Hi Krakatoa,
Fertinacoustics are very aware of the Axiom 80 and even hint at it on their webpages.
My M8 is the only surroundless speaker I have and therefore, IMO it doesn´t make much sense to speak of "the sound of surroundless".
I could tell endless lines of how my speaker sounds to me, but I´m too lazy and prefer listening to music... sorry!
However, I like them, otherwise I wouldn´t have worked long overtimes and finally paid for it.
Very randomly, I´ve heard and seen little bits of info about the Exact speakers, but never noticed they were surroundless? Any photos or info to share, a quick search resulsts in nothing?
Thanks and all the best
Mattes
Fertinacoustics are very aware of the Axiom 80 and even hint at it on their webpages.
My M8 is the only surroundless speaker I have and therefore, IMO it doesn´t make much sense to speak of "the sound of surroundless".
I could tell endless lines of how my speaker sounds to me, but I´m too lazy and prefer listening to music... sorry!
However, I like them, otherwise I wouldn´t have worked long overtimes and finally paid for it.
Very randomly, I´ve heard and seen little bits of info about the Exact speakers, but never noticed they were surroundless? Any photos or info to share, a quick search resulsts in nothing?
Thanks and all the best
Mattes
Hi Galu,
that wasn´t precisely about the Axiom 80, sorry if my words were not clear.
I have just a little bit of trouble imaginating a driver with a gap in a closed box, but have never (sadly I don´t have an Axiom 80...) tried it, so it might well be less of a problem than conventional wisdom suggests.
And as you said, Goodmans did it, so one might assume that at least in large CB it might be possible.
All the best
Mattes
that wasn´t precisely about the Axiom 80, sorry if my words were not clear.
I have just a little bit of trouble imaginating a driver with a gap in a closed box, but have never (sadly I don´t have an Axiom 80...) tried it, so it might well be less of a problem than conventional wisdom suggests.
And as you said, Goodmans did it, so one might assume that at least in large CB it might be possible.
All the best
Mattes
First thing - to Mattes - there are not many people that can answer the question "what does a surroundless fullrange speaker sounds like?" because not many own one, since you have such a rare "bird" I asked you in order to see if your description compares to what I experienced with experimentation of surroundless cones.
I (tried at least) attached the sole image I have of this driver, other than that there are a few lines on the forum about it, this description here is the one I go to:
"The last large Sano driver that I know of is one that I have never seen with my own eyes, the PR-EX. It was an edgeless (no surround) driver with a huge Xmax and weighed about 30kg each. I communicated with one Japanese person and one foreigner who actually heard this driver and both said that it was a stunning experience, one that they could still recall vividly after several decades. The PR-EX speaker was chosen as "Loudspeaker of the Year" by some Japanese audio magazine. I'm not sure if I'm recalling correctly but I think the price was something like 400,000 yen per driver, which back then was a huge sum." made by cdwitmer here - Exciting new line of fullrange drivers from Feastrex
The image I got here is very hard to get on the internet and will not show up in google searches. I managed to translate with some internet tools the japanese text and does not contain anything relevant.
I (tried at least) attached the sole image I have of this driver, other than that there are a few lines on the forum about it, this description here is the one I go to:
"The last large Sano driver that I know of is one that I have never seen with my own eyes, the PR-EX. It was an edgeless (no surround) driver with a huge Xmax and weighed about 30kg each. I communicated with one Japanese person and one foreigner who actually heard this driver and both said that it was a stunning experience, one that they could still recall vividly after several decades. The PR-EX speaker was chosen as "Loudspeaker of the Year" by some Japanese audio magazine. I'm not sure if I'm recalling correctly but I think the price was something like 400,000 yen per driver, which back then was a huge sum." made by cdwitmer here - Exciting new line of fullrange drivers from Feastrex
The image I got here is very hard to get on the internet and will not show up in google searches. I managed to translate with some internet tools the japanese text and does not contain anything relevant.
Attachments
Hi Krakatoa,
sorry for the late reply, was quite busy... and thanks for the interesting picture. If that´s a 27-cm-cone-driver, quite some material went into the motor...
