I think you have to reduce the pixel count to reduce the size. Here is a test of inserting an image of one of your score sheets, reduced from your original 1000x1333 pixels down to 200x266 pixels. Because of the reduced pixel count, however, you can no longer read it. So, cropping a portion of your image down to 200x266 pixels or so would probably be the solution. EDIT: Or, you could "attach" the image instead of "inserting" it, so the reader would then need to open the image to see it.
@jr@mac said:
All you need to know about that comment was the qualifier re. the type of tweeter. Simple confirmation bias.
Perhaps.
But the other thing about bullet tweeters. Or tweeter with very small faceplates eg. B&W tweeter in the Nautilus pod, is that they are have a lot of off axis energy around 2KHz.
Here’s a typical 1” dome tweeter on a large baffle with large 1.5" roundovers- without waveguide:
So there’s something to it. What someone means when they say splashiness is up for debate. But from my own use it's is related to not only excess SPL energy, but also time decay. Something that sound seems "confused" or too much reverberation. I'm not sure if it's related to harmonic distortion.
For Steve:
Evaggelos Kaselouris et. al. A detailed FEM study on the vibro-acoustic behaviour of crash and splash musical cymbals:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIRCUITS, SYSTEMS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING
DOI: 10.46300/9106.2022.16.116 Volume 16, 2022
Link is bad, Thanh - takes me to an Internal Server Error page but I would never have thought there was a research study done on this specific subject otherwise. Thanks for the enlightenment.
@jr@mac said:
All you need to know about that comment was the qualifier re. the type of tweeter. Simple confirmation bias.
Perhaps.
But the other thing about bullet tweeters. Or tweeter with very small faceplates eg. B&W tweeter in the Nautilus pod, is that they are have a lot of off axis energy around 2KHz.
Here’s a typical 1” dome tweeter on a large baffle with large 1.5" roundovers- without waveguide:
So there’s something to it. What someone means when they say splashiness is up for debate. But from my own use it's is related to not only excess SPL energy, but also time decay. Something that sound seems "confused" or too much reverberation. I'm not sure if it's related to harmonic distortion.
For Steve:
Evaggelos Kaselouris et. al. A detailed FEM study on the vibro-acoustic behaviour of crash and splash musical cymbals:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIRCUITS, SYSTEMS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING
DOI: 10.46300/9106.2022.16.116 Volume 16, 2022
Regarding the excessive 2kHz energy, are you referring to the common 1-3kHz "blooming" effect, which makes a speaker sound bright even though it measures flat on-axis? This would be why many designers employ what is referred to as the BBC dip in the 1-3kHz (on-axis) to compensate for the off-axis blooming effect. Would we need to see the power response or estimated in-room response curves to see this "bulging" or blooming effect?
Thanks for showing the polars out to 75 degrees. So the speaker has very wide dispersion out to about 3.5Khz, after which it drops off precipitously. Quite similar behaviour to the B&W tube loaded (bullet) tweeter-on-top teeeter.
@4thtry
It is a slightly different phenomenon to the the “blooming” that you mention, but in essence yes, it is about a change in directivity and thus power response. In the 2 way speakers without waveguides that I design, when measured out to +/- 90 degrees, they have the wide, narrow, wide dispersion characteristic. So in the crossover region I design (or accept) a dip in the on-axis around 3K that allows for a smoother down-sloping power response or Predicted In Room response.
But what we have here is a WIIIIIDE - then narrow response. As Keith has shown in his off axis response- it’s very flat up until about 3KHz, so the PIR or power response would be a minimally downtrending line until ~ 3.5KHz, after which the slope of the line goes down much more steeply.
So relative to other speakers it probably does have excess energy in the 2-4KHz region.
Could that perhaps explain the source of the “splashiness”?
@Steve_Lee
The forum software truncates the link when you click on it. You’ll be to manually append the URL with the “(2022).pdf” bit, if you were interested in seeing how a splash measures differently from a crash.
This is all curious to me but I’m starting to feel that we are all chasing our tails, because there is no reference standard in a recording studio- What amount of dispersion or directivity is “correct” when no such agreement have ever been made at the recording venue?
