Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

so a few things... one, there is a pair of Goto 370 on eBay and pictures of insides... the newer ones are made the same, but it seems that the execution has gotten a better/cleaner compared to these.. my diaphragms look smoother and the glue seems to be neater... I may be able to dig the pictures out of an old email if needed... I lost a lot in a drive crash a few months back... my fault for not regularly backing up...

Yes, thank for point out. The driver looks like OK, though the price is slightly higher than a new pair of Goto 370

http://www.eifl.co.jp/index/goto/goto.htm

If someone would like to give Goto a try then here is an opportunity for you with $3K admission ticket. It I had this option in 2001-2002, when I was going through the drivers, I would most like to try it…

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

field coils.. well, though I do also hear that you improve some areas and worsen others when varying voltage and therefore Qes, field coils and permanent magnets aren't different with regards to how they react to frequency... you certainly may find a permanent magnet driver that you like across the full band of the horn, but it isn't really due to the permanent magnet... as with all drivers, the magnet is just one of many variables.. I think the horn should be built to compliment the driver, whether field coil or not, just like any driver.. and maybe view the field coil as a bonus that will allow fine tuning once in place.. I do hear some things about field coils that I don't hear in permanent magnets.. but it is hard to say that it is directly due to field coils... I think, in general, they do sound a little smoother.. less grain... but this isn't a proclamation of "field coils are best" because I haven't really found that to always be the case... especially at low frequencies.. too many other things are more important...

I absolutely agree and I was pitching the very same few in all my field coils writings at my site and everywhere else. Unfortunately not one look at the drivers, magnets, horns, loading, utilization as a big unified picture and very few assess the sound of this picture without hysteria, using competence and lucid judgment. Usually people see the field-coils they roll eye and loosing freaking consciousness. I witnessed in a past as some idiots (hi-fi industry professionals) were listening field-coils and went over the exuberant glorification of what they heard, highlighting that it clearly auditable advantages of field-coils. The fan part that they during that listening session head not field-coils but permanent magnet speakers….

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

so my goto system... well, the basshorns are slowly being built... they won't use goto, though... (at least at first... but I may try an extension and my 505 drivers).. straight six foot 60 Hz horns... mouth about fourteen square feet... I am stil planning for physical time alignment to try to avoid digitizing my analog at this time.. I may change back at a later date... but you misread my wife... she doesn't mind large, just doesn't like unfinished R&D style horns... so I have to actually finish them, something I normally would only do for customers...

I was asking about Ming’s frustration with his big horns, I did not know what you were doing. So, it will be straight six foot 60Hz. Very cool. It is what I would do it I have a room and an abuseable person why would do it. I long time ago prepared the drivers for the projects and it is just wait for a right time.  I did not know that you do it as “job for customers”. Would you care to do some pictures? Also, how expensive that project in nowadays prices? I am not asking because I would like to move now into it myself now but others should know that there is an opportunity to do it.

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

and why did I choose goto you asked? ….seemed to fight off congestion at high volumes on complex music better than any I had heard....

Those few time what I head GOTO I did notice the same. They did look like have very nice ability to sound under stress… I have a big theory about it and I feel that the less power handling of a driver the better it sounds under stress.

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

….another big selling point to me was the 505 being a low resonance compression driver.. there just aren't many drivers with a resonance in the 80 to 100 Hz range like this driver... I have just begun my playing, but am already quite taken by it... this driver and its 48", 150 Hz horn will likely be the last thing I change.. it sounds very good...

As I understand you are planning to use the 505 with 150Hz and below will be the 60Hz horn. Might ask you how you are planning to stop the response from lower horn – with a sharp filter? That is one of the bottleneck that I have no solution and I do not what to go there with 3-4 order.

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

I am beginning to get slightly dissatisfied with the 370 on the 600 horn.. and I think it is the horn.. I think I must be spoiled by the leCleac'h and conical flare horns and their ability to radiate a more even power response into the room.. the result, to my ears, is a more natural and "open" sound.. maybe less focus, but it is hard to say for certain... luckily, I can easily turn horns of this frequency on my lathe..

be wrote:

"another big selling point to me was the 505 being a low resonance compression driver.. there just aren't many drivers with a resonance in the 80 to 100 Hz range like this driver... I have just begun my playing, but am already quite taken by it... this driver and its 48", 150 Hz horn will likely be the last thing I change.. it sounds very good..." Hm, I dont really know about this, I heard a GOTO system with the GOTO 505 in the GOTO 150 Hz horn and I found it to go anemic in the lower range, I think a FANE M8, that I heard briefly during some experiments, would do better in this range with a similar horn. I dont think it is a coincidence that GOTO systems sometimes have two parallel drivers on the lower midrange horns.

