Wilson Audio Haters

Is Tru Fi the same thing as Tuning? It certainly comes across that way least in terms of the dogmatism, mysteriousness, hostility and prostelyzation if not in actual implementation. Could it be that Tuning has spread to Europe? 

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shadorne,

Let's say everything you suggest is true about AMT folded ribbon drivers. I still prefer the MA PL500's over any Wilson speaker I've ever owned or heard. I've learned after making a generalization about Class "D" amplifiers that unless I've heard every component out there, it's hard and/or impossible to say how it sounds based on specifications or design.

@shadorne You say "problems’ as a speaker designer I say "possibilities."

The directivity of an AMT is different than a dome or ring, but if you are going to attack it, you will attack all line or planar sources, including ESL speakers from Martin Logan or Sanders, Quad, blah blah. not to mention most horns as well.

You are conflating compression with directivity and lobing. Three different things.

Let’s get compression out of the way first. When you add X dB to the input but the output is not uniformly X dB louder. About the only reviews that have this routinely are the one’s from

speakermeasurements.com

So I stand by my original statement, the best AMT's can compete with the best of any other type of tweeters in terms of compression.

Let’s discuss the rest. Lobing isn’t really caused by a single driver but how it interacts with another. It is caused by one driver interfering with another at different angles over the frequencies at which they are both working. This can be pretty complicated as the acoustic distances between 2 drivers varies in three-dimensional space. This is why lobing is a 3D problem, and why many manufacturers align their drivers in a vertical line, to minimize the complex and unpredictable (but not impossible to simulate) nature.

A single driver can not lobe. Single driver and single panel ESL speakers  are immune from this behavior but any 2 drivers can lobe, it is not an issue of planar vs. dome at all. It’s an issue of the acoustic centers not being aligned and crossover design choices.

Any time you have 2 or more drivers which overlap in the frequency domain and are not coincident in 3D space lobing can occur. With a theoretically perfect crossover, lobing disappears, but no one has made this yet. Admittedly the Joseph Audio 100 dB/octave crossovers come close. Co-axials are another nearly perfect solution to this problem.

Lobing is sometimes deliberately caused. For instance, the super-expensive, super-ugly B&O Beolab 90 takes advantage of this, and uses DSP to stagger the delays between similar drivers. Also a technique used in professional arrays. In the Beolab only dome’s and cones are used, but it’s been demonstrated many times they can "lobe" very well.

So with that out of the way, neither very broad nor very narrow drivers are "best."

Narrowing the angle of radiation can be VERY beneficial. Time domain problems, and therefore frequency response, at the listening location are greatly reduced by using larger diaphragms and have the perception of transparency and neutrality in spades. Anyone who has spent time listening to a good AMT or larger ribbon driver will attest to this.

Sure, if you are designing a speaker that needs extremely broad radiation in the vertical and horizontal plane, a broad frequency, planar driver is not going to be for you. That’s a reasonable trade-off, but neither should be judged by the Audiophile Gods of All That is Good as an absolute measure of "better."

Unfortunately, I find your prejudices unjustified. You should of course buy and live with whatever drivers you want to but AMTs in general deserve a better treatment than you are giving them.

For the top end, I really encourage anyone who can listen to the Gryphons to spend some time with them and compare to some of the low-end "giant killers" being touted as superb.

Best,


E

@erik_squires

Sorry but you are misinformed - single drivers can and do beam and ALSO can have lobes - just not as common a problem as not many folks use 3 inch tweeters for 3.4KHz and above range! You are absolutely correct that lobing occurs more commonly with multiple drivers and panels. It is rarer in most modern speakers because designers do not often make mistakes like MA has done.

I do not discount any of the designs such as AMT, Ribbons, horns or panels - all can sound great and have pros and cons.

However, when an amateur tells everyone incessantly that he has the found the holy grail in speakers I feel compelled to point out the very obvious deficiencies and false 3D artifacts coming from said design. It is common audiofoolery to promote weird designs that sound different and have artifacts because they do sound impressive or very different - good if you like that kind of thing but NOT the holy grail in high end accuracy - in fact far from it!!!!

So Wilson's are the "holy grail" in high-end accuracy?