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Speakers as the principle component/other components are servants

Speakers  hold the Kingship in our overall  audio systems. 
I think my recent posts have substaniated  this thesis, well at least my opinion of sorts.
This OP  came to me after reading  through some of (most of what is too deep for my understanding) 
pedro's 
topic
**Why is science a  starting point, yet not the end point?*
Meaning science gives us all sorts of parimeters, specs, graphs and such. Most of which we have no clue how to interpret, 
All we ae concerned is , **how does the speaker actually sound**.

Pedro suggests science has let us down, that science, if it was so intelligent, why can't science tell us which speaker is the superior and which the inferior sound???
Obvioulsy science is not the end all /be all.
Its only a  tool, human sensibilities come in  at the very end to say
Yea 
or worse
Nay
I say nay
to all/eversy xover design in the fq's ,,ohh say 800hz = 15khz.
Yeah I know thats a  massive chuck of our music.
As many of you know i make very long winded posts 
But actually I reduce them to make them more readable and so folks don't lose  interest. 
~~~So cut to the chase.
We accept high tech in every aspect of our lives.
You name it, super high tech is there,. Had you told us back in 1965, folks would be walking around with telephones, sending pics/videos,,we'd all laugh you at your face  as scifi fantasy.

~~~Long story short.

The new  wide band /high sensitivity speaker technology. What gives?
Why the denial it exists?
Why the fear to inquisite?
Why the lack of interest?
Why the rejection?

Speakers  will crown your system with beauty Or else render it as distortion/low fidelity.

Tweak/,od/upgrade all you want, at how much you care to spend $$$$$ ($40K!!!) on cables etc. 
Ain;'t going to make hardly even a  miniscle gain in sonics, if the speakers are ~~faulty~~  due to  low sensitivity.
Bass woofers, I'll grant low sens Seas and Scaspeaks high end woofers  a  stunning succcess.
Above 800hz,  I have issues with any driver neededing a  xover.
I tag these fq's with xovers. The Wet Blanket sound. Sounds mechanical, like   compressed music,, comming from a  box.
Squeezed, contorted, tiny soundstage, strained fq's  if vol is over 10 oclock. = fatigue/Coloration  in abundance.  
Many fq's of the source, missing in action. 
I am not suggesting  these new wide band is for everyones taste. Not at all. Only that we should at least give these wide band a   consideration as a  possible alternative to our old  traditional ideas.

Inqusisitiveness is a good thing in  all things audio. 
Without  a  healthy  curiousity, we putrefy , stagnate.
 Even  Worse
we might miss out on the super high fidelty we all hope to hear one day in our systems by this neglect  of the new high technology in speaker design. . 

.


 
mozartfan
oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 
Low E speakers is below 85%, that is still HiFi. 86-93% is HiFi high E speakers. It's as simple as that.

Above 93% you are IN PRO territory.

98% and above is pure PA.

From a speaker manufactures point of view it was ONLY a dollar and NOISE issue. Highly efficient speakers will show EVERY flaw in a noisy system and good pro speakers have GREAT Voice Coils. They stay cooler and hold TURE to their spec sheet. The issue is cost.. the VC normally for pro is at least 8 ohms and measured at 1 meter. NOT the hype of HiFi and 4 ohm BS.

Today because of very quiet preamps and power amps, "SOME" of the manufactures are using Pro and PA speakers mixed with HiFi speakers.
LOL all is good UNTIL you get a noisy valve or you go deaf and can't hear the noisy noise floor. 

87-92% is a VERY efficient speaker and with care NOT to noisy. BUT above that. Mercy.

I can here the HISS in Antioch, CA from El Paso, TX, make that Atlanta GA..:-) It's a loud one..

The old Klipsch at 99 to 103%. With a noisy system my ears just wouldn't let me stick around.. Same way at concerts.. CRAP sound, or noisy equipment.. I was GONE.. BUT that same speaker (Klipsch La Scala or Corner horns) with a super quiet Mac or Marantz or HK citation. LOOK OUT!! HEAVEN...

OP what the heck does,  "Low sens xover types = 91db lower". MEAN?

Below 85% is still HiFi. I've heard BIG electro stats that were in the 60% efficiency range that would blow your friggin' mind... Just had to DRAIN a local transformer at the POLE to get them to sound really really good..
500.00 PG&E bills behind A/B 600 watt mono block amps.. Rich Kids!!

Not me.. They just didn't sound they way they could with class ds an 2000 watts..

