Hi all,
I was checking the details of these three drivers from Dayton Audio:
Looking at the FR curves, and reading whatever I can understand of the spec, I can't see why one is called wideband and the other two are full-range. What am I missing?
I was checking the details of these three drivers from Dayton Audio:
Looking at the FR curves, and reading whatever I can understand of the spec, I can't see why one is called wideband and the other two are full-range. What am I missing?
These are terrible responses for full rangers which make world references humble classicals like Fostex's.
Fostex might have ridiculous low xmax, but Dayton won't make me swallow that their lower non linear distortion figures achieved by cheap tricks on the motors are more important than linear distortion and control of break up modes, and to this respect, most of their stuff suck: proper cone materials and suspensions matter more than copper shield on a piece iron, more difficult and expensive to achieve, requiring true expertise their OEM wharehouses lack of!
Fostex might have ridiculous low xmax, but Dayton won't make me swallow that their lower non linear distortion figures achieved by cheap tricks on the motors are more important than linear distortion and control of break up modes, and to this respect, most of their stuff suck: proper cone materials and suspensions matter more than copper shield on a piece iron, more difficult and expensive to achieve, requiring true expertise their OEM wharehouses lack of!
Not quite, the wide range is much less controlled. Frankly, they all look pretty bad, but you'd be surprised at how bad a response can look, yet be quite popular.
No, they are resonant nodes, bands that at certain frequencies get 'agitated'. Kind of like 'snapping a rag that's damped somewhat around the edges [surround]; pure pandemonium all dependent on its material properties and how fast, hard [frequency, amplitude] you 'snap' it if no other damping is done to control, shape its response.
Historically, I used Dammar, shellac, rubber cement, you name it, to tweak diaphragms, surrounds, spiders to deal with all these spurious noises, though most times just 'brute forced' it with a bit of judicious airbrushing. Folks with more patience use paintbrushes to add a zillion dots/whatever or my fave, laminating them with fine tinfoil or similar.
Ages ago now, I was sent two pair of super cheap, identical 'behind the Iron Curtain' built ~5" 'full-range' drivers, one pair stock, one pair foil laminated and various other tweaks done and it's true that in some cases you really can 'make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'.
The tweaked ones are good enough that if I were to market a driver I'd get a manufacturer to clone it using modern materials, technology and market it at the top tier of single driver BLHs.
GM
Well, a bit more focus on quality rather than novelty would not hurt. No need for so many mediocre new ítems e very now and then, or in the end they will brand and sell hair dryiers, bread toasters, bug zappers, and stuff like that..
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Actually......but that was long ago before your time. Mostly, I stay disappointed with misleading to downright BS marketing hype like the 99 dB, etc..
GM
This was very interesting, thanks.
This is the sort of nonsense we have to deal with when dealing with metal cones too, right? The break-up modes of, say, the Dayton RS180 drivers as seen here, from around 4KHz upwards:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
are quite scary. But to my untutored eye, this jagged and ugly break-up, which people like me try to cut down by 70dB by using extremely steep slopes, low Fc crossovers, sometimes by doing exotic things like Cauer-elliptic filters, seem to be par for the course with some of these full-range drivers, no? I can't see any real difference between this kind of SPL graph and what I'm seeing in some of those FR driver SPL -- but their users seem to interpret this to mean the response extends to 20KHz. To my eyes, this is not an extended response -- this is the cone breaking up, resonating, and ringing like a bell, giving non-linear HF distortion to slice my ears off.
This one, on the other hand seems like "real" extended response:
This is from the Dayton RS100 so-called Reference Full-Range driver. Not much of the cone break-up nasties, but an actual, controlled extended response.
The damping you speak of must be helping a lot, I'm sure. Never tried treating any cone -- I just use the crossover to cut off the difficult regions if I can.
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You're welcome!
Right, the more resonant the material, the greater its breakup mode's amplitude, which many perceive as more 'detailed'; and yes, the HF response of all wide range drivers is its breakup modes, if not, then it's a super tweeter.
