How much does speaker performance degrade over time?

[Grimoire]

So you forget what you heard just seconds ago?

You need to have your hearing (and brain) checked.

Yes, and you need to learn how to be civil in face of the facts.

 

[MattHooper]

Yes, and you need to learn how to be civil in face of the facts.

I think it would’ve been more helpful if you specifically referenced Echoic (sensory) memory which is indeed very short-lived - for remembering raw, high resolution auditory detail - subtle differences in timbre, distortion, spatial cues etc.

Vs Short-term/working auditory memory which can be more like seconds to minutes (which might include things like rough tonal balance).

Vs long-term auditory memory which can last month to years (in which pattern and identity information is stored, including traits of certain voices, etc.)

If I’ve got all my terms correct there.

 

[Grimoire]

I think it would’ve been more helpful if you specifically referenced Echoic (sensory) memory which is indeed very short-lived - for remembering raw, high resolution auditory detail - subtle differences in timbre, distortion, spatial cues etc.

Vs Short-term/working auditory memory which can be more like seconds to minutes (which might include things like rough tonal balance).

Vs long-term auditory memory which can last month to years (in which pattern and identity information is stored, including traits of certain voices, etc.)

If I’ve got all my terms correct there.

But weren't we talking about what you call echoic memory? High resolution stuff?

 

[MattHooper]

But weren't we talking about what you call echoic memory? High resolution stuff?

I think the person you were talking to seemed unfamiliar with this science, and so adding a little more specific detail would probably have helped, otherwise as you can see it looks like it was taken more generally.

 

[Grimoire]

From my original statement, I said the KG-4’s sound new “to me”.

I never made any scientific claims regarding sound memory or audio spectrum analysis.

You all are making a big deal about me liking the way my speakers sound.

Lighten up, Francis.

Welcome to my ignore list.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Sure, I heard them in 1985.

Wanted to buy a pair but frequent deployments in the U.S. Navy got in the way.

How did you come to the conclusion that my memory is unreliable after 41 years if you’ve never even met me before?

echoic memory is usually characterized as lasting for several seconds.

"One creative experiment designed to measure echoic memory was carried out by Guttman and Julesz (1963). They used a computer to generate repeating segments of white noise.
White noise is composed of all frequencies randomly mixed together. It sounds like "shhhh" and cannot be described or memorized. The computer made it possible to put together a repeating pattern of white noise with no gap between repetitions.
The subjects had no clue that a sound was being repeated. Guttman and Julesz instructed subjects to put on headphones, listen to the noise, and report what they heard.
If the repeating segment of white noise lasted longer than a few seconds, the subjects never realized it was repeating. They heard a continuous whooshing sound with no pattern.
If the segment of white noise was less than two seconds long, the subjects realized they heard a repeated sound. They still could not describe the sound (other than saying "shh, shh, shh") but they knew it was being repeated.
To detect a repeating pattern of random frequencies, subjects must use a memory system capable of preserving an exact copy of the noise from one repetition to the next. This is what echoic memory does: it preserves the exact pattern of sound for one or two seconds."

"Using MEG (magnetoencephalography), the team of Lu, Williamson, and Kaufman (1992) were able to show activity in a portion of the auditory cortex (part of the cerebral cortex which responds to sound) lasting two to five seconds after a sound stimulus."

Subjective auditory memory cannot be considered as "accurate" after this lapse of several seconds. The longer-term memory is subject to bias.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2041669515607153

Maybe my hearing has changed some. According to the audiologist at the VA hospital, my hearing is in excellent condition considering that I spent over 20 years on active duty.

You're confusing the accuracy of auditory (echoic) memory with the characteristics of the ear mechanism. We don't hear with our ears ... we hear with our brain.

If you wish to test whether you can (or cannot) accurately assess the characteristics of sounds ... especially the difference between two sounds as propagated by speakers ... you need to follow strict protocols. This video by Amir explains why:

If you wish to follow this sort of test, you would have needed one of the speakers from before the crossover modifications, and the other one from after.

However, that still does not address the discrepancy in years, and how your brain (not just your ears) has changed with time. There is no reference for that. It is unrecoverable. Although some people ascribe a certainty to their long term memory, it's best to describe it within only general terms, and not offer it with the same degree of accuracy as objective data, which is to mean capture of sound with calibrated electronic instruments.

None of this has anything to do with "liking the way [your] speakers sound". That is preference, and it is completely subjective. Many people conflate subjective description (based on emotion) with objective descriptions (based on data.) That's not a good idea.

 

[Chrispy]

tldr for the most part but unlikely this is an issue worthy of much time/effort.

