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New Those are a fine pair
that you will likley not be able to replace. Nowadays the name Sonex is more associated with the lack of sound...since it is the leading soundproofing material.

Dunno if I would >kill< for them. Wound, maybe. Kill is a bit harsh.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
New I've tried my hand at...
Reconing, New Surrounds, Inner and Outer Spiders, Windings, even Frame/Chassis customization. I still as of yet, have to master it (though I gave up back in the late 80s).

The McIntosh dealer in Grand Rapids, on Division just south of Burton (sadly out of business now) had a policy of not replacing any driver in a speaker, without replacing the corresponding one in the other side. They used to have matched pairs and quads, Not really hand made drivers, but hand tweaked and sonically nearly identical.

The used to use a sort of heavy material (I think epoxy might have been something else), to weight and tune the cone. Sort of like Heavy Metal in crankshaft balancing. They looked at the cone distortion and fix the major flows they found, using Wisdom (and plain old Know-How/Experience). Then after that, they recorded the response curves (free-air, infinite baffle), the then thought to be awesome compliance, "long" excursion, etc.. etc.. etc..

Then match the speakers for the High-Fidelity crowd, simplifying the cross-over's chore and making box design much easier. They were widely known as the place to get "Reference Class" speakers. They had a few global high volume customers (well High Volume in the manufacturing perspective) that kept them going until the end.

Sadly, the art of proper speaker design and tweaking is fading fast. Today's way, is to restrict the CRAP out of the speaker, using a small-volume, heavily packed (acoustically packed) box design with a massive Z bracing and using 6" screws in the corners, with corner bracing and expoy adhesives to build the strongest possible box using 1" or thicker Laminated HDF (High Density Fiberboard), which very heavy and ummm dense, to build the box and baffles. Then put HIGH power through the speaker to get typical listening levels.

I just wish I had a thimbleful of the know how, those guys had.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey

[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Military Intelligence"]
No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
New Full Circle!
Sadly, the art of proper speaker design and tweaking is fading fast. Today's way, is to restrict the CRAP out of the speaker, using a small-volume, heavily packed (acoustically packed) box design with a massive Z bracing and using 6" screws in the corners, with corner bracing and expoy adhesives to build the strongest possible box using 1" or thicker Laminated HDF (High Density Fiberboard), which very heavy and ummm dense, to build the box and baffles. Then put HIGH power through the speaker to get typical listening levels.
I was beginning to pay attention to audio at about the time that Edgar Villchur's (Mr. Audio Research) first design was coming out:

The AR-1W (for woofer-only) == pretty-flat smooth low BASS in a relatively tiny box.
Soon followed by the AR-1 (dome tweeter) the cheaper AR-2 [*I* could afford = my first], AR-3 etc. In fact the first AR I saw - was brought to the lab to show us, by a physicist/musician. Haul out the oscillator, etc.

Ultra hi-compliance was the basis; your description: the method.

Villchur founded AR, later with Henry Kloss.. and I forget the dancing that created KLH and later start-ups. This was the transition point from the cheap, efficient {but ugh} bass-reflex, later with tubes to 'tune' the ports and so on. And where a Klipschorn could drive you out of the room with a 3-watt amp {6K6s ??) : (electrical) Inefficiency Had Arrived! Welcome Back, 2005.

As you say, the idea was to kill / decimate / randomize the "other-side of the cone" energy == Inefficient But So What -- as EL-34s then KT-88s (all 6L6 variants) and 6550s meant that Watts/channel could reach all the way up to 100! (Then, this being Murica - paralleled 6550s for ever More).
Mc Intosh "Class B" amplifiers == notch distortion but Lots of $$ and very pretty. The beginning of audio-Hyper-hype.

{sigh} Never anything New in this level of physics; not that that ever stopped marketers from blathering.

I never tried to build any drivers or re- re- design a New Box, but briefly played with "Sweet Sixteen" (multiple el-cheapo speakers to try to move air; that because of what Wasn't available: long-throw and l i n e a r voice coils with the end-flux not spilling over!) Lousy imaging.

Someone starting today would have to adsorb tons of lore, methinks - or would just reinvent. Would also have to cleans mind of a Lot Known that Ain't So.

But with all the US engrg Cos going out of business, $40K spectrum analyzers being set out in pallet-loads + modern strobes to look at cone breakup: WTF, with Titanium (stolen from someone's *$&%# golf clubs?) and carbon-fibre: why, one could experiment for another decade, heading for 0-mass and infinite rigidity.

Ah well - nostalgia ain't what ...

(At least, in the beginning it was about trying to recreate the illusion of a live symphony orchestra / pipe organ -- verified by demo: live VS the simulated -- in the hall -- with the musicians faking it at points, so's the audience couldn't tell 'where'.)
Simple: if YOU couldn't tell? It Was Adequate.
I have no idea what a "live synthesizer" Ought to "sound like". Y'know?

It was fun while it lasted; cut my lectronics teeth on that stuff. And the progress is that: almost any 'cheap' set of gear is now a bargain, and better than what any plebes could afford way-back. But when I see $10K "power amplifiers" and $50 per *FOOT* multi-shielded Speaker Cables:
I Know that we have driven ourselves techno-Loony, as in QED.
And I Know that: the gullibility quotient has reached an All Time High.

