Are exotic material drivers required for a SOTA loudspeaker?

rbbert

rbbert

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Some companies with SOTA-aspirational speakers strongly promote the unusual (exotic) materials technology of many of their drivers, others don't. Magico, YG, TAD, Estalon, Evolution Acoustics come to mind in the first camp, Wilson most notably in the second, and then there are ribbons, planars (electrostats and not) and horns to consider as well. Almost all manufacturers using cone speakers make note of attention paid to enclosure materials, design and construction (NOLA may be an exception here).

Thoughts?
 
New materials are always important in the engineering quest for the development of new products or for the improvement of existing ones.

In the case of speakers, I have seen lots of discussion about using graphene drivers. But in order to fully benefit from the use of new materials there needs to be a lot of time spent on R&D plus good engineering.
 
Those touting the new materials for marketing purposes are using it as a differentiator from other manufacturers that do not. Whether the new material results in a better sounding speaker or more durable drivers depends on R&D and engineering.
 
I think Wilson proves it is not necessary. One listen to the Chronosonic XVX with it's paper and silk drivers and you'll become a believer!
 
Joseph Audio uses non modified SEAS drivers in their speakers and sound very musical. Have also received a large number of positive reviews if one believes that's relevant.
 
Are exotic material drivers required for a SOTA loudspeaker? If you take the classic definition of SOTA then your answer is yes. But are exotic materials necessary for a driver's diaphragm to reproduce the input signal accurately; or suspend our disbelief in ways that blur the lines between sounding real vs reproduced? then no, IME.
 
By definition, yes... Then again one also has to take the absolute limits into account. What is the limit of the recorded music? How much resolution depth is there really from an acoustic wave (bubble actually) hitting the microphone (dynamic/condenser/ribbon/tube/ss, etc) and all the wires, resistors, caps and a whole bunch of A to D conversions before it winds up on a CD or a digital file or is cut into the vinyl groove?

How much better does it get really? So I enjoyed a pair of Focal Utopia headphones. Pure beryllium driver. One single driver per ear. No multiple drivers, no crossovers, not nearly as much as the typical speaker has to compromise. Just one driver in each ear linear out to 50Khz supposedly. Frequency response for the most part so linear that it would put serious envy into just about every speaker to room response reality.

So what did I hear above and beyond all the various speakers in my various rooms over the years? Well, one would think it should be fairly easy to hear that one little gnat that farted sitting on the windowsill of the recording studio... Nope, that wasn't the case... Detail set of headphones? Sure. Impressive. Some subtle details did in fact "grow" in clarity just a bit. But perhaps the absolute depth of resolution and my hearing was already tapped out so there was not much to appreciate above the usual and less exotic construction speakers and headphones that I used before.

Technological progress is necessary and it is what propels progress forward. The reality of things is that it is not just the speaker and its exotic driver reproducing music. There is also a whole chain of events that needed to unfold before that sound reached the listener's ear. Some of those components, such as the recorded music itself, was not quite as ADVANCED and that exotic driver capable of the last ounce of linearity and precision is just not reaching its potential. Just like the 600+ hp cars locked away in the garages to be taken out for a drive around the neighborhood where the speed limit is 35...
 
Spock said:
Progress is not always based on what is necessary, but on what is possible. If possible, someone will try.
Click to expand...
Well, if you put it that way, it wasn't necessary to get out and away from the nice and cozy fire in a cave. Instead we find ourselves threatening with nuclear anhelation because it was possible. Now the possible becomes the necessary?
 
2fastdriving said:
X-Material is a proprietary composite Wilson uses in certain parts of its speaker cabinets. They won't say what it is made of.

But the OP was talking about drivers, not cabinets.
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Ok, but in my opinion the principle is the same. He talk about strongly promoting the unusual (exotic) materials and technology. So I think we can talk about the cabinets together with the drivers.

TheOctopus said:
Now the possible becomes the necessary?
Click to expand...

Yes. It becomes necessary when a new level of quality is established and becames the reference that someone will try to overcome later.
 
Spock said:
Yes. It becomes necessary when a new level of quality is established and becames the reference that someone will try to overcome later.
Click to expand...

The audiophile game reminds me of the Egyptians erecting super precise and way beyond the scope of knowledge of that civilization pyramids. Before the wheel was invented and while using soft copper tools to deal with granite which requires diamond tipped tools today!

Audiophiles have invented six figure speakers in the time the music industry was still producing dynamic range compressed, loudness mastered material on digital that sounded worse than the poorly chiseled, prehistoric stone wheel screeching over a cobblestone road...
 
TheOctopus said:
Audiophiles have invented six figure speakers in the time the music industry was still producing dynamic range compressed, loudness mastered material on digital that sounded worse than the poorly chiseled, prehistoric stone wheel screeching over a cobblestone road...
Click to expand...

Yes but they were not made for these recordings. They exist for those who bring us closer to God, allowing us to hear his voice! ;)

 
Crappy music has and will continue to be available in every medium. If it a crap recording just choose another. Too much music is available for anyone to worry about compression or loudness.
 
Spock said:
Yes but they were not made for these recordings. They exist for those who bring us closer to God, allowing us to hear his voice! ;)
Click to expand...

Strangely I was forced to listen to those speakers with the new digital format that was often worse than getting a root canal. Vinyl was on its way out big time as the perfect sound forever was completely taking over. There was not a turntable in sight for a quite a few years at the dealers back then.

Now streaming is king and vinyl has actually surpassed the CD and high res download numbers while being a tiny fraction of what the sales numbers were in the heyday of the music industry.

Was it necessary or did it happen because we could? Do we think streaming is the end game or will there be more innovation? Where do we go from here?
 
If I myself had to guess where the end game would be as far as music, I can imagine one day in the not so distant future that the whole world music library is expressed/digitized in some new way that it would fit on a drive the size of a USB key or similar. Storage is getting cheap... 35 Terrabytes is 2.5 million songs. Tidal has 60 million songs. At some point the two will merge into a complete collection on one small drive. Pay to keep listening will probably be the model and since the end user will hold the library in full, no need for internet, streaming and servers on Tidal/Qobuz or other perhaps making the fees even cheaper and they are dirt cheap now considering the access to 60 million songs today.
 
rbbert said:
Some companies with SOTA-aspirational speakers strongly promote the unusual (exotic) materials technology of many of their drivers, others don't. Magico, YG, TAD, Estalon, Evolution Acoustics come to mind in the first camp, Wilson most notably in the second, and then there are ribbons, planars (electrostats and not) and horns to consider as well. Almost all manufacturers using cone speakers make note of attention paid to enclosure materials, design and construction (NOLA may be an exception here).

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I think the title of your thread is creating a false narrative when you ask are exotic material drivers "required" for a SOTA loudspeaker. Required by who? There are no "requirements" for how a company designs, markets, and ultimately sell their speakers into the market place. There are no rules for what defines a SOTA speaker so any speaker company can claim that moniker. The number of companies that can lay claim to using exotic materials for their drivers is small compared to the number of speaker companies that use off-the-shelf drivers or drivers they claim to be "modified" to their specifications.

The real question to ask is whether or not people are make purchasing decisions on expensive SOTA speakers by the types of drivers used in the speakers. Again, there are no requirements imposed by anyone that only speakers that contain exotic drivers can be considered SOTA. If there was such a requirement, Wilson Audio would have gone out of business a long time ago. Obviously people vote with their wallets and Wilson Audio is considered one of the top speaker companies in the U.S. if not the world and they are still thriving.
 
Yes, my OP was referring to marketplace “requirements” rather than a true design imperative, and I am still curious to hear others’ thoughts. I should make it clear that I personally don’t think exotic or other materials are necessary or important in SOTA speaker design or implementation, but some high-end (and not so high-end) manufacturers would apparently like us to believe they are
 
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