Be,

Do you think that that based upon your experience with GOTO and FANE it might be possible to generalize “what is better”.  It is upper bass and it is upon many valuables: Imbedded Macro-Positioning, appropriateness of a given horn to the given driver, specifics of the given implementation of driver loading, specifics of the driver electrical damping by amps, a listening ignorance of a person who implemented a given solution… and many other factors. So, the specific positive or negative results (or a result as in your case) are not indicative to illustrate of “what is better”. I am not willing to pretend that I know an answer to the question “what type of driver is better for upperbass”. Let us to think at the subject together from slightly more divert perspectives.

The debate as I understand is about: to use a compression driver or do not use compression driver for upperbass. The people around Steve Schell circle love to drop tears that “there is nothing like bass from a compression driver” (link). I usually laugh when I hear that pontification. I also whenever I hear upperbass from compression drivers never found it even worth criticism – it was just very bad, including what I heard from Steve Schell demonstration. Still, I would not accept is as defeat of the compression driver for bass notion. Let look what we are actually debating.

The people who uselessly use compression drivers for upperbass practically never use the compression drivers properly. The bass-able compression drivers with low Fs are rare. People have the only one type of the horn that the can afford space-wise for upper bass and they got those rare and expensive compression drivers. However, there a compression driver has ONLY ONE already SET resonance frequency and it have the only one optimum horn for that frequency. No one I know consider it and peoples juts plug the compression driver “as is” into the horn that they have. No one will pay $$$ for GOTO drivers, build horn and… then take a blowtorch and blow away the GOTO’s back chamber, biding own back chamber with the Fs characteristics that would be necessary for a given horn. Be advised that with new acquired Fs characteristics the GOTO (for instance) diaphragm type and suspension might be not winning anymore and we are talking about the new completely open Pandora box for multitude of dilemmas.  There is also a diminishing return with compression driver bass. We have 3”-6” diaphragm the need to push 300Hz. It does it and we call it OK. Then we need the same 3”-6” diaphragm to push 80Hz. The dimension of the diaphragm in compression driver does not wary a lot and in order the 3”-6” diaphragm to push more bass the suspension should be softer and the cone’s excursion should be longer. So, we produce more bass by let the diaphragm to run furthermore but it has a LOT of potentially bad results. The longer excursion means the gap should be with less tolerance with more flux wasted.  The longer excursion means more mechanical contribution from the cone and it’s suspension to the drivers. The longer excursion means the compression of the front chamber impact the cone more different at the beginning and in the end of the excursion. I mean the low excursion is one of the main advantages of any compression driver – we do diminish this advantage what we go in bass region.  Also, we do not know how the given driver’s cone will break-up when it is dumped for a given horn. I do not support the bogus believe about the piston motion of diaphragm – the REAL sound is create inside the diaphragm break-up…

Ok, on the other side we have my Fane-type of application for upper bass. The application is call to found as proper cone driver with necessary characteristics and to use is as a compression driver. Pay attention: it is not a cone driver loaded into a horn, it is according to all definitions’ is a compression driver application. What is the difference with the GOTO approach? The difference is that by selecting of the driver, type of the cone, type of the suspension, the driver performance at the given cruise dumping, size of the driver,  mass of the cone, way to damp the driver and many other characteristics we virtually reconstruct the compression driver, only we do it with respect to our given horn.  It is important to note that in both cases we are screwed: in GOTO-type case we’re screwed with fixed design of a compression driver and in FANE-type case we’re screwed with deficiency of good drivers for our specific application.

The funny part is that I never was exposed to the results where both: the Fane-type and GOTO-type were implemented in horn properly in respect to own topology. I would be no surprised that in the case of proper use the GOTO-type approach and Fane-type approach would perform identically properly. After all, the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy once said “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Why do you think it should not applicable to the ways to get upperbass from horns?

So, I feel that there is no “better way”.  I am a big fan of compression drivers but I feel that lowering the frequency where compression drivers are used the amount of efforts to get the proper result increase in geometric progression. There are solutions for all problems I have mentioned above but at some point it becomes a pursuit of a concept for the sake of concept. The best way is to have Mr. Goto or somebody similar to built custom drivers to your own specification but I doubt that this task is accomplishable within one life span as it takes years and years to understand Sound and how to create it… unfortunately...

MINGSU wrote:

I finally received the GOTO SG38WNS 15" woofer and GOTO SG188S tweeter this week. My next step is to build a dual driver bass cabinet to cover 70Hz down.

be wrote:

Both the Fane and the Goto where used as compression drivers, so there where no principal differences of use.

