Helicopter
Major Contributor
Other things equal, yes they are better measurably and to agree that can be audible, and no, most of the time it is not worth the extra money. It is a better use of funds than a $50k amp or something though.
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How much impact does driver material actually make?
- Thread starter dfuller
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You're still on yak hair? Please try to keep up, or what will this forum become...
steve59
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To suggest value is pointless. Why don’t we start a forum hating on Harley’s? A Honda 600 is cheaper and more powerful, definitely more reliable so let’s go burn their house down when we’re done here? If you’re passionate about the music and enjoy squeezing all the resolution out of the recording a tweeter like the one in the salon2, Magico a5, paradigm persona, etc the premium price is worth it. If you’re assembling a home theater system in a compromised room that can’t accommodate speakers 5’ away from the boundary wall’s then ‘no’ the $1000 tweeter’s probably aren’t worth it.
This from another thread on the same general subject
Quotes from Ken Kantor on Audiokarma
No one will believe me, but I have to call it like I see it: I am convinced that how a driver is used, and how it fits the system requirements, has at least as much to do with tweeter sonics as the make and model. There are tweeters that I have come to like a lot over the years, but this has mostly to do with consistency, reliability, ease of use, cost-performance and well-thought out specs, as anything. Just as with cars and drivers, and chefs and food, average tweeters in the hands of a pro will almost always sound better than expensive, fancy parts in the hands of a someone without training and experience.
I used to judge various amateur speaker building contests, and got to listen to the best efforts of both first-time and well-known amateur designers, year after year. Submissions invariably used very well-regarded drivers, yet it was very rare for any of the judges to find a submission that would make it on the market at any price.
I'm not meaning to be snobby. Anyone can learn to be a great speaker designer. But, you have to learn, and you have to try dozens and dozens of different designs. Most importantly, you have to hone the skills to listen very quickly, analytically and brutally, and understand exactly how to correlate listening to engineering, without philosophical biases.
If you think that the finest drivers make the finest systems, you aren't paying attention!! Ingredients are only a start.
I will never cease telling people, who will never cease to disagree:
Experiment after experiment has shown that driver materials have no characteristic sound.
Paper doesn't sound woody.
Metal doesn't sound harsh.
Plastic doesn't sound, eh, plastic-ey.
Silk doesn't sound silky.
It is ALL confirmation bias and imagination. End of story.
Beginning of, "But, even my wife can hear that my metal domes sound metallic, you idiot!!"
He is certainly an authority on the subject which doesn't of course guarantee you have to agree with him. I tend to like hard domes because of all the reviews saying they're metallic sounding with no real proof (I'm a bit of a contrarian), the fact that they were developed after paper domes, and because they seem to be found on higher end speakers.
Quotes from Ken Kantor on Audiokarma
No one will believe me, but I have to call it like I see it: I am convinced that how a driver is used, and how it fits the system requirements, has at least as much to do with tweeter sonics as the make and model. There are tweeters that I have come to like a lot over the years, but this has mostly to do with consistency, reliability, ease of use, cost-performance and well-thought out specs, as anything. Just as with cars and drivers, and chefs and food, average tweeters in the hands of a pro will almost always sound better than expensive, fancy parts in the hands of a someone without training and experience.
I used to judge various amateur speaker building contests, and got to listen to the best efforts of both first-time and well-known amateur designers, year after year. Submissions invariably used very well-regarded drivers, yet it was very rare for any of the judges to find a submission that would make it on the market at any price.
I'm not meaning to be snobby. Anyone can learn to be a great speaker designer. But, you have to learn, and you have to try dozens and dozens of different designs. Most importantly, you have to hone the skills to listen very quickly, analytically and brutally, and understand exactly how to correlate listening to engineering, without philosophical biases.
If you think that the finest drivers make the finest systems, you aren't paying attention!! Ingredients are only a start.
I will never cease telling people, who will never cease to disagree:
Experiment after experiment has shown that driver materials have no characteristic sound.
Paper doesn't sound woody.
Metal doesn't sound harsh.
Plastic doesn't sound, eh, plastic-ey.
Silk doesn't sound silky.
It is ALL confirmation bias and imagination. End of story.
Beginning of, "But, even my wife can hear that my metal domes sound metallic, you idiot!!"
He is certainly an authority on the subject which doesn't of course guarantee you have to agree with him. I tend to like hard domes because of all the reviews saying they're metallic sounding with no real proof (I'm a bit of a contrarian), the fact that they were developed after paper domes, and because they seem to be found on higher end speakers.
