The Driver/Enclosure relationship

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TheMadMick
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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by TheMadMick »

savvypaul wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:09 am
Lindsayt wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 2:30 pm I've heard NVA speakers in a bake off against Steve57's red and black DIY'd speakers.
In that conext I wouldn't describe NVA speakers as "perfectly fine".
I'd describe NVA speakers as good sound for money and good sound for the size. They are not world class speakers. Steve57's are.
They were my Cube 1s. They ran out of puff pretty quickly in that very large room. Didn't sound anywhere near as good as they do in my front room. Richard determined at that event to make a set of Cubes with 12" drivers, hence the BB Cubes.

Steve57's speakers were excellent. They had immediacy and clarity without sacrificing any of the tone and timbre that music uses to melt your heart. They worked on an emotional level and an intellectual level. They sounded completely natural. Couldn't fault them.

Right at the end (I think you and most others had already left) Nick plugged his 300b monos in to those £75k Maxonics, and that was a big improvement on what we heard first up.
What a wonderful example of how it's not just a single component e.g speakers, that make a system but the entirety.

The other variable is us, the listener. What floats your boat may not be what floats mine. It's all a matter of taste and that changes with time as I can tell you to my cost!

Enjoy the vibes folks. :grin: :grin: :grin:
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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Lindsayt »

savvypaul wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:09 am
Lindsayt wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 2:30 pm I've heard NVA speakers in a bake off against Steve57's red and black DIY'd speakers.
In that conext I wouldn't describe NVA speakers as "perfectly fine".
I'd describe NVA speakers as good sound for money and good sound for the size. They are not world class speakers. Steve57's are.
They were my Cube 1s. They ran out of puff pretty quickly in that very large room. Didn't sound anywhere near as good as they do in my front room. Richard determined at that event to make a set of Cubes with 12" drivers, hence the BB Cubes.

Steve57's speakers were excellent. They had immediacy and clarity without sacrificing any of the tone and timbre that music uses to melt your heart. They worked on an emotional level and an intellectual level. They sounded completely natural. Couldn't fault them.

Right at the end (I think you and most others had already left) Nick plugged his 300b monos in to those £75k Maxonics, and that was a big improvement on what we heard from them first up.
Nick has made some really good SET amplifiers over the years. One of which was the best sounding amplifier at the Walthamstow event organised by Richard Dunn quite a few years ago now.

It's possible that other speakers at the MCRU speaker bake-off would have sounded better via the 300b SET too.

Also, was the same recording being played at the same volume?

The Maxonics were overall good sounding speakers - and they are the sort of speakers that are to my taste. I did get the impression that some recordings would suit them better than others. With good jazz recordings being the type to suit them, whilst Lene Lovich wouldn't.
If I could buy speakers that sounded as good as the Maxonics for under £1000, I'd be delighted.

I've had the privelege to hear Steve57's speakers a number of times now in a variety of rooms. He displayed them at Owston and Kegworth in 2018 and 2019.

Maybe someone could do the world of hi-fi a favour by picking Steve57's brains (with his permision) on what's gone into his speakers and publishing a guide (even if it's a rough one) on how to make clones or something similar?

I found SteveTheShadows DIY'd speakers highly inspirational.
Steve57's speakers are highly inspirational too.

So much so that I can't see me buying any more commercial speakers. My next speakers will be DIY'd efforts.

I'm looking forward to seeing what jimbob creates. And it'd be great if I can ever get to hear them too.

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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Lindsayt »

TheMadMick wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:19 am
What a wonderful example of how it's not just a single component e.g speakers, that make a system but the entirety.

The other variable is us, the listener. What floats your boat may not be what floats mine. It's all a matter of taste and that changes with time as I can tell you to my cost!

Enjoy the vibes folks. :grin: :grin: :grin:
What I will say is: what floated Richard Dunn's boat floated mine.
The only difference being that his boats tended to get launched quicker than mine at the bake-offs we both attended.

I'd also say that generally at bake-offs you get a very good consensus of the relative merits of different systems or components.

Where you don't get consensus - in my anecdotal experience - is where you have people with vested emotional interest and a lack of integrity. Sometimes bake-offs are an interesting exercise in human psychology. Most of the time for most of the people they are an exercise in comparing hi-fi equipment.

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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by savvypaul »

Lindsayt wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 12:12 pm
savvypaul wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:09 am
Lindsayt wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 2:30 pm I've heard NVA speakers in a bake off against Steve57's red and black DIY'd speakers.
In that conext I wouldn't describe NVA speakers as "perfectly fine".
I'd describe NVA speakers as good sound for money and good sound for the size. They are not world class speakers. Steve57's are.
They were my Cube 1s. They ran out of puff pretty quickly in that very large room. Didn't sound anywhere near as good as they do in my front room. Richard determined at that event to make a set of Cubes with 12" drivers, hence the BB Cubes.