Yes, very damped/controlled, but look at the 'hit' on efficiency to achieve it. I'd rather have the efficiency and do selective treatment or pay for a stronger motor, higher compliance [Vas], but vast majority of folks want tiny speakers that play low, so this is one of the performance prices we pay.
GM
Right, the more resonant the material, the greater its breakup mode's amplitude, which many perceive as more 'detailed'; and yes, the HF response of all wide range drivers is its breakup modes, if not, then it's a super tweeter.
Yes, very damped/controlled, but look at the 'hit' on efficiency to achieve it. I'd rather have the efficiency and do selective treatment or pay for a stronger motor, higher compliance [Vas], but vast majority of folks want tiny speakers that play low, so this is one of the performance prices we pay.
GM
This was very interesting, thanks.
This is the sort of nonsense we have to deal with when dealing with metal cones too, right? The break-up modes of, say, the Dayton RS180 drivers as seen here, from around 4KHz upwards:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
are quite scary. But to my untutored eye, this jagged and ugly break-up, which people like me try to cut down by 70dB by using extremely steep slopes, low Fc crossovers, sometimes by doing exotic things like Cauer-elliptic filters, seem to be par for the course with some of these full-range drivers, no? I can't see any real difference between this kind of SPL graph and what I'm seeing in some of those FR driver SPL -- but their users seem to interpret this to mean the response extends to 20KHz. To my eyes, this is not an extended response -- this is the cone breaking up, resonating, and ringing like a bell, giving non-linear HF distortion to slice my ears off.
This one, on the other hand seems like "real" extended response:
This is from the Dayton RS100 so-called Reference Full-Range driver. Not much of the cone break-up nasties, but an actual, controlled extended response.
The damping you speak of must be helping a lot, I'm sure. Never tried treating any cone -- I just use the crossover to cut off the difficult regions if I can.
There's a paper cone version of RS180, the RS180P that has less breakup nasties.
Flat response no good for a full ranger. A full ranger must have a rising response built on these nasty modes.
If flat, its power response will fall too much at the top octaves and will sound dull, asking for a super tweeter
The only problem with those peaks is when there is only one , at the wrong frequency or various but not well distributed (like this one aroun 2-4khz)...
Full range is the art of organizing this chaos in an elegant even sounding way...
Btw, i almost always find something i don't like in their curves, while they always base their sales proposal on the same secondary or irrelevant to sound quality attributes...
These might look weird, but are much better...
http://seas.no/index.php?option=com...fu10rb&catid=53:prestige-fullrange&Itemid=466
http://www.scan-speak.dk/datasheet/pdf/10f-4424g00.pdf
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Ya. I'm beginning to see this. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. I get quite bothered by uneven SPL and of course by these resonant peaks.
Some of my thoughts in this area are given in my notes. And the amazing thing about these speakers which I finished in 2014 are that they are detailed and uncoloured without any harshness, even with bright mixes. They"ve exceeded my expectations. This made me more fussy about evenness of SPL curves. Now I feel very ambivalent when I look at these full-range SPL curves.
I wonder how feasible it is to manufacture such a highly hand-crafted driver using mass production tools and processes? If these highly "tuned" models could be manufactured easily, we'd get affordable high performance FR drivers, wouldn't we?
Seems reasonable, but to date, 'sandwich' construction diaphragms are still expensive, though the factories are good at varying its density, they just choose not to damp them 'flat' for a variety of reasons, but assume it's primarily due to most folks finding them too 'dull', especially off axis.
GM
GM
Simple matter of taste?
Don't think so, rather would say that flat response is only good for a true point source driver and a true point source is an impossibly small driver, in real life these smallish under 3' Frs are tweeters or mid tweeters.
The bigger the driver, especially over 2', the worst sounds a flat axial response, because the duller it sounds no matter of taste: they suck simply because too lacking of hf energy in reverberated soundfield..
Flat no good for FRS!
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