Hey all,
I was thinking. I know through experience that speakers aren't perfect sound producers. They vary, sometimes greatly, in the 'signature sound'. The follow post is mostly made up of my 'opnions' and just my general outlook on how I 'hear' things when listening to speakers.
What I've found is that 'most' of the time speakers made from similar materials often give similar results. Here is what I've noticed:
Subwoofers = All sound alike to me. The material that a sub is made of seems to make no difference in the 'quality' or 'sound' of the bass. If I were blindfolded, I simply couldn't tell you if a sub is made of paper or poly, aluminum, etc.
Subwoofer cabinet = Sealed 'sounds' different than 'ported'. Even though the sub driver makes no difference to me in the 'texture' or 'tone' of the sound, I've noticed that sealed and ported cabinets produce bass that 'sounds' different to me in both texture AND tone.
"Ported" sounds like you're in the 'in the bass' but seems to blur details of mids (probably due to the auditory masking phenomenon used by perceptual encoders to hide noise). Ported bass is often described as 'boomy' but can also be described as 'smooth and mellow' or 'rich'. I like ported subs on jazz-like recordings. I like how bass guitars sound on ported although the notes are not as easy to discern. Ported gives this 'cloudy' sound to the bass that hangs in the air. Ported has a certain 'cover up' ability that makes old, scratchy or low resolution recordings sound 'good'.
"Sealed" seems to sound like you are listening to bass being produced in another room. Some people seem to describe it as having a 'hollow' sound (and I understand what they mean). If I incease the volume enough the bass has a more room filling prescense and will sound very accurate. I get the impression when listening to sealed subs that the midbass sounds are much more defined. Drums do MUCH MUCH better on sealed subs. I feel so strongly about that that I will say it's a 'fact'. Kick drums, snare drums, classical drums. Any drum sound better on a sealed sub. The 'kick' from the dynamics and the quick recovery make it sound 'tight'. Like a real drum. Bass guitar doesn't 'hold' or 'hang' around on sounds. I think sealed sounds more articulate and controlled. Upper bass echos in the recordings come through more clearly. The clarity it leaves on other sounds can unfortunately expose a bad recording and make listening not so enjoyable. The better the recording, the better a sealed sub seems to make the music sound vs a ported design.
Each type of sub seems to have it's own strengths and weaknesses. I actually like listening to both types of subs and have a hard time making up my mind. When I haven't heard a ported sub for a while then hear it in someone else's setup, I like it. Sounds good. I currently run a sealed sub in both my car and home mainly because sealed subs sound more "punchy" and seem to have more visceral impact and deeper extention than ported.
Midbass - This is a nebulous area where I can just 'start' to begin to hear the differences between speakers. Sealed vs ported isn't so easy to hear with midbass. When the lower midrange (above 400Hz or so) comes in, I can begin to hear distinct tone differences with speakers and their materials. From this point and up, the material and contruction of the drivers matter the most and the cabinet ceases to be as much an issue while the front baffle of the cabinet with it's difraction characteristics start making the difference.
Midrange - MTM? Single mid? To lobe or not to lobe. That is the question. As frequency gets higher, the size of the sound waves made by drivers becomes shorter and shorter. As these waves become smaller, reflections and directionality start to become the priority of a smart speaker designer. Is you baffle enducing major difraction? Are your walls reflecting too much sound? Is the room too dead (no reflections)?
Paper or plastic? Kevlar? Fiber? Other? I like midrange to have a "fleshy" type of texture. I don't like it to be too sharp sounding. Nothing grates on my nerves like edgy mids. I like my mids to have a smooth charater. I like treated paper or polypropylene/poly-like substances. They have a more smooth sound for me. I know according to scientific speaker research there is a breakup node for either of these materials somewhere in the audible range. But I can't help what my ears tell me sounds good. Aluminum sounds 'edgy' to me. Kevlar sounds like it lacks dynamics and it just plain doesn't sound right to me. I haven't had the chance to hear an aero-gel material on a mid before but would like to.
Tweeters - Here is another sore area of debate among speaker lovers. Bright or mello? Forward or laid back? Amibient or point source? What's your preference? I like classic paper cone and silk/fabric/textile dome tweeters. There are 'treated' fabric domes but they don't sound much different to me. I like the 'ambient' sound that gives an almost 'larger than life' sound to the image. I like the 'you are there' effect. It takes as much the right 'room' as the right tweet. I like sound which some consider 'bright'. I like sibilance. Gives me goosebumps when a chick has nice sibilance on her 's' and 'c' sounds. I like cymbals to have a sound that 'jumps' at me and stands out a bit. Afterall, that's what cymbals sound like in reality. I like 'jingle' sounds of bells and 'shake' sounds of shakers. Detail is what I believe great sound is all about. I don't want it covered up or muddied up.
