Hello everyone

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I'm a fan of time and phase coherence. First order crossovers or single driver speakers are the only ones I can enjoy listening to for long periods of time. It may be because I have a lot of experience with playing classical musical instruments. I'm starting to understand how time/phase coherent designs place great demands on driver quality, so I'm developing an appreciation for the importance of the low impedance (Le) spec, combined with a flat frequency response, as well as harmonic distortion graphs. And an appreciation for expensive speaker drivers.

I'm currently using Class D amplification. Would love to get into Class A but the power usage / running costs are hard to justify. My nCore NC400 amps are very listenable though. For a source I had built a PC-based audio system about 15 years ahead of its time (back in 2000), with CDs ripped onto my 40 GB hard drive. Nowadays I pretty much only listen to streaming music - convenience and musical variety wins over quality, sad to say.

Audio is a fascinating hobby full of tradeoffs that force you to constantly re-examine your priorities. For instance, the difference in speakers between a sealed enclosure and open baffle enclosure is the sealed enclosure can provide better low-end frequency response and power handling, at the cost of higher low-end second order distortion. The lower frequency response allows you to go further without requiring a crossover, which always affects phase. So essentially an open baffle is also trading off phase performance at the low end. Now, how much second-order distortion is worth a later onset of phase rotation? This dilemma provides endless entertainment.

[Marco]

Hi Andrew,

Great introduction! Welcome to AoS

Hope you enjoy the forum and we look forward to reading your contributions!

Marco.

[walpurgis]

Hello Andrew. Welcome to AOS.

What music do you listen to? Please tell us more about your system and add some photos to the Gallery if you like. They'll be appreciated.

I agree with your views on speakers and have a preference for point sources myself.


Enjoy the forum,
Geoff.

[jollyfix]

Hi Andrew , welcome to AOS, enjoy the forum.

[Code Acoustics]

Hi Andrew,

I've just joined AOS myself, through my company banner 'CODE Acoustics', but first and foremost I'm just a music enthusiast and hi-fi tinkerer. That's a really interesting introduction. I couldn't agree more about the phase issues being caused by conventional passive crossovers. Not helped by dropping the crossover point right in the middle of the most sensitive part of our hearing. I'm also constantly surprised that big brands choose to invert drive unit phase to get a flatter frequency response on axis at the cost of significant phase distortion.

I've had really good results using a full range driver to cover everything from around 300-400Hz up and then using dedicated woofers. In this mode the cone movement of the full range is tiny and really clears up the midrange.

I've yet to try the NCore amps, but I've heard really good things. We're using the miniDSP plate amp, which incorporate the B&O ICE Power modules. Not too dissimilar from the Hypex modules.

You're absolutely right about the compromise of designing speakers. There is no such thing as a perfect way to design a speakers and I think that's what makes it so fascinating!