sort of definitive text whatsoever. It's interesting, one sided reading and nothing more. Steve has had some great and informative articles in the past, many of which I have read, but this recent article is commercially driven in a sickening way.

Tangband and Usher are not evil companies. They both make some great products, regardless of how their marketing departments play the beryllium card.

Mowry's article was not really about performance but about claims that he thinks were deceptive in nature. The problem is that most of us in DIY land don't care about "claims". We're smart enough to care only about overall driver performance and price. So far none of us have seen that use of a pure beryllium diaphragm could offer anything other than a higher driver price. Anyone can rattle off Young's modulus and tensile strength for a given material. Some of the best performing traditional dome tweeters are coated fabric, and obviously extreme material properties were not part of the equation to reach that level.

I'll withhold final judgment of beryllium as a diaphragm material until I get some more experience with it. Until then I hold a healthy case of skepticism. I've extensively tested pairs of drivers where the only difference between them was the diaphragm material. Aluminum or titanium has not been proven to be better than a fiber or fabric based diaphragm, just different in the set of tradeoffs that an individual may or may not favor. Likewise, I wouldn't expect beryllium to pose much difference over aluminum or titanium provided the diaphragm geometry is optimized for the particular material used. I've got a Yamaha beryllium tweeter on the way for testing. It's the model pictured on the first page of Mowry's article. This may not really answer all (or any) questions but it will be interesting to look at.
Click to expand...

A lot of what has already been stated has been recapped by Zaph, but in addition to that he has a real deal Be tweeter to be tested so we can see some real results! Exiting stuff!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom