The “best midrange comes from compression drivers”. I see somebody like Haralanov would be very much opposed to this comment. The irony is that I would be opposed as well to this comment.  I would say that the best midrange at over 107dB sensitively is the simplest to get from compression drivers. I did heard very good non compression driver but they were good 10-20 less sensitivity then good compression drivers, not to mention that non compression driver will have a lot of difficulty to work with a good upperbass horn, and this is not a laughing matter as a proper upperbass horn with a right compression driver is the winning tandem, not the MF compression driver itself.

 The whole business of having something “best” is a bit tricky and it has to be understood properly. The best is not an absolute criterion but rather the best balanced criteria. The best compression driver is like a woman. Women know own best and worse properties of appearance and they use different tools of dressing, make up, behavior and etc… to hide the less attractive element of own appearance  and to highline on the most reactive properties. Would we consider that a women that does it most successfully might be considered the “best woman”? I do not think so but the compression driver it appears to me works in the very same way. It looks like it is very easy to capitalize on the best what a compression driver doe the best and it looks like it is relatively easy to deal very effectively with problems of compression drivers. So, I would not call that the best midrange comes from compression drivers but I would say that as a ready to go package the compression drivers are more optimized to get the best MF as they are.

Another subject that I would like to point out that in upperbass horns there are very narrow margin what would be the best size of upperbass horn.  Your MF mush be fast opening horn, this is not arguable and if you are in MF with exponential horn then you are ether deaf of a Moron. Either Tratrix or La-horn are fine, or it might be any other fast opening profile.  If you go for 120Hz upperbass then you most likely would like to stay with fast opening, it looks better and it has some sonic advantages, the sonic advantages are arguable however for 120Hz horn.  Still, 120Hz horn is 36”, and then we have let say 12” of MF horn. A half of 12” is 6” and we do not want the upperbass and MF overlap. So, 36” of upperbass and half of MF horn make 42” of the MF driver height. Jorge said that MF driver has to be at hears level, which is about 42”. So, we just concluder a proof that that 115-120Hz is the maximum possible size for upperbass horn. Sure you might put your upperbass above your MF but then you need to paint your horns in red, green, yellow and blue stripes in order everyone see that you are a Moron. Now let to see what happened with the upperbass length.  If you have 35”-36” diameter then the length will be dictated by the diameter of your throat. If you go for 1.5” as WE and the imitator do then your horn will be an ugly snake that you will never time-align with MF driver. If you go for 6”-8” throat that Bruce so like to make for his mostly idiotic customers then your upperbass will act mostly as a direct radiator and will not have the necessary equalization. If you sit with a 3D modeling software and begin to slide the throat up and down and to preview the desirable upperbass length in order to have the sufficient horn EQ, the easy of time aliment and the proper esthetic appearance foe your acoustic system in your frame then you very fast discover that 34”-37” is the very optimum length that makes upperbass to have 4” throat. A simple calculation will inform you that with 4” throat Tratrix blowing into 35” mouth will yeald for you +6 dB gain at the horn lover cut off. Congratulation, you just reinvented the basic Macondo geometry! Another 10 years of experience on the subject and you will reinvent what I leaned – a design of proper horn installation must start from design of horn supporting frame, but this is whole another subject…

A few words about a subject that Jorge missed. The loading of the amp or amps that drive MF and upperbass is super important. If you use tubes then more loading of output stage gives you more gain, more power, more harmonics, better diaphragm damping. Letting the output tube to run more idle give you faster transient response, less distortion, shorter decays. It is not necessary to multi-amp your MF and upperbass if you would like to mitigate the individual loading between the channels, you can do it with a single amp as well. Still, loading is VERY powerful tool, in many cased more powerful then a change of the drivers.

About the upperbass horn, upperbass horns are not panacea in my view. There are other topologies that can deliver very good upperbass results. The infinite baffle or VERY large open baffles in my estimation do very well. The problem with large open baffles is that they do not accept any channels under bottom, nothing will work with them. There are other problems with large open baffles, like large vertical surfaces destroy imaging and many others problems.  The upperbass horns in contrary not only sound well but as they do not deal with acoustic shorting as the result they accommodate proper bass support.

haralanov wrote:

Romy the Cat wrote: One more thing. In my mind the injection that I use is more preferable solution then to use truly rich driver as you presumably use. The resosn is that using one good driver you have no control over it's color. The driver is what it is and you can't add or reduced colors. Using one driver you have no control over depth of colors, I do.  I have control over thousand parameters of my main driver (and not only my main driver, but also my tweeters, my upperbass/lower midrange drivers and my 23” bass drivers!) Choosing the type of magnet system, the geometry of the magnetic circuit, the hysteresis properties of the magnetic steel, the type of the voice coil, the material of the VC former, the INDUCTANCE of the voice coil, the type of the glue for the different joints, the way the sound energy coming from the VC is transferred to the cone, the type of the cone, the geometrical properties of the cone, the type of suspension, the combination of different materials for that suspension (for more complex tone) and literally zillion other variables – I am able to manipulate the tone to any degree I want – I have unlimited freedom to do so.

