What is it about the "jump factor" that only expensive speakers get close to "real"?
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Sure. Science will back it up. The lower the enclosure energy storage the higher the dynamic output capability. A fellow member here modified his Maggie 1.6 QRs by replacing the factory frames with a double acrylic frame. I owned QRs myself and I was shocked by the increase in dynamic range. I had heard of others doing mods on maggies but never heard it for myself. When my loudspeakers were upgraded I heard an increase as well but not of the same magnitude. In my case the already thick and braced HDF was further stiffened with a triple laminate of stone and other materials. It's like my amps grew another pair. LOL.
Being a loudspeaker designer, I always thought that the biggest factor in the "jump factor" was the speakers. Going from a dynamic cone point speaker to line-source ribbons would make the biggest difference because the drivers have such low mass (more efficient and effective use of amplifier power), and the way the line-source radiates (- 3dB/double of distance instead of - 6dB/double of distance). Thus, the biggest leap in "jump factor" in my own line is not from the two-way monitor G7p to the 4-way bass amplified G5 (7 times more expensive), but from the G5 to the line-source G2jr (3 times more expensive). Of course, the disclaimer is that this must be in appropriate size rooms for the comparisons.
However, I was humbled in the past 2 months. The biggest change came about with the turntable/tonearm combination. Going from the Xerses 20 + Artemiz to the Air Force One + Vertere Reference made a huge difference in the jump factor of the G2jr.
This was amply displayed on Side 1 Track 2 of this:
However, I was humbled in the past 2 months. The biggest change came about with the turntable/tonearm combination. Going from the Xerses 20 + Artemiz to the Air Force One + Vertere Reference made a huge difference in the jump factor of the G2jr.
This was amply displayed on Side 1 Track 2 of this:
I think you bought all the remaining copies.
There is one on ebay from France but it's only rated VG++. I think I'll hold out for a cleaner copy.
The ultimate " jump factor" is the room they are in i think , and the speakers dont have to be nescesarilly very expensive , they have to fit to the roomsdimensions and be of good quality
Although expensive exotic housing constructions " can" increase transcients( dynamic contrast ) quite a bit .
Although expensive exotic housing constructions " can" increase transcients( dynamic contrast ) quite a bit .
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-- What about the very best music recordings, recorded by the greatest in the biz, and with the best equipment and microphones? ...And the artist's performance of course.
Jump factor (as it applies to loudspeakers) is the opposite of compression. Compression is mostly related to thermal issues.
Thermal compression comes in two styles: Long-term and short-term. Both originate from voice coil heating.
Short-term thermal compression could be called thermal modulation, and occurs within milliseconds of a high power signal hitting the voice coil. The hotter voice coil has a higher resistance. This compresses the entire envelope, not just the peaks, so it sucks the life out of crescendos. Once the crescendo passes, the voice coil cools off, but a lot more slowly than it heats up.
Long-term thermal compression happens when the magnet itself starts to heat up and lose strength. It can happen within a few seconds with pink noise but in practice usually takes a lot longer than that with program material. It is normal for a speaker to experience about 1 dB of thermal compression when operated at 1/10th its rated power, and about 3 dB of thermal compression when operated at its rated (by whatever AES standard) power. This isn't totally reliable because nowadays speakers can be made with very high-temperature-tolerant materials that will not fail at temperatures which result in severe thermal compression. There have even been tests in which increased input power resulted in decreased SPL because the driver was already so far into deep thermal compression, but nothing had melted yet.
Back to jump factor. The solution is to have a whole lot of thermal headroom. This can come in the form of high efficiency, or high thermal power handling, or both. If you have one speaker seeing 1/10th its rated power on peaks, while another speaker is taking its full rated power on peaks, the first speaker will exhibit far less thermal compression, both short term and long term. Horns tend to have very high efficiency, and expensive direct radiator speakers tend to have very high thermal power handling, so they both usually have a lot of thermal headroom. My idea of "adequate thermal headroom" is for the drivers to be seeing no more than 1/10th their rated AES power handling on anticipated peaks. This isn't guaranteed to give you that elusive jump factor, but it's a good start, and you're not going to get it if your speakers are suffering from significant thermal compression.
Note that with vintage horn systems, you can probably make your calculations based on 1/5th their rated power handling, because the glues and voice coil formers they had back then would fail at lower temperatures than their modern counterparts so the ratings were more conservative accordingly.