The only non-paper/non-fabric tweeters I've heard that I liked were ceramic-based ones like Infinity's CMMD which sounded good. Not as natural as paper or fabric domes but it wasn't harsh or metallic sounding either. I can't stand metal tweets. They sound fake. They make vocal sibilances have a 'metallic' sound instead of like a wisp that comes off a soft pair or flesh-like lips. Metal domes do 'one' sound right in my opinion and that is 'metal' based sounds like cymbals and tamborines but even those already 'metal' sounds are somehow made to sound even 'more' metal. Is that possible? I think SO!! Paper cones and fabric domes do a perfectly great job of producing metallic sounds which have a genuine flavor to my ears. Metal tweeters SUCK and are the worst invention ever. Polypropylene tweets sound way too laid back. I may like poly mids but don't dig much on poly tweets. I know that seems like a contradiction, but that's how I feel.
The best I can describe the difference between a 'decent' paper cone/fabric dome and a 'great' sounding set is that the 'decent' ones sound a bit 'dry' while the 'great' ones sound 'wet/liquid' (don't confuse this with the studio recording lingo wet/dry, I'm just talking with my own adjectives here).
Now. The big question. Knowing that different people have different tastes in sound, (and knowing that driver materials often give a 'character' to that sound) why don't speaker companies make different speaker lines targeting different listener preferences instead of trying to 'tier' their speaker lines with the 'budget' 'better' 'best' approach often using identical tweeters and mids for all their lines? I would prefer speaker companies take a more quality and catering approach to the audio hobbyists. Could you imagine a speaker company either 'sourcing' or 'developing' their own fabric dome for one type of listener and a metal dome for another? How about different mids? How about 4 different speaker flavors including ported OR sealed woofer designs along with various mids or tweets targeted at specific listening preferences? I bet that company would get a lot better unity from speaker lovers and would quickly climb the ranks of speaker makers.
Okay. I just had to get this out. Probably doesn't mean much to anyone else but I just wanted to babble about what I like in this audio hobby for a bit.
I was thinking. I know through experience that speakers aren't perfect sound producers. They vary, sometimes greatly, in the 'signature sound'. The follow post is mostly made up of my 'opnions' and just my general outlook on how I 'hear' things when listening to speakers.
What I've found is that 'most' of the time speakers made from similar materials often give similar results. Here is what I've noticed:
Subwoofers = All sound alike to me. The material that a sub is made of seems to make no difference in the 'quality' or 'sound' of the bass. If I were blindfolded, I simply couldn't tell you if a sub is made of paper or poly, aluminum, etc.
Subwoofer cabinet = Sealed 'sounds' different than 'ported'. Even though the sub driver makes no difference to me in the 'texture' or 'tone' of the sound, I've noticed that sealed and ported cabinets produce bass that 'sounds' different to me in both texture AND tone.
"Ported" sounds like you're in the 'in the bass' but seems to blur details of mids (probably due to the auditory masking phenomenon used by perceptual encoders to hide noise). Ported bass is often described as 'boomy' but can also be described as 'smooth and mellow' or 'rich'. I like ported subs on jazz-like recordings. I like how bass guitars sound on ported although the notes are not as easy to discern. Ported gives this 'cloudy' sound to the bass that hangs in the air. Ported has a certain 'cover up' ability that makes old, scratchy or low resolution recordings sound 'good'.
"Sealed" seems to sound like you are listening to bass being produced in another room. Some people seem to describe it as having a 'hollow' sound (and I understand what they mean). If I incease the volume enough the bass has a more room filling prescense and will sound very accurate. I get the impression when listening to sealed subs that the midbass sounds are much more defined. Drums do MUCH MUCH better on sealed subs. I feel so strongly about that that I will say it's a 'fact'. Kick drums, snare drums, classical drums. Any drum sound better on a sealed sub. The 'kick' from the dynamics and the quick recovery make it sound 'tight'. Like a real drum. Bass guitar doesn't 'hold' or 'hang' around on sounds. I think sealed sounds more articulate and controlled. Upper bass echos in the recordings come through more clearly. The clarity it leaves on other sounds can unfortunately expose a bad recording and make listening not so enjoyable. The better the recording, the better a sealed sub seems to make the music sound vs a ported design.