Well, ok, I´ll try to find a few words to describe the sound of a FERTIN ACOUSTICS 21M8EX, but I´m afraid that these are not generally valid for all sourroundless fullrange speakers. My M8 are, as you probably have seen by the pictures before, enhanced with an 18-inch-driver for the real bass. They´re also controlled by a passive filter, resulting in a relatively flat FR with a slight rise in the treble region.
After all that, the system does the best illusion of a small jazz combo in my listening room that I have encountered in the last few decades... I may characterize the M8 as very fast, responding to the smallest signals, every detail on a record is there, slightest room cues (if on the record) are there in 3-D holographic space. Large and small dynamics are easily reproduced at lifelike level (for a small jazz combo, not a full orchestra...). Despite the system working in an OB, precision of imaging is very good.
To my ears, tonality is also very good, but this for sure has nothing to do with the surroundless aspects. Of course, achieving a very fast high-resolution reproduction also requires that many other design details of a driver are done right, like the strong motor, symmetrical flux in the gap, cone break-up control, baffle diffraction and resonance control and so on...
It took me some time and efforts to get it right, but I still see potential for optimizing even this exotic driver, and I will try to get rid of the basket and the spider in future...
All the best
Mattes
sorry for the late reply, was quite busy... and thanks for the interesting picture. If that´s a 27-cm-cone-driver, quite some material went into the motor...
Well, ok, I´ll try to find a few words to describe the sound of a FERTIN ACOUSTICS 21M8EX, but I´m afraid that these are not generally valid for all sourroundless fullrange speakers. My M8 are, as you probably have seen by the pictures before, enhanced with an 18-inch-driver for the real bass. They´re also controlled by a passive filter, resulting in a relatively flat FR with a slight rise in the treble region.
After all that, the system does the best illusion of a small jazz combo in my listening room that I have encountered in the last few decades... I may characterize the M8 as very fast, responding to the smallest signals, every detail on a record is there, slightest room cues (if on the record) are there in 3-D holographic space. Large and small dynamics are easily reproduced at lifelike level (for a small jazz combo, not a full orchestra...). Despite the system working in an OB, precision of imaging is very good.
To my ears, tonality is also very good, but this for sure has nothing to do with the surroundless aspects. Of course, achieving a very fast high-resolution reproduction also requires that many other design details of a driver are done right, like the strong motor, symmetrical flux in the gap, cone break-up control, baffle diffraction and resonance control and so on...
It took me some time and efforts to get it right, but I still see potential for optimizing even this exotic driver, and I will try to get rid of the basket and the spider in future...
All the best
Mattes
Thaks for relplying Mattes! You have an advanced system over there it'a a (nontraditional) multiway and with filtering... It's hard to tell from a description but it does match what I've heard, I would characterize the sound of surroundless as being rich in highs and detailed in all frequencies.
Do you know that this acceleration factor is from the specs of Fertin speakers? - model 8 anglais for sure they care about it since they even publish it - I have to presume it has to do with how much detail is reproduced.
Yesterday I replaced a cloth surround with a paper one (home made, nothing that looks too sexy) and to my amazement the resonances went down and there where plenty of those; the actual weight of my surround was approximately 2.5 times lighter than the 0.3 mm cloth surround, mine was 0.2 mm soft paper. The overall sound shifted to fullrange from what was a small midbas driver (thin paper cone) that reached over 10 khz, and better in most ways I can think off. The cone was light so you can call it wideband.
Do you know that this acceleration factor is from the specs of Fertin speakers? - model 8 anglais for sure they care about it since they even publish it - I have to presume it has to do with how much detail is reproduced.
Yesterday I replaced a cloth surround with a paper one (home made, nothing that looks too sexy) and to my amazement the resonances went down and there where plenty of those; the actual weight of my surround was approximately 2.5 times lighter than the 0.3 mm cloth surround, mine was 0.2 mm soft paper. The overall sound shifted to fullrange from what was a small midbas driver (thin paper cone) that reached over 10 khz, and better in most ways I can think off. The cone was light so you can call it wideband.
