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In Reply to: RE: Apogees and ethics - comments posted by josh358 on February 12, 2012 at 16:19:36
I remember following Vavetude's project as he was posting it. You need to take into consideration his heroic effort with giant magnet structure and fine tuning of every component, surface, location. It is something that you would expect to cost a few thousand a piece and something like most of a Genesis system once you add the appropriate woofers to complement it.
I did not know that the Neo 10 uses the magnets to form the shape of the magnet boards. Very cool idea. Yes, I was aware of the heat failure mechanism. That differs from mylar, which just melts.
I think 250 hz is an ok spot rather than perfect. The ideal would be more like 150-200 depending on how solid the structure holding the mids is.
I have a rather good memory of what I heard, since I got to hear the Centaurs and Slants many times, and got exposure to the Stage and its derivatives sufficient to get a permanent feel for it.
I can say that the Apogees are still somewhat more dynamic sounding than the Neo8 - probably because the ribbons are loose and not stretched as much as the Neo's. I think that limits their output some when you go beyond a certain rather high volume, they compress a little. But otherwise, I think they are just more refined and texturally right. I have heard my Neo8s with a variety of amps, so I have some idea of the sound of the array itself.
I am a little surprised that you can get a more correct imaging with the down tilted top end - as pointed out in the Sonus Faber Amati Futura review from Atkinson. Very interesting.
I guess we just leave the minimum gap size for dipole cancelation aside. From my experience it seems like 1/2" is already over the threshold in the 300 hz area.
Follow Ups:
I gather that large Neodynium magnet assemblies are insanely expensive right now, I've seen some figures on DIY audio in the $1-$3 thousand range. (Though some have done quite well with factory seconds, etc.)
I'm not sure the Neo's are necessary for sound quality, for anything except the ultra-wide ribbons (and then you wouldn't necessarily need huge ones). The Neos give you great efficiency but as Wendell points out it's cheaper to buy a big amp. I read somewhere that stronger magnets give you lower distortion, but I'm not sure why that would be the case, I'd expect ribbons to be predominantly air damped and distortion to depend on the uniformity of the field rather than its strength, the precision of the air gaps, and the resonances in the ribbon. Am I missing something? Better electrical damping at low frequencies, perhaps?
Ditto Valetude's 250 pounds of steel, I gather he kept adding it until he eliminated most traces of saturation in FEMM but if you don't need the efficiency, I assume you wouldn't have to go that far.
I read last night that Linesource's 2" ribbons are crossed over at 80 Hz? With an 8-pole crossover.
I've heard it said that ribbons have an advantage in dynamics. I'm not sure why. I'd expect the planar-magnetic field to increase distortion at high excursions. I'm not sure about the compliance of the film, does it become nonlinear? Otherwise I'd expect it to store energy, as of course it does, but AFAIK that wouldn't cause compression. Maybe the ear, while it integrates over time to judge frequency response, interprets time smearing as a loss of dynamics or a change in timbre? I'm thinking back to analog synth days, and the effects of the ADSR envelope generators -- stored energy would have the effect of reducing attack and reducing decay, and both of those make substantial changes to timbre.
Do you remember approximately where John Atkinson said that about the Amati's FR and imaging? I just read the review, must have skipped over it (feeling guilty about doing this stuff right now when I should be getting to work).
Well, one fact is and would be that a ribbon in its loose suspension does mostly have air as restriction and load.
Compare that to a membrane that is suspended and stretched!
The stretching in itself is a very strong force that directly affect dynamics as it is actually forced not to move but still does due to flexing in material.
As a perfect example of this is electrostats that really needs a pretty strong suspension that actually forces the membrane to its stationary place between the stators.
This because it would otherwise automatically get attracted to one of the stators and get stuck.
The solution to this is make the membrane area larger to compensate for the lack of motion.
This of course is mainly true in the bass region where large excursion is needed.
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
On the other hand, the forces on an electrostatic are essentially limited by the breakdown voltage of air. So there's an upper limit on the force that can be applied to the diaphragm at a given stator spacing, which I think is about 1/10 that of a planar magnetic. Whereas in practice, the low frequency excursion of large planar magnetics seems to be limited by the position of the magnet assembly, which is determined by efficiency and magnet strength. They'll play until they slap the pole piece. So as far as I know, for a large planar, the limitation on LF output is imposed essentially by the cost of the magnets, and of a mechanical assembly of sufficient strength to accommodate them. For a smaller planar like the Neo's thermal damage could also be an issue, and also maybe distortion at large Xmax's caused by the non-uniform field. As far as I know, the compliance of these plastic films is a constant, so I'm not sure where dynamic compression would occur, unless it's a subjective consequence of rising non-linear distortion? And I wouldn't expect most of these concerns to apply at higher frequencies, where excursion is low.
Edits: 02/16/12
What I was talking about was dynamics.
All You say is right when talking about output.
But dynamics are all about having a non restriction or as little as possible. And here a ribbon is unbeatable... except for maybe plasma. hehe
The restriction for a membrane will be exponential and therefore the dynamics will decrease exponentially.
Single ended or double pole piece are another discussion as it is mainly a linearity and efficiency one as such. But both will suffer from restriction from the suspension.
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
Why would it be nonlinear, though? I'd expect the deflection to be pretty linear until you get near the elastic limit. Which you don't want to do because you'll stretch or break the diaphragm.
What I mean to emphasize is that suspension equals compression and thus less dynamics.
