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RE: Measuring Maggie stuff with Cool Edit Pro (or Adobe Audition)

Posted by josh358 (P) on October 7, 2010 at 14:07:14

In Reply to: RE: Measuring Maggie stuff with Cool Edit Pro (or Adobe Audition) posted by pictureguy on October 7, 2010 at 12:36:02:

A box frame has additional requirements. In particular, it has to constrain the backwave without transmitting it to the room. However, beyond those requirements, the goal is the same -- provide a fixed attachment point for the drivers, one that doesn't "play along" with the speakers and distort the sound by moving in antiphase and resonating.

An undamped vibrating wooden cabinet can't reproduce sound cleanly. It's way too massive. That means it will produce frequency-dependent amplitude variations in the frequency response, and ringing in the time domain. Exactly the sort of resonant phenomenon we try to eliminate in our speakers and listening rooms.

That being said, many people have had good results with wood frames (which I haven't heard myself and can't, no pun intended, opine on). To the extent that cabinet resonances are impossible to eliminate, I do believe that the high Q resonances of wood may be more euphonic and similar to the sound of musical instruments. That would correlate well with the audible difference between the distortion + noise of cone and ribbon speakers. The ribbon spectrum distortion sounds better, because its more euphonic.

Getting mass down is, I think, problematic. Speaker technologies may differ, but Newton's laws still apply, and the diaphragm wants to push against a high mass. As I said earlier, rigid frames help in that regard since they can couple the drivers to the mass of the base, of the house, eventually of the earth. But we're talking torsion with a long moment arm here, as well as resonances, and even a very rigid frame will twist. So the ideal frame is neutronium, as far as I'm concerned, though I'd settle for iridium or even depleted uranium in a pinch. As I said, I'd also be concerned about pushing the resonant frequency up, rather than down. You really want the resonances to be outside of the audible range, if possible, and in the least audible parts of it if not.

In practice, a number of people have reported good results with sand bags, lead shot in their Mye frames, etc., which lends real world credence to theory. Also the OP, JBen, had bad results with less massive wood frames.

PG's frames don't have very high mass, but they aren't rigid, either, his design philosophy allows -- encourages -- them to resonate.

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