If you go on to Troel Gravesen’s website he explains how important quality components are when designing high quality loudspeakers.
Cheers, SteveT
If you go on to Troel Gravesen’s website he explains how important quality components are when designing high quality loudspeakers.
Cheers, SteveT
Its just fun really I like messing with small speakers…
Doesn’t he also say all amps are the same?
Yes, he does. I don’t agree with him on that!
As the coupling between room, transducers and cabinets, cross overs, speaker cable and power amp is one of the more sensitive areas in the Hi-Fi chain, the quality and design of the cross over very much determines the performance and character of the resultant audio.
A mediocre crossover design with poor and non optimised components can significantly add distortion of various types, rob the system of micro dynamics and transients in a given room. The passive crossover is a key component… quality speaker manufacturers who focus on passive speakers will not be skimping here. A poor crossover results in poor audio. The crossover is as critical as the power amp… from a system perspective the cross over (and speaker cable) can be considered as part of the power amp.
Passive cross overs with coupled lengths of speaker cable can be quite a compromise to performance and so one wants to keep that compromise to a minimum and additionally with Hi-Fi, through design, add an attractive character to the resultant sound.
I find the physics in real world quality crossover design rather involved… and interesting… Here is a good high level intro on crossover considerations including some basic real world considerations… the tricky part!
aperionaudio. com crossover-design-and-theory
As we see in the conclusion optimising components and tweaking values around a core design through trial and error to get the performance and character right or to taste is key… so yes the parts matter.
Danny at GR took a good look at the P3ESR and his view was the driver was a bit naughty and the crossover very complex to compensate…with not so good components…hmmm. But I have heard these and they sound pretty darn good…
The purpose of the guy is to sell upgrade kits. I don’t like his reviews, don’t like his appearance, don’t like his accent and last but not least it’s terribly difficult to avoid the guy since all AI algorithms think that I should watch it.
Haha.
I feel that he is a bit of a d@*k also.
IMO crossover parts quality matters. Sometimes not by much and it doesn’t take much to hide or minimise the difference but there’s definitely a difference to my ears.
As you imply Rich, best to trust our ears as always. Manufacturers producing amplifiers with high damping factors ( hundreds or more) always make a point of elevating this point with the huge increase in bass driver control, yet from memory the 500DR has only a factor of 35. Doesn’t sound a slouch in my system ATB Peter
Yeah he does sell kits…but if the speakers measured reasonably he would have nothing to tweak. I think he is pretty genuine and has been in the industry for many years…his own speakers are pretty successful… Like all things you have to make a judgement if you are happy with what you have thats great…speakers are subject to preference… One thing to remember the us eq on speakers is different to uk…
Good point…
Interesting, as I’d never heard of the guy, nor the company! But then, I don’t have much involvement with AI other than frustratingly awful chatbots on banks’ and insurance companies’ websites!
He seemed to think that ATC did a good job when he stripped down sone scm19’s tho …still a proper pen15 tho
Phrased another, more self evident way, the question could be put as “Does the quality of components in the signal path matter?”
I’ve seen this guy’s videos and I’d hesitate to destroy the value of kit that presumably I thought was good in my system when I bought it. On the other hand there are videos on how to upgrade the parts in a StageLine, SuperCap, SuperLine, 52, 252 and on and on.
Someone always thinks they know better than the manufacturer… and many are on this forum
No end of threads with posts about how Naim’s design decisions are allegedly stupid.
For sure… although removing the “build to a price point” constraint for a one-off upgrade with premium parts is a classic approach in many diy areas.
Even manufacturers do this, yielding a higher price point superior edition The Kudos Super 10 and 20 are tweaked versions of their regular Cardea counterparts, with upgraded internal wiring and matched / tighter tolerance components:
The Cardea Super series’ superior quality components are tailored specifically for Kudos to stringent tolerances. They include Mundorf’s MResist Supreme resistors and air-core inductors, and ClarityCap’s unique CopperConnect technology capacitors.
Part of me agrees with you…and of course use you ears…and of course manufacturers, good ones that is - voice their designs. However…iron core inductors…generally do not perform as well as wound inductors … which is is proven…as for electrolitic capacitors in the signal path…this is also proven to be sub optimal… Going onto to the P3ESR…there is an available size issue…as big wire wound coils and big caps would simply not fit…in the tiny cabinet…What shocks me with Harbeth why use such a naughty little driver which needs so much circuitry to successfully tame it…
Except those who strive for neutrality. (Though, of course, some people might call that voicing.)
What is “naughty” about it?
It is interesting, though to me unsurprising, how common it is for even very sophisticated and expensive drivers to not have a flat response nor flat impedance curve. The box it is in then modifies things further. The art of speaker design is to choose the best combination of box design and driver, usually within predetermined box size limits and total production cost limits, and pick the best complementary partnering drivers and then design a crossover that marries them together in the most effective way. Doing that well is not an easy task.
It’s naughty as it needs around 5 inductors and a load of capacitors to get it right. Of course allot of it could be the box loading. The point I am making is - it’s like fighting against what the driver want’s to do - involving all the losses associated with that…(both good and bad) … my premis is use a driver inherintly well behaved - then you don’t need to try and controll it with a rod of iron… A case in point is the SEAS A26 kit…a superb classic…seas-a26-kit
look at the driver responses by clicking on the driver data tags… they are quite remarkable. So much so the bass driver has no network at all…superb. Look at the frequency response…pretty darn good… This is just an example…of natural synergy…