Yes I have (2 occasions), leather surrounds are as the material implies - soft, most don't know but leather is made from fibers, similar to paper but more flexible and with high resistance to pulling; I used them without tensioning them, I suspect some vintage drivers (much large then my 5 incher) used tensioned leather, there is a photo somewhere on the internet with an Rullit driver being "stretched" - the leather from the surround, and I saw it mentioned before somewhere on a forum. Another thing I know about leather surrounds - in a book by Baranek (I don't have time too look up all small info) - there was a measurement of the leather surface density - 1.01 g/100cm2 - "very soft sheepskin" which I estimated to be just 0.3 mm in thickness based on measurements I made on different leather pieces I got (many, over 30)... and that's very thin, very very thin, it was difficult to get 0.6 mm leather and that came out at 2.6 g/100cm2. And to compare these weights here you have the rest of my measurements: foam surround 0.8 mm thick - 3.9 g/100cm2, another foam surround 1.4 mm thick - 2.48 g/100cm2, cloth surround 0.3 mm - 1.42 g/100cm2, 0.2 mm leather a bit too porous - 0.56 g/100cm2, 0.2 mm thin actual paper from a surround (4 incher) - 0.63 g/100cm2 - did not flatened the paper, it would have been even smaller density - notice which one is the lightest.
Leather may not be a good ideea on small cones because it absorbs energy from the cone, I suspect on large cones the above 4 khz energy is smaller at the edge of the cone and there should not be any more problems but I'm just guessing. My 0.2 mm surround managed to knock out enough of the highs on a 94 mm cone to "clean" the magic factor. There may be ways of getting away with a leather surround but one thing it's for sure - it will not sound like a paper one.
I suspect the best surround is a mixture of no surround and leather (soft fiber), so having the surround glued by many thin fibers (bridge) as opposed to doubling the paper on the entire length of the circle, and leaving a minuscule gap between the actual surround and the cone, the fibers bridging the gap. I don't know how durable is that but I might try it; it's a variation on the paper surround which is basically a bridge of thin layer(s) of fibers between the cone and the basket.
So far the best surround I made was from paper, long fibers, I suspect not the industry standard fibers, after crinkling the paper for 10 minutes it had the appearance of human skin and had a bit of shine to it (the fibers themselfs shine). Others (diy) also point to mulberry paper as the best sounding surrounds. I'm presuming long fibers flexible paper is the correct answer and sub 0.25 mm thick.
Leather may not be a good ideea on small cones because it absorbs energy from the cone, I suspect on large cones the above 4 khz energy is smaller at the edge of the cone and there should not be any more problems but I'm just guessing. My 0.2 mm surround managed to knock out enough of the highs on a 94 mm cone to "clean" the magic factor. There may be ways of getting away with a leather surround but one thing it's for sure - it will not sound like a paper one.
I suspect the best surround is a mixture of no surround and leather (soft fiber), so having the surround glued by many thin fibers (bridge) as opposed to doubling the paper on the entire length of the circle, and leaving a minuscule gap between the actual surround and the cone, the fibers bridging the gap. I don't know how durable is that but I might try it; it's a variation on the paper surround which is basically a bridge of thin layer(s) of fibers between the cone and the basket.
So far the best surround I made was from paper, long fibers, I suspect not the industry standard fibers, after crinkling the paper for 10 minutes it had the appearance of human skin and had a bit of shine to it (the fibers themselfs shine). Others (diy) also point to mulberry paper as the best sounding surrounds. I'm presuming long fibers flexible paper is the correct answer and sub 0.25 mm thick.
One thing I have been thinking about is if you can measure (if there is such a thing) a reaction time of the suspension(s) - so a "slow" suspension will be a heavy viscous one? and a fast suspension will be a light and tight one? obviously comparison would be with suspensions giving same or very close resonant frequency. I suspect this is not fiction.
Voxativ do use leather surrounds but only on the top of the range model - AC-XHB - for which you have to pay 60000 euros (read: sixty thousand euros) the rest of the range use foam, a king of plastic basically, the foam is king of a standard in the world of Lowther type manually made cones from paper sheets (like Lowther, Aer, Voxativ, and others) so it should not sound that bad, but still... why don't they use paper ones? By the way Audio Feast (related to Feastrex) do use paper surrounds, but not corrugated paper, it's more of a hand made thing with poor esthetics.
I don't know anything about tyvek, is't plastic derived anyway, not pure paper.
I don't know anything about tyvek, is't plastic derived anyway, not pure paper.
