Advancers in speaker design

Gregadd · Dec 26, 2016

I concede advances in materials and computer analysis has produced better speakers at all levels. The problem is what true discoveries have been made? It is hardly noteworthy that a particular company stumbled on what they should have known and incorporated into their product before offering it to the public. Is it a true technological advance or just a little on the job training?
For example going to concerts and talking to conductors. Should you not have been doing that all along?

Robh3606 · Dec 26, 2016

Hello Geggadd

Is it a true technological advance or just a little on the job training?

No not at all

For example going to concerts and talking to conductors. Should you not have been doing that all along?

Maybe I don't understand your question What does that have to do with technology and design unless you mean polar response as an example??

Rob

Gregadd · Dec 27, 2016

The question is why should I or consumers in general be interested in a manufacturers/designers learnin curve? I novations,inventions and discoveries aside.. As a professional should they not avail themselves of the existing knowledge necessary to produce a competent product?

NorthStar · Dec 27, 2016

Joyous holiday season Greg, and slowly preparing for a dynamite year in 2017. ....Very bests to you and to all your loved ones.
_____

Bass is where, I think, most advancements are made in music listening @ home.
Speaker's designers are paying attention.

• http://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/best-loudspeakers-world

Some of the best speakers in 2016 ? https://www.cnet.com/topics/speakers/best-speakers/ ... I know, most people will skip this link here.

You like horns? http://www.toptenreviews.com/electr...r-standing-speakers/klipsch-reference-review/
Match this tower with an amp from say Yamaha, and engage the "Party" mode during the holiday season.
For solo listening engage the pure natural audio mode.

Cheers,

DaveC · Dec 27, 2016

I agree with NS, bass is the only place anything has advanced, and then not in an absolute way, but in a way that allows us to use smaller solutions.

For bass, the improvements have come from driver design, amplifier design and DSP. Modern top of the line woofers are pretty amazing, and while they can be equaled with vintage drivers it takes a lot more of them, or a bass horn. Of course we're only considering the best implementations as modern bass can also be seen as the kind of sound you expect from auto SPL competitions... so , not that... But for example, I have compared an excellent modern 15" woofer, the Acoustic Elegance TD15H+ with JBL 2226 and even AE's version of a vintage driver, the 15M. The H+ is a bit less efficient at 94 dB instead of 99 dB, but it sounds much cleaner, there is a lot less measurable distortion and the woofer can play a lot lower as well. Modern class-D amps like Hypex NCore series have an iron grip on the woofers, and DSP allows us to omit a passive xo and use room correction, a large benefit with bass. Done right, a single AE TD15H+ can produce very high SPLS, very low distortion and sound extremely "fast", no problem integrating it with single driver, horns, etc that are often difficult to integrate other drivers with. It has 38mm peak-to-peak Xmax vs just a few mm for most vintage drivers, and power handling is much higher too... there are huge advantages to surface area over excursion but some amount of both is ideal for most of us who don't have space for bass horns or a dozen woofers in their listening room.

While there have been advancements in dynamic driver design I'm not sure they have actually exceeded the sq of vintage systems wrt to mid/high frequencies. It is true tweeters have gotten much better with ribbon and Be domes, but they aren't as good as CDs/horns anyways...

JackD201 · Dec 27, 2016

Gregadd said:
The question is why should I or consumers in general be interested in a manufacturers/designers learnin curve? I novations,inventions and discoveries aside.. As a professional should they not avail themselves of the existing knowledge necessary to produce a competent product?

Competent at least down to at least 100Hz has seemed relatively easy. There are some micro speakers out there like the baby Audience's that do these great. To borrow from Tasos, it's scaling up and out that is the bigger challenge. Funnily enough, in my experience, the extremes, given the way our brains are wired as pattern recognition engines that is hardest to dupe. The highs must not beam/peak too much and should have as little distortion as possible. The bass is much harder. Not only does the design of the drivers and XOs needing to be sound, so does the cabinet or bracing design. It's crossovers that still seem to be a dark art or if not the area where the top designers are most secretive. The days of viewing an XO as simple high pass and low pass filters are behind us. Driver correction is being done in the analog domain by many companies these days by including impedance stabilization circuits outside of the direct signal chain. As we know impedance variances directly impact FR, so it explains a lot why there are more and more speakers becoming available that don't need to be cranked to come alive. .

ddk · Dec 27, 2016

Advanced isn't what comes to my mind, different is the best I can describe speakers today. Maybe it's a matter of perspective but bass is exactly where I hear major issues with modern speakers. Yes there seems to be more extension but the IMO bass is a lot less natural now from the light, fast, efficient cones of yester years. In comparison the bass I hear today even among ultra extensive speakers simply sounds too mechanical and slow in comparison. With many speakers I would prefer a less extended speaker specially those half active ones with plate amps in their bass. Mega watt Class D electronics just sound very wrong to me unless you're listening to computer generated bass and DSP is just all wrong and agitating to my ears...

david

Mike Lavigne · Dec 27, 2016

ddk said:
Advanced isn't what comes to my mind, different is the best I can describe speakers today. Maybe it's a matter of perspective but bass is exactly where I hear major issues with modern speakers. Yes there seems to be more extension but the IMO bass is a lot less natural now from the light, fast, efficient cones of yester years. In comparison the bass I hear today even among ultra extensive speakers simply sounds too mechanical and slow in comparison. With many speakers I would prefer a less extended speaker specially those half active ones with plate amps in their bass. Mega watt Class D electronics just sound very wrong to me unless you're listening to computer generated bass and DSP is just all wrong and agitating to my ears...

david

different strokes for different folks.....

my preference is not for speakers that only do a slice of the picture (even if it's a beautiful slice). I want it all and the dynamic and FR headroom to do the whole musical picture with ease. and I grant you that when you want it all, then you better get it right or it's a mess. smaller slices are more forgiving.

but I respect there are other views of things.

ddk · Dec 27, 2016

Mike Lavigne said:
different strokes for different folks.....

my preference is not for speakers that only do a slice of the picture. I want it all and the dynamic and FR headroom to do the whole musical picture with ease.

but I respect there are other views of things.

