Follow WeChat Download Audiophile APP Follow the audiophile class related suggestion What kind of sound do you like? The answer should vary from person to person, and everyone has different hobbies and focuses. Some people think that timbre is the most important, some people like the overall feeling, others like a strong sense of three-dimensional space or a strong sense of transparency, sound image, etc ...
"Flawless sound" is often used in advertising. You should know what is most important to you. The current speakers cannot meet everyone's requirements.
Designers can only design according to their subjective factors, and cannot simply say that one method is correct or another method is wrong. If someone says that a certain method is correct and others have problems, it may be that he is indulging in a method he invented or believes in a design genre.
My own position? Of course I am not a cultist of a certain school. I pay attention to the flat response, small residual energy, small intermodulation distortion, and a very realistic feeling. Here are a few different methods to see how they are used to achieve the results they think are perfect.
Genres that focus on impulse response (three-dimensional sound image)
The products of Duntech, Thiel, Spica and Vandersteen belong to this category. Designers control the harmful reflections at a high cost and achieve the continuity of the phase of the unit. Usually, first-order (6dB / Oct) frequency dividers are used. For example, Spica may use third-order (18dB / Oct) or fourth-order (24dB / Oct) Gaussian or Bessel dividers.
This is the only genre that can provide an accurate impulse response, sometimes better than electrostatic or aluminum ribbon responses. However, the visibility of phase changes and impulse responses is controversial in sound engineering. Other engineers believe that paying too much attention to the correct impulse response is a waste of time and money.
In a typical phase coherent design, the unit is very demanding, and its bandwidth is more than twice the actual need. Therefore, the unit is very expensive and is accurately corrected in the frequency divider. In fact, it is very difficult to control the radiation pattern of the sound and the resonance of the control unit in the first-order frequency divider.
To measure the success of the design depends on whether he has a very accurate sound image and sense of space, if not, the design is unsuccessful-because this is the most important goal of the school.
Flat response (objective design) genre
Most British and Canadian speakers belong to this genre. They have a very flat frequency response. British products focus on the axial frequency response of 1 meter or 2 meters, while Canada focuses on the off-axis response within the hemispheric radiation angle.
They adopted the test method proposed by the BBC and NRC based on the analysis of the results of multiple blind hearings. The designers of this school often have a degree from a famous university and believe in objective test results. If the "mysterious effect" of supplementary wires, resistance capacitors, direct heating vacuum tubes, etc. cannot withstand the blind listening test, they do not believe it.
The BBC first accurately measured and identified the resonance and response problems of the horn unit and cabinet in the early 1960s. Many British speakers still dominate the field. In fact, the audible resonance is often more than 20DB lower than the result of the sine wave test. The BBC first recognized this problem, so a special method was used to test the phenomenon of sound staining and resonance. This method has become the current measurement system such as FFT, Standard part of TDS, MLSSA.
Objective design often uses third-order (18dB / Oct) Babbitt or fourth-order (24dB / Oct) Lin filter. It provides the most flat and accurate in-band response and the smallest out-of-band intermodulation distortion, but at the cost of severe overshoot in the impulse response. KEF's Laurie Fincham was optimized with a computer in the 1970s and designed a frequency divider with precise acoustic attenuation characteristics and resonance correction. Now any 486, 586 computer can use XOPT, LEAP and other software to achieve the optimization of the frequency divider. The requirement for designers today is to be able to design accurate acoustic attenuation characteristics regardless of their design genre and philosophy. Frequency divider.
Designers in the UK have recently paid attention to high-quality speaker stands. Objective designers often do not pay attention to the impulse response, nor the capacitance, inductance and wires that are distinguished by subjective listening. Instead, they focus on how to improve the quality of the unit, control the resonance of the cabinet, and accurately match.
Design simple and subjective genres
Some Italian, Scandinavian, British, and American speakers belong to this genre. The frequency divider is very simple, sometimes there is only one capacitor to protect the tweeter (even Sonus Faber in Italy has even canceled this capacitor, I ca n’t figure out how to protect the tweeter), the unit they use is the best quality, the wire used And the cabinet material is also very advanced.
This genre often does not pay attention to the measurement index. Under the guidance of this philosophical concept, the resonance of the unit is not corrected. The deviation of the frequency, phase, and pulse caused by a simple frequency divider is also considered acceptable. Its performance depends on other equipment in the system. Although they have a certain coloration, they can actually create exciting effects and a sense of engagement.