To compound things even further- a century after the invention of the loudspeaker we have professional speakers like the Avantone Mixcube Pro and CLA-10 being pushed as studio products; and they can’t even get the on axis right, let alone any other axis! (rant off)
It's all very subjective. As for Keith's speakers, the on/off axis has that little peak at 5.5K that is in every measurement, and a dip right before it. Is this the culprit? 🤷🏻♂️ Also as you get further off axis, the top end starts gaining back, room? Baffle anomaly? Who knows.
I usually just check off axis to make sure nothing crazy is happening. I mean hell, my speakers have zero edge treatment. Big no no, right?🤷🏻♂️ Again, so subjective. Grain of salt. I still don't think I should have won, but whatever. I had fun as usual.
Your speakers look very unique and looks sell.
I have awesome sounding speakers that no-one cares about because they are ugly.
At least no-one is going to steal them from me . . .
@6thplanet said:
It's all very subjective. As for Keith's speakers, the on/off axis has that little peak at 5.5K that is in every measurement, and a dip right before it. Is this the culprit? 🤷🏻♂️ Also as you get further off axis, the top end starts gaining back, room? Baffle anomaly? Who knows.
I usually just check off axis to make sure nothing crazy is happening. I mean hell, my speakers have zero edge treatment. Big no no, right?🤷🏻♂️ Again, so subjective. Grain of salt. I still don't think I should have won, but whatever. I had fun as usual.
I don’t mean to pick on Keith’s design. I’m just curious about the nature of the auditory interpretation as it relates to the measurement and graphical interpretation.
If someone says splashiness during a sighted test, are we to assume it’s a bias against a bullet (minimally baffled) tweeter?
Or is there something actually going on?
One way would be to EQ out that 5.5Khz peak (which is most like a baffle diffraction effect on the tweeter) by using a parametric EQ of about -2dB with a Q of 3-4. And listen again.
Or improve the directivity matching around 2-3 KHz by using a slightly higher crossover point and/or shallower slope.
As for how important the audibility of mild diffraction effects are- I don’t know either.
In my own main system I had to accept no round-overs (so I off-set the tweeter). But like you’ve noticed- it’s clearly not a deal breaker. Maybe it creates a special effect that is different (from a speaker that has a heavily optimised baffle edge)
And from a neurobiology point of view, different is interesting (the brain likes novelty)
@tktran and @6thplanet - by all means guys please pick This kind of discussion is actually more valuable to me than the judges input based on 3 minutes of listening!
My thoughts, I kinda honed in on some midrange cues to decipher between the good and the great. The room really helped the bass out, so most of the entries had good bass. I tend to prefer top end, so a few with shy top end didn't score well for me. I was sitting behind the judges one seat from far right.
From what I remember, Keith, the top end did seem a bit hot and midrange clarity was off compared to my top pics. As in just didn't seem as detailed as others. Bass was excellent, treble clarity was good. Cab work was nice. That baffle was amazing looking, totally dug that!
To put things in perspective, John and Daves isobaric 2ways were both spot on. I gave the first position to Dave because they sounded just as nice in Indiana. John was second. Ben and Bill were a toss up for third. Loved the mid and up for Ben, but Bill's bass was better to me and his cab work was excellent, nod went to him for third.
Eric, i would tend to agree with your assessment of Keith's towers. From where I set, treble was very nice and clean without splash. Bass was good. Spectral balance seemed good, but something seemed a bit off or maligned somehow. It could be a directivity mismatch, or a slight phase anomaly I suppose. There may have been a lack of detail in the upper mids, but I did not hear that or focus on it.
As to the rest of the entries by comparison from my position;
I felt Bill's lacked bass and it made them sound bright by comparison. Yes his cabs looked nice. I preferred these in the Spring.
Your cabs were gorgeous, Eric, and the balance was good. While John's mids were stellar, I felt that was the only thing he had on yours. Dave's had a peak in the mids in my location, which I did not hear in the Spring. Brad's sounded as good as before, but the tweeter was just still not cutting the resolving mustard for me, even though balanced and clean, and the cabinetry could have been a bit better. I felt mine did not extend as deep as others, though balanced, but upper tier was the cleanest of the bunch, and the best cabinetry/paint I've ever done.
