Are exotic material drivers required for a SOTA loudspeaker?

rbbert said:
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
Click to expand...

It is no different than a Bugatti Veyron or a Lamborghini Veneno roadster. Why settle for $22k Honda when there is a $8M dollar car out there and one has the money to keep the EGO burning bright? The passion of the engineers making luxury products is met with the applause of those who are inspired by such marvels. How else is a speaker or a car or a yacht manufacturer supposed to separate those looking for absolute cutting edge of technological toys from their money when they are offering something less than cutting edge?
 
rbbert said:
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
Click to expand...

It’s called marketing Rob.
 
mep said:
It’s called marketing Rob.
Click to expand...

And based on our country's current situation, a very large percentage of people base their actions and beliefs on just that.

Just curious as to how swayed members are here and at other audiophile forums WRT to speaker design.
 
I respect the latest drivers and driver technology, but it’s the sound that counts at the end of the day. If it’s that new driver technology that delivers the great sound, than I’m all for it. I can assure you, putting fancy off the shelf drivers in a cabinet doesn’t make them a great speaker. There is so much more to it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
rbbert said:
And based on our country's current situation, a very large percentage of people base their actions and beliefs on just that.

Just curious as to how swayed members are here and at other audiophile forums WRT to speaker design.
Click to expand...

Are you changing the focus away from exotic drivers to the actual design of speakers?
 
rbbert said:
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that
Click to expand...

OK. When I read this from you, I thought you switched gears:

“Just curious as to how swayed members are here and at other audiophile forums WRT to speaker design.”
 
I am thrilled beyond belief with my wood cabinet speakers with (basically) off-the-shelf drivers, so I definitely do not believe the premise I questioned in the OP, and I have spent a fair amount of time listening to speakers with "exotic" driver and/or enclosure materials (as have most members here, I suspect).
 
exotic material , its all about how the material is used in the complete product. I look at it like cars, sure I can drop a Dart block in my 66 vette, but will it be as good as say the block GM built for the car , I say it all depends, as there is more to it than one component. .
 
Mike said:
I respect the latest drivers and driver technology, but it’s the sound that counts at the end of the day. If it’s that new driver technology that delivers the great sound, than I’m all for it. I can assure you, putting fancy off the shelf drivers in a cabinet doesn’t make them a great speaker. There is so much more to it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...

I agree. after hearing tons of speakers over the past few years, can't say driver materials influenced the sound specifically. it's a sum of the parts imo.
 
Though slightly apples and oranges but.
If you use SOTA materials to build a violin does that mean a Stradivarius can't be STOA with those old materials.
 
In my opinion, a definitiv No.

Here are two examples of SOTA *for my ears... that are using good old paper pulp, silk etc... And there are many others out there.
Stenheim Speakers and the Living voice Olympian.
 

Attachments

  • living_voice_vox_olympian.jpg
    living_voice_vox_olympian.jpg
    41.8 KB · Views: 97
  • 1366918c-a9c3-4ab8-80a8-a340a1adeefb-1.jpg
    1366918c-a9c3-4ab8-80a8-a340a1adeefb-1.jpg
    102.2 KB · Views: 99
To answer MEP’s question, yes, my speaker purchasing decision was based in part on the drivers using SOTA materials. I wanted speakers first, that sounded musical and could deliver clarity and timbral purity on my jazz recordings. Second, I wanted the drivers to be technologically advanced. My Vandersteen 7 Mk2’s employ a carbon/balsa/carbon sandwich in their speaker cones that are fused together by baking them in an oven. The sandwich design is used on the dome tweeter, the midrange and the woofer. It is extremely light, rigid and pistonic. Third, the cabinet uses a carbon fiber composite to reduce resonances. Lastly, the speakers are time and phase coherent, measure well and have lower distortion than many other designs.

Certainly, great sounding speakers can and have been designed using traditional materials. But for me personally, I would not purchase speakers unless the company designed and manufactured its own drivers, and used advanced materials.

