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As a frame of reference we could use the audio frog line here though the brand doesn't matter.
As far as I've collected from other's I've heard that a big tweeter that's soft dome and a 6.5 midrange might not sound better than a smaller midrange though I just wanted ya'll's opinions before I build my three way.
Also does a 6.5" or 8" midbass sound better?
does a 10" subwoofer sound the best for sound quality? Now that one does get thrown around allot...
There are no absolutes. Driver selection of Sizes depends a lot on the vehicle chosen, Mini Van/SUV/Truck or Hatchback, Coupe, Sedan, Micro Car. once vehicle is picked contact a good installer for more lessons on driver selection.
6.5 vs 8's is dependent on what you are doing with your vehicle if you are doing 2 way vs 3 way. 8-10s can cause beaming, Size doesn't determine how high a frequency a speaker will play this is speaker dependent.
Certain vehicles may have trouble doing 8's and Kick panels( no matter what size) simply because you cant depending on vehicle type, that annoying secondary Break Lever.
Ive seen a 110mm Diameter Tweeter put in a sedan.
Speaker size selection also depends on your willingness to modify and half destroy to rebuild doors/kicks/Dash to not be off axis.
Subwoofers- dependent on the amount of space you have and how many subwoofers. as well as if you are running IB or not. 8's-18' may be used
Everything I mentioned I have seen people break that mold/reference/absolute TIPS and guidance did whatever the fuck they want. Because Money is not a factor.
TLDR: want SQ? contact a good installer that has good Helix DSP knowledge almost anything and everything works as long as you can adjust size issues through tuning or with car modifications. if not competing great, or choose to do Masters where the only rule is there almost are no rules.
Solen in Canada , check 18W/4531G00
Revelators for mid and tweet will bring an OMG feeling.
Fast-Bass-Experiment
https://www.stereo.net.au/features/t...y-woofers-slow
A sealed box will do best with transients
Revelators are similar to Ribeye or beer-boated tenderloins on grill [ Scanspeak is Technologically unequaled ]
Mid -
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.co...SABEgLcVvD_BwE
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.co...SABEgIPBPD_BwE
Tech explained used on 7 inch
Size works against you - not only in terms of raw install space, but in terms of directionality. The larger your speaker cone, the more directional it is.
What size is good for is loudness. You are pushing more air with a larger cone.
You could have some generalizations -
For example, a larger cone may have more moving mass - especially with the larger voice coil needed to push it.... that will change certain parameters, like Fs.
Or, for example, a larger driver - with a larger voice coil - may have a longer Xmax, which is necessary to play lower frequencies.
That's normal - but not absolute.
But directionality - that IS absolute. It's purely a function of the size of the cone. Whatever frequency starts resulting in different arrival times at your ear from one side of the cone vs the other, as you start to move off-axis - the speaker starts to be "beaming" above that frequency, and that's not an advantage.
So for SQ, I'd argue "the smaller the speaker you can get away with, the better"
I also can't say "going three way" (with the inherently small midrange) is "better", because it adds another crossover point, which pretty much always mucks up your frequency response a half-octave in each direction - depending on crossover slope and how far apart you mount them, and a number of other things. The more locations you have playing sound (three vs two) actually can muck up your imaging.
There's just no generalizations. You have to plan out your install, then pick speakers that fit THOSE needs.
And it's not brand names that determine that. :wink:
Did "they" expound on why/how they might sound better?Quote:
Originally Posted by punkrocker
Louder maybe... but what defines better?Quote:
Originally Posted by punkrocker
(Usually the size also impacts whether it can fit in the available space.)
Again, better in what way?Quote:
Originally Posted by punkrocker
A 10" can sound better in car where it fits, than a 24" sounds which is inside of a building, and cannot fit into the car.
These blanket, "what is better" threads often miss a whole bunch of other things.
it is like saying components always sound better than coaxials, but in many cases a coaxial works and it is easier to arrive at a decent result.
Goals and budget also play a huge factor in addition space and volume constraints.
The best speakers are those that fit your install and budget requirements... it’s like asking what’s the best car, there is no correct answer... it’s entirely down to your vehicle and the space you have available and your tastes, plus ask 100 different people for an opinion and you will get 100 different responses... anyone who tells you to buy x, y and z without asking all of the above questions and more is talking out of there backside with little knowledge and practical experience ;)
A silk dome ?Quote:
Originally Posted by punkrocker
The bigger midbass with more power than midrange and less power than subQuote:
Also does a 6.5" or 8" midbass sound better?
We could probably turn this around to theory...
Ideally the best speaker is an all in one that has a light diaphragm, and keeps all the frequencies looking like they come from the same place.
it is even better if that is a planer shape so that the sound appears to have a focus point further away than an actual point source.
Which then looks something like a Magnaplanaer.