Aside from vintage horn systems (which is where all the killer deals are in high jump factor speakers), imo one of the more cost-effective approaches is to use high quality prosound drivers and beat them into submission with a thorough crossover design.
Having adequate thermal headroom isn't the only thing that matters as far as jump factor goes, but I think it's arguably the most critical.
I think that 'jump factor' in uber-expensive speakers comes from over-the-top ease related to both efficiency facing the amplifier and plenty of driver surface (and cabinet design) in the typically difficult to render mid-bass area. so much musical content lives in the lower mids/upper bass that we are use to hearing thru more common speaker systems that when we hear it without 'relative' limitations it is easy for our brain to perceive this higher level of realism....and relaxed presentation.....this 'liveness' as that 'jump factor'.
in the case of the Evolution Acoustic MM7's you have 96db, 6 ohm load, and then '4' 11" ceramic-matrix mid-bass woofers per side. even at high SPL's with all that driver surface, driver excursion is minimal, and combined with the factor that the amplifier is not stressed, you have minimal distortion. every small step up in source performance or amplifier performance or really any aspect of system performance comes thru loud and clear when the speaker is so revealing in this area. you have the bass towers to handle the deep bass and the foundation so these mid-bass drivers only have to do one thing well.
as speakers get less expensive this mid-bass area is more and more compromised, since cabinet size and driver compliment becomes relatively limited. it becomes degrees of 'less good' and the 'jump factor' lowers relatively. sometimes less expensive speakers might have the 'jump factor' but maybe not the bottom octave too. choices get made on what priorities might be to hit price points.
in the case of the Evolution Acoustic MM7's you have 96db, 6 ohm load, and then '4' 11" ceramic-matrix mid-bass woofers per side. even at high SPL's with all that driver surface, driver excursion is minimal, and combined with the factor that the amplifier is not stressed, you have minimal distortion. every small step up in source performance or amplifier performance or really any aspect of system performance comes thru loud and clear when the speaker is so revealing in this area. you have the bass towers to handle the deep bass and the foundation so these mid-bass drivers only have to do one thing well.
as speakers get less expensive this mid-bass area is more and more compromised, since cabinet size and driver compliment becomes relatively limited. it becomes degrees of 'less good' and the 'jump factor' lowers relatively. sometimes less expensive speakers might have the 'jump factor' but maybe not the bottom octave too. choices get made on what priorities might be to hit price points.
I don't know as much about the limiting factors in electrostats, though I imagine that transformer saturation may play a role roughly analogous to thermal compression. And likewise I would imagine that headroom is a good thing to have, but don't have a feel for where the goal posts are. Sorry!
It is very hard for a physically small speaker to do a good job in the midbass. It either suffers from baffle step fall-off, or uses baffle-step compensation, which somehow always sounds "rounder" to me than the real deal that you get with a big speaker. Design specifically for up-against-the-wall placement might work. However I think you're right that a naturally full-sounding midbass contributes to jump factor. Thanks, I hadn't made the connection.
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Nothing as long as you limit the max SPL. On the low end they can't move enough air, it doesn't matter how big the panel is if you can't get more than 50 mil excursion peaks. They don't have the physical impact dynamic drivers can have especially on the low end.
That can make a big difference depending on the program material.
Rob
Nothing as long as you limit the max SPL. On the low end they can't move enough air, it doesn't matter how big the panel is if you can't get more than 50 mil excursion peaks. They don't have the physical impact dynamic drivers can have especially on the low end.
That can make a big difference depending on the program material.
Rob
Well this isn't about jump factor per se, but does illustrate what a big enough panel can do:
A friend of mine used to have a pair of old SoundLab B-1 electrostatic subwoofers. He had a recording with very strong low frequency content that he claimed would make his vision go blurry on certain notes. That made no sense to me, until I later found out that the resonant frequency of the human eyeball is 19 Hz!
The Duke said, "A friend of mine used to have a pair of old SoundLab B-1 electrostatic subwoofers. He had a recording with very strong low frequency content that he claimed would make his vision go blurry on certain notes. That made no sense to me, until I later found out that the resonant frequency of the human eyeball is 19 Hz!"
Right, and thats why I limit my freq response to 30hz. Below that and I start to get a queasy feeling in my stomach! And my system is capable of below 15hz! But I think it does depend on loudness levels, I listen to live sound levels at 110db+.
I know other posters here listen louder still....Bass Pig and Atmosphere do but how low do their systems go?
Wendell
Right, and thats why I limit my freq response to 30hz. Below that and I start to get a queasy feeling in my stomach! And my system is capable of below 15hz! But I think it does depend on loudness levels, I listen to live sound levels at 110db+.
