Define it for me... Slam, Ring & Dynamics

[SimplySound]

I'm going to start some threads on Terms we seem to use around here on AK and lets just call it "Define it for me". I'll try to cluster these under a grouping that seems logical. I'll try to make it fun and maybe we'll all learn something and come up with new terms!

So let's start with what many may think are the same thing, but which might not be. When someone says a speaker has a "Ring" to them, what might they mean? Is the ring of a speaker related to "Slam" or is Slam really all about the Bass drive of a speaker. And how do Ring and Slam relate to the "Dynamics" of a speaker?

Thoughts oh wise AK'ers???

 

[crouse]

It will be interesting to see others' responses. I think of ringing as a negative artifact. A type of distortion that is unpleasant. A dissonant ringing, if you will. Perhaps others use the term differently?

 

[HiFiThor]

Not sure about "slam" but "ring" is easy. When the music signal stops the driver should stop too. This is more evident with speakers that have metal or rigid cones for driver surfaces. I once saw some oscillographs of various speakers that were hit with a square wave pulse. Ideally the speaker should respond in the exact manner, following the rise/duration/fall of the pulse. The worst example was the Ohm F speaker. It was basically an inverted metal bell coupled to a bass enclosure. After the pulse passed the speaker continued to "ring" (about 20 cycles!) until it damped out. It was like hitting a bell. Of course this type of action is unwanted as it colors the sound, The ringing adds to the music. The best example I saw of a faithful following of the pulse was a Magnepan speaker. It only rang for about half a cycle. The quest for faithful sound reproduction has always been the science of overcoming inertia and controlling it. I think the best example of this was a completely diaphramless speaker. The speaker used an ionized gas arc to produce the sound. The bummer is that you could run out of gas and have to stop and get the cylinder refilled.

 

[Tom Brennan]

Dynamics is easy; it's how loud a speaker gets and how well it gets loud--- for example with some speakers the woofer will compress, run out of gas so to speak, before the tweeter--thus the tonal balance changes as the speaker gets louder, that's bad dynamics. And distortion rises with volume, worse with some speakers than others. A speaker with good dynamics gets as loud as the music calls for with a minimum of compression and distortion. No strain.

 

[JoeESP9]

Not sure about "slam" but "ring" is easy. When the music signal stops the driver should stop too. This is more evident with speakers that have metal or rigid cones for driver surfaces. I once saw some oscillographs of various speakers that were hit with a square wave pulse. Ideally the speaker should respond in the exact manner, following the rise/duration/fall of the pulse. The worst example was the Ohm F speaker. It was basically an inverted metal bell coupled to a bass enclosure. After the pulse passed the speaker continued to "ring" (about 20 cycles!) until it damped out. It was like hitting a bell. Of course this type of action is unwanted as it colors the sound, The ringing adds to the music. The best example I saw of a faithful following of the pulse was a Magnepan speaker. It only rang for about half a cycle. The quest for faithful sound reproduction has always been the science of overcoming inertia and controlling it. I think the best example of this was a completely diaphramless speaker. The speaker used an ionized gas arc to produce the sound. The bummer is that you could run out of gas and have to stop and get the cylinder refilled.

No (actually much less) ringing is one of the reasons I like Maggies and other (especially ESL) panel type speakers. The original Quad ESL is supposed to be able to reproduce a recognizable square wave.

IIRC the Dukane Ionovac (1956?) was the first speaker (tweeter) to produce sound with no diaphragm (Plasma). The Hill Plasmatronic (1980?) came with a refillable cylinder of Nitrogen. The gas was for the plasma the tweeter produced/used. Lansche speakers from Germany use Plasma tweeters in all their models. However, AFAIK they all use a Plasma only for the tweeters. The high open air voltages used in massless speakers have a tendency to produce Ozone. This is one of the main reasons Dr. Hill used a tank of Nitrogen in his design..

The only full range massless (Plasma) speaker I'm aware of was one Nelson Pass demoed at a CES years ago. Unfortunately, it produced such massive amounts of Ozone it caused Mr. Pass to spend some vacation time in hospital.