Then the second attribute is for the speaker to have a good time domain response.
Here is a quote from a magazine:
"Atkinson: I can count the manufacturers of loudspeakers that produce good, time-coherent impulse responses on the fingers of one hand—Dunlavy, Spica, Thiel, Vandersteen, Quad. So why don't the designers of 99.9% of loudspeakers out there care about the impulse response?"
However a car poses problems not encountered in a home... and there is a reliance on DSP, in part because the speakers are not able to be place in optimal locations... because there are places for them... so the woofers go in doors or kick panels.
We have bandaids if your vehicle has problems ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
Some great points here - I think my prior post above was skimmed or ignored. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
But your post here made me think of a way to re-phrase it:
There's no generalizing on speaker size for sound quality.
Ideally, you'd have a lightweight moving assembly - even zero mass (Google "plasma tweeters" if you want to see something wild... zero mass, sound from a flame...). Problem is, the smaller and lighter the moving mass, the higher your resonant frequency is. And also, that tiny moving mass means a tiny cone - and two things make a speaker loud - cone area, and excursion.
The smaller your cone, the less loud it will be, at any given comparative excursion.
And you could give it a super-long-throw voice coil/motor, but then it won't be low mass any more, voice coils are heavy. And it will have a deep mounting depth... it could have high inductance - lots of potential drawbacks.
So maybe that's not ideal.
Same for suspension compliance - the less restrictive the spider, the higher your efficiency, but you get less control. And it's not really even suspension compliance that matters, it's suspension compliance across excursion. For sound quality, you don't want a spider that's loose at rest but then stiffens up as Xmax increases, that causes intermodulation distortion. But CMS vs excursion plots are rare to find.
So you engineer a larger cone. And you have a spider that provides a linear CMS across your entire Xmax range.
Now, your Fs is lower, and you do need Xmax to play lower... in fact, every octave lower that you ask a speaker [of a given size] to play, it needs to double it's excursion. So you need to size your Xmax to your Fs goals. And that can increase mass as well (unless you go with an underhung design).
But that added mass reduces the motor's ability to maintain control at higher frequencies...
But we're speaker engineers. So we have some tricks. We can build a wideband driver.
...problem now is, that larger cone? It's beamy.
At whatever frequency corresponds to the diameter of the cone, the speaker becomes directional. This is because when you start moving off-axis from the woofer, the sound from one side of the cone can arrive sooner than the sound from the other side of the cone, and off-axis response at the higher frequencies rolls off - more sharply as you get more off-axis with the speaker.
But sometimes - sometimes you WANT directional. Lots of off-axis sound means lots of off-axis sound being reflected by all our glass...
So there is no "ideal".
You can't have a small cone and a large cone.
You can't have light moving mass and no suspension and a low Fs.
You can't have a motor that's strong AND has a high Xmax... well, you can, but then it will have terrible efficiency, which means you need to send it more power... which means it needs heavier duty windings to handle that power, which requires a wider gap (which lowers motor strength), which reduces efficiency more... let's not go down THAT road...
...when in fact, only sometimes you want a strong motor (vented and passive radiator applications), and sometimes you absolutely do not want a strong motor (sealed and infinite baffle).
So what's "ideal" for SQ?
The right driver for your application, for your installation, for your goals.
And that's the right order to determine:
1) State your goals.
2) Figure out an installation strategy to achieve your goals.
3) Figure out drivers that work for each specific application aspect of your installation plan.
That will be as close to "ideal" as you can get.
Everyone's "ideal" will be different than everyone else's.
It's why people tossing out brand names are just tossing out their own anecdotal fallacies - if even THAT. :wink:
I either totally missed it, or we were thinking the same thing at around the same time... but it is "on point".Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
it is like a cult, and repeating the magic incantations.Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
The Scanspeak split-cone technology fights distortion ( less distortion . .. more "qualitative" enjoyment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
But the split cone does not do anything for InterModulation Distortion" (IMD). And the discussion context was on non-linearity in stiffness.Quote:
Originally Posted by mlekk
My point is to emphasize why ALL design variables exist as exactly that - variables.Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
If there's more than one way to do something - or more to the point, even: if this very mature industry hasn't coalesced around a single, inarguably "best" that has eliminated a design variable in favor of a single standard by this point...
...then there's a reason for that. Or possibly, tens.. or hundreds.
Cones are the same. They have different damping factors, weight factors, flex factors... different shapes... each contributes to acoustical differences, not only directly but when combined with an intended use or application. Need a lower mass? Use a thinner cone. Oh wait, now it's flexing and has terrible breakup patterns? Use a different material. Etc.
EDIT: But cone size is still not the significant determinant of SQ (or other response) concerns.
