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Your biggest surprise in hi-fi

Ashley James said:
The problem I see with the arguments you lot put forward is that:

1. You only have a partial understanding.
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Funnily enough, I see that as your problem.

I wonder who is right?

Oh and by the way, where did I say I had larger drive units? I specified cone area.
 
S-Man said:
Yes. Mine have 12mm linear pk-pk (22mm max), BUT I have about 4X the cone area of your " very special" 6.5" driver and much more importantly mine are not wobbling a column of air about long after the signal has gone.

In addition I know exactly how much current each driver needs to reach maximum excursion and even quite a few old fashioned amps have sufficient power.
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12 mm peak to peak is plus or minus 6mm which is average for a modern 10"

Ours of plus or minus 22mm so 44mm, so rather better for low bass.

Ash
 
S-Man said:
Funnily enough, I see that as your problem.

I wonder who is right?

Oh and by the way, where did I say I had larger drive units? I specified cone area.
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Roughly speaking 2 x 6" = 8", 2 x 10" = 12" and so on. It's not very precise, but a rough guide.

Ash
 
It's certainly no surprise to see Ash here plugging his wares...

Ashley James said:
We're working with some very special 6.5" drivers at the moment that have 18 mm of linear travel, the best conventional ones have 10 or 12mm and a few years ago, 2 or 3 was typical. How many posting here know how good their drivers are or how much liner travel the speakers they are using have.
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Ashley James said:
The only problem is that if you're using gutless old fashioned amps that don't have sufficient headroom the extra dynamic range of the speaker will make clipping sound worse.
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Ashley James said:
Ours of plus or minus 22mm so 44mm, so rather better for low bass.
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I've had two big surprises recently:

- a Mac/DACMagic has finally allowed me to enjoy CD sourced music.

- I was able to hear wow on a Klimax Sondek, and in direct a/b comparisons it had less speed stability and was less tuneful than cheaper decks. That was a bit of a shock to a 26 year Sondek user.
 
prowla said:
It's certainly no surprise to see Ash here plugging his wares...
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This one is good too!

Ashley James said:
That's not correct. Speakers cover a relatively narrow bandwidth before they start to break up. This means that the cone starts to buckle and twist, which affects how they measure and how they sound.

Even a 6.5" driver is breaking up at around 1.4 kHz and this is obvious when you measure them. Designers have devoted huge energy to smoothing these problems out and most are okay to crossover in the 2.5 to 4 kHz region.

5" drivers break up at higher frequency, but lack dynamic range and bass extension.

However the bigger a driver the lower the break up. A 15" might at 250 Hz, a 12" 350 Hz and a 10" a bit higher.

In the old days when powerful amplifiers didn't exist, designers had to use larger drivers with lighter diaphragms to increase sensitivity, which meant less bass and more break up as well as a low crossover point. They still do this for PA and for Tannoys, but in terms of high fidelity sound reproduction, neither are as good as smaller modern drivers.

There have been big improvement in driver design in recent years, which means bigger amps are more important that they used to be. Old fashioned speakers boomed, so that the harshness of clipping was sort of balanced up. Boom and Tizz. Now they are controlled over very large excursions, so no boom, just harshness.

Ash
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Ashley James said:
The problem I see with the arguments you lot put forward is that:

1. You only have a partial understanding.

2. You're paranoid about being sold something, which I don't understand. I don't buy lots of things, especially if I recognise a hard sell, but that doesn't mean I don't learn something from the salesman.


If you have a larger driver it wont do the mid properly, which is why the world uses 5 or 6" drivers and not big ones. Bigger drivers do have more linear travel. Our sub that most customers use has plus or minus 22 mm so 44 in total. Horses for courses.

However I wasn't talking about ADMs, I was talking generally and about some new technically advanced drivers we're experimenting with to show how far things have advanced.

In the main sensible speakers are 8 Ohms and they need lots of volts not lots of amps to
drive them.

Ash
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Ashley, why do you comment on a website you detest?

Yes, I read your comments on the HDDI website about pfm. I don't wear hypocrites gladly, so I suggest you do a rethink - and issue an apology before posting further.

Be aware that you're allowed to comment here. If someone made the same comments you do about HDDI, they would be banned on that site. You are lucky, and it would do well to show some humility.
 
Ashley James said:
That's nonsense, speaker drivers have been improving incrementally for years.

One of the most significant improvements is in linear travel or dynamic range. The more you have the more clear and dynamic speakers become.

We're working with some very special 6.5" drivers at the moment that have 18 mm of linear travel, the best conventional ones have 10 or 12mm and a few years ago, 2 or 3 was typical. How many posting here know how good their drivers are or how much liner travel the speakers they are using have.

The only problem is that if you're using gutless old fashioned amps that don't have sufficient headroom the extra dynamic range of the speaker will make clipping sound worse.

Ash
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Not the ones I have listened to recently, all very disappointing. May be you could recommend something?

I think 400W of mono amp per channel should be enough.
 
I'm always surprise to hear back hi-fi components that I thought I knew how they sounded like. Aural memory is very ephemeral and could be the reason why so many people are frequently on the hunt for the next upgrade.
 
My biggest surprise is that I can run 2 very common and decidedly midfi units (Sansui 8080DB, Klipsch Forte), combine them with decidedly midfi front ends (AR-XA, Philips GA-302, Sony CDP-397, 497, Gateway PC running flac), and get very satisfying sound. I need to witness hi-fi in all its glory to hear what I'm missing...
 
michaelhigh said:
My biggest surprise is that I can run 2 very common and decidedly midfi units (Sansui 8080DB, Klipsch Forte), combine them with decidedly midfi front ends (AR-XA, Philips GA-302, Sony CDP-397, 497, Gateway PC running flac), and get very satisfying sound. I need to witness hi-fi in all its glory to hear what I'm missing...
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If your systems make you happy and you're content with the music that you hear, you're not missing a damned thing.
 
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