Hierarchy within the speaker

We use the Tune Method to evaluate performance

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Charlie1
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Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Charlie1 »

Are the input terminals and crossover the most important element of a speaker, or is there more to it than that?

I mean, is it like a preamp where the input stage is the most important and source first theory applies to the amplifier stages?

If so, then I guess a speaker with single midrange driver and no crossover would be more tuneful playing accoustic guitar than a normal speaker with crossover and tweeter, assuming same drive unit and quality of enclosure. But does this fall apart when you play music with more high and low frequencies that a single midrange driver cannot do justice to?
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Spannko »

I’ve got a pair of computer speakers which are very simple and cheap as chips. They’ve got just one 40mm aluminium drive unit and amplifier in each ported enclosure and I think they sound way better than they have any right to for only £15 and I’ve often wondered if they would make the ultimate flat earth system if they were partnered with a KDS!

I know of one prominent Quad dealer in the 1960’s who only recommended 2 speakers: the ESL’s and Jordan Watt’s. The JW’s used either 1 or 2, JW designed, 100mm full range, crossoverless, aluminium coned drive units - very similar to my computer speakers.

The AE sub/sat’s can sound a bit musical too, and they also use a small full range drive unit, but the sub’s not really quite up to the job tbh.

So I think you’ve got a point charlie1, a good quality, small’ish full range driver in a good cabinet could work really well. In my experience of all of the above, it’s not so much the tune which suffers with wideband material, they all seem to struggle with heavy compression when they attempt to play anything above modest levels. But, for background music, it might be possible to design something acceptable.
Charlie1
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Charlie1 »

Thanks Spannko.

I did try a pair of speakers with single wideband driver a couple of years ago - I may have shared clips. That drive unit was literally acting as both a woofer and a tweeter - i.e. it would go forwards and backwards like a normal woofer but also vibate at the same time to create the upper frequencies. Don't know if it was the driver itself or the implementation but it wasn't very musical at all, hence my hyperthetical scenario is based on using a normal midrange woofer.

This is all out of curiosity btw - just something that occured to me - I'm not about to go into speaker design :D
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Spannko »

Yes, I forgot to mention, all of the modern full range HiFi speakers I’ve heard have been awful too - the ones with a 6-8” paper cone and a paper “whizzer” in the middle. Musically, they’ve all been worse than my little Logitech jobbies, but they go a LOT louder.

The principle obviously works, cos even budget earphones, which use a single driver, can sound ok. Something possibly doesn’t scale up well, maybe due to the spl’s which can be generated at the ear drum without pushing the drivers into non linear regions? This would seem to fit with my observation that single driver speakers appear to compress the sound when driven at moderate levels too?
beck
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by beck »

Maybe listen to a pair of Rehdeko 115:

https://youtu.be/K8w79K7O3_g
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Charlie1
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Charlie1 »

Thanks beck - interesting.
FairPlayMotty
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by FairPlayMotty »

http://www.tocaro.de/en.html

The 40e is a similar concept and still available new. Interesting topic Charlie1!
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fatjulio
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by fatjulio »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-07-20 23:06 http://www.tocaro.de/en.html

The 40e is a similar concept and still available new. Interesting topic Charlie1!
Those speakers look really interesting. None of them have a filter, even their multi driver models.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by FairPlayMotty »

fatjulio wrote: 2020-07-21 02:57 Those speakers look really interesting. None of them have a filter, even their multi driver models.
It's very interesting to see a different approach to loudspeaker design.
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Charlie1
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Charlie1 »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-07-20 23:06 http://www.tocaro.de/en.html

The 40e is a similar concept and still available new. Interesting topic Charlie1!
Thanks FPM!

They are pricey but would like to hear a pair.
fatjulio wrote: 2020-07-21 02:57 Those speakers look really interesting. None of them have a filter, even their multi driver models.
Yes, I was surprised by that too. I guess the tweeter has to somehow handle a full bandwidth signal.
sunbeamgls
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by sunbeamgls »

Perhaps, Charlie1, there is a step earlier in the hierarchy that you haven't included.
The competence of the designer and their ability to understand that drivers, crossovers (or not) and cabinets all sit somewhere in the hierarchy - I suspect the cabinet is possibly more fundamental than the crossover and possibly is on a par with or before the drive unit.
I have heard one single driver loudspeaker that I found enjoyable, that's a very low hit rate as I've heard quite a few.
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Spannko
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Spannko »

sunbeamgls wrote: 2020-07-21 18:29 I suspect the cabinet is possibly more fundamental than the crossover and possibly is on a par with or before the drive unit.
I’ve not heard of anyone saying this about a cabinet before. What makes you think so, sunbeam?
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by sunbeamgls »

Spannko wrote: 2020-07-21 22:29
sunbeamgls wrote: 2020-07-21 18:29 I suspect the cabinet is possibly more fundamental than the crossover and possibly is on a par with or before the drive unit.
I’ve not heard of anyone saying this about a cabinet before. What makes you think so, sunbeam?
The driver and the cabinet are a mechanical system, dependent on each other for many parameters. They need to work very closely together.

Some aspects to be considered: The wrong volume has a fundamental effect on how a driver performs. Having a ported enclosure for a driver that who's characteristics better suit a sealed box would be bad for performance. Having a cabinet that encourages multiple standing waves at or around the same frequency (imagine the worst case of a cube where the standing waves are at the same frequency in all the 3 fundamental dimensions). A cabinet that has resonances that coincide with the driver, or where multiple panels resonate at the same frequency. Unless these are accounted for in the design approach. A baffle width that causes baffle step diffraction at the same frequency as a peak in the driver's output. The location of a port, port length - all important to performance. You might be amazed at how sensitive bass timing / pace / control is dependent on small changes to the the density of the filling inside a sealed cabinet. Horn loaded speakers are even more complex.