There is no "best". Cones are just ONE of the variables, and even with all those words, I only barely touched on why there's no single "best", I only covered size/width and directionality! :wink:
Their are many , "MANY" technological factors worth the money that Revelators bring to distortion fighting.
I know that their are products that have tested or sounded different .
If you attempt to fight distortion in a driver . . . This is leading towards subjectively better sound quality ?
If OP were to go with a smaller midrange , would a 4.5" 12M w3rk or do other speakers come to mind ?
Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by mlekk
Cone size isn't how you fight distortion. It's not even a contributing factor, not even a consideration.
You can have a 1" tweeter that's horrible, and a 3" wideband that's amazing, and a 5.25" midrange that's terrible and a 6.5" that's clean as a whistle, and an 8" that's muddy and a 12" that's perfection, and a 18" that's... you get the idea.
It's your application that matters.
If you have a directional 7" - let's say a Revelator! - but then you mount it in an application that requires a lot of off-axis listening and isn't in an enclosure (like your typical door mount location) - the sound quality isn't going to be there. Doesn't matter how awesome it is in a small bookshelf cabinet that you listen to firing right at your face.
In that case - directionality - speaker size matters.
That's my point - that's all it matters for. It correlates directly to what frequency the speaker becomes directional at.
Other than that and how it might impact your installation, there's other WAY more impactful variables that actually determine if a speaker distorts or not.
Size isn't one of them.
Increased excursion increases distortion, more cone area means less excursion for a given spl, ergo more cone area can mean less distortion if you look at it from that side of things, sure there are lots of other variables, but to say cone area makes no odds is missing a bit of the picture for meQuote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
That's only a true statement for a motor that doesn't have a flat BL curve.Quote:
Originally Posted by dumdum
Or, a suspension that doesn't have a flat CMS plot.
It's my very point -
You engineer properly to avoid distortion.
You don't just say "Well, just size up on the speaker and use it at 1/4 capacity. Problem solved!" :lol:
You cause other problems that way - fundamentally, you now need to fit a larger cone speaker somewhere. You now need to deal with absolutely unavoidable directionality considerations. You now have to make sure your larger speaker has the larger requirements (air, vents, etc) that it needs. It's not just subwoofers - putting any speaker in a cabinet that's too small for it won't be good.
If inter-modulation distortion is the concern (sounds like it is, if these linearity points are being raised - since excursion was mentioned), then solve them with good engineering. Slapping a bigger cone on a non-linear motor and a non-linear suspension won't solve the problem. That's what you call "a kludge". Not even a good workaround.
I mean sure - if all you have access to is sub-par flea markets to shop at, it's good to be aware that stuff will be limited in linearity.
But you can do better. Don't shop at flea markets, and buy linear drivers.
You don't need to cause yourself more issues trying to counterproductively work around bad engineering. Just buy good engineering. It's not expensive to do. :wink:
What about AMTs, and ribbons?
Points on loudness and directionality will still apply... there's no getting around physics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
Same with magnetic planar.
And for fun, how about the inverse?
Google "plasma tweeters". It's as close to the SQ-ideal "single small point source" as you can get - a nearly zero-mass flame that makes sound.
It was more of a wiseass comment, to inject further confusion.
(But some of those ribbons n such have good transient response, so there is some basis for goodness.)
If suppose if the OP had access to a spec sheets, then it could be easier?
i think they may just want a jump at the frogs statement.10" MB is better than 6.5"
You make another great point that I think would make a great discussion topic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
There's a reason that the "ideal" SQL driver is a mass-less single point-source driver that eminates in a realistic 360 degree pattern, where huge cones and high mass penalize performance.
There's a reason that the "best" subwoofer driver is a huge cone, high-excursion beast, where small cones and low excursion and even low mass penalize performance.
These things change as you move down the frequency spectrum.
It's why most high-end tweeters are 1" domes.
It's why most high-end midrange drivers are between 3" and 5".
It's why most high-end midbass drivers are between 6" and 8".
It's why most high-end subwoofer drivers are between 10" and 15"
Sometimes these numbers skew a bit smaller for high-end home audio.
Sometimes those numbers skew a bit larger for high-end pro-audio.
In both cases that makes sense for the venues and noise floors and audiences.
Audio engineering is all about having the right balance of specs-
We'll start with a tweeter because that's the one that ideally is closest to being able to have zero mass and a point-source size, to replicate the absolute fastest frequencies precisely.
As you go lower in frequency, the cycles per second slow - which makes the cone reach further excursion levels. It's very proportional to frequency - for every octave lower you ask any given speaker to play, it needs to double it's excursion - and that's to play the exact same volume. The same decibel level.
Of course, there's physical limitations to the suspension, the leads, the motor... so it can only play so low before excursion limits are reached. And what really matters with volume is not excursion, but displacement. The same loudness can be achieved by a small cone reaching a high excursion, or a large cone reaching a fraction of that excursion.