"Given" correct pitch, timbre, weight and scale, the crux seems to be balancing available color saturation, color range, articulation and "force".  Getting this "right" is what I have referred to as the "matrix", and when the "critical mass" is achieved, the results are literally startling.  I don't know why, but all by itself it has an uncanny effect on "image" and "soundstage", rendering the presentation as "real" (ok, "more real"...) in a way that I am very eager to explore.  Even in mono...  It is only fairly recently that I started listening to it this way, during trials of my new "stack" of tone-rich drivers.  I could not sustain it with the rough stack, but I believe I got enough information to press on.

Jorge, you are spot on about the "turgid" quality of "chubby" drivers, although a lot more than is generally supposed might be gotten from more "delicate" drivers, without cutting meat off the bones.  Of course we are not talking 6" FR...  While any signature sound might be a problem, the S2 as you all describe it is an example of a very "rough" driver that might be tweaked to "outperform" a typically-smooth driver.  Like I said before, today I would try to "use" the 808's "faults" to sonic advantage rather than trying to make it sound like a 375...  Likewise, all a driver's strengths might be used more wisely.

We probably all hate the One Trick Pony, and once a specific trait becomes obvious and then relentless as such, how long is it tolerable?

Best regards,
Paul S

unicon wrote:

I recently have tried many mounting methods  and can say that for sure it changed many parameters such as colors and tones of drivers ...

Jorge wrote:

Sometimes it is not so much as adding color, but taking it away.  Most cheap cone drivers will exhibit a loose sound,  so if you want to get the cellos more clearly, you need to get some meat off the bones or they wil get lost in the mess. Having a thin, detailed structure helps when adding weight and color in the sense that you can add just as much as needed.  It would be more difficult to get a clear sound out of a chubbby driver. Another important point to make is:  Color must be added quirurgically,  the wood on the violin needs a little more red: Having multiple channels allows you to get a more detailed point of application of tone and color,  as oposed to painting the whole orchestra green! I do not want this to become a Horns vs box speaker contest.  Lets just say if any topology of speakers can achieve the effects wanted and described,  it would be great to share some input.

As I said, there is no doubt that desirable combination of color density, color contrast and color discrimination at different dynamic levels might be accomplished by a single direct radiator driver.  The compression drivers have no advantage in this department with exception that they might or might not do it at 10-20dB higher dynamic level.

However, we do not have an ability to correlate the actual Sound and we are driven only by claims that people make on-line. It would be nice to have some kind of tone/color pissing context where people could come to together and to compare noted about the actual results. Unfortunately this is not always possible or even imposable.   BTW, I did proposed an idea of Foundation Standarts for Exposed Evaluation:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=16355

Someone might look into this.

So, we all understand that we do not deal with the actual results but with different people, including myself, running mouths on line. So the value of those claims is very questionable. However, as far as I am familiar with what people only say of claim my site is THE only one location where the subject of moderation of color density, temperance with color discrimination, the employment of color contrast at low dynamic levels, deliberate management the entire warmth of tone and many other factors are even mentioned and even designated as playback design objective. No one there talks about, at least I did not see, read or was exposed to it in any other ways. So, I do not see this tendency in other and since I know that to accomplish all those things is possible only if one clearly identify what she/he would like to accomplish I do not know how valid all those claims.

I do not claim that what people lie when they say about their ability to moderate anything they want by changing suspensions, materials or injection of some kind of tone-shaping ingredients into the direct radiator’s cellulose diaphragm pulp. This is very good direction to go and to this and many private parties and commercial companies do experiments with it. I do not use this approach and I do not know the rule and the result of the engagement. If somebody claim they use leather out suspension then I can concur with it as I heard the leather-suspended driver as I know the results. If someone claim the they use paper for cones with variable thickness and let the paper be eaten by female orangutan and then to be passed by orangutan digestive system as according to them the orangutan’s stomach acids are able uniquely impact the molecular structure of cone then I do accept it respectfully but if people never ever talk about their objective about Sound then I do not know if all of it has any Sonic merit.

This is what I stay with my position regarding the “achievements of others” in audio coloring.

Paul S wrote:

On a lighter note, I have actually read some interesting - if relatively simplistic - commentary on Tone at guitar forums.  Too bad about their bases for the discussions, however, and I will close by saying it bodes well for anyone interested in the subject to be alert to context.

Jorge wrote:

I think we have been using the wrong analogy here…..