Sony SS-CS5 crossover upgrade discussion

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

Thanks Dennis. That's real helpful.

 

[BenB]

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/improving-the-sony-ss-cs5.3068362/

@BenB

When I saw that Erin measured a pair of CS5s on his spinorama, I sent my frames to him, and he created a spin using the frames. Unfortunately, the spin showed a narrowband resonance near 2 kHz. We assumed it was from the frame vibrating on the cabinet. He then measured the speaker without the frame and found the same resonance. Apparently the speaker he used in the review on his site was resonance free, but he attached the frame to the 2nd unit, which had an issue of its own. There was also a slight discrepancy in bass output between the two speakers.

In my opinion, the resonance detracts from seeing the impact of the frame, and assessing any directivity error (or lack there-of) in the crossover between the woofer and tweeter. I have asked Erin to attach the frame to the 1st unit, but he made no promises and said if he did so, it wouldn't be for a while.

If you ignore the resonance issue with the speaker, you can tell that the frame evened out the on-axis frequency response significantly, and resulted in extremely consistent horizontal dispersion from 500 Hz up to 8 kHz. I think it would be really educational for consumers and designers alike to see how well these speakers took to this frame.

Erin didn't perform the whole mod I developed. He only added the frames, which I think is good scientifically to isolate the impact. However, if he had performed the resistor short, the slight depression near 2.8 kHz would fill in a bit, and the Sony with the frame and short likely would have measured +/- 1.7 dB from 88 to 12 kHz. Not bad for a speaker that can be had for $88 a pair, and a bit of cut up PVC.

 

[Doublej]

What's the problem with taking them apart? Danny Richie seemed to have no problem taking them apart.

Sony SS-CS5 Upgrade Kit | GR-Research

gr-research.com

 

[Dennis Murphy]

What's the problem with taking them apart? Danny Richie seemed to have no problem taking them apart.

Sony SS-CS5 Upgrade Kit | GR-Research

gr-research.com

It's a freaking nightmare--There are videos with suggestions, but unless you're naturally talented at this sort of thing, you'll regret it. There's a thread of the problems involved somewhere on the speaker measurement thread. I'll see if I can find it.

 

[Doublej]

You mean like this one? I cringed at ~30 minutes in when he has the knife under the plastic ring and is pulling it towards his body.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Just put together the 3 way crossover with a few value tweaks. This looks, and sounds, good so far. I'm impressed at the $88/pair speaker. Basically a 90 degree listening window maybe? I'll flirting with a 2.5 way design too.

directivity 0,15,30,45 deg.

That 15 deg measurement in black looks great.

Separated for better visibility.
View attachment 188358

We must be working with very different Sony's. I plugged your crossover values into my design file, and the predicted response doesn't look like these measurements. My lspCad file predicts the stock response perfectly, and also predicts my mod accurately. But this is what I get with your values. It's always possible I made a mistake somewhere, although I've checked several times, but just looking at your woofer filter, reducing the value of the series inductor slightly to 1.0 mH with no change in the shunt cap value actually accentuates the baffle step problem on the stock unit. Just increasing the inductor value to 1.5 mH and eliminating the 2.2 Ohm resistor (which you also do) takes care of most of the sonic issues
with the stock Sony.

This is my predicted response for the stock Sony, which matches what others have measured:

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

We must be working with very different Sony's. I plugged your crossover values into my design file, and the predicted response doesn't look like these measurements. My lspCad file predicts the stock response perfectly, and also predicts my mod accurately. But this is what I get with your values. It's always possible I made a mistake somewhere, although I've checked several times, but just looking at your woofer filter, reducing the value of the series inductor slightly to 1.0 mH with no change in the shunt cap value actually accentuates the baffle step problem on the stock unit. Just increasing the inductor value to 1.5 mH and eliminating the 2.2 Ohm resistor (which you also do) takes care of most of the sonic issues
with the stock Sony.

View attachment 189419
This is my predicted response for the stock Sony, which matches what others have measured:
View attachment 189420

Hey thanks for pointing this out.

I'm interested in what's going on with my measurements. I don't have an explanation. I'm very interested in getting down to the bottom of this. I think you saw the ST phase was reversed in the diagram, but that's not correct as I noted in a later post? Everything is positive to positive. I don't think that explains anything. Hopefully my calibrated microphone isn't bunk. That would be... frustrating.

I'm happy to start from scratch again and do this all over. Afterall, I'm a new to all of this.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

What's the problem with taking them apart? Danny Richie seemed to have no problem taking them apart.

Sony SS-CS5 Upgrade Kit | GR-Research

gr-research.com

I had to take some snips to the attachment points. Hot snot on the plastic catches that attaches the board to the cabinet were very annoying. I had a couple of whiskeys so I wasn't gentle lol. But yeah, I can see this being obnoxious for someone who is nervous about destroying their speakers.

 

[Pete Basel]

@Dennis Murphy How are you taking these measurements, near field in the bass?
Here is Amir's thread, note that the on axis response (CEA2034) shows 100 Hz being
about equal to the output at 600 Hz whereas yours is more than 5 dB down:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/sony-ss-cs5-3-way-speaker-review.13562/

Erin's CEA2034 on axis shows similar bass output:

Sony SS-CS5 bookshelf speaker (review by Erin)

Thanks to @hardisj for his review: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/sony_sscs5/ Erin's conclusion: Let’s be real. This is a budget darling. I paid $88 for the pair. Most people are paying $130 or less. The performance is OK. It’s not going to knock your socks off with...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Pete Basel]

I have a pair of these by the way but have only taken input impedance measurements since I've
not yet opened them up. It would be interesting to get a model going in Xsim.

I find it odd that so many reviewers are calling them bright, look at the vertical off axis, they
become slightly brighter 10 deg above on axis, and have significant mid and top end
attenuation 5-20 deg below axis. The tweeter and super tweeter are obviously not in-phase
at the crossover and overlap frequencies.
This can be used as an advantage, if you like the laid back British sound listen below axis,
also if you find them bright or forward do not cant them in rather listen slightly off axis in the
horizontal plane.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

I have a pair of these by the way but have only taken input impedance measurements since I've
not yet opened them up. It would be interesting to get a model going in Xsim.

What do you need?

 

[Pete Basel]

ZMA and FRD files for all the drivers.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

@Dennis Murphy How are you taking these measurements, near field in the bass?
Here is Amir's thread, note that the on axis response (CEA2034) shows 100 Hz being
about equal to the output at 600 Hz whereas yours is more than 5 dB down:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/sony-ss-cs5-3-way-speaker-review.13562/

Erin's CEA2034 on axis shows similar bass output:

Sony SS-CS5 bookshelf speaker (review by Erin)

Thanks to @hardisj for his review: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/sony_sscs5/ Erin's conclusion: Let’s be real. This is a budget darling. I paid $88 for the pair. Most people are paying $130 or less. The performance is OK. It’s not going to knock your socks off with...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I usually cut my Praxis measurement plots off at 200 Hz when posting, because the response below that is very room dependent The Klippel measurements are much more reliable in this area. Praxis, which is superb measurement software otherwise, starts to transition from anechoic to room response a little above 200 Hz. So what you see below 200 Hz is highly room-dependent. If I moved the speakers to the opposite side of my measuring room, the deep bass response would be quite different. I've learned how to interpret these plots for a given location when I'm designing speakers, but they aren't intended to provide reliable bass response information for general use. However, above 200 Hz my plots have proven quite accurate and I've used them to design hundreds of speakers. I can't resolve the discrepancy between my measurements and predictions and those recorded by velocipede. All I can say with certainty is that a 1.0 mH inductor combined with a 10 uF shunt capacitor won't provide enough baffle step compensation to clear up the somewhat murky midrange that is the principal deficiency of the stock design.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

I usually cut my Praxis measurement plots off at 200 Hz when posting, because the response below that is very room dependent The Klippel measurements are much more reliable in this area. Praxis, which is superb measurement software otherwise, starts to transition from anechoic to room response a little above 200 Hz. So what you see below 200 Hz is highly room-dependent. If I moved the speakers to the opposite side of my measuring room, the deep bass response would be quite different. I've learned how to interpret these plots for a given location when I'm designing speakers, but they aren't intended to provide reliable bass response information for general use. However, above 200 Hz my plots have proven quite accurate and I've used them to design hundreds of speakers. I can't resolve the discrepancy between my measurements and predictions and those recorded by velocipede. All I can say with certainty is that a 1.0 mH inductor combined with a 10 uF shunt capacitor won't provide enough baffle step compensation to clear up the somewhat murky midrange that is the principal deficiency of the stock design.

Yeah I'm not sure what is going on there. I have two calibrated mics. One from Minidsp and one from Dayton. I'm going to do some comparisons to see if there is a great disagreement between the two. I gate my measurements to remove reflections. How does your software deal with reflections?

Erin recently tested another speaker for me and provided me with a spinorama and it was quite close to what I tested with my mic I used on these speakers in the same settings and environment. So I don't know what's going on here. What I will do is change my testing setup to get a longer time gate to see if I can get more resolution and compare my two calibrated microphones. We'll see what happens. Hopefully I get congruent results.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Yeah I'm not sure what is going on there. I have two calibrated mics. One from Minidsp and one from Dayton. I'm going to do some comparisons to see if there is a great disagreement between the two. I gate my measurements to remove reflections. How does your software deal with reflections?

Erin recently tested another speaker for me and provided me with a spinorama and it was quite close to what I tested with my mic I used on these speakers in the same settings and environment. So I don't know what's going on here. What I will do is change my testing setup to get a longer time gate to see if I can get more resolution and compare my two calibrated microphones. We'll see what happens. Hopefully I get congruent results.

It's a puzzler. I just sent in my Affordable Accuracy kit to Erin for a Klippel test, and it replicated my measurements as well, albeit with more resolution in the midrange. The one area where I don't think there's any room for disagreement is the bump at 1 kHz. I don't see how it's possible for your measurements to show no issue in this area when your mod doesn't do anything to address that bump.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

So I broke out my umik-1 to test against my Dayton UMM-6.

I took my recording setup to a larger area that had a lower noise floor and set everything up at 1 meter. I install software and downloaded cal files on a new computer to make sure that wasn't the culprit.

I tested the stock Sony @ 1M on the Dayton, then the UMIK twice in a row, then back to the Dayton all in the same location and same gated settings. This is what I got.

There is a discrepancy between the mics, but not until 2.2k ish.

I need to find a way to overcome my mic issues before I can do much of anything. 2500hz and up as me stuck.

Edit: Looking at Erin's vs mine, I think the Dayton may be closer to Erin's measurements Edit again: No I take that back. I think the UMIK is closer.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

Going to drop the money on one of these: https://cross-spectrum.com/measurement/calibrated_umik.html

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

So they're out of stock.

Any ideas on how I can overcome this? A third, vetted, mic would be useful.

 

[Pete Basel]

You could send your current mic to Cross Spectrum for another calibration run,
I thought he'd do this last time I checked.

 

[Velocipede_Acoustics]

Just ordered the cross-spectrum calibrated umik2... To be continued.