What is the worst malady of a loudspeaker?

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#43
SaSi said:
I feel that some may find the question controversial but the aim is benign, really.

I will list some of the problems that a designer has to face (at least some that I know of):

Low frequency extension:
Add subwoofers

flatness of frequency response:
Choose decent drivers - measure correctly and make a good filter - preferably active and digital.
Oh - and dont push the physical limits to far.

irregularities at crossover points:
Measure and understand what can and cant be done.

lobbing and dispersion:
Use a smaller midrange or a waveguide for a bigger one.

baffle step, enclosure resonances:
Build proper cabinets - it's not that hard.

port puffing:
Do closed boxes or do a really good ported one.

transducer distortion, cone breakup:
Not really a problem unless you try to push the limits to much, like making a small driver pump bass, pulling a 1" tweeter down to low or a midrange way up to high. Then use active filters and measure your problems to understand what to do about them.
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You had some simple questions - so I gave you some simple answers 😉

PS. Speakerbuilding is all about compromise. Stop thinking that you can get big sound from small speakers or that you can get away by "cheating" to much, when bending the rules of physics. But do take advantage of the very real problems and solutions of phycoacoustics 🙂
 
#45
andy19191 said:
This is not correct.

The on-axis response should ideally be flat but given what the combination of the off-axis response and the room may be doing improvements in perceived sound can often be found by moving away from a flat on-axis response. Dipoles are a common example.

The off-axis response should be smooth but claims for the correctness of constant directivity by it's many supporters tend not to be supported by listening tests. What seems to be the best compromise, perhaps not surprisingly, is to mimic in an averaged sense what musical instruments do and narrow the beamwidth with rising frequency. Both the width and the degree of narrowing are obviously influenced by the room, the recording and the listeners preference in terms of spaciousness.

There is a range of off-axis responses that can work well without there being a correct one. To have a correct one we would need the recording industry to take an interest in genuine sound quality and specify the degree and type of indirect sound to be included in the recording and what is expected from the speaker's interaction with the room.
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Relatively was a key word in my very short and thus oversimplified statement.
I don't think we disagree on this.
 
#48
picowallspeaker said:
We're trying to involve the world politics to embrace a common line in which the people excluded from the common wealth but aiming to reach a minimum target in their life, should have the right to access to basic nutrition.
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Well yeah - kinda. You still have to do some kind of work, if you do not have the money to pay someone else to do it.
If you have access to this site, then you also have access to find almost everything online.

So what do you want to build?
Start by having a dream - then learn how to make a priority and then sit down and make a plan. A plan than works backwards to find out what you really need and what is absolutely necessary.
Even microphones, cables, amplifiers, wood, laptops and so on... cost very little today. And I still believe that it's the method, more than the tools. Of course good tools help alot, but you need to fight for it, if you want to learn something new and want to continue fearless on the path to hifi 😀
 
#50
digitalthor said:
You had some simple questions - so I gave you some simple answers 😉
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The problem is not your simple answers (which were exactly on point!), the problem is, the answers were not what he wanted to hear. 😀 😉

digitalthor said:
PS. Speakerbuilding is all about compromise. Stop thinking that you can get big sound from small speakers or that you can get away by "cheating" to much, when bending the rules of physics. But do take advantage of the very real problems and solutions of phycoacoustics 🙂
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Exactly! I've heard it so often, "I'll build my speakers without compromise!", I can only laugh about that and every few month comes anotherone with the same idea. If someone claims that, he isn't even aware of how many 'advantages' and decisions he's adamant he has to have on the speakers but mutually exclude other advantages he wants them to be absolutely perfect in too. And then he becomes sour because you mention conceptionally flaws he didn't even realize were very important or even existed - just because that would destroy his so far (in his mind) perfect picture of his speakers. 🙄

picowallspeaker said:
Oh man! I have the perfect source with super cables bringing precious signal to my beloved state-of-the-art amplifiers, I have a room in my house that is perfectly made for accomodating my system, and now you're telling me that!
😡
😱
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WHAT!? You didn't even replace the wiring in the walls with 100% oxygene free high end copper wires to give you clean, noise free power mains?! 😱 😀 😉
 
#53
Hmmm... I think the worst fault of speaker (and room) systems is their inability to reproduce the sound fields that aren't even stored on just a few recorded channels being played back. The best speakers I've heard are able to commit a little bit of deception to give the illusion that what is being played really includes that information.
 
#56
Philimon said:
What would a speaker with least compromise look like with unlimited funds?
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There are a lot of approaches to that question. It would be big, multiple ways, active with a dsp and still be a lot of compromises.

Philimon said:
Can my house be a speaker enclosure first?
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It already is. The room changes more in the bass response than the speaker itself and the room impression changes with the dimensions and speaker positioning and dispersion pattern, and, ofcourse, the absorption and reflection properties of your listening room.
 
#59
scottjoplin said:
Some of SL's Conclusions

I particularly like "All accurate speakers will essentially sound the same when listened to in a setup that is appropriate to their specific design" 😎
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That's simply not true. With the same, perfect response they will still sound different. Alone the room impression diverts vastly from one deemed to be perfect speaker to another. The differences become even bigger if dynamics come into play, impulse answer and distortion are a huge factor and big membrane surfaces got a lot more authority, no matter how 'appropriate' you set up smaller and seemingly perfect speakers. If that was true, there would only be around 20-40 different speakers for HiFi. In reality, there are hundreds, if not thousands judged to be 'perfect', alone in the past 20-25 years.
 
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