I know some amp guys. I know some source guys. I know some tube guys. (insert comments about needing new friends) Me, I’m a speaker guy.
Speaker design has always fascinated me. Unlike the electronics in front of them, you can see a speaker working, breathing, huffing, and sometimes chuffing -- playing (or playing back) music. Pretty animate as far as inanimate objects go.
Also unlike electronics, you can see a lot of their design. So many shapes, sizes, types of drivers, crossover choices, materials, bass loading schemes, etc. No other component so directly interacts with the room, and by extension, the people in it. Yeah, every piece matters on the way there, but for me, the piece that turns electricity into music is where the magic finally lies.
I’ve been informally educating myself on speaker design since getting a pair of Phase Research Little –Ds in the early 80s. Ribbon tweeter, transmission line loading bracing the cabinet, time phased, front face covered with thin acoustic foam – I’ve got a better idea of what those things mean now and thought it would be fun to start a discussion on speaker design.
Caveat: I am absolutely not a speaker engineer or expert – much of what follows is my experience of certain designs and parameters, food for thought that hopefully spurs discussion. I’ll start here with ribbon drivers and add more subjects, such as crossover slopes, controlled directivity, and time phasing down the road.
Ribbon: Since those Little Ds, I’ve been a fan of ribbon drivers. Went a long time with domes and cones before returning to ribbon tweeters and mids in my VMPS RM40s, and the Sunfire CRM2s I use for surrounds. Speed, liquidity and transparency are what I find to be most notable with good ribbons – they make most domes seem to be letdowns in my experience. The appeal of ribbon technology is their extremely light weight which should translate into excellent transient performance as well as little or no resonance of consequence to muddle sound. A ribbon tweeter can be up to fifty times lighter than a dome. In relative weight, that’s a tiger versus an elephant. Which one will have an easier time cleanly starting and stopping; tracing fast-changing musical signals?
On the downside: ribbons have the reputation of being non-linear, fragile, and power hungry among other maladies. However, advances in materials and fabrication processes, such as neodynium magnets, kapton, and lamination techniques, along with lower prices for some of these have moved ribbon drivers from a niche product to the relatively commonplace. Manufacturers such as Meridian, Verity, Monitor Audio, Aerial, BG/Wisdom, Adam, Aurum Cantus, and others use ribbon drivers, and often in their top line speakers.
Now obviously, there are good speakers with both domes and ribbons. My ATC 20-2 actives have a very good-sounding dome. Having said that, a good ribbon tweeter usually sounds more right to me than a good dome. What’s your take?
Speaker design has always fascinated me. Unlike the electronics in front of them, you can see a speaker working, breathing, huffing, and sometimes chuffing -- playing (or playing back) music. Pretty animate as far as inanimate objects go.
Also unlike electronics, you can see a lot of their design. So many shapes, sizes, types of drivers, crossover choices, materials, bass loading schemes, etc. No other component so directly interacts with the room, and by extension, the people in it. Yeah, every piece matters on the way there, but for me, the piece that turns electricity into music is where the magic finally lies.
I’ve been informally educating myself on speaker design since getting a pair of Phase Research Little –Ds in the early 80s. Ribbon tweeter, transmission line loading bracing the cabinet, time phased, front face covered with thin acoustic foam – I’ve got a better idea of what those things mean now and thought it would be fun to start a discussion on speaker design.
Caveat: I am absolutely not a speaker engineer or expert – much of what follows is my experience of certain designs and parameters, food for thought that hopefully spurs discussion. I’ll start here with ribbon drivers and add more subjects, such as crossover slopes, controlled directivity, and time phasing down the road.
Ribbon: Since those Little Ds, I’ve been a fan of ribbon drivers. Went a long time with domes and cones before returning to ribbon tweeters and mids in my VMPS RM40s, and the Sunfire CRM2s I use for surrounds. Speed, liquidity and transparency are what I find to be most notable with good ribbons – they make most domes seem to be letdowns in my experience. The appeal of ribbon technology is their extremely light weight which should translate into excellent transient performance as well as little or no resonance of consequence to muddle sound. A ribbon tweeter can be up to fifty times lighter than a dome. In relative weight, that’s a tiger versus an elephant. Which one will have an easier time cleanly starting and stopping; tracing fast-changing musical signals?
On the downside: ribbons have the reputation of being non-linear, fragile, and power hungry among other maladies. However, advances in materials and fabrication processes, such as neodynium magnets, kapton, and lamination techniques, along with lower prices for some of these have moved ribbon drivers from a niche product to the relatively commonplace. Manufacturers such as Meridian, Verity, Monitor Audio, Aerial, BG/Wisdom, Adam, Aurum Cantus, and others use ribbon drivers, and often in their top line speakers.
Now obviously, there are good speakers with both domes and ribbons. My ATC 20-2 actives have a very good-sounding dome. Having said that, a good ribbon tweeter usually sounds more right to me than a good dome. What’s your take?