So when you reach the lower limit of a tweeter... you hand off to midrange. Because of the frequency range and excursion and volume needs you have for that next lower set of octaves - a larger (than the tweeter), heavier (than the tweeter, since you want a lower Fs), higher excursion driver makes sense. But you still want it to be as small and light as possible, to match the detail and precision that the tweeter can play at. But you need it to be large enough and have enough excursion so that it can play at the same loudness level that the tweeter can reach at higher frequencies.
So... 4", 5", 6". The 4" driver either won't play as low or as loud as an otherwise identical 6" driver, and the 6" driver either won't be as precise or might have too much inductance to play as high as the 4" driver. And again - as you go lower in the frequency spectrum, eventually again you reach the excursion limits of the midrange. And again, we're not asking it to play any louder than the tweeter, that's just naturally what happens to play the same volume level.
So when you reach the lower limit of a midrange... you hand off to midbass. Because of the frequency range and excursion and volume needs you have for that next lower set of octaves - a larger (than the midrange), heavier (than the midrange, since you want a lower Fs), higher excursion driver makes sense. But you still want it to be as small and light as possible, to match the detail and precision that the midrange can play at.
...starting to sound familiar?
And again - as you go lower in the frequency spectrum, eventually again you reach the excursion limits of the midbass, and have to hand off to a subwoofer.
Same really for a subwoofer... you want it to play the frequency range and excursion and volume needs you have for that next lower set of octaves - a larger (than the midbass), heavier (than the midbass, since you want a lower Fs), higher excursion driver makes sense. But you still want it to be as small and light as possible, to match the detail and precision that the midbass is playing at.
It's really all the same deal.
Smaller and lighter and high precision is better up high in the frequency spectrum.
Bigger and heavier and high excursion is better down low in the frequency spectrum.
And in between, when you are in between in the frequency spectrum.
There is no generalization. :cool:
That's true and there's trade-offs with those as well - and maybe a good example to bring in the quality dimension...Quote:
Originally Posted by Holmz
Because for any given speaker size, you also can't generalize about quality, right? :wink:
Seems like that's even more true for these... there's some cheapies that really sound just... bad.
And there's some AMTs that sound amazing... and you'll definitely pay for it!
Do you have any AMTs, home or ...car? Curious what you have. Still have only ever seen one pic of an AMT in a car, and the owner ended up not satisfied, but it had more to do with some installation choices that were made. I only know of a long discontinued Hertz midrange that was far from cheap, for an AMT for car audio.
I got a pair of Fonteks but sort of pushed them in a cabinet straight away... (when I found someone selling a set of 12Ms, and a set of beryllium SS tweeters.)Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
The connectors were nice on the Fondteks.
So I have never heard any, but fondled a pair of Fondteks, which is the set I own.
"Sorta kinda" it is a "yes", in the specific wording of your question.
But I think you also meant... "how did they sound", which is more honestly a "No" and "I dunno".
i suppose I could pull out a digit?
Hell yeah!
Pull them out!
I always like knocking up a stupid simple bookshelf cabinet with a $20ish-but-good midrange and you could extend that front baffle up for a simple AMT dipole...
Use a simple crossover. Fun leftover parts projects.
Scraps of MDF and a jigsaw. Why not pull them out and give them a listen?
Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
I would like to be able to say it is because I no tools or skills, but basically I am lazy.Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
I did put varnish on 4 boards yesterday.
The neighbour shot a cow, so I borrowed a dehydrator and am making load #2 of jerky today before I hit the tools.
Lastly I want to do a sub box first, before yet another set of book shelf speakers.
I'm not going to criticize your priorities, or your claim of "lazy" :lol:
I personally have a storage unit of a lifetime of audio gear that's mostly just collecting dust... At least it's a climate controlled facility, like a room in a building, so it's not collecting humidity or damage.
The storage unit was the best compromise I had for avoiding domestic strife, but I do have some notables in there, like my absolute favorite tweeters, Focal Aramids... so you'd think I've have used them in something over the past 14 years, right? :lol:
Or my compression horns that a buddy of mine personally talked me into picking up...
Oh, sometimes it's sad to go over there.
I guess you are leaning it to me to present both sides of the argument then?Quote:
Originally Posted by geolemon
I think that the claim of lazy is misplaced based upon this:
Attachment 11493
For sure - that looks beautiful.
That same finish would look stunning on a set of bookshelves... Just saying :wink:
[emoji38]
Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
It could also look good for a subwoofer box...
A bit of work bicuiting on wood around the outsides, but it, and then the varnish, help to keep it sealed up and prevent water damage... which is a bathroom is a real concern.
The cooper feet on the otherhand will receiver a patina.
All good practice for sub boxes.