Ken
 
Alpinist said:
To answer MEP’s question, yes, my speaker purchasing decision was based in part on the drivers using SOTA materials. I wanted speakers first, that sounded musical and could deliver clarity and timbral purity on my jazz recordings. Second, I wanted the drivers to be technologically advanced. My Vandersteen 7 Mk2’s employ a carbon/balsa/carbon sandwich in their speaker cones that are fused together by baking them in an oven. The sandwich design is used on the dome tweeter, the midrange and the woofer. It is extremely light, rigid and pistonic. Third, the cabinet uses a carbon fiber composite to reduce resonances and is phase correct. Lastly, the speakers measure well and have lower distortion than many other designs.

Certainly, great sounding speakers can and have been designed using traditional materials. But for me personally, I would not purchase speakers unless the company designed and manufactured its own drivers, and used advanced materials.

Ken
Click to expand...

Hey Ken. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say the cabinets are "phase corrected." I read all of the marketing materials on the Vandy website for your speakers and unless I missed it, I saw no mention of the cabinets being "phase corrected."
 
kiwi_1282001 said:
Driver materials do matter – at least in this designer’s opinion. The video shows analysis for two mid range drivers, an ultra-rigid carbon-fiber/balsa core design vs. “a very expensive paper driver cone that is employed in some very high-end speaker designs.”


Source: “The Truth About Pistonic Driver Cones”, The Truth About Pistonic Driver Cones | Vandersteen Audio Accessed 20 Dec 2020.
Click to expand...


Wonder why he is driving a midrange cone to 14 kHz? I doubt most midrange drivers were designed to operate that high.
 
personally i don't have an opinion about the technical aspect of driver materials. i've not sat down with 20 drivers with different materials and compared them head to head. but i have my experiences.

i formed an opinion now 20 years ago when i went from the paper drivers in my Wilson WP6.0's to the the ceramic mid range of my Kharma Exquisite 1D's. it seemed like the ceramic mid range was much more life like. and i had not heard that from any other driver. when those Kharma's could not do enough bass in the new room i had built, i switched to the Von Schweikert VR9SE's with again paper drivers for the mids. no doubt i liked those VR9SE's alot, but i missed the magic of the ceramic mid range. during this time my friend Jonathan Tinn, who had heard my Kharma speakers and liked them enough to become a dealer, started working on designing his own speaker. and he choose the same Accuton ceramic mid range from the Kharma for that project. later when he created Evolution Acoustics he carried over that (now dual) ceramic mid-range, and i got the 2nd set of MM3's built.

7 years later i upgraded to the newly designed, twin tower MM7, which not only carried over the Accuton ceramic mid-range, but doubled down with -4- per side Accuton Ceramic 11" woofers. so now i had ceramic drivers from 30hz to 3khz. wow and double wow. no dynamic driver speaker i have heard can do what the MM7's do in these frequencies. ceramic is inherently stiff and light, and retains linearity and lack of distortion.

we might note that the new Ultra series from Von Schweikert switched to ceramic drivers. and the new super uber big $$$ Magico M9 uses the same 11" Accuton ceramic woofer (somewhat modified) used in my MM7's (but only 2 per side).

there are plenty of great sounding speakers and drivers out there. and i'm in the camp that execution counts for much more than choice of bits. but i have observed that the presence of ceramic drivers does seem to corelate to my enjoyment mostly. there is just a sparkle and transparent component to the presentation that attracts my ear. yet no hardness or sense of mechanical type sound. i also feel that the ceramic drivers put demands on overall speaker design execution as they are not forgiving. crossovers and voicing must be spot on. and ceramic drivers if not properly treated can ring as they are so stiff. so it's not a trivial choice to use them.

i am intrigued by the Bending Wave driver from the Gobel. although it's amplifier requirements are considerable.
 
kiwi_1282001 said:
Driver materials do matter – at least in this designer’s opinion. The video shows analysis for two mid range drivers, an ultra-rigid carbon-fiber/balsa core design vs. “a very expensive paper driver cone that is employed in some very high-end speaker designs.”


Source: “The Truth About Pistonic Driver Cones”, The Truth About Pistonic Driver Cones | Vandersteen Audio Accessed 20 Dec 2020.
Click to expand...


A picture is worth a thousand words.
 
nicoff said:
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Click to expand...

Only if the picture is put into proper context. Nobody is driving a dedicated midrange driver to 14 kHz, let alone driving the midrange cone with a pure 14 kHz test tone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top