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| Re: New Pipedreams and woofer/driver horiz spacing... [message #60631 is a reply to message #60626] |
Wed, 19 August 2009 08:12   |
Eric J
Messages: 71
Registered: May 2009
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Its hard to say.....
When you are selling your product for $44,000, people tend to overlook the fact that you've violated a lots of physics and having spent more money than for a luxury car or a small house, that it doesn't really sound as good as it should.
My experience is that people pay no attention to research in speaker building. They just do what they want.
I spent 18 months researching every aspect of the design for my line arrays from the exact amount of insulation needed in the construction, to the tubes used for the midrange enclosures to everything. My system works as a synergy, it would not do as well if I just took the speakers and dumped them in a big box. But most people just do that, so they don't understand the synergistic concept, nor are they willing to take the time to do so.
They have to try it out for themselves, despite the fact that there is plenty of real research that tells people exactly what works, what doesn't work, and why.
Eric J.
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| Re: New Pipedreams and woofer/driver horiz spacing... [message #60640 is a reply to message #60631] |
Thu, 20 August 2009 23:10 |
darkmoebius2
Messages: 37
Registered: August 2009
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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| Eric J wrote on Wed, 19 August 2009 08:12 | people tend to overlook the fact that you've violated a lots of physics...that it doesn't really sound as good as it should
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Well, I'm not sure it's fair to say that the Nearfield Acoustics guys don't have a firm grasp of the physics involved in speaker/array design.
| Quote: | Mark Porzilli, a former child prodigy, was able to wire simple circuits and draw schematics at age 5. He completed a masters level education in Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Chemistry at age 14, after winning a national competition to miniaturize electronic circuitry for Bausch & Lomb at age 12. That same year, he designed biofeedback electronics for several New Jersey hospitals, and entered two state science fairs, winning first place in both.
George Bischoff studied at the renowned Berlin Technical Institute. He designed with Mark Porzilli and built the first American ribbon line-source speakers, using the legendary Strathern ribbons from England, which garnered accolades in the pages of Stereophile magazine in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Mark designed all of Melos Audio's solid state and vacuum tube products with George Bischoff from 1979-1999. He is also the designer of the original, award winning Pipedreams Loudspeakers. He is the designer of the new Scaena Line Source Loudspeakers (RLA), rave reviewed by Harry Pearson in The Absolute Sound, January, 2008: www.scaena.com.
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And I don't think even Dr Griffin would claim his white paper is the end-all, be-all to everything regarding line array design. I view it more as a primer on the subject for lay people that distills the far more technical analysis in it's reference papers. So, simply because the paper doesn't specifically address the design features found in both examples I provided, doesn't mean that they are not technically valid.
Rick Craig, designer of the Symmetrica array, responded on his Selah Audio forum at Audiocircle: | Quote: | The spacing of the two woofer lines is important because it effects how they couple around the crossover point. The wavelength rules are affected not only by the woofer diameter but also the driver's dispersion.
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Not sure I have the slightest idea what he's getting at, but it does give me some homework to do.
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| Re: New Pipedreams and woofer/driver horiz spacing... [message #60652 is a reply to message #60640] |
Fri, 21 August 2009 16:45 |
Eric J
Messages: 71
Registered: May 2009
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Both of these speaker systems are completely proprietary. You do not know what speakers they used, what the crossovers are or how they are configured, or how the boxes are constructed.
In Rick Craig's case, I'm sure his system works great. When I put mine together and posted it here with 16 -3 inch midranges per side, he seriously questioned it, particularly the use of the 3 inch midranges. Dr. Griffin chimed in that he would have preferred ribbons to my dome tweeters but that it should work beautifully, since i followed his paper to the letter. And it does!
Amazing that it wasn't too much later that he produced a kit very similar to the system I designed. Imitation is the greatest flattery. I wish he'd gone to the electronic crossovers and tri-amplification as well as complete separation of each mid range speaker from its peers, but that would have required a much larger building process, and lots more expense.
My main point is that without these proprietary builders telling us exactly how they built them(Rick Craig is partly excluded from this since he and Dr. Griffin are good friends and he tends to take Dr. Griffin's research literally), we are relying on how smart they are. After 60 years of being taken(and not taken) for a ride by smart people who do dumb things, I'm not willing to buy something expensive simply because they were made by someone who talks about how smart they are.
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