 

[SimplySound]

Well this is interesting... folks seem to be defining "Ring" from the perspective of the driver, but how about the enclosure?

I think of ring as how the harmonics of the enclosure interact with the drivers. I'll bring up the BBC "thin walled" un-ported sealed enclosures and ask how that may come into play when someone mentions ring? Now is it necessarily bad? I guess you could argue that ring is distortion and coloration, but I'd like to ask how do you reproduce the echo inside a stand-up Bass, or the thump resonance of a Bass Drum, or the "ring" that a bass string of a guitar makes? Isn't "Ring" perhaps part of the music that is only made audible through the interaction of the driver with the enclosure?

 

[Tom Brennan]

I think of ring as how the harmonics of the enclosure interact with the drivers. I'll bring up the BBC "thin walled" un-ported sealed enclosures and ask how that may come into play when someone mentions ring? Now is it necessarily bad? I guess you could argue that ring is distortion and coloration, but I'd like to ask how do you reproduce the echo inside a stand-up Bass, or the thump resonance of a Bass Drum, or the "ring" that a bass string of a guitar makes? Isn't "Ring" perhaps part of the music that is only made audible through the interaction of the driver with the enclosure?

A speaker that reproduces what it's fed reproduces recorded resonances as a matter of course without ringing of its own. The recorded ringing is just signal. If the enclosure of the reproducing speaker itself rang it would add more ring atop the intended sound and thus it would sound inaccurate.

 

[SimplySound]

No (actually much less) ringing is one of the reasons I like Maggies and other (especially ESL) panel type speakers. The original Quad ESL is supposed to be able to reproduce a recognizable square wave.

Good point Joe... And this is why I started the thread... I just jumped off of my Acoustat's to build a "Wall of Dunlavy" because I missed the Slam?Ring?Dynamics? of cones. My Dunlavy SC-IV's are pretty accurate when it comes to reproducing a square wave, but what is this thing called "Dynamics" that I was missing and now seem to have found?

And yes Tom, I agree with your definition of Dynamics as it relates to "distortion at volume", but isn't there also an element of Dynamics in how the various frequencies are presented as a dimension of SPL (Sound Pressure Level)? What is it about Cones that differs from Stats/Panels when the volume rises? Is it the displacement/excursion characteristics of the cone relative to a panel that generates a different perception of Dynamics?

 

[Tom Brennan]

And yes Tom, I agree with your definition of Dynamics as it relates to "distortion at volume", but isn't there also an element of Dynamics in how the various frequencies are presented as a dimension of SPL (Sound Pressure Level)? What is it about Cones that differs from Stats/Panels when the volume rises? Is it the displacement/excursion characteristics of the cone relative to a panel that generates a different perception of Dynamics?

Well I talked about how varying compression between different drivers affects frequency response and tonal balance. I first became aware of this from Richard Heyser's speaker tests in Audio magazine which often showed drastic changes in frequency response as volume rose. Speaker makers don't like to talk about this.

I didn't detect a difference in dynamics with direct radiators that I attributed to their being monopolar cone-dome things or dipolar panels. Differences in spatial presentation yes. My Magnepan MG IIs had rather poor dynamics despite their large radiating area. On the other hand my Martin Logan Vista electrostats hybrids (cone woofers below 400 he or so) had surprisingly good dynamics, perhaps because their push-pull operation gave lower distortion than the single ended Maggies? Hmm.

 

[SimplySound]

Thanks Tom, I do value your insight...but I'll leave you something else to ponder as you drift off to "La-La Land"... what of the "Room"? Does it have some impact associated with the Drivers and Enclosure that synergistically brings it all together? Uhmmm, this thing called "Ring"?

I just got done watching "Collateral Beauty" with Will Smith coming from the "Wall of Dunlavy" and there was something there... something more! Of course, a well produced (i.e.; audio mixed) current movie is going to sound as good as a source gets... but after that I listened to John Mayer's 1999 debut "demo" called "The Inside Wants Out"... and all I can say is that the "acoustic presentation" of that gem I'm not sure was all due to the drivers alone!!!