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
Is it? I always assumed it was pretty close to Hooke's Law, that is, linear. In two dimensions, of course, with more compliance laterally than vertically.
"Is it? I always assumed it was pretty close to Hooke's Law, that is, linear. In two dimensions, of course, with more compliance laterally than vertically. "Not really if You look at the function of a suspended membrane witch is not a spring.
You could though try to integrate Hooke's law into the calculation of air volume that is very non linear for a suspended membrane.You probably understand me now? :)
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
Edits: 02/16/12
Sure. The next question, then, is which distortion mechanism predominates at high excursions -- the nonlinear displacement, or the nonlinear magnetic field?
You are absolutely right, the mitigating factor is that the membrane becomes more flexible over short time periods as stretching increases temperature in the membrane and reduces resistance to elongation. It is noticeable on the Neo8s as the detail retrieval and dynamic swings after a very loud passage improve and then deteriorate slightly if no further loud passages follow. I should point out that when I use the modified Nuforce class D amps, the dynamics are better and the effect is even more pronounced but dynamics are better overall. I think this better dynamic presentation has something to do with the driver being within the feedback loop since the little amps get way hotter than the energy they are supposed to deliver would imply. Which indicates some sort of electric damping, probably of the return tension on the membranes.
The membrane material in the Neo8 is rather stiff and has little elongation and is responsible for the sheer drop of the bass response as stretch limits on the membrane are approached. It is alot more like kevlar than it is like rubber.
There is definitely energy storage and compression going on with the BGs. But it is not that great so long as you keep bass freq out of it.
The big deal is that the bigger the magnets the smaller the effect of air damping on dynamics. Remember that you have the ribbon sittin in a narrow slot and pushing air into and out of the slot with turbulent air flow and at the kinds of displacements that Valvetude reports that is going to play into damping - and the more magnet you have the better you are able to overcome the air resistance. While you can get "cheap power" to do it instead of expensive magnets, the quality of the "cheap power" in something as revealing as a ribbon is far more significant a cost than it would be on a bass driver.
Torsion is also magnetically/electrically damped, though weakly, which is why that is a limiting factor in ribbons. The torsioning is caused by greater air resistance to motion by the edges of the slot. Once an asymetry initiates the torsion it will not go away till the ribbon's vibration is much reduced in amplitude.
Re Atkinson - it is what he is implying in comparing to the Quads.
http://www.stereophile.com/content/quad-esl-63-loudspeaker-measurements
http://www.stereophile.com/content/quad-esl-989-electrostatic-loudspeaker-john-atkinson-may-2003
Also Iverson's review of the SF Guarneri stand mount speaker actually compares to the Quad ESLs.
While it's true that larger magnets increase electrical damping, air damping so predominates at the higher frequencies at which ribbons operate that I'm not sure how much of an effect electrical damping has, even with strong magnets. More on torsion and edge-gap distortion perhaps, since when that occurs the air is turbulent. But as I think about it, I'm not even sure if it has much of an effect there. Amplifier damping can be compromised by the crossover network, which would leave only self-damping from eddy currents. Since ribbon resonances are below the crossover point, the diaphragm could literally be left to twist in the wind. Another consideration is that the amplifier can only damp the ribbon as a whole. Since torsion is symmetrical, it may not be much affected by amplifier damping at all. Again, you're back to eddy currents. Which would however be stronger in a stronger B field.
The idea is that larger magnets and thicker tweeters end up with larger relative magnetic forces vs. air resistance and damping. Thus less compression.
In the torsioning case, I know from listening and from the basic physics of it that it can't be damped effectively, only prevented - as magnepan do with their little beads - which allows them to have no torsioning and no significant lengthwise resonance.
One of my tweeters is loose, while the other is nice and tight and beaded. The loose one torsions when playing signficant output below 5 khz, but performs just fine with the 10khz XO. The higher frequencies don't seem to be affected by the torsioning when playing at lower XO, but the 2-3 khz range becomes rough and screechy like the Apogees can sound.
Once it starts oscillating the damping would already have proved insufficient, so it makes sense that it wouldn't stop while still driven. But I assume that if you could achieve critical damping, you wouldn't get the torsional oscillation in the first place.
I gather the Apogee ribbons had foam supports to achieve the same thing as Magenpan's adhesive. But of course they still had the torsion problem, I assume due to the width of the ribbon.
Not any measurements done by myself but from the book "Ribbon Loudspeakers Theory and Construction" ISBN: 1-882580-24-X.
Corrugated ribbon have larger/more THD then an uncorrugated ribbon in 3kHz and 10kHz except for 1kHz where the uncorrugated ribbon has slightly higher THD.
IMD is higher for corrugated in 2&5kHz and slightly higher for an uncorrugated ribbon in 5&7kHz.
Interesting I would think.
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
I was looking for that book a few days ago, the only copy I could find was going for more than $300. But I saw the web page that had that info. I wonder whether an uncorrugated ribbon would be more susceptible to torsion. Also, whether it would allow sufficient displacement to play at high amplitudes at the lower end of its frequency range.
There are sadly no comparisons in those areas in the book.
But it mentions and shows a research of how a corrugated ribbon does behave as a uniformly moving piston, but has many modes imposed and torsional movement in, what they call 8th resonance mode, that would be 244Hz.
The one who succeeded was the one who didn't know it was impossible.
Edits: 02/17/12
Now that's really ineresting. Wish I could get hold of that book. I'm going to see if I can get it on interlibrary loan.Meanwhile, I found the paper mentioned in the caption:
Edits: 02/19/12
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