Glupson specfic to debating one must have a general understanding of the factual use and implementation of material and methods if not science of the subject, in this thread it is audio. In your case you have demonstrated a failing grade on virtually any audio subject. Your commentary has limited use here or on any audio subject because you seem to lack a broad knowledge of anything that is part of the chain of sound. Tom
Millercarbon's Mega Moab Mod Meander
One of the all time great automotive engineers, Norbert Singer, was a key player in every one of the 16 Porsche LeMans victories from 1970 to 1998. His dominance was such that at one point Porsche had won LeMans more than all other marques combined. This was all accomplished by building on the already solid foundation of Porsche production models. The air cooled flat 12 in the 917 was really two flat sixes combined to make 12. This car so dominated motorsport the rules had to be changed to stop it!
So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.
I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!
The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.
My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.
This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.
Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.
So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.
That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!
The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.
I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!
The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.
My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.
This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.
Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.
So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.
That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!
The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
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- 185 posts total
One of the more useful resources in all my research is this site where caps are compared like fine wine- http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html The top Duelund caps are superb, but would cost more than the Moab - and take up about as much space! So I opted for Jantzen Alumen Z as they come very close for a fraction of the price. Then with a Duelund bypass cap they get even closer. It is one thing to read and look at these things on paper. It is quite another to actually hold in hand. The instant this happens it is quite apparent the Jantzen ring like the proverbial bell. Well they do appear to be rolled inside a thin wall aluminum tube. In contrast, the Duelund caps are in some sort of composite looking material that is thicker and quite inert. Even just a little bit of the Herbie’s material killed a lot of the Alumen Z ringing, and by the time I was done with fO.q tape the Jantzen are now pretty thoroughly damped. The Herbie’s material is thicker and so will double as additional isolation, suspending the caps about 1/8" above the mounting board and apart from each other. Another interesting thing that came up, inductors. There is a very generalized or simplified way of seeing electricity as a current that moves through the core of a wire while fine details ride along the outside, the skin effect. This is really silly simplified, leading to my saying to Krissy one day what we know about electricity is like what we knew about fire a million years ago- Don’t touch, fire hot! Millions like that even today. What’s behind the panel? Don’t touch! Still, we can do things even with this crude understanding. Coil a wire around and around, the fields block higher frequencies while the lower ones pass. This coil is an inductor. Inductors filter out high frequencies. There’s things we can do to improve inductors. An iron core improves efficiency. Eric uses one of these for the bass. Sometimes called a sledgehammer inductor, by Peter Gabriel fans, I guess. I wanna be.... A much better and (of course) more costly method is to shape the round wire into a flat ribbon and wrap the ribbon around with very thin insulation. This is better because we are trying to get the high frequency surface fields to interact and mute and this ribbon geometry maximizes these surface interactions. Also costs a lot more to roll into a pure copper wire into a uniformly thin ribbon and wind it all nice and tight and precise. So that is what we got, and I went for Goertz Alpha Core inductors. The gauge was a bit confusing. Normally with wire the gauge is thickness. In this case we want thin. So it was counter-intuitive at first to hear the thicker gauge is preferred. But gauge is really about cross-sectional thickness. The "thicker" 12AWG is actually ribbon rolled out very thin. But by making it wider we get the extra cross-sectional current carrying capacity. Now it makes sense! Alas, inductors get no love. If there is an inductor website where enthusiasts gush over their favorite inductors ineffable ability to convey the emotion in Tony Levin’s bass line, the perfect combination of slam and fundamental fullness, I have yet to find it. Still, that is what we are looking for here. Inductors also roll off the high frequencies from the midrange drivers. In doing so they affect not only the upper band of the midrange but the lower band of the tweeter. Nobody really seems to talk about this, yet it has to be. So in addition to what seems an obvious bass improvement it seems inevitable that quality inductors also contribute to improved midrange and treble. |
- 185 posts total