 

[Jim Taylor]

tldr for the most part but unlikely this is an issue worthy of much time/effort.

Possibly true, possibly not. In the past, some people thought I was worth their time and effort, and I'm glad they did.

 

[Chrispy]

By the way ......


Possibly true, possibly not. In the past, some people thought I was worth their time and effort, and I'm glad they did.

Hopefully you were treated better than a loudspeaker?

 

[Jim Taylor]

Hopefully you were treated better than a loudspeaker?

Well, no one stuck a pair of wires up my behind to measure how much my performance degraded over time!

 

[DanielT]

That’s good to know. Apparently the newer SEAS Graphene drivers were meant to address corrosion (particularly in warm climates), I don’t know if they’ve revamped anything about these tweeters.

Is drying out ferrofluid something that will inevitably happen over time, or is it only a possibility? Also, is there any ballpark estimate as to how long the tweeters would operate properly before the ferrofluid drying issue arises?

Joseph Audio Perspective2 Graphene.Nice speakers you have.
Might be worth unscrewing your tweeters and sending them to @MAB , if he wants and has the time to service them.Preventive service in other words.

You're planning to keep them, so it might as well make sure they're in good, tiptop condition.
Agree on a reasonable (hourly?) price for the service.

Just a suggestion.

Edit:
It costs a fair amount of money to buy two new ones, around $1000..

...so it might be worth doing some maintenance on them.

 

[MattHooper]

Joseph Audio Perspective2 Graphene.Nice speakers you have.
Might be worth unscrewing your tweeters and sending them to @MAB , if he wants and has the time to service them.Preventive service in other words.

You're planning to keep them, so it might as well make sure they're in good, tiptop condition.
Agree on a reasonable (hourly?) price for the service.

Just a suggestion.

Edit:
It costs a fair amount of money to buy two new ones, around $1000..
View attachment 509603
...so it might be worth doing some maintenance on them.

Thanks for the session, but… I think that would be jumping the gun just a tad ;-)

The tweeters are only a few years old, so I’m sure they’ve got lots of life in them… more life than my hearing probably.

 

[DanielT]

Thanks for the session, but… I think that would be jumping the gun just a tad ;-)

The tweeters are only a few years old, so I’m sure they’ve got lots of life in them… more life than my hearing probably.

Sorry, I mixed up different speakers. I thought they were a few decades old. But a few years old as you say shouldn't be necessary then.

I might replace my tweeters in my JPW P1, though. They're probably around 30 years old. I did a refoam on the bass drivers a few years ago, but I didn't do anything with the tweeters.

Maybe, because I have them as extra speakers, plus they're not worth much more than $150. Two new tweeters cost around $40. Not a lot of money, but well, maybe unnecessary.

 

[Wolf11Man]

If you can disconnect the tweeter (or any other driver you test) from the crossover, there are simple ways to check their health.
A plot of the drivers impedance will show you how the condition of the ferro fluid is. With any driver worth talking about it, you will get a factory data sheet. There usually is no cause for the manufacturer to present wrong impedance plots. Maybe different with the frequency response. The static coil resistance gives a hint whether the driver is the one on the data sheet.
Another test is a frequency sweep. You can hear if something is wrong, when the frequency hits a critical spot.

Please mind: Often only a single letter or number on the driver identifies special OEM versions the speakers manufacturer may have ordered. These can be quite different, but look 100% identical. All major driver factories did those specialized drivers for their larger customers.

 

[DanielT]

It usually makes sense to have an If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude towards, well I guess most things, not just HiFi. But with that said, we also have A stitch in time saves nine.

There are probably a lot of proverbs circulating around fixing, servicing and repairing things.

 

[techsamurai]

I did quite a bit of listening yesterday and I think my tweeters are fine. I was also playing with treble eq (up to +/-6db )to see if it can get too bright and it did.

Here are some songs/albums I used:
Yosi Horikawa - "Letter" - first time I heard that, very interesting.
Nikonn - "Fragile" (my kids loved that song when they were young)
Pink Martini - 1969 Album (some tracks are very interesting)
Rimi Natsukawa - Minamikaze (she sings really well)

 

[techsamurai]

If the foam surround of a midrange/bass woofer on a standmount is stiff what happens to the frequency? Unfortunately, with 5 channel I can't localize the sound degradation. I'll still replace it as it's a no-brainer and the driver is affordable.