I had Eric in 1st, me in second, and JohnH in 3rd as far as my vote goes.
That said...
I may have been in a bass null in my location, one chair closer to center on the left than Eric was on the right. Jerry turned around after mine and said the bass on mine were just awesome, so that made me think this.
hmm... so midrange clarity was off... I wonder.... I mean I did stuff 60g of polyfill in there to try and lower the Qtc as best I could. Chasing that Jim Moriyasu Speaker Builder article from 2000's stating a mid enclosure with Qtc approaching 0.5 was best. I got to about 0.68 before things just stopped changing. Maybe I choked off my mids with that much stuffing?
I was hanging in there with judges 2 and 3, but judge 1 sure didn't like what he heard.
@wolf - interesting comment that you made above...Only judge 1 left comments:
(1) Tweeter a bit hot. Good detail, but turn in down just a bit. Bass good.
(2) Upper mids and highs a bit hot. Gives his voice some thin quality
(3) Image collapsed. Vocal ok, but thin.
The only person I talked to about the speakers was CraigK who was not in InDIYana and he suggested I take about a 1 ohm off the tweeter resistor...because they were a little flat.
I was a little disappointed that Judges 2 and 3 didn't provide much in terms of comments. I know they have to listen non-stop all day long, but I've always appreciated the little comments they've made in the past, and even brief they have often been helpful.
Under $300 Category: Voz Pacifica: Lavoce TN131.00 and SB Acoustics SB16PFCR25-8 (DIY sliced cone)
Not many posts of scores from the under $300 category, but based on comments at SDC and in this thread I think I was pretty close to the top 3.
I know not everyone is a fan of PE, SDC or the competitions in general, but it sure is a good time hanging out with all of you guys and listening to great speakers. See some of you in Detroit and Des Moines.
@KEtheredge87 said:
hmm... so midrange clarity was off... I wonder.... I mean I did stuff 60g of polyfill in there to try and lower the Qtc as best I could. Chasing that Jim Moriyasu Speaker Builder article from 2000's stating a mid enclosure with Qtc approaching 0.5 was best. I got to about 0.68 before things just stopped changing. Maybe I choked off my mids with that much stuffing?
Honestly, could just be the driver. No amount of stuffing will help if it's not performing.
I'm definitely a believer in just because it measures nice doesn't always mean it'll sound nice.
sometimes what is theoretically ideal is practically immaterial.
Like this Qtc thing for a midrange driver in a midrange box. Classically, the Qtc determines your low end rolloff and subsequent excess group delay right?
But once you add in the passive high pass components then the bottom end of midrange’s pass band follows whatever the filter dictates. So the Qtc follows whatever transfer function you dictate.
So it’s the box volume, stuffing and high pass filter/EQ that determines the rolloff. So then one can forget about the Qtc in the traditional sense; it just rolls off the way it rolls off- and with modern tools you can certainly measure this using a ground plane method or near field + diffraction loss compensation simulator.
I suspect the aim for a Qtc of 0.5 for a midrange box is from the same era of “use a LR4 filter for a 8 ohm driver”
So my score sheets never showed up, lost in the sucking abyss know as the USPS, but rest assured that if they ever do arrive they will be thoroughly mangled and placed in a plastic bag that reads "WE CARE". I receive several of said bags per year.
Finally got mine today. The envelope was post marked 8/7/2023, so mine took 10 days to reach Wisconsin. Looks like the judges really liked my horizontal "horseshoe style" red racing stripes. Overall, the Zonkers did much better than the Retros. EDIT: I just noticed that 3 speakers so far (Chimera, Bosi 225, and Retrospeak) have the "image collapsed" note for track 3. I'll have to set my speakers up and play track 3 again to see if I can recreate this anomaly at home. (EDIT: Spelling)
Very close to 20 years old. Darren brought the first project I saw and heard with an RS midbass in 2004 to the Dayton DIY, as well as the Collossi. I believe the midbasses were announced in late 2003, and the RSS subs came the following Spring.
That said, the papers came maybe 8 years ago or so, and there have been 2 big changes over the aluminum lineup over the years. The first was the change from fiberglass or Kapton to black aluminum formers very early on, and the second was the revamp with Klippel optimization. And- they are still here and competitive with the other available driver lines out there.