Wow, who made such experiment? Bring this person to my forum, it would be interesting to interview him! I still do not know about the “principal differences of use”. If Fane and Goto were loaded in the same horn then how that person equalized the system primary resonance? Then there is another ketch: Goto and Fane cones/suspension are very different and they might (and most certainly will) react differently to proximity to the throat reactance. Go figure if the Goto and Fane were used identically properly in respect to own topology.

Let to be honest, if I had borrowed Goto drivers then I would do the same: juts plug up one, then another and then listened what was better. I would NOT modify or rebuilt a new horn to accommodate it to Goto needs. It is possible that Fane as compression used Fane is better driver for bass, in fact is it what I based upon my theoretical assumptions, some of them listed above. However, I would like do not send a message to others that bass compression drivers is a not perspective direction to go. I think if the bass compression drivers are properly implemented (no one does it) then they might be fine. Still, I personally feel that the threshold of the diminishing return with bass compression driver located somewhere around 150Hz. To go lower with compression driver does not make practical sense.

be wrote:

The sound of the Goto 505 in the lower range was similiar to what you hear from a 8" woofer trying to do what a 15" can in the bass.  Although the sound was clean as free of distortions, it lacked impact and authority.

Well, makes sense of course. Only God knows what the Goto 505 primary resonance is. The company claims the frequency response 100Hz-6KHz (loaded) with no further information about primary resonance. For a manufacture that does ONLY drivers it is very bad do not release more data about their drivers. Here is what Fane has:

http://www.romythecat.com/Site_Images/FaneStudio8M.jpg

be wrote:

Maybe it is not a problem with the Goto driver, but maybe there are limmit to horns ability to transform great ratios of impedance, just as there is with electrical transformers? The air presure at the beginning of the horn in the Goto case will be higher, maybe the non linearity of air starts to be a factor producing compression?

An interesting question. You presume that higher compression has problems to be transfer over the horn. I know very little about it and I generally disregard the theory of pressure conversion in horn as anything that explains Sound in horns. A week ago I have replied in another accidental site to a comment about the horns purpose:

Jdza: The function of a horn is to couple the very high acoustic impedance at the loudspeaker to the very low impedance of the air in the room so a giant transformer with no iron, no wire-just pure clean air.

be wrote:

I shold make it clearer: The Goto was used in a Goto 150Hz horn, crossed at 180Hz. I guess that is a proper implementation for Goto. The Fane was in a 140Hz tractrix horn with a 10cm throat and a not optimised (to large ) back chamber, and no crossover downwards. That is not optimal, but it still sounded better at the lower range.

MINGSU wrote:

SG505TT + S150 horn crossover at 180 Hz is not recommended by GOTO.  The SG505TT driver is not recommended to use with single throat S150 horn.  Double SG505TT driver is recommended to use with single throat S150 horn.  To use single throat S150 horn, GOTO recommend to use the SG570 driver.  The crossover point for S150 horn should be 200Hz and up to 1kHz only with 1st order/6dB active filter.  For passive filter, 2nd order /12dB filter is recommeded.  Hope this help.

MINGSU wrote:

Hi All, This is Ming Su and I am the US distributor for GOTO and J.C. Verdier.

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

........he has listened to Goto's advice quite a bit.. they have very strong thoughts on how to do things... some you will find humorous, others you will agree with... they beleive that electronics don't really matter.. the driver is the primary importance above all others... to them, it is silly to buy expensive electronics if you do not have double drivers on all your horns.. (I do not believe in this, at all) .. they also do not believe in time alignment... I have heard the amazing transformation that time alignment brings, both with digital correction and with physical alignment... Goto says the drivers can just go anywhere.. their philosophy is that a low distortion loudspeaker is the most important thing... double drivers... I am with you on double drivers... I understand that it shortens a horn.. to me, that is usually a bad direction.. length helps with loading.. especially in the lower frequencies... (at high frequencies I tend to like short horns, subjectively)... I also find that double drivers in the mids and up confuse things a bit.. a touch "blurry"... but I must say that I know two people who liked double drivers in the 300 to 1500 range better than single.. do note that both have *large* rooms... also note that Ming'shorn has adequate length at over 8' for a 60Hz flare...

Jeffrey Jackson wrote:

.... the rear chamber and reactance annulling... yes, I know this subject very well... it makes a very audible difference... and deserves our attention... Bell Labs actually published a formula for source impedance with regards to horn impedance.. it was quite enlightening.. they used very high output impedance amps with their horns... and, yes, they had *giant* aluminum diapragmed compression driven bass horns... interesting, no? the throat of Ming's horn is two times 100 mm diameter openings, I believe... I did not build the dual throat adaptor.... the drivers are quite impressive in scale.. the pictures make them seem smaller than life... but I do wish we could have the rear chambers modified for the task, as you pointed out... Goto, as far as I know, does not do this for any of their horns... for each driver they sell a few different size horns.. and no changes to teh driver.........