I know other posters here listen louder still....Bass Pig and Atmosphere do but how low do their systems go?
Wendell
IME jump factor is a combination of source quality, dynamic response of preamp and amps and finally speakers.
The source if digital can easily lose JF if the jitter is too high. I have found that as jitter is lowered, the overall JF improves dramatically.
The preamp and amp can lose JF if the power subsystem is poor. Many amps have no HF decoupling at the output transistors for instance. Most preamps and amps have slow-responding voltage regulators. All makes for sloppy voltage control and loses JF. This is the single biggest issue with mid-fi gear. No guts or speed to the power supply, which results in lackluster dynamics.
Finally, the speakers can easily lose JF by poor crossover design and cheap components. Also, if the bass box is ported, the port can be out of proper "tune". I have a pair of ribbons with bass boxes that I use for my current reference and I had to retune the bass ports on these. The snapped to life when I did this. I think a lot of manufacturers build speaker prototypes with the port designed by simulation or calculation and never go back and tune it by ear.
And BTW, I have used TAD and YG Acoustics speakers in my rooms at shows in the past 3 years. The TADs when driven by my modded 1000W monoblocks were quite good. All amps should be modded IMO to improve the speed.
Steve N.
The source if digital can easily lose JF if the jitter is too high. I have found that as jitter is lowered, the overall JF improves dramatically.
The preamp and amp can lose JF if the power subsystem is poor. Many amps have no HF decoupling at the output transistors for instance. Most preamps and amps have slow-responding voltage regulators. All makes for sloppy voltage control and loses JF. This is the single biggest issue with mid-fi gear. No guts or speed to the power supply, which results in lackluster dynamics.
Finally, the speakers can easily lose JF by poor crossover design and cheap components. Also, if the bass box is ported, the port can be out of proper "tune". I have a pair of ribbons with bass boxes that I use for my current reference and I had to retune the bass ports on these. The snapped to life when I did this. I think a lot of manufacturers build speaker prototypes with the port designed by simulation or calculation and never go back and tune it by ear.
And BTW, I have used TAD and YG Acoustics speakers in my rooms at shows in the past 3 years. The TADs when driven by my modded 1000W monoblocks were quite good. All amps should be modded IMO to improve the speed.
Steve N.
My current system does not go that low, but my new Vapor Audio speakers will. I never had any queasy feeling. Sounds like the effects of bass overtones, which are distortion from the speaker cones. This is quite common. IT is not unusual to have 20% distortion in the bass from the woofer cone.
Having the superb KEF 104/2 (modded) for many years, I got used to less than 10% distortion from the bass. My new speakers will have a 15" woofer which is short-throw and puts out very low distortion too. These are marvelous to hear because your first impression is there is bass lacking, that is until there is some significant bass in the track and then it surprises you. For those used to hearing mostly bass overtones from the cones, it is a different experience entirely. One must retrain their ears to reality.
I have often wondered why many PA systems with live microphone feeds running through a mixer have a higher JF than vastly more expensive audiophile systems DESPITE higher distortion. I believe it is all because of higher dynamics, probably resulting from shorter, more direct signal path.
Personally, whenever, I got a new component that increases JF, it typically goes hand in hand with a heightened concern about blowing up the drivers of my speakers; higher dynamics.
Personally, whenever, I got a new component that increases JF, it typically goes hand in hand with a heightened concern about blowing up the drivers of my speakers; higher dynamics.
Isn't it because they are using extremely efficient speakers, often horns, and backing it up with some big solid state power?
I'm a horn convert for home listening after more than 30 years of various Quad electrostats (with add-on woofs, tweets, etc.) I didn't page back through this thread, but horns can do LOUD effortlessly. The trick is to make them sound good, tonally, without squack, and mate them seamlessly with the bass (unless you have a monster sized horn for the woofs). It ain't easy, but I get the transparency of the electrostat and the 'startle' factor that horns can deliver, provided the source material is dynamic (and otherwise well recorded). The 'cost' in my experience has been to get the right associated components in the chain upstream, and deal with the (noise) issues associated with a speaker that is 104db (or more) efficient.
Dunno. I'm not talking about a very loud, highly amplified band. I'm talking about a two guys with a guitar jamming, with a pair of JBL speakers and just a bunch of wires and some electronics between mics and the speakers. It somehow always sounds more real and has higher JF factor than a six figure audiophile system.
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