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In Reply to: Re: Burhoe Acoustics update posted by johng on March 8, 2007 at 12:38:28:
He certainly could have gotten lucky and may well have gotten phenomenal results. Lightning does strike twice in the same place and people do win the lotteries. That does not change the odds of winning the lottery of having lightning strike twice in the same place. Luck is not a methodology. Even if this was an instance where the person got lucky, one instance is not sufficient to statically prove false my assertion.The point I want to make is that he should try new surrounds on the original driver before he makes his final judgment, given the care that went into the original design. I would agree with you that genius is an overused term here. I reserve that term more for people like Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci, but I do thing that Burhoe used sound engineering principles in his designs.
Follow Ups:
Burhoe's designs became less successful as time went on so whatever genius he possessed didn't manifest itself in the marketplace. The guy at Human speakers seems to blame marketeers but Burhoe's final designs appear to be exact copies of the stuff Epicure couldn't give away so I might have called him more of a savant but I didn't because I was trying to be nice. What bugged me was Jerry's comment about Burhoe's following because the line appeared to be lifted directly from Human's site and if you take the time to Google him you get nothing. How much of a genius can the guy be if no one chronicles his success'. By the way, have you ever built a set of speakers? A lot of time a haphazard approach works wonders because unlike a cautious approach you don't know what you are going to get which can be a very good thing. It has nothing to do with being struck by lightning and more to do with a willingness to take chances which all really great designers have. Incremental improvement can always come later. As to your desire for the guy to try surrounds I would first ask if the original poster even knows he has the original drivers and if he really wants to rebuild a speaker that had zero commercial success when he has already got phenomenal results without spending a dime. I love how guys like you and Jerry are never unwilling to tell some one else to spend their money based on absurd recollections and assumptions. So, it's just my opinion but your assertion was false even before this example popped up.
John..
Look at the beginning of the post. Tapehead@Cincy will be refoaming.
I tend to agree that the term genius is bit strong in the case, but I have never met Burhoe. One of the most intelligent people I have me painted cars for a living.With regard to speaker design, I have not come up with a finished product, but I am in the process of designing a high efficiency ported speaker. I recommend that you read Vance Dickerson's "Loudspeaker Design Cookbook". It explains very clearly, the relationship between driver’s parameters and cabinet design. When you read it, you will see that there are far too many significant variables for the random approach to have any chance of succeeding. You would have to keep cuuting and trying for a thousand years to have a chance of lucking out! I have read and reread it many times and have read many articles on speakers design (AudoXpress, jblpro.com, pispeakers.com). There is also quite a lot of good information in the High Efficiency Asylum. No one with any experience in the subject has suggested trial and error as a viable methodology.
I did do the bolt a driver in a box thing with my father, in the 60's quite a few times, without good results. I have been involved in audio since them, I also sold audio equipment in the 80's and heard many successful and unsuccessful designs. I have yet to see anyone get a good result with bolting drivers in a box, but I have had to suffer through a few auditions of such attempts. In each case, the builder thought it sounded wonderful, yet there were glaring error in the designs.
Designers could get good results before the Theil/Small parameters were published, but it involved quite a bit of trial and error. Designers would go through many steps of build, measure, and tune and would have built many prototypes before settling on a design.
Can you name any respected speaker design that was the result of haphazard design? What are your speaker building credentials?
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