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These are very special Yaks. They are raised by my cousin on a plateau near Taos, New Mexico. Incredibly this part is true.
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It's absolutely true, proven by $20 soft dome tweeters that sound high-end when implemented well.
Tom C
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Their wool makes a nice sweater.
Schollaudio
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The Wavecore TW030xxx, SB29rdnc and 27tdc are hard to beat with in their operating range as is a well implemented aluminum diaphragm compression driver.
If you get the JBL Horn drivers with the Beryllium diaphragm, along with the right Horn throat? Then sure.
The best way to describe it that I think anyone will get is in Car guys terms.
You can use steel connecting rods on your crank. But using aluminum rods is actually better FOR RACING applications. Titanium Rods instead of aluminum or steel rods in an engine also have their trade offs.
When you can't get what you need from a steel rod, you then design it in an H Beam for example. But since you want less mass, then you go to something like Aluminum that will work really well for high RPM operation, but will stretch over time*. But won't have the longevity of steel connecting rods or titanium rods in your engine.
Its kind of like a balancing act with what materials you want to use.
On paper, beryllium looks better from a numbers perspective then:
remember in the early 80s when JBL used titanium? And Pioneer started pioneering with beryllium? There were problems solved and some new ones created:
When a material such as aluminum couldn't keep up with their design constraints, they just decided to use a different material basically to cover the weakness of the designed envelope they had to work with. (Size, sensitivity, response)
In the Video example above, they JBL used titanium for this Compression driver alongside with aluminum. Aluminum being lighter, they had to make the dome thicker to compensate.
JBL ran into the problems of resonance peaks with beryllium. (Hence the coating)
it's true that different materials have their different resonance frequencies & therefore CAN sound different. But where a material like beryllium really shines is when you're really are pushing it and you're trying to maintain linearity. Think of it like a titanium rod. You want to push that engine to Max RPM and Power or Output, but you pay a price for it.*
you're basically solving a problem with Brute Force. Same thing with diamond tweeters or Composite / ceramic to a point...
However, its the End design that really matters as the SUM of its parts is better then just having a Carbon Fiber Hood. The rest of the Honda accord may just be a basket case along with the engine. But the Hood? Oh yea. That helps.. But how? does it work with the rest of the formula? No. It just takes care of ONE part of the whole package.
Take Colin Chapman's Lotus 7. 1500 lbs of pure magic. Even the latest and greatest cars come in at 3000 lbs with all the Aerospace grade carbon everything. They still can't hold a candle to the Price/performance / value/ excitement metric you get with a car made nearly 50 years ago.
And then there is this 800 Lbs monster.
If you REALLY go ALL out? Can come in at 500 Lbs if your willing to go even further into F1 extreme weight reduction territory, going nuts with just how much weight you can take off to the Bleeding edge of a cost no object car build. While aiming for DOING ONE thing ONLY Really good.
Each time you try to up the performance, you are making a trade off in one way or another.
So for a drivers claim to fame just being the material the diaphragm is made out of, doesn't really add up to the sum of its parts. Especially since we're considering audio reproduction.
Something being rigid does not automatically equate to better performance.
If that were the case? piezoelectric Tweeter's on paper seem to be the Superior Tweeter in all regards at least on paper up to the ultrasonic range which is around 100 khz easy. And goes up from there to the Mhz range from what I understand.
Its kind of like my hate for Metal Dome tweeters. Until I found a great one? And then another one? I never really liked them all that much compared to silk domes. Its just that Metal dome's require a LOT more engineering chops to get it right then say a soft dome tweeter. Its more "Forgiving" so to speak.
Even being that the case, my escapades replacing Tweeter diaphragm's in some Dynaudio MD-102 blown tweeters were less then I had hoped for. Dynaudio must sprinkle Danish Magic on them from the factory. Its amazing how different the two sound compared to the one I rebuilt.
After my foray into tweeters? I never again will complain about a price of a tweeter ever again. The amount of work and expertise that goes into a tweeter is simply mind-boggling it's much more advanced than just getting new soft parts for woofers.
You can use steel connecting rods on your crank. But using aluminum rods is actually better FOR RACING applications. Titanium Rods instead of aluminum or steel rods in an engine also have their trade offs.
When you can't get what you need from a steel rod, you then design it in an H Beam for example. But since you want less mass, then you go to something like Aluminum that will work really well for high RPM operation, but will stretch over time*. But won't have the longevity of steel connecting rods or titanium rods in your engine.
Its kind of like a balancing act with what materials you want to use.
