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RE: Foil vs Wire: What difference does it make?

"I think that the foil will be less likely to come loose from the diaphragm over time, as there is more area upon which the glue will be bonding it to the mylar."

That has certainly been my experience with the 1.6s. The tweeter section (foil) has never exhibited any issues related to delamination. On the other hand, the bass section of the panel (wire) developed the classic "banana peel" delamination when they were around 15 years old.


"And, unless the panels wired with foil have a different DC resistance than the panels made with wire, then the mass will be the same."

Makes sense. The same amount of aluminum, just a different cross sectional geometry.

"Unless they have to apply more glue to the foil due to the larger surface area of the foil vs round wire..."

Very interesting point! So, the composite foil driver, (conductor, adhesive and Mylar) would most likely have a greater mass than its wire conductor counterpart because there is more adhesive material used with the larger surface area of the foil bond!

"You could argue some things about skin effect being different in the two, but skin effect isn't all that important in such small conductors until you get up into high RF frequencies. If you are using your speakers for an antenna.... well then maybe."

I do remember there was some discussion around here many years ago about the RF/antenna effect of Maggies in general. The idea being that RF "recieved" by the "antenna" was interacting with the audio frequencies causing subtle, but audible distortion. The proponents of this theory advocating the use of an RF filter (choke) on the speaker input terminals. If I remember it correctly it was mostly an anecdotal position with little to no measurements/science to back it up. I'll go with your engineering knowledge on this one. This is not a factor to be concerned with.

"The shape of the magnetic field around a flat foil might differ slightly from a round wire."

This gets my attention the most! This could go a long way in explaining the differences I have experienced comparing the two 1.x series speakers firsthand. I'll go in to more detail on that in another post.

Thank you so much for the detailed point by point explanations. This was exactly the kind of information I was interested in.









-Joe

They're not that big!


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  • RE: Foil vs Wire: What difference does it make? - Joe Schmo 08:30:00 12/27/22 (0)

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