Comments
I think you have to reduce the pixel count to reduce the size. Here is a test of inserting an image of one of your score sheets, reduced from your original 1000x1333 pixels down to 200x266 pixels. Because of the reduced pixel count, however, you can no longer read it. So, cropping a portion of your image down to 200x266 pixels or so would probably be the solution. EDIT: Or, you could "attach" the image instead of "inserting" it, so the reader would then need to open the image to see it.
Now I wonder how a splash cymbal is supposed to sound . . . on a speaker . . .
This is how I wound-up here and addicted to speaker building . . . chasing a moving target . . .
Perhaps.
But the other thing about bullet tweeters. Or tweeter with very small faceplates eg. B&W tweeter in the Nautilus pod, is that they are have a lot of off axis energy around 2KHz.
Here’s a typical 1” dome tweeter on a large baffle with large 1.5" roundovers- without waveguide:
With waveguide:
Here’s a bullet tweeter, no baffle-
Reference:
https://pkaudio.webnode.cz/
So there’s something to it. What someone means when they say splashiness is up for debate. But from my own use it's is related to not only excess SPL energy, but also time decay. Something that sound seems "confused" or too much reverberation. I'm not sure if it's related to harmonic distortion.
For Steve:
Evaggelos Kaselouris et. al. A detailed FEM study on the vibro-acoustic behaviour of crash and splash musical cymbals:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIRCUITS, SYSTEMS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING
DOI: 10.46300/9106.2022.16.116 Volume 16, 2022
https://npublications.com/journals/circuitssystemssignal/2022/c362005-116(2022).pdf
Keith, what did you cross over at?
JR, Crossover on this guy between mid and HF was right around 2K.
Any off axis response or waterfall plot for that tweeter?
Here you go sir! Full system off axis from 0-75 deg
Link is bad, Thanh - takes me to an Internal Server Error page but I would never have thought there was a research study done on this specific subject otherwise. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Regarding the excessive 2kHz energy, are you referring to the common 1-3kHz "blooming" effect, which makes a speaker sound bright even though it measures flat on-axis? This would be why many designers employ what is referred to as the BBC dip in the 1-3kHz (on-axis) to compensate for the off-axis blooming effect. Would we need to see the power response or estimated in-room response curves to see this "bulging" or blooming effect?
@KEtheredge87
Thanks for showing the polars out to 75 degrees. So the speaker has very wide dispersion out to about 3.5Khz, after which it drops off precipitously. Quite similar behaviour to the B&W tube loaded (bullet) tweeter-on-top teeeter.
@4thtry
It is a slightly different phenomenon to the the “blooming” that you mention, but in essence yes, it is about a change in directivity and thus power response. In the 2 way speakers without waveguides that I design, when measured out to +/- 90 degrees, they have the wide, narrow, wide dispersion characteristic. So in the crossover region I design (or accept) a dip in the on-axis around 3K that allows for a smoother down-sloping power response or Predicted In Room response.
But what we have here is a WIIIIIDE - then narrow response. As Keith has shown in his off axis response- it’s very flat up until about 3KHz, so the PIR or power response would be a minimally downtrending line until ~ 3.5KHz, after which the slope of the line goes down much more steeply.
So relative to other speakers it probably does have excess energy in the 2-4KHz region.
Could that perhaps explain the source of the “splashiness”?
@Steve_Lee
The forum software truncates the link when you click on it. You’ll be to manually append the URL with the “(2022).pdf” bit, if you were interested in seeing how a splash measures differently from a crash.
This is all curious to me but I’m starting to feel that we are all chasing our tails, because there is no reference standard in a recording studio- What amount of dispersion or directivity is “correct” when no such agreement have ever been made at the recording venue?
To compound things even further- a century after the invention of the loudspeaker we have professional speakers like the Avantone Mixcube Pro and CLA-10 being pushed as studio products; and they can’t even get the on axis right, let alone any other axis! (rant off)
It's all very subjective. As for Keith's speakers, the on/off axis has that little peak at 5.5K that is in every measurement, and a dip right before it. Is this the culprit? 🤷🏻♂️ Also as you get further off axis, the top end starts gaining back, room? Baffle anomaly? Who knows.