On paper, beryllium looks better from a numbers perspective then:
- silk
- aluminum
- titanium
- mylar
- foam like poly-cell
- paper
- Kevlar
- Spider Poop.
- Vapor deposited Plastic dome stuff.
- diamond...
- Copper.
- Ceramic's
- piezoelectric
- Etc..
remember in the early 80s when JBL used titanium? And Pioneer started pioneering with beryllium? There were problems solved and some new ones created:
When a material such as aluminum couldn't keep up with their design constraints, they just decided to use a different material basically to cover the weakness of the designed envelope they had to work with. (Size, sensitivity, response)
In the Video example above, they JBL used titanium for this Compression driver alongside with aluminum. Aluminum being lighter, they had to make the dome thicker to compensate.
JBL ran into the problems of resonance peaks with beryllium. (Hence the coating)
it's true that different materials have their different resonance frequencies & therefore CAN sound different. But where a material like beryllium really shines is when you're really are pushing it and you're trying to maintain linearity. Think of it like a titanium rod. You want to push that engine to Max RPM and Power or Output, but you pay a price for it.*
you're basically solving a problem with Brute Force. Same thing with diamond tweeters or Composite / ceramic to a point...
However, its the End design that really matters as the SUM of its parts is better then just having a Carbon Fiber Hood. The rest of the Honda accord may just be a basket case along with the engine. But the Hood? Oh yea. That helps.. But how? does it work with the rest of the formula? No. It just takes care of ONE part of the whole package.
Take Colin Chapman's Lotus 7. 1500 lbs of pure magic. Even the latest and greatest cars come in at 3000 lbs with all the Aerospace grade carbon everything. They still can't hold a candle to the Price/performance / value/ excitement metric you get with a car made nearly 50 years ago.
And then there is this 800 Lbs monster.
If you REALLY go ALL out? Can come in at 500 Lbs if your willing to go even further into F1 extreme weight reduction territory, going nuts with just how much weight you can take off to the Bleeding edge of a cost no object car build. While aiming for DOING ONE thing ONLY Really good.
Each time you try to up the performance, you are making a trade off in one way or another.
So for a drivers claim to fame just being the material the diaphragm is made out of, doesn't really add up to the sum of its parts. Especially since we're considering audio reproduction.
Something being rigid does not automatically equate to better performance.
If that were the case? piezoelectric Tweeter's on paper seem to be the Superior Tweeter in all regards at least on paper up to the ultrasonic range which is around 100 khz easy. And goes up from there to the Mhz range from what I understand.
Its kind of like my hate for Metal Dome tweeters. Until I found a great one? And then another one? I never really liked them all that much compared to silk domes. Its just that Metal dome's require a LOT more engineering chops to get it right then say a soft dome tweeter. Its more "Forgiving" so to speak.
Even being that the case, my escapades replacing Tweeter diaphragm's in some Dynaudio MD-102 blown tweeters were less then I had hoped for. Dynaudio must sprinkle Danish Magic on them from the factory. Its amazing how different the two sound compared to the one I rebuilt.
After my foray into tweeters? I never again will complain about a price of a tweeter ever again. The amount of work and expertise that goes into a tweeter is simply mind-boggling it's much more advanced than just getting new soft parts for woofers.
But how can just careful work be exploited as something special in the advertising?
I read a lot here on "break-up", but what is the consequence of such behaviour? If one can name it, it can be measured and compared one material against the other. What is it, please?
E/g, there is a manufacturer who designs tweeters around a diaphragm of synthetic diamond. Special indeed, expensive of course, but distortion numbers are quite high, so sounds different, for sure. In audiophilia the equation (different && expensive) => better still holds ...
... same with metal cones. First the nasty peak on top end wasn't shifted too far out of the operating band. So harmonic distortion components copied down into the operating band, Different, expensive was considered better. Now that the peak's issues are mitigated with newer designs, prices fell, people crave for the good ol' paper sound again. But is has to be special, best served with sloppy surrounds to spice the dish by intermodulations.
I've never seen a material that solves an issue without introducing errors elsewhere. It's an obscure selling point.
Killingbeans
Major Contributor
Shefffield
Member
I'm tempted to approach this discussion with a slightly different angle...
My thing is DIY, and since 2010 digitally controlled speakers. With the possibilities of FIR filters and ultra steep digital high and low passes, there's a lot more freedom to address the imperfections of various drivers.
If hard or stiff materials - those with a high internal speed of sound and low damping - have the potential to follow the input signal better, they should offer more potential to build a low distortion system. The breakup modes can be efficiently cut off with digital filters - just don't excite the problematic frequencies and you're good. Right?
