so - did PWK get things wrong with his papers on modulation distortion? That little driver dioes look like it would make a neat little 2-way for a bedroom system from 100Hz up. OH ! - I didn't see that amazingly low fs. With a 10 liter sealed box and 600uF cap, it could handle
~7v to hit 10mm xmax.
~7v to hit 10mm xmax.
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... And sometimes you'd be wrong.
High efficiency does not guarantee good sound. In fact, lighter cones are likely to be less damped than a heavier one, so the upper kHz range will be more of a mess. If you're shooting for efficiency, then cabinet size (for a given LF cutoff) must increase, too.
It's a tradeoff, just like everything else.
So long as you can achieve your desired SPLs without clipping the amps or over-driving the speakers, I don't care what the sensitivity is.
Chris
It doesn't really matter, but I personally disagree with that part of your post.
(And I'm currently overworked/underslept and also don't care if my post doesn't help the discussion and might border on trolling
)
It doesn't really matter, but I personally disagree with that part of your post.
(And I'm currently overworked/underslept and also don't care if my post doesn't help the discussion and might border on trolling
You're welcome to disagree, but I don't see any particular reason you might. Feel free to post about it when you're better rested - I'd welcome the discussion.
Chris
Hi Chris. Totalitarian categorisation/generalisation based on my limited and subjective impressions: high sensitivity (say > 96 dB/W/m) speakers in general "sound different" than low sensitivity (your average modern 86dB/W/m driver) speaker driven to the same SPL. The differences are in the realm of "liveliness", dynamics.
Caveats: the ones I compared where apples and oranges. The high sensitivity ones usually 15" woofers with horns, the others 8" woofer 2ways in little boxes.
It might be totally different if I had a chance to compare drivers of different sensitivies but the same size.
Apart from that, is there a way to look at driver sensitivity as something like amplifier slew rate? I'm struggling to put that question into proper words (language barrier and struggling with the concept itself...). If my mumbling sparks an idea please let me know.
Caveats: the ones I compared where apples and oranges. The high sensitivity ones usually 15" woofers with horns, the others 8" woofer 2ways in little boxes.
It might be totally different if I had a chance to compare drivers of different sensitivies but the same size.
Apart from that, is there a way to look at driver sensitivity as something like amplifier slew rate? I'm struggling to put that question into proper words (language barrier and struggling with the concept itself...). If my mumbling sparks an idea please let me know.
A fun anecdote:
In 2005, I flew out to Colorado to evaluate the Gedlee Summas. I spent a lot of time in the demo room, and I ended up buying them.
After spending some time in the demo room, I noticed that I was losing my voice, and realized what was going on:
We were shouting over the Summas.
Basically when you make the cabinet really inert, and the drivers have crazy amounts of headroom, and the distortion is vanishingly low, and the HOMs are nearly non-existent, you wind up listening at crazy levels. And I didn't even notice. We were probably driving the neighbors at the RMAF nuts, because the Summas were being played really, really loud... It was just hard to tell.
I'm definitely going to catch some flak for this, but here goes:
I think a lot of conventional horns suffer from distortion and HOMs, and those distortions can make them sound "lively and dynamic." For instance, I practically lived in nightclubs in the 90s, I used to go out to clubs three or four nights a week. JBL and Cerwin Vega were staples in the club. Fast forward twenty years, and I play some of that same music over my own system (Waslo Cosynes)...
And the music sounds rather "polite." Basically the Cerwin Vega systems were adding a layer of "grunge" which worked really nicely with grungey music.
It's really one of those things that's vexxing, because there's no real answer. Do you want it clean? Do you want it grungey? Somewhere in between?
In 2005, I flew out to Colorado to evaluate the Gedlee Summas. I spent a lot of time in the demo room, and I ended up buying them.
After spending some time in the demo room, I noticed that I was losing my voice, and realized what was going on:
We were shouting over the Summas.
Basically when you make the cabinet really inert, and the drivers have crazy amounts of headroom, and the distortion is vanishingly low, and the HOMs are nearly non-existent, you wind up listening at crazy levels. And I didn't even notice. We were probably driving the neighbors at the RMAF nuts, because the Summas were being played really, really loud... It was just hard to tell.
I'm definitely going to catch some flak for this, but here goes:
I think a lot of conventional horns suffer from distortion and HOMs, and those distortions can make them sound "lively and dynamic." For instance, I practically lived in nightclubs in the 90s, I used to go out to clubs three or four nights a week. JBL and Cerwin Vega were staples in the club. Fast forward twenty years, and I play some of that same music over my own system (Waslo Cosynes)...
And the music sounds rather "polite." Basically the Cerwin Vega systems were adding a layer of "grunge" which worked really nicely with grungey music.
It's really one of those things that's vexxing, because there's no real answer. Do you want it clean? Do you want it grungey? Somewhere in between?
Interesting. I like horns. That "lively and dynamic" sound, also from direct radiators. The ones I like most always give funny moments, like one time I tested some drivers and told my wife they sounded nice but somehow just didn't give any level. She wanted to hear them, turned on the stereo and played a tune, I came in and said: "see, no bloody volume!" and was stumped because I couldn't hear myself talk...
I think I see where you're coming from. However, I have a few examples which (IMO) put things into perspective. For all of these examples, the amplifier power was adequate - I often use PA amplifiers which will put out a couple of kilowatts on each channel. Amplifier clipping does not happen here!
Example 1:
- 2-way speaker with a 4" midbass and a 0.75" tweeter, low-80s @1w. The frequency response measured reasonably flat (and reached 40Hz in-room), and at lower levels they sounded pretty good. If you turned it up, the dynamics disappeared as the drivers became overloaded - they couldn't move enough air to produce satisfying performance.
Example 2:
- My PA system, in the living room. 1x 18Sound ND1460, 2x Faital Pro 10FH520, 1x Faital Pro 15HP1060, per side - above 100Hz, sensitivity is >100dB@1w. Again, flat response. At lower levels, they sounded fine. However, the difference was that you could raise the volume and the speakers would stay linear until it was loud enough to drive you out of the room. All the dynamics were retained.
Example 3:
- The speakers I've settled on. 8" 2-way, with a compression driver. They're probably in the mid-80s @1w. So, not very different to Example 1. However, these speakers still get loud enough to feel the kick and snare drums. You have to put some power in there, but that's okay - they're good drivers which can take it.
My conclusion is this: often, high-sensitivity speakers are being driven to a fraction of their capability, so they still have lots of headroom left and the sound will follow - the speakers will sound relaxed and have plenty of dynamics. Low-sensitivity speakers are more likely to be driven closer to their limits, which means they will suffer accordingly. A good low-sensitivity speaker will comfortably take the extra power that's needed to produce the desired SPLs.
Chris
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