Ergo, I don't pay much attention to 'audio' any more -- it's religion and Mine's Bigger now; the High End stuff is completely faith-based, and it's a hoot to read the occasional Review of special AC supplies for your accessories at $400, maybe $1K now. Special grounding/shielding schemes - with microwave concepts for Ultra-Purity yada yada.
All I could say to those folks is,


You Sillies !!!
New Sounds like voodoo
I mix with a pair of [link|http://www.mackie.com/products/hr824/|Mackie HR824's].

They are "neutral" - dead flat in response from something like 20->22kHz.

They are active monitors - the amp is built into the speaker. Thus, it is a reference monitor/speaker combo working together. It does you no good to tweak a speaker unless you are tweaking it on the amp that is going to be used to drive it. Everything adds color - the key is to get the color filters to balance and become neutral.

Incidentally, these are not the most "pleasant" sounding speakers I have. Only the most accurate.

Audiophiles crack me up.

You should spend a bit of time in the studio watching a final mix-down. The engineer will typically listen to each track through reference monitors and work to produce the most realistic tone using eq/noise reduction/reverb etc. Once he has his palette established, he will rapidly switch between the lovely reference speakers, some big bertha "audiophile" types, a pair of cheapies (Auratone's - often called awful tones - basically car stereo speakers mounted in boxes), and maybe a set of walkman headphones. The idea is to get a good compromise so the piece sounds "decent" on all of the devices.

Thus, your "audiophile" experience is going to be riddled with artifacts imposed by the limitations of much lesser systems. If the engineer is any good, it will still sound great, but is definitely going to be sub-optimal and definitely not "true" reproduction.

Those "hand tweaked" speakers? Most likely rose colored glasses for you ears.




"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"   --Mark Twain

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."   --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."   --George W. Bush
Expand Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 12:47:51 PM EDT
New Yessir.
But the art was before computer modeling. With active feedback loops with built-in amps.

Yes, they strived to get the most out of them by hand tweaking them. Voodoo it was.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey

[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Military Intelligence"]
No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
New I would still like to believe that this applies to pop
and not at all to recording of 'classical', even today - at least I've never heard of a full orchestra sound being 'tuned' for car speakers (or compromised because of noting those results). Certainly true though, especially with the gadgetry now available - what you get will never be from 'a straight wire with gain' from classic Neumann mics, say.

But since the 'Reference Speakers' are inextricably a part of the listening room, having its reverb-time and other qualities: there really is no such thing as a Reference Listening Experience\ufffd (as in NIST-calibration, say). And an anechoic chamber just never would be a useful way of evaluating a music performance, much as it is useful for quite a lot else. We simply cannot relate ears + brain to music 'played' in such a Dead environment.

(I recall seeing pics of a guy's listening room, eons ago: he had made one wall the end of an exponential horn, cast in concrete; grille cloth across this maw, attention paid to no parallel walls or simple integer relationships of wall sizes etc. Suitable drapes, furniture etc.) This was quite pre- billions of transistors and 5000 controls you can set funny. This I deemed excess but not silly, whereas much marketed today is entirely Faith-based Expensive-snake oil, where any proposed double-blind tests are anathema to the hucksters. (Bob Pease, Chief Sci. at National Semiconductors and an anointed Analog Wizard -- did some hilarious takes on this.)



But then, too many million words have been wasted already -- imagining to separate the measurable from the subjective in recording/listening. Just like religion, audio has its Fundies, too. It's What We Do cha cha cha

moi
New I suspect there are specializations
And I can see choosing to optimize classical for the high end speakers. Even so, the dynamic range of most performances exceeds the capability of the equipment. Compressors are still essential to allow speakers to survive Haydn's little joke.

I recently went fishing for a nice collection of Django Reinhardt tunes. There are a number of collections available. Many of them are labeled "remastered" and the careful listener will note that they do sound a bit brighter. However this apparent high end comes at the cost of warmth and is largely the result of introduction of harmonic distortion. While it gives the tracks "modern production values", it costs them in soul and depth. I much prefer the older masterings that sound a little darker, a bit warmer, and to my ears a lot purer.



"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"   --Mark Twain

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."   --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."   --George W. Bush
New Migawd.. so someone stole the NAME, too____Figures :-/
     Laptop maintenance - (bepatient) - (19)
         You've been busy! -NT - (imric) - (3)
             Waiting for delivery - (bepatient) - (2)
                 Heheh. Missed the Captain Privelege / Peter Patriot ref - (imric) - (1)
                     Needed to add the "Captain" - (bepatient)
         Speaker Maintenance - (bepatient) - (11)
             Re: Speaker Maintenance - (Ashton) - (10)
                 Twas truly cooked - (bepatient) - (9)
                     Re: Twas truly cooked - (Ashton) - (8)
                         Those are a fine pair - (bepatient) - (7)
                             I've tried my hand at... - (folkert) - (5)
                                 Full Circle! - (Ashton)
                                 Sounds like voodoo - (tuberculosis) - (3)
                                     Yessir. - (folkert)
                                     I would still like to believe that this applies to pop - (Ashton) - (1)
                                         I suspect there are specializations - (tuberculosis)
                             Migawd.. so someone stole the NAME, too____Figures :-/ -NT - (Ashton)
         Does the iTrip work well? - (tuberculosis) - (2)
             Depends on your free stations - (SpiceWare)
             Good enough - (bepatient)

We get more play than a 6-disc changer in a bitchin' Camaro.
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