Secondly, shouldn't we make a differentiation between low frequency and mid/high frequency drivers? I only consider 3- or 4-way systems, don't really like 2-way. In a woofer, I want piston-like behaviour, since it is easy to dampen the break-up modes and the acceleration demands are modest. Maybe the breakup of paper doesn't really matter here, since it's above the intended frequency range anyway? (Many PA woofers show harsh breakups of their paper cones above the usable range. Do we need metal/ceramic cones here at all?)
In a mid and a tweeter I want lowest possible moving mass, but still a good stiffness. (Talking domes only here.)
I wouldn't be surprised if I found out in a comparison of carefully EQed tweeters that we can't hear a difference between different membrane materials, given the FR is truly equal.
Maybe we should ask ourselves about the influence of the motor vs. the influence of the membrane material? Probably both have to be 'good enough' to not spoil the result?
My thing is DIY, and since 2010 digitally controlled speakers. With the possibilities of FIR filters and ultra steep digital high and low passes, there's a lot more freedom to address the imperfections of various drivers.
If hard or stiff materials - those with a high internal speed of sound and low damping - have the potential to follow the input signal better, they should offer more potential to build a low distortion system. The breakup modes can be efficiently cut off with digital filters - just don't excite the problematic frequencies and you're good. Right?
Secondly, shouldn't we make a differentiation between low frequency and mid/high frequency drivers? I only consider 3- or 4-way systems, don't really like 2-way. In a woofer, I want piston-like behaviour, since it is easy to dampen the break-up modes and the acceleration demands are modest. Maybe the breakup of paper doesn't really matter here, since it's above the intended frequency range anyway? (Many PA woofers show harsh breakups of their paper cones above the usable range. Do we need metal/ceramic cones here at all?)
In a mid and a tweeter I want lowest possible moving mass, but still a good stiffness. (Talking domes only here.)
I wouldn't be surprised if I found out in a comparison of carefully EQed tweeters that we can't hear a difference between different membrane materials, given the FR is truly equal.
Maybe we should ask ourselves about the influence of the motor vs. the influence of the membrane material? Probably both have to be 'good enough' to not spoil the result?
Please do check out Erin's audio Corner. It really is surprising the amount of distortion that some speakers have. This may be the reason why I like some Fiberglass drivers over others. They really do sound different.
But there are so many parameters in play, the perfect design or the end all be all does not exist. ( Geil in German vernacular)
Driver Cost use to be a good way to determine performance. And yet? 2022 has shown us this is a legacy way of thinking. Supplanted by modern testing methods & technological feats in Speaker manufacturing.
You are on the right track however. And there are some GREAT ways to make speakers these days. But at the end of the day? Its like Baking. You have to get the recipe just right or cake won't rise in the oven.
About a 2 way system:
I use to think having a lot of drivers is the way to go unequivocally. But there are so many parameters in play, the perfect design or the end all be all does not exist. ( Geil in German vernacular)
Driver Cost use to be a good way to determine performance. And yet? 2022 has shown us this is a legacy way of thinking. Supplanted by modern testing methods & technological feats in Speaker manufacturing.
You are on the right track however. And there are some GREAT ways to make speakers these days. But at the end of the day? Its like Baking. You have to get the recipe just right or cake won't rise in the oven.
D
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Following the metal tweeters sounds metallic logic, Yak hair drivers must sound Yucky...
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Schollaudio
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From the driver specific point of view, more work is needed remediate the cone to surround integration. That breakup region is often evident by looking at various frequency response and distortion measurements including my own. IT's visible even on expensive well regarded devices. A few companies are making improvement.
Back to the OT, The impact of different materials is clear on many manufacturer publish data sheets. That is often in the area of breakup. Find a favorite manufacturer that uses several cone materials on similar devices and look at the breakup regions.
As for me I'm still interested in paper, fabric and aluminum (in CDs, not woofers). Plastic, TI, coated TI have come a long way. I've never heard Be.
I only reiterate my comment from above. Intermodulation is neglected (exception Purify for obvious reasons). Measure it, and sound differences are clearly understood. The so called break up doesn't hurt once the spurious excitation by harmonic distortion components is understood and mitigated.
The traditional approach to 'hear' a driver is obsolete. It gave us decades of erratic back and forth, a random walk with lots of expenses in life-time actually. We want to stop that.
But shouldn’t measurable differences correlate to audible ones if the change of material is at all meaningful? I do want to hear the difference in a more exotic driver, not just measure it.
Please do not conclude that I don’t think measurements are meaningful, it’s just that they have to be in service of better sound.