Hi Krakatoa,
interesting discussion, and many thanks for your numbers!
Would love to do a real comparison some day, having the same driver with a variation of suspension materials, measure and listen...
Personally, I tend to attribute sonic impressions to driver built and material choice as well - but the driver is always a combination of details and materials, and such findings - or better impressions - do not necessarily be always valid.
I´m aware of good.sounding drivers with several types and materials of suspension, but am also sure your concentration on weight issues is valid (for a driver which has not to rely on resonance damping by suspension at least).
All the best
Mattes
interesting discussion, and many thanks for your numbers!
Would love to do a real comparison some day, having the same driver with a variation of suspension materials, measure and listen...
Personally, I tend to attribute sonic impressions to driver built and material choice as well - but the driver is always a combination of details and materials, and such findings - or better impressions - do not necessarily be always valid.
I´m aware of good.sounding drivers with several types and materials of suspension, but am also sure your concentration on weight issues is valid (for a driver which has not to rely on resonance damping by suspension at least).
All the best
Mattes
It's not that hard to change a surround to get an idea of the differences in sound, you need a cheap driver - don't even bother to think on using something new, there are plenty of fullrange speakers from all sorts of cheap audio (like cheap home theaters), personally I prefer old stuff from the 70s or 80s not necessarily dirt cheap, and it's good to have a pair so that you can have a direct comparison after the modification.
In my quest for lightweightness I noticed that the lightest thigs out there - let me put it this way my scale that can measure 0.01 grams said zero when I put the entire surround before glueing it on a 3 incher, so very small surround but for Mms you only calculate half of what was less than 0.01 grams. The surround was paper, the problem was that it made sounds when excursion past 1 mm... this is just one problem, the other is too light of a cone tends to have too much resonances, however what I discovered so far is that manufacturers stay away from optimizing Mms to a minimum - I know that's not what you have been told but just get the info and you will see, Supravox is the exception from the rule; in the old days the situation was different, it was normal to keep the weight down to a minimum.
The typical engineer mindset says that the acoustic system formed by the components of the driver have a number of parameters that give you the final sound... that's not how the artisan thinks; back in the day when there was no such thing as a loudspeaker, luthiers (for example) were the ones that made acoustic systems that were made in such a manner to please the listener in an aesthetical/artistical manner - did they succeed without knowing what a resonant mode is? did they knew that you can measure a frequency? no! of course not! all of those tools that are used by acoustic engineers did not even exist... forget about anechoic chambers and all that... but! did we threw to the garbage those Stradivariuses? no we didn't - why? because they are really good, because it's not only possible to make an acoustic system based on listening and intuition but it has been done very very well with far more limited means than we have today.
Understanding of for example changing a surround with another surround that gives same Fs does not mean it will sound the same, because it's not the same, if you change something well... something changes. By the way - the whole thread started because I noticed in testing that paper surrounds always sound better, more open, more detailed, more fullrangy while soft materials give a "missing something" sound so naturally I presumed that the industry knew this and got rid of it on purpose hoping nobody would notice (it's called a conspiracy) or even worse they just forgot about them since it did't go well with the fake economic dogma of low sensitivity - you know "upgrade" to something worse. Offcourse this is just presumption, nobody has come up with a ferm answer in this thread for why was it abandoned.
In my quest for lightweightness I noticed that the lightest thigs out there - let me put it this way my scale that can measure 0.01 grams said zero when I put the entire surround before glueing it on a 3 incher, so very small surround but for Mms you only calculate half of what was less than 0.01 grams. The surround was paper, the problem was that it made sounds when excursion past 1 mm... this is just one problem, the other is too light of a cone tends to have too much resonances, however what I discovered so far is that manufacturers stay away from optimizing Mms to a minimum - I know that's not what you have been told but just get the info and you will see, Supravox is the exception from the rule; in the old days the situation was different, it was normal to keep the weight down to a minimum.
