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In Reply to: RE: About Magico speakers ... extremely impressive posted by morricab on January 12, 2015 at 14:53:07
Hi and very interesting indeed
Honestly Magico speakers are quite over my budget, but i am impressed by their technology.
You say " As a result, both speakers are remarkably transparent and low in coloration "
I know your position on the listening test as the only way to assess this
Still i hope that one day an instrumental test able to show these characteristics will be available.
That would change the speakers world.
A simple and objective test able to give information on these primary aspect of loudspeakers' performance.
Distortion tests for instance are quite neglected these days.
I wonder why. Nobody performs them.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 01/12/15 01/12/15Follow Ups:
Speakers are easier to characterize than electronics IMO. Colorations in the cabinet and drivers can be evaluated and many companies have done so. However, while it is possible to suppress to a great degree the influence that materials have on the sonic character it is not possible, IMO, to completely eliminate those effects.
It is now quite straightforward to get a flat on-axis response and a "perfect" in-room response with DSP computer processing of the speaker. You can also digitally time-align the speaker for optimal impulse response. A DEQX system or some other room correction systems (like TACT and Lyngdorf) will do this for you.
I have played with the TACT system in the past and some cheaper digital EQ solutions and they do work as advertized...for the most part. The TACT in particular put an electronic haze over the sound when doing all the room processing that IMO and my friend's opinion (he owned it) more than offset the benefit from getting the Frequency response correct.
That aside, I have heard demos where the improvement in the speaker was significant when processed for correct FR and impulse response...something that should teach speaker designers a thing or two about getting FR and time domain correct. However, correcting two different designs in these domains so that they measure the same in a room does NOT result in the same sonic signature. The overall character of the speakers were different despite now being corrected for in-room response and impulse response.
This leaves harmonic distortion of the drivers, which is probably not so bad at moderate levels to be a big sound contributor and the sounds the materials and cabinets themselves make due to excitation. This "self noise" is IMO where the true character of a speaker comes out.
Now of course uncorrected this is convoluted with FR, dispersion and time smear (poor impulse response) that serves to further distinguish the character of a speaker. Sometimes these factors are dominant but in a very well designed speaker it is more likely materials and harmonic distortion giving the character.
Magico and Wilson go to heroic lengths to make their cabinets inert to minimize (but never completely eliminate) excitation and re-emission of sound (which is time smeared an frequency smeared). Magico goes to great lengths to make drivers that minimize their own self-noise (carbon fiber and rohcell sandwhich...similiar in concept to Focal drivers)...as do companies like Rockport and Kharma (interestingly all with carbon fiber sandwhich concepts it seems). Some people have gravitated back to paper because paper has a less offensive "self noise" than most other materials...doping helps to quell this further but then the driver loses sensitivity.
In the case of Wilson, they have minimized the cabinet influence but still use drivers that are not overly damped. They get good sensitivity and wide dynamic range from their speakers as a result. So despite somewhat ragged frequency response, they can still sound quite lifelike...for a dynamic speaker they have "jump" factor.
Magico has gone a more damped route for both cabinet and drivers and the result is a far more neutral tonal balance and smoothness but at the expense of some "aliveness". They have lower sensitivity and not as much "jump" as a Wilson speaker. I prefer the Wilsons overall. I have not heard the huge all horn Magico but it is a completely different animal to their normal speakers and it uses compression drivers from another company and not their own drivers.
Dynaudio has a similar but somewhat less refined sound as Magico because their cabinets are definitely not as heroic nor are their driver materials as well damped.
Distortion in speakers, while not super low is often of low order harmonics and therefore arguably not so audible in light of the other issues. If you look at speaker hobby magazines they do show the distortion of drivers so designers at least keep an eye on it.
Hi and thanks a lot for the very interesting explanation.
i can only imagine the complexity of the task
I am very ignorant but a driver is of course the main actor
In an way everything else should have the less impact on its performance.
Colorations for me in the end are distortions.
I was watching a video on Youtube ... even a very simple monotone test signal is reproduced very differently by different drivers/speakers.
In some cases you get very high level of harmonics not present in the original signal.
I know that music signals are so much complex.
But a speaker that has difficulty to playback simple signals could it be better with more complex ones ?
Take some woofers, send in a 100Hz/100dB signal and see what comes out.
The more and the higher the other peaks the worse the woofer.
At least at that freq and that level.
It should not be that difficult.
And after reading that real peak levels can be pretty high i would test the speakers also at 110 dB to see their limits.
I heard that a very top and extremely expensive brand has stopped using ceramic woofers because at high levels tend even to break.
That could be made evident with the correct testing i guess.