 

[Blue Shadow]

dynamics are an explanation of the overall attack of the speaker, not that it goes loud or soft but the ability to go from soft to loud in a very dynamic manner
slam is the ability of a speaker to slam you with power, a feeling in the gut a body slam. something that planar and e-stats don't really do so well and something a sub can improve to a degree but if the sub isn't fast like these two types of speakers it is not a good addition.

Slam, without a sub a car stereo sounds like an am radio and has no slam. Add the sub and the quality sound comes out with some power to hit you. Sure the am-like sound was accurate and clear but without subs those little 4" drivers can beat there hearts out and still not fill the cabin with sound. Need subs for that.
Home speakers of any size can have the low frequency response to be full range and then the slam is based on whether the sound knocks you down.

 

[Tom Brennan]

dynamics are an explanation of the overall attack of the speaker, not that it goes loud or soft but the ability to go from soft to loud in a very dynamic manner

You're going in circles, saying that dynamics is being...dynamic.

 

[Blue Shadow]

The Hill Plasmatronic (1980?) came with a refillable cylinder of Nitrogen. .

Just as an aside about the Hill speakers, you made me look since I heard them at CES in 78 or 79. Stereophile says the bottle last about 300 hours and got a price of 20 cents per hour of listening. Today's He price makes that $1.00 per hour just to run the speakers. Maybe have been why the guy that had a pair near me had em for sale a few years ago. But that is right in line with inflation since 79 to 16, 30¢ is $1.01.

 

[Blue Shadow]

You're going in circles, saying that dynamics is being...dynamic.

If you look at the definition of dynamic, I used the right term and one needs only get the definition to know exactly what is meant. Maybe that was a useless statement on my part so I'll get you the definiton: variation and contrast in force or intensity (as in music)

 

[Tom Brennan]

Thanks Tom, I do value your insight...but I'll leave you something else to ponder as you drift off to "La-La Land"... what of the "Room"? Does it have some impact associated with the Drivers and Enclosure that synergistically brings it all together? Uhmmm, this thing called "Ring"?

IME the room has great affects on frequency response and imaging but not so much on dynamics.

I had some Altec 605As that could make a huge image that could creep out along the sides of the wall and come up behind you like a Zulu impi--in the right room. In another room the right side enveloped but the left side hung back. In the last room I used them in they sounded dead, flat and useless, no life at all. But in the same room a set of JBL Pro 3115s sounded very good.

 

[Tom Brennan]

If you look at the definition of dynamic, I used the right term and one needs only get the definition to know exactly what is meant. Maybe that was a useless statement on my part so I'll get you the definiton: variation and contrast in force or intensity (as in music)

So the greater the volume a system can achieve above it's noise floor the greater the variation and contrast thus the greater the dynamics. I think we're on the same page there, in which case simple dynamics can be objective.

Some people use the term micro dynamics to (I think) describe the agility with which a speaker makes small dynamic changes. I think this described agility is more related to low distortion and high clarity in a speaker than to actual dynamics--dynamics being the ability to simply make changes in volume. I think people may be mislabeling or misinterpreting a very real effect. Maybe. Anyway, this is a trickier case than simple dynamic range.

 

[Blue Shadow]

So the greater the volume a system can achieve above it's noise floor the greater the variation and contrast.

No.

just because one can play it loud with lots of watts or play it quiet with few watts, that is the dynamic range. But when one plays it at a moderate or high volume and the difference between the low volume and high volume at the one playback level, the greater the difference, the greater the dynamics of the speaker.

How often do you read that speaker A really opens up with a big amp? That speaker might not have the greatest dynamics compared to one that doesn't require a big amp to get going. Not that this is an indication of quality of the speakers, just differences.

 

[Tom Brennan]

No.

just be cause one can play it loud with lots of watts or play it quiet with few watts, that is the dynamic range. But when one plays it at a moderate or high volume and the difference between the low volume and high volume at the one playback level, the greater the difference, the greater the dynamics of the speaker.

I'm sorry, I read this several times over and can make no sense of it. I don't know what you're trying to say, much less mull it over.

 

[Blue Shadow]

want to talk about it?

 

[Tom Brennan]

want to talk about it?

Yes.