I usually just check off axis to make sure nothing crazy is happening. I mean hell, my speakers have zero edge treatment. Big no no, right?🤷🏻♂️ Again, so subjective. Grain of salt. I still don't think I should have won, but whatever. I had fun as usual.
Your speakers look very unique and looks sell.
I have awesome sounding speakers that no-one cares about because they are ugly.
At least no-one is going to steal them from me . . .
I don’t mean to pick on Keith’s design. I’m just curious about the nature of the auditory interpretation as it relates to the measurement and graphical interpretation.
If someone says splashiness during a sighted test, are we to assume it’s a bias against a bullet (minimally baffled) tweeter?
Or is there something actually going on?
One way would be to EQ out that 5.5Khz peak (which is most like a baffle diffraction effect on the tweeter) by using a parametric EQ of about -2dB with a Q of 3-4. And listen again.
Or improve the directivity matching around 2-3 KHz by using a slightly higher crossover point and/or shallower slope.
As for how important the audibility of mild diffraction effects are- I don’t know either.
In my own main system I had to accept no round-overs (so I off-set the tweeter). But like you’ve noticed- it’s clearly not a deal breaker. Maybe it creates a special effect that is different (from a speaker that has a heavily optimised baffle edge)
And from a neurobiology point of view, different is interesting (the brain likes novelty)
(Edit- minor grammatical/spelling errors)
Absolutely
...and not picking on, merely observing.
@tktran and @6thplanet - by all means guys please pick
This kind of discussion is actually more valuable to me than the judges input based on 3 minutes of listening!
My thoughts, I kinda honed in on some midrange cues to decipher between the good and the great. The room really helped the bass out, so most of the entries had good bass. I tend to prefer top end, so a few with shy top end didn't score well for me. I was sitting behind the judges one seat from far right.
From what I remember, Keith, the top end did seem a bit hot and midrange clarity was off compared to my top pics. As in just didn't seem as detailed as others. Bass was excellent, treble clarity was good. Cab work was nice. That baffle was amazing looking, totally dug that!
To put things in perspective, John and Daves isobaric 2ways were both spot on. I gave the first position to Dave because they sounded just as nice in Indiana. John was second. Ben and Bill were a toss up for third. Loved the mid and up for Ben, but Bill's bass was better to me and his cab work was excellent, nod went to him for third.
Eric, i would tend to agree with your assessment of Keith's towers. From where I set, treble was very nice and clean without splash. Bass was good. Spectral balance seemed good, but something seemed a bit off or maligned somehow. It could be a directivity mismatch, or a slight phase anomaly I suppose. There may have been a lack of detail in the upper mids, but I did not hear that or focus on it.
As to the rest of the entries by comparison from my position;
I felt Bill's lacked bass and it made them sound bright by comparison. Yes his cabs looked nice. I preferred these in the Spring.
Your cabs were gorgeous, Eric, and the balance was good. While John's mids were stellar, I felt that was the only thing he had on yours. Dave's had a peak in the mids in my location, which I did not hear in the Spring. Brad's sounded as good as before, but the tweeter was just still not cutting the resolving mustard for me, even though balanced and clean, and the cabinetry could have been a bit better. I felt mine did not extend as deep as others, though balanced, but upper tier was the cleanest of the bunch, and the best cabinetry/paint I've ever done.
I had Eric in 1st, me in second, and JohnH in 3rd as far as my vote goes.
That said...
I may have been in a bass null in my location, one chair closer to center on the left than Eric was on the right. Jerry turned around after mine and said the bass on mine were just awesome, so that made me think this.
InDIYana Event Website
hmm... so midrange clarity was off... I wonder.... I mean I did stuff 60g of polyfill in there to try and lower the Qtc as best I could. Chasing that Jim Moriyasu Speaker Builder article from 2000's stating a mid enclosure with Qtc approaching 0.5 was best. I got to about 0.68 before things just stopped changing. Maybe I choked off my mids with that much stuffing?
