but they were rare, and very expensive, at the time. True, the first-generation Quad, the RCA LC-1A, the Tannoy, and the Lowther compare well with modern systems. The tube electronics helped sweeten much of the coarseness, but they couldn't rescue the really bad loudspeakers of the day. The sound quality was closer to an old neighborhood theatre, or amusement park skating rink, than a modern speaker.
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It wasnt for nothing that early hi-fi systems acquired a "boom-and-tweet" reputation.
#SPEAKER ENCLOSURE DESIGN BRACING DRIVER#
A "good" driver of this type usually had a plus/minus tolerance of 4 to 8 dB, and it took a lot of judicious pen damping to get it to measure that well.
#SPEAKER ENCLOSURE DESIGN BRACING DRIVERS#
The coax, or worse, triax drivers went into paper cone breakup at 300 Hz and above, cavity resonances (due to the horn element mounted in the cone driver) at 800 Hz and above, horn breakup throughout the working range of the short horn, and phenolic diaphragm breakup at 8 kHz and above. (Have you ever heard a restored jukebox?) A large cutout served as the vent, resulting in boomy, resonant boxes tuned much too high, with a 6 to 12 dB peak in the 80 to 150 Hz region. The typical enthusiast had to endure University, Jensen, or Electro-Voice 12" coaxial drivers in large resonant plywood boxes with a single layer of fiberglass on the rear wall. Very few "hi-fi nuts" had full-size Altec "Voice of the Theatre" A-7 systems, Bozak B-305's, 15" Tannoys, or Klipschorns. The primitive 20th Century technologies of telephones, movies, radio, television, hi-fi stereo, and the World Wide Web converge into an apparently simple technology that is transparent and invisible.Ĭontemporary speakers, for all of their faults, are better than most speakers of the Fifties. this device also has access to all sounds and images ever recorded, and an instantaneous link to billions of similar devices. It would be "grown" by nanotechnology and operate at the molecular level, appearing simply as a transparent film when not in operation. (Similar in principle to present-day military phased-array radars, with tens of thousands of tiny antennas with individual electronics subsystems.) This perfect loudspeaker would be made of millions of microscopic coherent light and sound emitters, integrated with signal processing circuits all operating in parallel. the sound would be literally as clear as air itself. A host of distortions (harmonic, intermodulation, crossmodulation, frequency, phase, and group delay) would be utterly absent. Resonances due to massive drivers and cabinets would be a thing of the distant past. It would made of an immense number of tiny point sources that would create a true acoustic wavefront (or soundfield). If you relax and take a mental journey to the 22nd Century, it is easy to imagine the perfect loudspeaker. At every point, from overall system design to subtle points of cabinet construction, esthetic preference merges invisibly with engineering decisions.
![speaker enclosure design bracing speaker enclosure design bracing](https://avgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/speaker-design-software.jpg)
![speaker enclosure design bracing speaker enclosure design bracing](https://images.truckid.com/atrend/subwoofers/15lsvdd.jpg)
At a more detailed level, the designer has to examine the sonic character of different types of direct-radiator driver, and know the advantages and limitations of each type.Įven designers who profess an agnostic, specification-driven approach make an esthetic decision when they decide which group of specifications to optimize. Due to the limitations of the art, no one school can "have it all," despite advertising claims to the contrary.
![speaker enclosure design bracing speaker enclosure design bracing](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61-c7NfDyGL._AC_SL1000_.jpg)
These challenges can be met in many different ways, resulting in many different schools of speaker design. This chapter opens with a quick trip through the future, the past, and the challenges of designing speaker systems in the here and now. The Art of Speaker Design The Art of Speaker Design