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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 4, 2015 18:21:33 GMT -6
As I think about new monitors and something clear unhyped and more natural than my Adam ax7, I wonder about the actual materials of the speaker cones and tweater construction and what their recognized sound characteristics are?
I know I am leaning to amphion but actually haven't heard them yet.
There are a lot of knowledgeable people here can I ask those who know to identify speaker material and their sonic qualities?
thx !
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Post by svart on Sept 4, 2015 18:29:18 GMT -6
Paper flexes but does so smoothly, so it will distort, the most of all the cones.
Pulp cones have a very mild mannered, smooth, sound. Low amounts of breakup so crossing over is easy, but the sound can be blurred due to the bumpy surface.
plastic cones can flex and distort. The material is harder so it can have a resonance in the audible range. Some plastic coned drivers are very good, some are really bad.. These can either be easy or harder to crossover.
Metal is most rigid of the affordable cones, but is heavy. Good metal cones have the lowest distortion from cone flex, but tend to have nasty breakups near their limits. They can also be power hungry in order to move the cones fast enough. Extremely hard to crossover well due to the breakup regions needing higher order crossovers.
Ceramic cones are expensive and rare and mostly for tweeters and midranges.
Diamond is almost exclusively used for tweeters that cost 2000$+. Supposedly these are the best performing tweeters due to the rigidity of the diaphragm.
Amphions are metal cones.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,107 
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Post by ericn on Sept 4, 2015 18:31:47 GMT -6
It's not what you use it but how you use it!
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 4, 2015 19:32:17 GMT -6
thx Prof. svart  , the amphion woofers are aluminum as are I believe the speakers you made. do different metals have different sonic attributes due to their metallic structure? |
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 4, 2015 19:36:29 GMT -6
Ericn I don't disagree just trying to better understand. For example when I got my Adams I really liked their hi end resolution and now I find it grainy or the texture unatural ? I know now that is a characteristic of transducer drivers so I probably don't want that design again ?
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,107
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Post by ericn on Sept 4, 2015 19:58:02 GMT -6
Ericn I don't disagree just trying to better understand. For example when I got my Adams I really liked their hi end resolution and now I find it grainy or the texture unatural ? I know now that is a characteristic of transducer drivers so I probably don't want that design again ? While not a Fan of That type of driver in general, I have heard different Versions ( the quested install series) that I was surprised I almost liked! I have heard metal cones I hate and those I like! Volt ATC Scanspeak Morel all make paper cone woofers all sound different and benefit from different types of loading and when they sound there best still sound different ! It sucks but in the end you gotta here them to know what they do! |
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Post by wiz on Sept 4, 2015 20:00:17 GMT -6
Ericn I don't disagree just trying to better understand. For example when I got my Adams I really liked their hi end resolution and now I find it grainy or the texture unatural ? I know now that is a characteristic of transducer drivers so I probably don't want that design again ? I have the A7s Since getting them.. I dunno 6 or 7 years ago... I have never coveted another monitor. Monitors are like woman... one mans beauty is not another mans... 8) cheers Wiz |
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 4, 2015 20:04:38 GMT -6
Wait if monitors are like women, wiz are you telling us we can have 2 in the studio what about the Phantom Centre channel: three ? surround sound lord have mercy!! Man when your wife told you to grow some: you didn't mess around !! |
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Post by Martin John Butler on Sept 4, 2015 20:48:31 GMT -6
I found the A7X's to be this generation's NS-10. Hypey, but pretty good translation. Still happy with my Avantone Abbey's, but I'm so looking forward to being somewhere that I can properly treat my listening area, where I am, it's a mess. I haven't heard the Amphions, so I can't compare.
A dear friend who's passed had two pairs of Avalon speakers. He was the least pretentious person I knew, but very wealthy He liked good stereos. His speakers were by Avalon. He had two systems, one for his apartment, one for his weekend house. One pair of speakers was the Eidelon, one the next smaller model, I forget their name. The Eidelon I think was $24,000, and the other, I think was $14,000. I was lucky enough to get to listen to his system a lot. I preferred the smaller system, I remember a Conrad-Johnson amp, or maybe a Vac amp and preamp, I've forgotten the rest of the components. One of my references was Mark Knopfler's "Sailing to Philadelphia". I was especially taken by the incredible tone of the bass and the brushes on the snare. I was making my "Watching the Days Fall" album then, so I was constantly listening to mixes on his system for reference.
When I heard the Avantone's, I was instantly reminded of the "smaller" Eidolons, the Avantone's had such a similar sonic signature, I was taken aback, I just loved hearing that heft and depth again, and from a monitor no less, the Avalon's were floor standing.
I could just be biased in that direction, but it was only the ATC speakers I heard that cost $8,000 that were better. Even the $3,000 Tridents ween't better. Unless the Amphion's kill them, the Avantone's to me are punching way over their weight.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 5, 2015 11:56:37 GMT -6
When I think paper cones I think guitar amps, and grit. Also paper tweeters tend to get a bit flabby sounding over time, or maybe that's how they sound to begin with, I don't know. These are on some of the cheaper '90s bookshelf speakers around here. Not my favorite type of tweeter.
I don't know a terrible lot about other types of materials. I know Focal writes a lot about their cones, worth reading a bit. Nobody else makes cones that look like that. They have some that even use a flax material, quite pretty. Polk uses some kind of unique composite in their drivers. Again their website goes into some detail on the design parameters. They sound really good. The KRK yellow kevlar cones also sound fairly sweet to me, even though that speaker is sort of hyped and unbalanced overall (V6 Series 2).
Surround materials and their compliance also play a big part in driver sound.
Speaker design is so complex I barely can begin to understand it. Cone material is just a scratch on the surface. I'm starting out with upgrading some old Technics, and building some Auratone type cubes from scratch, we'll see how those turn out. Hopefully I'll learn something in the process. I braced the opposite faces of the Technics cabinets with some thick rods, and deadened the larger flat surfaces with Dynamat. I also stuffed with some Polyfil. These changes really tightened up the sound overall. So I learned you want an acoustically dead enclosure, not something that vibrates. Those are my club banger grot box type speakers, sort of a real world test. I have them up on the wall like mains and I turn them on when I want to check the bass on something, or dance, when I'm nearing the end of a mix. Ten inch cones are good for that.
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Post by joseph on Sept 5, 2015 14:52:15 GMT -6
Suggest you audition Questeds along with the Amphions.
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, the amphion woofers are aluminum as are I believe the speakers you made. do different metals have different sonic attributes due to their metallic structure? 