Linn are often criticised for using relatively low cost drivers, but their cabinets tend to have some interesting and expensive aspects to their design and construction - most of them not cheap. This is why the design needs to be holistic, not just about drive units or crossovers.

I have some Mission 782s and Mission 783s from the turn of the century - they have some very complex interior machining that no one ever sees, but there's no doubt it will be making a significant contribution to how they perform.

Picture of a small part of the machining inside a 782:
Image
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FairPlayMotty
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by FairPlayMotty »

Cabinet construction, choice of drivers, stands, quality of internal wiring etc. all play a role.

A childhood memory for me is listening to two one speaker old fashioned cabinets before stereo emerged. To my young ear both sounded very good. One had an integrated Garrard turntable later upgraded to a much sought after Garrard. Henry Kloss knew how to build loudspeakers and was able to choose one single small speaker for Tivolo radios that deliver sound in a very pleasing way (his company was KLH, manufacturer of the first loudspeakers I ever bought).

Charlie1 did something rare on here and in the world of HiFi. He challenged conventional thinking. Lejonklou does that too. He did it with the Hakai. With spectacular results.

Too many HiFi manufacturers start off with a set of assumptions from current practice. If people didn't challenge assumptions we wouldn't have the internet.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Spannko »

There’s no doubt that it’s important for the cabinet and drive units to work together harmoniously. But more important than the x/o ? If we follow the path of the signal, the x/o has to be more important than the drive unit/cabinet. Not more expensive necessarily, but if musical information is lost here, it’s lost forever. The best drive units and cabinet combinations simply cannot recover what has been lost.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by FairPlayMotty »

Too many variables to say which is most important. To achieve great sound they have to work in unison.

Charlie1 has taken us to a long neglected opportunity in loudspeaker design. Humans like to follow, others challenge.
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Charlie1
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Charlie1 »

Thanks gents for contributing.

I suppose Sunbeam and FPM you must be right because how else could a speaker without any crossover have sounded so poor compared to my Majik 140s. In terms of linking that into source first theory, perhaps the 140 crossover degraded the signal very little but the wide band driver / cabinet made such a mess of everything that I couldn't hear through it all to the slight improvement in source signal - i.e. source first was still there and working but I couldn't really benefit from it.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Tendaberry »

I heard a single-drive speaker without a crossover once and it's one of my worst hi-fi experiences ever, so there must be more to speaker design than just that... I tend to agree with Sunbeam here.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by sunbeamgls »

Spannko wrote: 2020-07-22 00:11 There’s no doubt that it’s important for the cabinet and drive units to work together harmoniously. But more important than the x/o ? If we follow the path of the signal, the x/o has to be more important than the drive unit/cabinet. Not more expensive necessarily, but if musical information is lost here, it’s lost forever. The best drive units and cabinet combinations simply cannot recover what has been lost.
I'm only putting forward ideas for debate.
There's one thing for sure though, single driver speakers without crossovers are generally pretty dire. So the design philosophy is more fundamental than any of the components. And that design philosophy has to encompass the way the cabinet and the driver(s) interact - the crossover design comes after that, not before it. So which hierarchy are we talking about, the design hierarchy or the in-line electrical hierarchy?
If there is to be a crossover, then yes, it will form part of the opportunity to lose the music. But perhaps it loses a little of the music to pass it along to a cabinet / driver combination that loses a lot of music!

Not to be taken forward in this thread, but if the crossover is the most important part of a speaker design, there is an opportunity to do it earlier in the chain or even earlier in the chain than that, when it can be done far more accurately. We shouldn't always consider that a process has to be where it is in the chain, just because its always been there in the past.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Whatsmynaim »

Long ago I tried doing a similar write-up, because I wanted a check list of easy answers on complex matters :)
Here's what I surely thought would make a good speaker:

It's passive.
Uses 1st order crossovers.
Uses a stand.
Is a ported design.
Is a two-way.
Uses a paper cone woofer.
Isn't full range.

..but then there's closed-box, electrostatic, isobarik designs etc. which all have become fantastic speakers.
It seems mostly anything can sound great if the designer knows what he/she's doing and takes the time
to listen and fine-tune everything.

Edit: Also if a good single driver no crossover speaker exists that's proof there's nothing wrong with the technology.
Just it's difficult to get right.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by sunbeamgls »

Are some electrostatics a single driver speaker?
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Spannko »

Whatsmynaim wrote: 2020-07-22 16:25 It seems mostly anything can sound great if the designer knows what he/she's doing and takes the time to listen and fine-tune everything.
I think you’re right WMN. For every “rule” there will be an exception, which reminds me, there’s only one rule: there are no rules! Only one thing takes precedence: the outcome, however it is achieved. For most of us here, it’s best achieved by throwing away the rule book, being curios, using “trial & error” and assessing the outcome with musically related criteria.
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by beck »

Spannko wrote: 2020-07-22 18:56
Whatsmynaim wrote: It seems mostly anything can sound great if the designer knows what he/she's doing and takes the time to listen and fine-tune everything.
I think you’re right WMN. For every “rule” there will be an exception, which reminds me, there’s only one rule: there are no rules! Only one thing takes precedence: the outcome, however it is achieved. For most of us here, it’s best achieved by throwing away the rule book, being curios, using “trial & error” and assessing the outcome with musically related criteria.
👍
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by Karousel »

hello, what do you think of the Naim IBLs?
E434663B-196E-4AEB-8CF9-AE055DA18586.jpeg
E1E3C856-06FC-46D3-B61B-959AC9422B63.jpeg
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beck
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Re: Hierarchy within the speaker

Post by beck »

Very nice looking but make a recording Karousel and we will tell you what we think! :-)
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