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Open baffle subwoofer

Perhaps I should have mentioned that many posters here play one or more instruments. I helped work my way through college by playing the bass. We know what live music sounds like. As for me I regularly attend concerts played by the Philadelphia Orchestra at The Kimmel Center. Those concerts provide my baseline for determining how good, or bad my system sounds.

My system always comes off a distant third even though there are only two sound sources in the running.:biggrin:
 
faber12 said:
I believe the mistake was in saying that this system sounds better than a $250,000 system.

Every time I have obtained a piece of gear that was a significant upgrade, I have realized just how much less my system was actually all that great before. Where can we go from here?

You can give up trying to convince us that you have thrown a few drivers and a capacitor together and managed to make a system that sounds better than one that someone has spent 30 years and many thousand dollars developing. You are not going to change our way of thinking.

We do however believe you that your system sounds good. :thumbsup:

The real reference for how a speaker 'should' sound is a real instrument. Does a guitar or cello sound like it is real? As an aside, have you ever heard a horn speaker play a brass instrument? Horns, French horns, tuba, etc?

Ever hear a pair of Bose 901? They are really cool. Big, wide open sound, lively and fun. Realistic? No. They are a ton of fun to listen to though.

I am rambling here. One thing I have learned is that you are not going to change someone's opinion over the internet. :) This thread is a fun read though, really.
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An important life lesson could be extracted here.

250 dollars is never 250000 dollars. Never, ever. ;)
 
I really need go listen to music critically or something.

On my reel to reel consumer machine.

Everything sounds like 250k on it. Even my wife, who isn't into audio can see, err I mean hear the difference in the timbre. Of my voice, which triggers her expectation bias response mechanism and she just "knows" what component should be sounding better when asked.

We should see if we can fit more audio into this thread.

And E-Stat is missing in action. Wonder whats up with that? I mean someone said "live, unamplified" and he didn't start posting. I hope hes ok? :)
 
ev13wt said:
Which brings me to this.

Timbre. The entire frequencies that make up a single sound event. Base, overtones, noise.

Your mother when she says: "Nick!"

Has a timbre. It can be recorded and reproduced with technology in such a way that the recreated sound event fools you into thinking its actually your mom.

A single violin note.
A snare hit.

Music is art. Fully agreed. Cannot predict a emotional response.

Everything to (re)produce the art (depending in part on the scale of the art: from edm to a single piano to, yes, records of birds chirping) is in fact quite measurable.

If it where not measurable, how could you reproduce it?
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Certain aspects are measurable but timbre is not to my knowledge. Two speakers with identical frequency response will sound different if the cone is made of a different material.
 
So what? The real question is, which sounds better. Better meaning truer to the source.

My goodness you are certainly argumentative.:D
 
faber12 said:
Maybe a little. It has been fun though. :)
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This was the point of the thread
  • <-----------



















..................................................................................................................................................... this is where we ended up----> •
 
Here is my short opinion, fwiw:

There is probably a reason that open baffle subwoofers are not common.

The experts here have spoken. I respect their opinion.
 
nick parkin said:
Certain aspects are measurable but timbre is not to my knowledge. Two speakers with identical frequency response will sound different if the cone is made of a different material.
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Define timbre. Obviously you don't mean what the world thinks it means. :)

Enlighten us.

So the cones sound different. So a hand made japanese paper driver, eh?
 
nick parkin said:
This was the point of the thread
  • <-----------



















..................................................................................................................................................... this is where we ended up----> •
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New to the internet, huh? :)
 
But you made it that way. You could have built two of the designs people helped you out with and posted pics in this time.
 
ev13wt said:
Define timbre. Obviously you don't mean what the world thinks it means. :)

Enlighten us.

So the cones sound different. So a hand made japanese paper driver, eh?
Click to expand...
Timbre is the way something sounds. Different electric guitars have different timbres. My mother has a different timbre than my grandmother. Timber is the distinctness in a sound.
 
ev13wt said:
But you made it that way. You could have built two of the designs people helped you out with and posted pics in this time.
Click to expand...
You know I'm a broke college student and work a lot right. I have....
no tools
no money
no time(at least not today and tomorrow and Wednesday and thursday')

I can't just make this stuff appear
 
ev13wt said:
An important life lesson could be extracted here.

250 dollars is never 250000 dollars. Never, ever. ;)
Click to expand...
no no no not mine, my buddy erwin, I may have misspoken. he says his speakers are right up there with those quarter of million dollar speakers. He has a a nice pair of 15" ers and a very nice finely tuned tube amp and audio source. You don't have to spend thousands developing a driver, some just happen by chance, in this case a unlikely little Zenith woofer that sat in a radio cabinet for the last 55 years. Zenith just got lucky with this. Its not like they planned on cranking incredible speakers. It was just the right combo of materials.
 
nick parkin said:
You know I'm a broke college student and work a lot right. I have....
no tools
no money
no time(at least not today and tomorrow and Wednesday and thursday')

I can't just make this stuff appear
Click to expand...

That's the reason why I pointed you to room acoustic. Speaker placement is free, required no tools. (A laser pointer can help a lot thought) Some tweaks are not expensive, pillows, drape, bean bags, etc can be helpful.
 
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