Each type of sub seems to have it's own strengths and weaknesses. I actually like listening to both types of subs and have a hard time making up my mind. When I haven't heard a ported sub for a while then hear it in someone else's setup, I like it. Sounds good. I currently run a sealed sub in both my car and home mainly because sealed subs sound more "punchy" and seem to have more visceral impact and deeper extention than ported.
Midbass - This is a nebulous area where I can just 'start' to begin to hear the differences between speakers. Sealed vs ported isn't so easy to hear with midbass. When the lower midrange (above 400Hz or so) comes in, I can begin to hear distinct tone differences with speakers and their materials. From this point and up, the material and contruction of the drivers matter the most and the cabinet ceases to be as much an issue while the front baffle of the cabinet with it's difraction characteristics start making the difference.
Midrange - MTM? Single mid? To lobe or not to lobe. That is the question. As frequency gets higher, the size of the sound waves made by drivers becomes shorter and shorter. As these waves become smaller, reflections and directionality start to become the priority of a smart speaker designer. Is you baffle enducing major difraction? Are your walls reflecting too much sound? Is the room too dead (no reflections)?
Paper or plastic? Kevlar? Fiber? Other? I like midrange to have a "fleshy" type of texture. I don't like it to be too sharp sounding. Nothing grates on my nerves like edgy mids. I like my mids to have a smooth charater. I like treated paper or polypropylene/poly-like substances. They have a more smooth sound for me. I know according to scientific speaker research there is a breakup node for either of these materials somewhere in the audible range. But I can't help what my ears tell me sounds good. Aluminum sounds 'edgy' to me. Kevlar sounds like it lacks dynamics and it just plain doesn't sound right to me. I haven't had the chance to hear an aero-gel material on a mid before but would like to.
Tweeters - Here is another sore area of debate among speaker lovers. Bright or mello? Forward or laid back? Amibient or point source? What's your preference? I like classic paper cone and silk/fabric/textile dome tweeters. There are 'treated' fabric domes but they don't sound much different to me. I like the 'ambient' sound that gives an almost 'larger than life' sound to the image. I like the 'you are there' effect. It takes as much the right 'room' as the right tweet. I like sound which some consider 'bright'. I like sibilance. Gives me goosebumps when a chick has nice sibilance on her 's' and 'c' sounds. I like cymbals to have a sound that 'jumps' at me and stands out a bit. Afterall, that's what cymbals sound like in reality. I like 'jingle' sounds of bells and 'shake' sounds of shakers. Detail is what I believe great sound is all about. I don't want it covered up or muddied up.
The only non-paper/non-fabric tweeters I've heard that I liked were ceramic-based ones like Infinity's CMMD which sounded good. Not as natural as paper or fabric domes but it wasn't harsh or metallic sounding either. I can't stand metal tweets. They sound fake. They make vocal sibilances have a 'metallic' sound instead of like a wisp that comes off a soft pair or flesh-like lips. Metal domes do 'one' sound right in my opinion and that is 'metal' based sounds like cymbals and tamborines but even those already 'metal' sounds are somehow made to sound even 'more' metal. Is that possible? I think SO!! Paper cones and fabric domes do a perfectly great job of producing metallic sounds which have a genuine flavor to my ears. Metal tweeters SUCK and are the worst invention ever. Polypropylene tweets sound way too laid back. I may like poly mids but don't dig much on poly tweets. I know that seems like a contradiction, but that's how I feel.
The best I can describe the difference between a 'decent' paper cone/fabric dome and a 'great' sounding set is that the 'decent' ones sound a bit 'dry' while the 'great' ones sound 'wet/liquid' (don't confuse this with the studio recording lingo wet/dry, I'm just talking with my own adjectives here).
Now. The big question. Knowing that different people have different tastes in sound, (and knowing that driver materials often give a 'character' to that sound) why don't speaker companies make different speaker lines targeting different listener preferences instead of trying to 'tier' their speaker lines with the 'budget' 'better' 'best' approach often using identical tweeters and mids for all their lines? I would prefer speaker companies take a more quality and catering approach to the audio hobbyists. Could you imagine a speaker company either 'sourcing' or 'developing' their own fabric dome for one type of listener and a metal dome for another? How about different mids? How about 4 different speaker flavors including ported OR sealed woofer designs along with various mids or tweets targeted at specific listening preferences? I bet that company would get a lot better unity from speaker lovers and would quickly climb the ranks of speaker makers.
Okay. I just had to get this out. Probably doesn't mean much to anyone else but I just wanted to babble about what I like in this audio hobby for a bit.