The typical engineer mindset says that the acoustic system formed by the components of the driver have a number of parameters that give you the final sound... that's not how the artisan thinks; back in the day when there was no such thing as a loudspeaker, luthiers (for example) were the ones that made acoustic systems that were made in such a manner to please the listener in an aesthetical/artistical manner - did they succeed without knowing what a resonant mode is? did they knew that you can measure a frequency? no! of course not! all of those tools that are used by acoustic engineers did not even exist... forget about anechoic chambers and all that... but! did we threw to the garbage those Stradivariuses? no we didn't - why? because they are really good, because it's not only possible to make an acoustic system based on listening and intuition but it has been done very very well with far more limited means than we have today.
Understanding of for example changing a surround with another surround that gives same Fs does not mean it will sound the same, because it's not the same, if you change something well... something changes. By the way - the whole thread started because I noticed in testing that paper surrounds always sound better, more open, more detailed, more fullrangy while soft materials give a "missing something" sound so naturally I presumed that the industry knew this and got rid of it on purpose hoping nobody would notice (it's called a conspiracy) or even worse they just forgot about them since it did't go well with the fake economic dogma of low sensitivity - you know "upgrade" to something worse. Offcourse this is just presumption, nobody has come up with a ferm answer in this thread for why was it abandoned.
Forgot to answer to this one - my concern with weight is due to the fact that in the world of fullrange drivers you need to reproduce the high frequency spectrum with a big cone, big compared to a 1 inch tweeter for example, so how do you do that? - well you conserve energy by lowering mass and adding (keeping) stiffness - and there is a very very small amount of energy up there (6 khz - 20 khz aprox). Naturally I presume that the best way to build a fullrange is to take Mms down but practice has shown there are limits due to lack of support in the structure at very low weight and the need to keep TS parameters good for bass repoduction; you want that Qts above 0.4 (maybe 0.3X) and you also want the Fs to be low to "catch" the deep bass; most people don't know but when you soften the suspension you get lower Fs but you also get lower Qts, for example - lowered Fs from 277 hz on a 3 incher (by changing spider and surround) to 45 hz, Qts went down from 1.71 to 0.63 without changing the voice coil and the magnet. So to stay away from a very low Qts when having a very low Mms means you need to lower Bl - magnet strength or coil lenght and I suspect this will cause a problem for the voicecoil to "pickup" those high frequencies with same detail as you lower Bl; I don't know for sure but I know some rumors it might be the case. So there will be compomises, most manufacturers lean towards more mass more magnet strength, lower Qts (then 0.5-0.7 range).
Another aspect of lightweightness = energy conservation for high frequency is that lightweight surrounds should conserve this energy and the lightest surrounds are paper surrounds not to mention that paper is the gold standard of the fullrange worlds when it comes to materials for cones. And one more thing - one thing is to conserve energy in absolute terms, another thing is when you have wild accelerations normal with sounds. I suspect the wild accelerations leave some speaker components (spiders, cones, surrounds) "behind" the action and will end up sounding like they hide details in the recording.
Another aspect of lightweightness = energy conservation for high frequency is that lightweight surrounds should conserve this energy and the lightest surrounds are paper surrounds not to mention that paper is the gold standard of the fullrange worlds when it comes to materials for cones. And one more thing - one thing is to conserve energy in absolute terms, another thing is when you have wild accelerations normal with sounds. I suspect the wild accelerations leave some speaker components (spiders, cones, surrounds) "behind" the action and will end up sounding like they hide details in the recording.
With 'lively' accordion surrounds vs soft rubber or foam, maybe it's a case of balancing reflections and possible resonances against harmonic distortion and modulation?
If the material has high mechanical losses, one factor could be non-linearity from hysteresis or creep. So if the voice coil produces perfect sine waves, the reflected energy could have harmonics in it, or be amplitude modulated by other frequencies.
OTOH, the image I have of accordion surrounds is that they go hand in hand with "bad sounding" musical instrument drivers. Why? Probably because of some ear piercing, screechy box resonances, which, now that I think about it, could've been improved with larger boxes, and low damping factor amps.
If the material has high mechanical losses, one factor could be non-linearity from hysteresis or creep. So if the voice coil produces perfect sine waves, the reflected energy could have harmonics in it, or be amplitude modulated by other frequencies.
OTOH, the image I have of accordion surrounds is that they go hand in hand with "bad sounding" musical instrument drivers. Why? Probably because of some ear piercing, screechy box resonances, which, now that I think about it, could've been improved with larger boxes, and low damping factor amps.
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