I see instrumental testing as a screening tool to avoid basic issues like reliability, high distortion, quality assurance ... etc.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
It is not really clear how audible simple harmonic distortion from motor non-linearity would be. Much of it will be masked as it is generally of a low harmonic order.
I think an interesting experiment is to have a speaker in the free field (so outdoors would work) playing music and then suddenly cutting off the signal and measuring how long it takes sound to stop emanating from the speaker and at what level. This could give an idea as to the residual "self noise" the speaker is creating under the main signal.
I've read most of the back-and-forth between the two of you, and several good points have been made. I'd like to offer a few thoughts which may help to complicate things.First, in reply to Beppe's question/thought about distortion measurements being ignored in loudspeaker design, what self-respecting audiophile would buy a speaker if it is known to produce as much as 10 percent THD? ;) I'm certain that many - if not all - major manufacturers perform such tests, but simply don't publish the results.
Second, there are some excellent tests which reveal important and useful information about a speaker's performance, and these tests are quite common. One is the 'typical' impulse response measurement, and another is the MLSSA "waterfall" analysis. I'm a big fan of both. While looking up the MLSSA info, I stumbled upon this very readable link to a Stereophile article written by our good buddy John Atkinson:
http://www.stereophile.com/reference/290mlssa/
Third, John Meyer (www.meyersound.com) also has in-situ/live measurement software which can use the music being performed as the test signal. Pretty intriguing.
Fourth - and this is very exciting to me - there is a system called "IRIS" which uses a tetrahedral array of four small microphones to measure not only amplitude and frequency, but also direction. This is VERY useful for measuring sound in rooms.
Lastly, speaker system designers have known since forever that the enclosure contributes to the sound. Some try to avoid or at least minimize it, some use it to make their speakers sound the way they do.
:)
Edits: 01/15/15
Hi and thanks for the helfpul reply.
My first reaction, and i am not trolling here, is why they do not pubblish?
1) they do not think they are telling anything (then why go thorugh the hassle of performing them ?)
2) the problem is the results that can be too telling.
But it is a old story ... without clear conclusion.
" MLSSA "waterfall" analysis " is very very interesting
I think that most big manufacturers have facilities to perform this test
If i am not wrong it is a full bandwidth impulse test ?
" tetrahedral array of four small microphones "
i am more intrigued by measurements carried out with a well designed artificial head. It is more like the real listening conditions.
But any test can be telling something and a useful tool to get info on speakers and listening rooms.
" speaker system designers have known since forever that the enclosure contributes to the sound "
yes and this is very easy to demonstrate
But during this very interesting discussion, for which i thank you and all the kind Inmates, i am more convinced about the drivers impacting the sound timbre more than other aspects (someone can say obviously)
I think this way now.
That the best enclosure gives to drivers the opportunity to sound as they can, at their maximum and without adding colorations.
And it is not a small thing.
And i am not sure that really good performance needs 200 kg of cabinet.
Separating the big woofer from the rest can simplify life.
This would be my approach like the example in the picture.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
"i am more intrigued by measurements carried out with a well designed artificial head. It is more like the real listening conditions."
Four microphones arranged in a tetrahedron are required to give the up-down/left-right/front-back information. Two microphones only define one plane, three mics can define two planes, and four mics give you the entire sphere, enabling you to pinpoint sources in any direction.
This is actually an idea I had started to pursue in the late 1970s, but did not have the resources (money, time, math skills, programming skills) to see it through. (The late great Michael Gerzon used this principle in his original "soundfield" microphone, produced by Calrec, about that same time. See linky.) I attended Malcolm Dunn's (Marshall Day Acoustics) presentation at the October 2014 AES convention, and was coming unglued that they have a working system for measurement and analysis! Later, I went to their exhibit space and had a nice long talk with Hans Forschner (NAVCON consultants). (See other linky.)
Gerzon Soundfield: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundfield_microphone
IRIS: www.iris.co.nz
Hi and thanks again for the very interesting information
This special microphone could be the best also for listening room treatments maybe ?
Nice to hear about the progress of technology
I would follow an approach a little extreme, with speakers with narrow dispersion aimed at the listening spot and a full treatment of the wall behind the listening spot to stop any possible reflection.
It should work quite ok in a normal home
Maybe also some kind of acoustic panel placed on the front wall.
If a wall does not reflect sound i should not hear it i guess.
Thanks again for the explanation and link.P.S. just to add that i have spotted maybe what can be considered the AudioMachina and Magico "ancestors" ... the Celestion sl600/sl700
A sublime cabinet made out of aluminum honeycomb ... and they delivered an extremely good sound
So the concept is not that new in the end
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 01/19/15
But Trinnov's boxes are also ghastly expensive for what they are.
THAT is some funny stuff!
:)
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