Planar Speaker Asylum

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Planar Speaker Asylum

RE: The Mylar is not a passive pool of water...

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In Reply to: RE: The Mylar is not a passive pool of water... posted by emsquare on July 06, 2010 at 04:16:05

The problems with the mid bass are as I understand it (which isn't terribly well, I'm no speaker designer) caused by reflections rather than the shape of the baffle.

My 1-D's have some kind of vents at the edge of baffle -- it's the only time I've seen that strategy used. But you should be able to smooth the response that way above the 1/f region, sure. Or you can use a serrated edge of some sort.

You may find this page interesting:

http://www.musicanddesign.com/Dipoles_and_open_baffles.html

Follow Ups:

RE: The Mylar is not a passive pool of water... - emsquare 09:13:13 07/06/10 (3)
Hi J, I do find that intersting. Thanks.
When I started considering what I wanted to change with the baffle of this speaker is to relieve the ribbon from the pressure wave created by the bass panel. That and minimizing the doplar shift induced by the two being physicly connected. I could stop right there and call it good but... if I can find a way to flatten the bass response a bit then I think I would like that.
What got me started on that was something that I read about the Carver Amazing Platinums. I would like to re-read it before I quote anything about it but I get the impression that the Platinum's are Bob Carver's version of a Magnepan. Part of what the speakers take advantage of is the Bezzle nature of the open baffle. The natural six db. roll off combined with the chosen Q / resonant peak of the bass divers sum nicely well into the 20's before the roll off starts to dominate. I may not be able to find the Q of this bass panel though and will be content with the original idea. I can live with that.

In search of musical bliss...

Edits: 07/06/10
- RE: The Mylar is not a passive pool of water... - josh358 10:14:48 07/06/10 (2)
  Magnepan and other manufacturers of dipoles actually do the same thing with their bass panels -- they're underdamped, and the resonance compensates for the 6 db/octave dipole rolloff. Otherwise, you'd have to use active equalization, which would gobble up amplifier power. For an interesting rundown, see the letters after Stereophile's review of the 1.6.
  
  The Magnepan resonance does seem to be higher in amplitude than is necessary for flat response, but also see the conversation I was having the other day with Dr. Chaos -- it seems that the ear wants to hear a bit of a bass boost on two-channel reproductions of large ensemble works.
  
  Anyway, I think it's a good idea to tread lightly here. Magnepan puts a lot of effort and "black art" know-how into the development of each model, which is one of the reasons I think that their speakers are so musical. The crossover, dimensions, tensioning, mechanical damping, magnet strength, and so forth have all been carefully chosen, albeit considerations of economics and practicality sometimes trump considerations of sound quality. It's easy for those of us who don't design planars for a living to wander in an do more harm than good. Not that that's ever stopped me, LOL. :-) But the trick as we were saying is to figure out what's been done for economy and can be improved, and what's been done for good reasons that we don't happen to understand.
  - wise words - wazoo 10:48:53 07/06/10 (1)
    "But the trick as we were saying is to figure out what's been done for economy and can be improved, and what's been done for good reasons that we don't happen to understand."
    
    I also agree that "Magnepan puts a lot of effort and 'black art' know-how into the development of each model" . Like you, I believe that all of those things you listed are carefully chosen and probably tested and tweaked quite a bit during development. It has been suggested that Magnepan just kind of throws things together - a ridiculous notion if you ask me. (Oh, and it hasn't stopped me either. ;-)
    
    "Jazz is not dead - it just smells funny" FZ
    - RE: wise words - josh358 09:17:43 07/07/10 (0)
      Engineering projects always seem infinitely simpler from the outside. Even if they're you're own project . . .

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