ygoh wrote:

1.) Why is it that you do not support using teo compression drivers in the same throat?   Is the distortions increases, such as wavefront distortion?

ygoh wrote:

2.) What are the main reasons of using two compression drivers at the same throat, beside shortening the horn's length?

ygoh wrote:

3.) Do you agree that with using shorter (mouth dimensions is unchanged) horn will not decrease the 'loudness' or efficiency, as efficiency does not depend on the length of the horn, but efficiency depends on throat's area and the drivers itself?

ygoh wrote:

4.) Do you also agree that by shortening the horn, you loose lower frequency?  Another word, the lower cut off frequency increases?

ygoh wrote:

1.) What's that formula to calculate the back chamber volume given a throat reactance? 2.) Would it be a bigger back chamber with higher reactance at the throat?   or vice versa?

Romy the Cat wrote:

ygoh wrote: 1.) Why is it that you do not support using teo compression drivers in the same throat?   Is the distortions increases, such as wavefront distortion? Sure the wavefront gets spread; it is what Wilson does in his WAMM system. The drivers are never the same. There are always are small between them, so what you have two drivers, with own necks to drive the same throat it is an opportunity for problems. I do not even go into the discussion how the axes of two drivers face the same not perpendicular throat. Try to angle a single driver from the horn throat or offset their centers – you will see the result. How pretend that you have two 45 degree drivers firing into the same hole.  ygoh wrote: 2.) What are the main reasons of using two compression drivers at the same throat, beside shortening the horn's length? Increase pressures nothing else. Double drivers do not shorten the horn's length – the double size throat does it. The double compression drivers use very commonly in past. Do not forget however that compression drivers in past were only about developing maximum acoustic pressure, there was very little consideration about quality of sound. Put in this way- they were not applied consideration and way less inferior then what he have noonday for home system. So, the RCA, Altec, Klangfilm  and whoever else in past make the stupid double drivers configurations to get more yelps form little amps in order to sound reinforce larger areas…  ygoh wrote: 3.) Do you agree that with using shorter (mouth dimensions is unchanged) horn will not decrease the 'loudness' or efficiency, as efficiency does not depend on the length of the horn, but efficiency depends on throat's area and the drivers itself? Efficiency depends from profile and varies slightly. Efficiency is less important factor. The important one is an equalization at a given frequency or the horn equalization diagraphs. I have no idea what it is not being used  ygoh wrote: 4.) Do you also agree that by shortening the horn, you loose lower frequency?  Another word, the lower cut off frequency increases? Sure, a longer horn means the higher ratio between mouth and throat, means more LF boost and more HF roll off.  ygoh wrote: 1.) What's that formula to calculate the back chamber volume given a throat reactance? 2.) Would it be a bigger back chamber with higher reactance at the throat?   or vice versa?  You do not need any formulas. Use the guideless form this post: Practical Guide for Back Chambers Tuning. The Cat

Thanks, Be, for a correction but the fun part is no one acknowledged your blander. The Goto drivers I think are exotic terra incognito for most people and I think it is how Goto Company is willing to keep it. No one talk about nuts and bolt of Goto compressions driver, trying to convince the parties of interest in Goto’s alleged design advancement. Not one talks about Sound from Goto drivers. I wonder what ideas Goto-Company and Goto-resellers have that would make their driver more popular than they are now. The only exposure that I see from Goto is adolescently-designed installation with system owners too full of themselves to even to cognitively recognize what Sound they are getting out of own playback.

I think if Goto is willing to go somewhere and if Mulg is willing to sale that 56 feet boat on Lake Erie bought for the money of Goto distribution, then those Goto people need to talk a little about themselves and about own products. Avantgarde could press zillion of their horn but the Avantgarde business started what AG’s US distributor opened his month (and Avantgarde ended what he shut up). Ming site should have a lot of context and the site should be interactive. The site should have a lot is service information about horns, frames, crossovers, success stories. Goto should be presented as an equitable competitor to JBL and TAD and the results that Goto demonstrate should be convincing to use them. Goto shells try to sell their driver as EOM to other horn manufactures…  I can go on and on but Goto is not there.

The price for Goto drivers in Japanese catalos is reasonable. The “street price” in Japan is even 30-50% lower. The US prices are in tense thousands that clearly indicate that there is a room for investment into the drivers’ publicity. Perhaps a situation what Goto sell 10 drivers per year is something that Goto feels comfortable but I feel different. My feeling is that until Goto will not be widely available and widely used by more or less civilized users then Goto (as a company) will not learn how to make better drivers. Ming is a new US distributor and let see where he we take Goto. There are some distributors who juts move boxes and there those who do active product development. The time will show where Goto will lend in the hierarchy of horns opportunities.