Steve57's speakers were excellent. They had immediacy and clarity without sacrificing any of the tone and timbre that music uses to melt your heart. They worked on an emotional level and an intellectual level. They sounded completely natural. Couldn't fault them.

Right at the end (I think you and most others had already left) Nick plugged his 300b monos in to those £75k Maxonics, and that was a big improvement on what we heard from them first up.
Nick has made some really good SET amplifiers over the years. One of which was the best sounding amplifier at the Walthamstow event organised by Richard Dunn quite a few years ago now.

It's possible that other speakers at the MCRU speaker bake-off would have sounded better via the 300b SET too.

Also, was the same recording being played at the same volume?

The Maxonics were overall good sounding speakers - and they are the sort of speakers that are to my taste. I did get the impression that some recordings would suit them better than others. With good jazz recordings being the type to suit them, whilst Lene Lovich wouldn't.
If I could buy speakers that sounded as good as the Maxonics for under £1000, I'd be delighted.

I've had the privelege to hear Steve57's speakers a number of times now in a variety of rooms. He displayed them at Owston and Kegworth in 2018 and 2019.

Maybe someone could do the world of hi-fi a favour by picking Steve57's brains (with his permision) on what's gone into his speakers and publishing a guide (even if it's a rough one) on how to make clones or something similar?

I found SteveTheShadows DIY'd speakers highly inspirational.
Steve57's speakers are highly inspirational too.

So much so that I can't see me buying any more commercial speakers. My next speakers will be DIY'd efforts.

I'm looking forward to seeing what jimbob creates. And it'd be great if I can ever get to hear them too.
For the Maxonics with the 300b it was just a brief listen and just two or three of us left in the room. Not a proper comparison but it was a couple of the tracks that we had been listening to throughout the day. It was a definite improvement on when they were up, first thing, with the 200w amps. Much better tone.

I'm sure Steve's speakers would have loved the 300b, too. I spoke with him for a little while. I said I loved the immediacy of his speakers. He said it was all about driver material (very light), efficiency and speed. He said I would never match that with heavily doped drivers.

I remember that, within a couple of tracks, Richard announced Steve's speakers as the best.
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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Daniel Quinn »

I fail to see how doped enclosures are less sensitive than a passive crossover bass driver.

Indeed anything other than 1st possibly 2nd order crossover, I'd bet they are less sensitive.

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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Vinyl-ant »

Do you mean doped driver cones?
If so, Doping adds mass to the driver cone, this means it requires more power to move it to the same excursion as before, hence the sensitivity drops.
Eg if it originally measures 90db/w, adding mass to the cone through doping might mean it now requires 1.1w to reach 90db/w, now reaching 88db for 1w. These are just example figures
Doping also alters the resonant frequency of the driver, it might be for example 50hz, adding the doping might change that to 45hz, I actually have a pair of Richards doped 12" bass units here which we measured as having a 45hz resonant frequency. So the doping alters the resonant frequency at the expense of some sensitivity.

Apologies if That wasn't what you meant I've only quickly scanned the tread so I might have missed something
Last edited by Vinyl-ant on Sun May 03, 2020 12:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by savvypaul »

Daniel Quinn wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 12:34 pm I fail to see how doped enclosures are less sensitive than a passive crossover bass driver.

Indeed anything other than 1st possibly 2nd order crossover, I'd bet they are less sensitive.
I took it that speed of driver response was more important than ultimate sensitivity, but you would need to ask Steve.

Crossoverless is the easiest for the amplifier to drive (and imo gives a very pure sound) but ease of drive is different to sensitivity, I think.

I believe my Cubes need further around the volume control than any other speaker I've owned. My Klipsch play at 10 o' clock. The Cubes play at 1 o' clock for the same volume.
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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Geoff.R.G »

A doped driver, as already stated, will have more mass than an un-doped one as a result it will take more energy to move it but it will also be more inert so it will take longer to accelerate/decelerate than its un-doped equivalent. Obviously this will affect the sound in some way but, without trying it, I couldn't say how that would manifest itself.

The fact that use of a doped driver allows the design to dispense with a crossover will also have an effect, reportedly beneficial, on the sound. The interaction of doping and crossover less operation seems to have produced a sound that Richard, and others, considered to be superior to that of un-doped drivers with crossovers. If the overall sound is subjectively superior I would be interested to begin to understand, objectively, what that is.

A subjective approach may well result in superior sound but some degree of objectivity may point the way to further improvements, or not depending on the conclusions drawn. Knowing that something is better is great but knowing why can be illuminating too.

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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by Daniel Quinn »

Passive electronic components do all the things that is attributed to doping.

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Re: The Driver/Enclosure relationship

Unread post by valvesRus »

Daniel Quinn wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 12:57 pm Passive electronic components do all the things that is attributed to doping.
Can you provide a link to anything that would substantiate that statement ?

I have found, as an example, when using a quality full range driver, that when adding a bass speaker, and using a crossover to roll off the full range so it's not working so low down, has made quite a positive change to the full range sound.

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