Also, another thing I noticed is that my standmounts generally speaking don't have massive excursion, except with a Denon in 2008 where they were practically jumping all over the map. It was something to behold - it even beats the videos showing the excursion on youtube

Even my floorstanding speakers' bass woofers don't have excessive excursion but I was checking the FR on a phone app (Spectroid) directly from the woofer and tweeters and they're hitting very low frequencies which measurements showed in the past.

 

[DanielT]

I did quite a bit of listening yesterday and I think my tweeters are fine. I was also playing with treble eq (up to +/-6db )to see if it can get too bright and it did.

Here are some songs/albums I used:
Yosi Horikawa - "Letter" - first time I heard that, very interesting.
Nikonn - "Fragile" (my kids loved that song when they were young)
Pink Martini - 1969 Album (some tracks are very interesting)
Rimi Natsukawa - Minamikaze (she sings really well)

Tips, this can be played at various Hifi fairs. People like the shimmering, floating high notes Nils Lofgren creates when he has a lot of flageolets in his guitar playing. You can hear it from 3:15 where the solo begins:

Speakers in the video above were found at this fair:

Hifi Vintage DIY fair with pictures

I visited this fair yesterday! DIY & Vintage meeting in Mölnlycke Here is a short report. When: 6 November 2021 Where: Country: Sweden City: Gothenburg I took pictures myself BUT most were so damn blurred so I borrow pictures from this thread, taken by other participants. Pictures taken from...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Cwopete5]

echoic memory is usually characterized as lasting for several seconds.

"One creative experiment designed to measure echoic memory was carried out by Guttman and Julesz (1963). They used a computer to generate repeating segments of white noise.
White noise is composed of all frequencies randomly mixed together. It sounds like "shhhh" and cannot be described or memorized. The computer made it possible to put together a repeating pattern of white noise with no gap between repetitions.
The subjects had no clue that a sound was being repeated. Guttman and Julesz instructed subjects to put on headphones, listen to the noise, and report what they heard.
If the repeating segment of white noise lasted longer than a few seconds, the subjects never realized it was repeating. They heard a continuous whooshing sound with no pattern.
If the segment of white noise was less than two seconds long, the subjects realized they heard a repeated sound. They still could not describe the sound (other than saying "shh, shh, shh") but they knew it was being repeated.
To detect a repeating pattern of random frequencies, subjects must use a memory system capable of preserving an exact copy of the noise from one repetition to the next. This is what echoic memory does: it preserves the exact pattern of sound for one or two seconds."

"Using MEG (magnetoencephalography), the team of Lu, Williamson, and Kaufman (1992) were able to show activity in a portion of the auditory cortex (part of the cerebral cortex which responds to sound) lasting two to five seconds after a sound stimulus."

Subjective auditory memory cannot be considered as "accurate" after this lapse of several seconds. The longer-term memory is subject to bias.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2041669515607153

You're confusing the accuracy of auditory (echoic) memory with the characteristics of the ear mechanism. We don't hear with our ears ... we hear with our brain.

If you wish to test whether you can (or cannot) accurately assess the characteristics of sounds ... especially the difference between two sounds as propagated by speakers ... you need to follow strict protocols. This video by Amir explains why:

If you wish to follow this sort of test, you would have needed one of the speakers from before the crossover modifications, and the other one from after.

However, that still does not address the discrepancy in years, and how your brain (not just your ears) has changed with time. There is no reference for that. It is unrecoverable. Although some people ascribe a certainty to their long term memory, it's best to describe it within only general terms, and not offer it with the same degree of accuracy as objective data, which is to mean capture of sound with calibrated electronic instruments.

None of this has anything to do with "liking the way [your] speakers sound". That is preference, and it is completely subjective. Many people conflate subjective description (based on emotion) with objective descriptions (based on data.) That's not a good idea.

Wow, okay, Guess you put me in my place. Remind me to never comment again. Adios.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Wow, okay, Guess you put me in my place. Remind me to never comment again. Adios.

No one is here to "put you in your place", least of all me. People are here to learn, to find out new information, and to verify what works best. Many times, that is accomplished by back-and-forth discussions between members, and sometimes it is accomplished by reading existing texts. The information I posted is applicable to evaluating sound, and as such, it is useful to remember.

It does no one any good to rely on beliefs that are faulty. Seeing (or hearing) the world around us through the lens of those beliefs leads us to conclusions that are incorrect. In general, one could say that is not a good situation.

Stick around. I've learned a great deal here. Every day, I learn more about how the mind is controlled by subjectivism and how it is served by biases, and how science breaks through those chains to show us a better world.

After all, belief in the validity of subjective bias didn't give us modern medical technology, nor hybrid cars, nor television, nor the audio recording process, nor cell phones.

Science did that.