So do I but I haven't found a modern one that I can live with in the lower registers and in case of monitors I can always extend the low end FR with passive subs.

david

still-one · Dec 27, 2016

I am not sure is on On The Job Training as the OP notes. For decades designers have come up with a variety of solutions yet none are totally successful in making a speaker not sound like a speaker. We want a "speaker" to accurately produce the sound of natural sound of the human voice and scores of different instruments. We are fortunate we have come so far.

Folsom · Dec 27, 2016

What makes you think it's the speakers?

NorthStar · Dec 27, 2016

That's what the thread is about...advancements in speaker's designs.

Next, someone will start another one about cartridges, then DACs, then preamplification, then phono stage, then power amplification, then speaker wires, then analog stereo interconnects, then power AC cords, ...

Folsom · Dec 27, 2016

The thread is about advancements in speaker design, but when you start claiming everything rests on the speakers I disagree.

In general speaker drivers and capacitors used are highly superior to past generations found in vintage stuff besides Altec and a few things.

There isn't really much advancements, but all the time people are making better refined products. For something to be an advancement I'd expect it to be entirely different in some way, and we just don't see that. Well, I've seen one idea that's very cool but the guy got weird and has gone into recluse mode.

x1992 · Dec 28, 2016

May be its just me but one theme I have seen in audio is when some problem is fixed by a second generation product when the problem was never noted until the second gen product was released. The OP's questions may reflect marketing. OTOH, a designer has to pick a philosophy and then refine it, which seems normal in a lot of products, although the course is often not a linear progression.

MPS · Dec 29, 2016

x1992 said:
May be its just me but one theme I have seen in audio is when some problem is fixed by a second generation product when the problem was never noted until the second gen product was released. The OP's questions may reflect marketing. OTOH, a designer has to pick a philosophy and then refine it, which seems normal in a lot of products, although the course is often not a linear progression.

Well said!

It's all about compromise. Since there is no perfection in the real world, one needs to decide what to get and what to lose.

Gregadd · Dec 29, 2016

What we should have is one linear progression of speaker development . Indeed instead what we have is way too many paths to questionable destinations.(At least withan a particular genre). Said progression is often the result the designers learning curve rather than true advancement of the art. I pick on cones in box because they are most susceptible. Wilson has been accused of the use of off the shelf parts, the fact he does it it as well as anyone notwithstanding.
High price is often a path toe xclusivity rather than quality.

Folsom · Dec 29, 2016

So what kind of Advancements are you expecting, Greg?

Perhaps you can solve a bunch of quantum physics problems so we can defy physics in loudspeaker building?

There isn't exactly a lot of mysteries left in speaker building. Sometimes new abilities to manufacture something press the envelope a bit farther or bring it down in price.

I don't see the problem with continued refinement ("learning curve" ? ). Maybe no manufacturer has got past 50% potential for the type of speaker they make? We don't know.

DaveC · Dec 29, 2016

Gregadd said:
What we should have is one linear progression of speaker development . Indeed instead what we have is way too many paths to questionable destinations.(At least withan a particular genre). Said progression is often the result the designers learning curve rather than true advancement of the art. I pick on cones in box because they are most susceptible. Wilson has been accused of the use of off the shelf parts, the fact he does it it as well as anyone notwithstanding.
High price is often a path toe xclusivity rather than quality.

Why? All speaker designs have potential and some people prefer one type over another... I.E. Horns vs Stats vs Omnis like MBL/German Physic. All totally different concepts, all have potential to sound nice... I'd also argue progression is ALWAYS the result of the designers learning, designers are human just like everyone else and tend to learn how to do things better over time. How do you separate this from "true" advancement?

As far as the last sentence, any market is "buyer beware"... from the supermarket to the car market...

the sound of Tao · Dec 29, 2016

Great post^ humans only tend towards the linear in rather short term ways. We are by nature cyclical creatures and so we often revisit the past to find a better way to the future. The resurgence in reel to reel, vinyl, horns and SET are good examples of this. Not to say that any of these are in themselves perfect either but rather that we seek balance within opposition. The middle pathway isn't straight forward. This makes the journey forward much more of a sine wave than a line.

morricab · Dec 29, 2016

ddk said:
Advanced isn't what comes to my mind, different is the best I can describe speakers today. Maybe it's a matter of perspective but bass is exactly where I hear major issues with modern speakers. Yes there seems to be more extension but the IMO bass is a lot less natural now from the light, fast, efficient cones of yester years. In comparison the bass I hear today even among ultra extensive speakers simply sounds too mechanical and slow in comparison. With many speakers I would prefer a less extended speaker specially those half active ones with plate amps in their bass. Mega watt Class D electronics just sound very wrong to me unless you're listening to computer generated bass and DSP is just all wrong and agitating to my ears...

david

Interesting and I would generally agree. It is funny but I sought out a subwoofer that specifically did not use a class d amp and it sounds more natural to me overall.

My back horn loaded Odeons use a light fast paper cone and is fast and tight but with a very natural flow.

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