Thanks for the interest in our future speaker products. Unfortunately, removing couple of the 8" woofers and 10" PRs wouldn’t reduce the price by $18500. They’re expensive woofers but not that expensive!
In addition to doing a model with fewer woofers we’re also working on some smaller 7" woofers and midrange to scale things down in output level and cost but bring as much of the same sound and quality as possible.
It would be interesting if price in this class around 20-30k is the main decision maker at all, or if it is (as I assume) size. I think a main reason why the watt/puppy and its followers were so successful, is, that it was (and they still are) the smallest real high end speakers with noteworthy potential. Most any other competitive speaker was quite bigger.
I was always in the camp of trying to get the smallest (I mean shortest) possible speaker in a certain class. Physics and radiation characteristics certainly demand a tribute.
Are the smaller woofers for the so-called FR20? If not, are they for an Aspen/FR series or something else?
Those would be for an even smaller aspen model and could also be used in 2 or 2.5 way applications.
I’m currently doing some work with non-woven carbon fiber, rohacell foam sandwich speaker cones and and non-woven carbon fiber nomex composite cone that is looking good regarding low mass with good stiffness and damping. They look at bit like paper but with a slightly iridescent look from different angles.
Thanks Chris! I’m looking forward to hearing your next speaker!
Chris, I love the forward thinking and use of new materials for drivers in your talk. I have a question you might shed some light on for me. Some well respected speaker manufacturers with incredible sounding speakers - have designs that allow large amounts of driver movement. A lot of design talk surrounds drivers with rigid, stiff, low mass, with strong motor control- so why the large driver movement In some of these speakers such as the great sounding GamuT line? Doesn’t this add distortion or create issues with transient response/distortion?
Any enlightenment would be appreciated!
It is driver surface vs. driver movement as a certain volume of air needs to be moved to make low frequencies audible.
Stiffer materials allow for larger surface, vs. extremely flexible surrounds allow for driver movement. Both properties have limits therefore the size vs. movement decision like anything in engineering calls for the best compromise.
The entire speaker design and room acoustics have an influence on top of material properties and driver construction. So some speakers with large drivers sound fine, but need to fit in the available space.
Smaller speakers with lots of driver movement fit smaller rooms and sound equally fine in those smaller rooms.
Luckily we can choose.
True! But I’m talking about speakers with the same size drivers. As mentioned, GamuT and others like Vimberg and Rockport look as if their drivers are going to come out of the cabinet- regardless of the room size. Other manufacturers’ speakers seem to have so much control over the drivers that they barely move.
Both speakers (some with extreme driver movement and others with almost no driver movement) sound equally great!
I’m just wondering why some manufacturers choose to let their drivers move so much - just thinking that this extreme movement would lead to negative effects on the SQ. Though it obviously doesn’t, at least in listening (not sure on measurements).
I’ve heard all of these speakers mentioned above in very large rooms at “shows” and also in smaller listening rooms with the same extreme driver movement - still sounded good in both settings.
As far as I understand, the larger excursions are primarily for generating more air pressure in the lowest frequency capability of the driver.
A positive side effect acclaimed by driver manufacturers of high excursion drivers is that the mid range frequencies would be generated with even lower distortion as those drivers provide so much head room.
I agree with you, many different concepts on the market lead to enjoyable sound quality. I believe that is because those manufacturers know the implications of their concepts and are capable to match the entire speaker design to arrive at the enjoyable sound quality.
Yeah, they each obviously know what they are doing. What a fun hobby!
I never really understood how and why materials sound as I perceived them. To me the electrostat foils of e.g. ML had a fascinating but somehow artificial sound, that could be heard out and that lacked the roughness and dynamicsa hard hit cymbal have. A magnetostatic foil of e.g. a Maggie to me sounded natural and transparent to the music instead, but also without the necessary bite. Similar with various ribbons. Only the AMT had the proper dynamics, inspite of being a ribbon, too. Then the Podzus Görlich chassis mid to bottom were the fastest sounding conventional chassis I heard, close to electrostatics and with dynamics.
Then carbon, paper…it seems to be quite a science what sounds good.
Well, it comes down to “space versus bass” like a lot of speaker design decisions. It might seems counterintuitive but, all things being equal, using a bigger driver in a given enclosure actually gives you LESS bass extension. Larger drivers will give you more output capability (all other things being equal) but require a larger enclosure.
The amount of air displacement required for a given output level quadruples every octave you go down. For instance, to play 20 Hz at the same volume as 40 Hz for a given cone size, the drive needs to move 4 times the amount.
If you can double the excursion of a driver for a given distortion level, you can gain 6 dB of output at low frequencies (where displacement is the limiting factor). There is an IEC standard around the level of distortion for this rating (measuring the limits around the motor force, suspension compliance and inductance vs excursion). If you can optimize these curves (to give you more excursion for a given distortion), you aren’t adding distortion or creating issues.
It’s not so much about low mass or a strong motor - those are related to sensitivity, not excursion and linearity versus stroke, it’s about how linear these parameters are with excursion.
For what it’s worth, your use of transient response in this context is probably better described as “large signal behavior” or dynamic linearity or something like that. I know that you are referring to reproducing big transients but the term doesn’t mean that in this context.
Here’s a little poster on the causes of these distortions and how speakers are optimized for greater excursion. We used these techniques in our woofers too.
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/klippel/Files/Know_How/Literature/Papers/Klippel_Nonlinearity_Poster.pdf
Of course, it would be even better to have a larger driver with with level of excursion but the resulting enclosure size would need to be proportionally larger to the cone area difference.
Wow! Thanks for the explanation! It might take a few readings to fully grasp!
I just wondered why my drivers - two 6” mids, two 6”
isobaric midbass, and four 12”” isobaric woofers have little movement when compared to other speakers where their drivers of similar size have a lot of movement.
Again, thanks!
Well, since you have multiple 12" woofers, I’m not surprised that you’re not seeing them move. A 12" has about 4X the cone area as a 6.5" woofer and so the excursion will be 1/4 the amount at a given sound pressure level.
Also, if they are ported, there is a cone minimum at the port tuning, greatly reducing excursion in that range.