Horn and high efficiency genres
Many Japanese HI-END speakers and a few French, Italian, British, and American speakers belong to this genre. This kind of philosophy originated from Xidian cinema speakers, Paul Voigt's parabolic horn and other hybrid products, with high efficiency. It is best to use a low-power direct-heating triode single-ended Class A amplifier to drive to achieve the best results. If you use a transistor amplifier, even if it is Class A, it will often be very tedious.
The horn usually has very low harmonic distortion, modulation distortion and a very flat frequency response, but the frequency range is narrow, with very fast attenuation at both ends of the frequency range. And the impulse response, diffraction, and radiation range are very difficult to achieve, so the Western HI-END system is very small, and it is reserved for professional and audio engineering.
However, in the past decade, Bruce Edgar in the United States and some people in Japan have made significant progress in the design of the horn. Has been affirmed by some magazines, and began to move towards HI-END, ULTRA-HI.
My own opinion? I might also like the new type of horn completely, but I ca n’t say anything yet, because I ’m planning to add Edgar ’s alto horn to the entire system.
(Press: The following introduces the non-electric horn unit)
Static flat
A few British, American, and Japanese companies manufacture this product. Well-designed electrostatic speakers have the best linearity and maintain piston movement. They also have the advantages of low distortion and very good pulse response. The electrostatic speakers first produced by QUAD are very famous and Beyond other products of the same generation for ten years.
Of course, there are also disadvantages: for example, low efficiency, low impedance, which makes the amplifier very difficult to promote, limited dynamic range, easy to damage, lack of bass, etc., and the dipole radiation pattern makes its treble characteristics very sensitive to the room, these are difficult to solve, In particular, its large-area diaphragm sounds, which is very unfavorable for sound image localization.
The old-fashioned QUAD uses the most common method, the "face-to-face" 3-way system, which uses a gradually decreasing diaphragm plane to generate high frequencies, and the new one uses a complex phase array system to achieve a nearly spherical radiation pattern. The MarTIn-Logan design uses a cylindrical panel, but the same problem still exists. All electrostatic speakers have resonance at 200HZ and a certain point on 8KHZ.
In short, electrostatic speakers have good midrange, depth, frequency extension at both ends, sound image is also acceptable, and dynamics are limited.
Aluminum belt and electromagnetic flat type
Produced by a small number of American manufacturers, such as Apogee, Magnepan, Eminent Technology, etc., are divided into two categories. The aluminum belt type uses a very thin, corrugated aluminum belt (voice coil) to move left and right in the magnetic field; Grease film, voice coil printed or pasted on the diaphragm.
The electromagnetic flat type usually uses a magnet array with magnets behind the diaphragm or in front and back of the diaphragm (working in a push-pull mode), but the magnetic field distribution is not uniform so it is more distorted than electrostatic speakers, but the output sound pressure is also much larger .
The magnetic gap of the electromagnetic plate type is larger than that of the moving coil type, and the length of the wire in the magnetic field is shorter, so the electromagnetic coupling is poor. In the moving coil type, the high BL product means that there is a strong magnetic field and more voice coils are placed in the magnetic field, resulting in a larger back electromotive force. The damping is mainly caused by the elasticity and air resistance of the diaphragm, and the effect of the power amplifier is relatively small. And the impedance and efficiency are very low. If you try to increase the performance by lengthening the "wire", it will cause the phase response to become worse.
They have a unified drive, which is close to a linear sound source, but the impedance and efficiency are too low, so they cannot be used in the bass unit. Many actual aluminum belt units usually use an impedance converter to match their impedance as low as 0.5 ohms.
The sound of electromagnetic plate type is between moving coil and electrostatic type. The medium and high frequencies have less staining and the radiation pattern is similar to the electrostatic type. Therefore, the problems of bass and sound images are also similar, and it is difficult to use the power amplifier damping to change the sound. This type of speaker is the most sensitive to the room. In some rooms, you need to choose between smooth bass and sound image positioning, so I do n’t like it, but I know that many people like its natural, open sound, and the aluminum band has a high sound ratio. The moving coil and the static are better, only second to the "no quality" tweeter.
The magical "quality-free" speaker
The principle is to use music pulse ionized gas to emit sound (the ionized gas is helium, which cannot be air, otherwise ozone will be harmful to health), so there is no resonance until 100KHZ or above, accurate phase, flat frequency response, and almost no distortion.
I remember listening to Plasmatronics at CES in the winter of 1979. It can be said that such a tweeter has never been heard-it looks like a tube that emits blue-violet light in a dark room. They emit the most beautiful sound. The measurement results It is also best to have a "diaphragm" with quality, but the same quality as air, so the acoustic coupling is 1: 1. Its efficiency is difficult to describe. The screen voltage of the tube can be directly controlled. This is probably the end of speaker development.
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