Any monitors clearly better than Pulsars?

Prof,

Extension is meaningless if the distortion figures are 10% at 50hz at 90db.

I have tried to look up the distortion figure of the seas excel 5 inch midbass used in the pulsar, in vain. do you have the distortion figures of the Pulsar midbass? the only way we can discuss objectively about the harbeth vs Pulsar performance is if we have those measurements.

the Harbeth midbass used in the 30.2 distortion figures however can be easily found, the Harbeth distortion figures is excellent.
Ive never seen a 5 inch midbass thateven come close to the distortion figures of a good 8 inch woofer at 95db.

secondly, you mention that the Pulsar spec indicate that it has more extension then the harbeth 30.2, which indeed is true.  You can find sone 15 inch woofer that will have less extension then the pulsar. But does that mean that the Pulsar will have better bass? not at all. having heard both, I cannot understand how one could find the bass of the Pulsar comparable to the 30.2. 

andy,


I don't find myself having much beef with your beef about the infinite slope claims.  :-)


Though I would say:  Regardless of whether the specific technical claim is true about the infinite slope crossovers, I'm personally not sure about how much is due to the drivers vs the skill of the designer.


I've heard/read from numerous speaker designers that the crossover design is one of the fundamental challenges,  so choosing the proper drivers in the first place to get what you want, and then nailing the crossover design, especially to the degree you get so many plaudits, seems like a major part of the process.

Btw, I can understand anyone not liking the JA speakers, personal taste being what it is.   I was just puzzled by the particular nature of the critique lobbed at them in this thread.

At low frequency, our hearing may not be that sensitive to distortion since the wavelength is so long.  At low frequency, what's more important is how well the bass is properly damped - otherwise the bass will be lose or flabby.  Two most important variables that determine the quality of the bass is first the driver QTS, and the internal volume of the cabinet.  As for how low the driver can go determined by first the size of the driver surface area, secondly the material (such as paper, aluminum, ceramic ...), and thirdly the Xmax (or how much excursion can the driver move back and forth).  In general, everything else being equal, the harder the cone material, the more bass extension.  Hence materials such as aluminum, kevlar or magnesium will have more bass than paper cone.

I think the Harbeth 30 woofer is made of paper or paper that has been coated with some sort of material.  The Pulsar woofer is magnesium, so most likely it will have more bass extension vs. the Harbeth.  I personally have used the Seas 5.5in magnesium, and I would crank up the volume and that thing would just play on.  I did the same thing on a lesser paper cone driver it broke on me.

The challenge in designing small monitor such as the Pulsar is that you need some sizable internal volume to able to control or dampen the bass.  But most people want small monitors so that they look pretty in their living rooms.  If the internal volume is too small, you have a midbass hump.  For the magnesium woofer on the Pulsar, you probably need about 13 - 15 liter of volume to properly damp the bass output.  I've read the Stereophile review and it seems like the Pulsars do have a bit of a midbass hump.  The midbass hump sometimes can be mistaken for having deeper bass.  And to be fair, most monitors in the same size category as the Pulsars probably don't have much deep bass to speak of so it's more like a game of millimeter.  

I heard the midbass hump on the Pulsars (Stereophile noted a bit of added warmth to the Pulsars too), which is why I gravitated to the Perspectives, which evened that out and sounded more linear t me through the lower midrange/upper bass.