Over $300 Category:
Bosi 225: Satori TW29RN-B-8 and isobaric Dayton RS225-8
Category... Judge 1/ 2/ 3
Clarity.......................6/ 8/ 9
Craftsmanship............9/ 7/ 9
Dynamic Range..........7/ 8/ 8
Originality/Design.......6/ 8/ 8
Soundstage/Imaging...5/ 7/ 8
Tonal Balance.............5/ 7/ 8
Total 134
I was hanging in there with judges 2 and 3, but judge 1 sure didn't like what he heard.
@wolf - interesting comment that you made above...Only judge 1 left comments:
(1) Tweeter a bit hot. Good detail, but turn in down just a bit. Bass good.
(2) Upper mids and highs a bit hot. Gives his voice some thin quality
(3) Image collapsed. Vocal ok, but thin.
The only person I talked to about the speakers was CraigK who was not in InDIYana and he suggested I take about a 1 ohm off the tweeter resistor...because they were a little flat.
I was a little disappointed that Judges 2 and 3 didn't provide much in terms of comments. I know they have to listen non-stop all day long, but I've always appreciated the little comments they've made in the past, and even brief they have often been helpful.
Under $300 Category:
Voz Pacifica: Lavoce TN131.00 and SB Acoustics SB16PFCR25-8 (DIY sliced cone)
Category... Judge 1/ 2/ 3
Clarity.......................7/ 8/ 9
Craftsmanship............8/ 8/ 9
Dynamic Range..........7/ 8/ 8
Originality/Design.......7/ 7/ 9
Soundstage/Imaging...7/ 8/ 8
Tonal Balance.............7/ 8/ 9
Total 142
Not many posts of scores from the under $300 category, but based on comments at SDC and in this thread I think I was pretty close to the top 3.
I know not everyone is a fan of PE, SDC or the competitions in general, but it sure is a good time hanging out with all of you guys and listening to great speakers. See some of you in Detroit and Des Moines.
Honestly, could just be the driver. No amount of stuffing will help if it's not performing.
I'm definitely a believer in just because it measures nice doesn't always mean it'll sound nice.
sometimes what is theoretically ideal is practically immaterial.
Like this Qtc thing for a midrange driver in a midrange box. Classically, the Qtc determines your low end rolloff and subsequent excess group delay right?
But once you add in the passive high pass components then the bottom end of midrange’s pass band follows whatever the filter dictates. So the Qtc follows whatever transfer function you dictate.
So it’s the box volume, stuffing and high pass filter/EQ that determines the rolloff. So then one can forget about the Qtc in the traditional sense; it just rolls off the way it rolls off- and with modern tools you can certainly measure this using a ground plane method or near field + diffraction loss compensation simulator.
I suspect the aim for a Qtc of 0.5 for a midrange box is from the same era of “use a LR4 filter for a 8 ohm driver”
So my score sheets never showed up, lost in the sucking abyss know as the USPS, but rest assured that if they ever do arrive they will be thoroughly mangled and placed in a plastic bag that reads "WE CARE". I receive several of said bags per year.
Finally got mine today. The envelope was post marked 8/7/2023, so mine took 10 days to reach Wisconsin. Looks like the judges really liked my horizontal "horseshoe style" red racing stripes. Overall, the Zonkers did much better than the Retros. EDIT: I just noticed that 3 speakers so far (Chimera, Bosi 225, and Retrospeak) have the "image collapsed" note for track 3. I'll have to set my speakers up and play track 3 again to see if I can recreate this anomaly at home. (EDIT: Spelling)
My Scores finally showed up today!
Total score, 157.
Great score cards Dave!!!
Hey an 8 for Dynamic range! Lol
Those were fantastic, well deserved win!
Wow. RS225 almost 2 decades old and still great a midwoofer to use for a 2 way. That’s some staying power.
Very close to 20 years old. Darren brought the first project I saw and heard with an RS midbass in 2004 to the Dayton DIY, as well as the Collossi. I believe the midbasses were announced in late 2003, and the RSS subs came the following Spring.
InDIYana Event Website
I should have used a pair of these in my Retros instead of the RS270P's
That said, the papers came maybe 8 years ago or so, and there have been 2 big changes over the aluminum lineup over the years. The first was the change from fiberglass or Kapton to black aluminum formers very early on, and the second was the revamp with Klippel optimization. And- they are still here and competitive with the other available driver lines out there.
InDIYana Event Website