Regarding rare magnets, premium tweeters, and other exotica...

I've been on a kick researching the wide world of loudspeaker technology, so I will be stream of consciousness mtoc-posting and people can respond and pontificate as they please. A lot of good stuff on diyaudio and the other annals of the internet

For starters:



That's from Paul Klipsch BTW

 

Interesting, ive been interested in exotic speaker tech, ill be watching this thread

 

From Post #6 in this thread:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/134465-what-draw-older-alnico-drivers.html#post1678640

The more I read about Alnico magnets the more skeptical I get. Most of the Alnico woofers out there that I see are sought after by guitar/bass guys for their inherent colorations. It seems to me that given the poor coercivity, the signal driven through voicecoil creates a force which counteracts the motor's B field and would lead to that compressive and warm quality. Speaking purely from my interpretation of this theoretical model, that would make things less dynamic and more compressed and NOT be particularly good sounding by my interpretation of what a good moving coil sounds like. I get an inkling that the "smooth" quality that proponents testify to is a result of this action, but is nonetheless a sin of commission.

Could be totally wrong of course, but this argument seems much more convincing than stuff like the diaphragm tension theory (sorry @Marvey I'm still not 100% on board with that one)

 

An unrelated gem from the same thread:

http://www.speakerbuilding.com/content/1039/

 

The guy at omega speakers seems to think well of them, and uses alnico magnets in his high end drivers.

 

As do more than a few others. Also a lot of pentode amps that people are making, but I can remain skeptical

 

The great thing about DIYaudio is that users have flags on their profiles. You start to notice the different trends. Romanians, Greeks, and other Eastern Europeans tend to be knee deep in the exotica while Germans tend to be hyper-objectivists. The Brits are usually objectivists too but have a cheekier sense of humor when responding to the Eastern Bloc. Germans are always really sterile and reductionist which never helps their arguments.

 

It's possible that a lot of the older Alnico woofers have demagnetized themselves over the past 60 years and that's why they have that sound. I'm open to that possibility

As far as hunting for evidence goes, I'm just reading what's out there at this point and attempting to correlate it to subjective testimonies.

 

And the Canuck kids just sit there wondering why the old folks are always fighting and whether we should put them in a home yet.

 

I think we should really listen to some of the alnico stuff. I'm open to the possibility that @Besnia was right and that Neodymium has a sound to it. He has the Ether 7.1.12 drivers and likes them a lot. I've seen them at shows before along with some other alnico stuff but it never blew me away on the spot.

Regarding the ionized tweeters. Yep, super high distortion that would make all objectivists run away screaming. I guess the best idea is just to cross is really high (say 8kHz like Acapella) and hope that the IMD won't be too terrible, but even then the distortion will be way past audible levels. Also probably a good idea to play digital redbook with absolutely no content in the ultrasonics. Actually the best idea is probably to play only sine waves of 10kHz and higher.

 

Some article about diamond domes : here

 

Very interesting stuff about High Q woofers, could explain in part why this driver sounded so wonderful in a diy speaker I've heard.

http://aespeakers.com/shop/td/td15m/

 

What modern woofers are those? A quick look at the T/S parameters or the impedance plots would tell you that most modern drivers are dominated by electrical damping with little mechanical losses.

 

Ahh, well put on all points

 

Just a little correction, I didn't mean Neo had "sound" to it. It has what I would describe as "noise" that is somewhat reminiscent of electrical noise, and is most evident in the treble region.

Did you hear the Ethers at the Munich show? At any show I've heard them, I had the feeling the treble was subdued. In reality I think most other systems had hyped-up sound, a la HD800 For example, the half a million euro MBL system had, to my ears, a razor blade treble. It was hurting my ears. Such shows defeat their own purpose. The background noise is usually horrible. Exotics aside, of all commercial/off the shelf products, I'd pick Focals. My overall impression is they are just a bit better in almost every respect.

 

Pentode in triode mode = nice Pentode mode = chainsaw massacre! It's not just that though. Topology, different tubes and mostly output transformers can make a huge difference.

 

I have a Dennis Had 6L6, and since I bought it along with a preamp Dennis added switches to change the tubes between triode and ultralinear modes. The difference was not subtle, and you definitely didn't want to listen to classical or jazz in ultralinear. Of course, this was quite some time ago, I've packed those suckers away for the time being. I like having desk space a bit more than I enjoyed the speakers.

Anyway, this will be really interestin to watch, since I'm kicking around ideas for some DIY floorstanding speakers, and I'm still trying to decide whether to go with a single driver or 3+ drivers with first-order crossovers. Driver choice is really important either way, and there are lots of options to choose from.