What a  Pitty!


mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Very interesting, the pro drivers I have seen are garbage relatively speaking. A great dome tweeter is a work of art ferrofluid and all. Have you seen the casting of a Dayton subwoofer basket? 1st class. 
Lower efficiency is not an evil if you can afford the watts. If anything it is the sign of a highly evolved crossover. If you are hung up on pea shooter tube amps then you have a big problem. I have yet to hear an uncolored full range driver other than an ESL and even they need a bit of tuning. I you think you are going to get decent bass out of an 8" driver with a whizzer cone stuck on it I want some of the stuff you are smoking. Midrange is worthless if there is no bass and treble stuck to it. 

I've got news for you, science gave us all the wonderful drivers and components we have and science is perfectly capable of given us insane sounding loudspeakers it just gets expensive. Science has no control over the room you stick them in. However science again comes to the rescue with digital signal processing and the in home test equipment to get any speaker working at it's best. 
mozartfan OP
2,143 posts
 
LOL all is good UNTIL you get a noisy valve or you go deaf and can't hear the noisy noise floor.

87-92% is a VERY efficient speaker and with care NOT to noisy. BUT above that. Mercy.

I can here the HISS in Antioch, CA from El Paso, TX, make that Atlanta GA..:-) It's a loud one..


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK Fair, and interestijng
So what you are getting at 
is if one the 12 KT88;'s in the Defy starts to go bad, which some are failing now as I type, they go dark, cold, and so i pop in another, whether its a mtach I have no idea. 
They have some 3k hrs by now i'm guessing. 
So  a  bad cranky tube may cause issues, Got it. 
Might need to sell off the Defy,,,ahh but can't right now you can't give a  heavy amp away, nothing is moving,,,But I may keep the Defy as backup, nothing more,,, and add a  Dynaco ST70 EL34, takes only 4 EL34's, = afforadble to retube.
**Hiss factor*** Yeah I can understand if the sensitivity is  over say,,,97db. 
I think, not sure the Vox are like 97db, . 
So hiss may be an issue, 
Got it. 
Higher sensitivity is good, but also picks up any flaw throughout entire system, Got it,.

BUT OTOH,
Higher sensitivity allows the new high tech JFET opamsp in the Jadis DAC, now to be herad, Takman REy metal resistors can now be noted via the higher sensitivty,. Mundorf caps, can bring forth their magic, Navships   cables throughout entire system can now  be heard.
Lower sensitivity , 91db lower, these speakers block and tweak/mod/upgrade fro being voiced.
Argue all you want, I have noted this in my experiements. 

Its all based on actual testing. 

If I need a  EL34, I'll add one, 
We will have to wait and see how the driver responds to different amplifiers. 
Hopeful the Jadis will be quiet and a  success.
 There was a time when the Jadis had hum in one channel, 
WE swaped out the main  internal wire with navships silver copper and thus far, only hums if the tube has issues.

I agree though, any hum in a  amp, will be  acceptable on the xover low sensitivity type speaker,,, , as its hardly noted,
 but here with 97db, even the slighest hum, will be a  aggravtaion. 

mozartfan OP
2,143 posts
 
Very interesting, the pro drivers I have seen are garbage relatively speaking. A great dome tweeter is a work of art ferrofluid and all

~~~~~~~~~
The Seas Millennium is one of the worlds finest ever tweeters, Not sure how anyone can like a  dome tweeter,, Beats me.
Pro Drivers are aweful for music,, , these super powerful  super high sensitivity drivers are only for discos and PA systems, Not for music. 
Wide band are not Pro Drivers, 
They are completely different from Pro Compression horns. 
realworldaudio
174 posts
 
**Why is science a starting point, yet not the end point?*

As a research scientist my answer is:
Electronics / electromagnetism / acoustics should be the stating point of every design, and biology / pshcyhoacoustics should be the end point of all designs.

So, the proper scientific workflow of audio gear design is from engineering science to biological science.
The last link (biological science) is ALWAYS missing, as most manufacturers want (and understand only) validation from electronics standpoint. Yet, all the electronic performance validation gets is whether a unit performs up to design specifications or not, gives only very vague pointers on how the human biological system interprets the results.
The reason for this design workflow deficency is two fold:
1., We know little of phscyoacoustics (that is, how our brain interprets soundwaves) - but we most certainly know more than enough that it should be the core of design that dares to call itself scientific. (If we leave out the human, then we are just designing lab equipment, and not stereo to play back music.)2., Shoddy planning rationale, half-scientific approach. (Sadly true for most fields today, the side-effect of over-specialization.) Specialized experts cannot see beyond their field of specialization, and thus neglect core parameters and considerations: for example, an electric engineer cannot see beyond the scope of his instruments and the electric domain, and does not even recognize that there is a human element - the very element that should be the goal of all his efforts.
Once we start involving psychoacoustics, I project that there will be a massive boom in music reproduction quality, and we will also see the birth of a working measure of sound quality.
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