Usher / Ascend comparison talk continued

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Zenshi

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Sorry, I started an OT discussion on someone elses thread (yes...me bad :mad: ) and I didn't want to continue to threadjack so I decided to start this thread.

Last post below.

astrallite said:
Bright typically means the frequency response at 30 degrees (or more) more closely resembles that of the on-axis performance. Almost nobody sits on-axis since the typical person arranges their speakers more for decor than performance (and not stand around with a radioshack mic to find where the speakers need to be positioned to be perfectly-on axis).

So in effect, almost everyone is listening to their speakers off-axis, where dispersion characteristics of their tweeter effects how much the treble rolls off. If you took a series of bookshelf speakers from a dozen brands with relatively flat on-axis FR (but with wildly different off-axis performance) and pointed them at your ears I guarantee you that you will find them all bright/forward sounding. So my understanding is very few people like the sound of neutral speakers, but rather speakers with a rolled off FR response.

One solution is to simply listen to speakers with their grills on if you want to reduced top end.

And oh yeah, the 170s are pretty ugly, especially with the grills off, although since they are so nondescript you could say they disappear pretty well into a room. (IMO the Ushers aren't really that great of lookers either but the cabinet finishes are better). I personally don't want to be distracted by looking at speaker drivers while I'm looking at something on the screen, so I typically use speakers with the grills on.
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Thanks again for your comments astrallite. Interesting definition of the term "bright". So you are saying that the term "bright" is mostly in reference to the rolloff characteristic of the speakers? So a bright speaker is one that is less directional? Or is this the differential rolloff characteristic between the highs and lows of a specific speaker? I always thought bright meant that you had greater strength from the highs than from the lows, though I am not sure if that is even the case since I often see speakers having relatively flat frequency curves being called bright or warm.

Yeah I agree the s520s are no beauties compared to many other speakers but the 170s just look downright ugly to me :p . I think maybe the Aperions are also similar in looks to the Ushers (when in piano black, which seems to be the ones that my wife likes). I like small speakers so the Intimus 4B do look enticing. Oh well I don't have to worry about this for another year or so. I am still curious what price the Sierra 0.5 and the Swan D1.1SE will be priced at.
 
I do agree that the Usher drivers are ugly, but I think the Usher cabinets are some of the best. Especially the Dancer series. You get what you pay for with the s520s. Still a pretty good sounding speaker.
 
Yeah the s520s are the economy cheapo model of Usher just like my STF-1 is the economy model of HSU. Also as nice as the Tiny Dancers are, they are also way out of my league in price. Maybe in the future, I will be able to get something much more higher in price and quality but for now I will be happy with something in the s520 range.
 
Zenshi said:
Thanks again for your comments astrallite. Interesting definition of the term "bright". So you are saying that the term "bright" is mostly in reference to the rolloff characteristic of the speakers? So a bright speaker is one that is less directional? Or is this the differential rolloff characteristic between the highs and lows of a specific speaker? I always thought bright meant that you had greater strength from the highs than from the lows, though I am not sure if that is even the case since I often see speakers having relatively flat frequency curves being called bright or warm.
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I'm not a professional in the audio field, or a qualified psychologist, but here's what I've noticed.

Here are the off-axis measurements of speakers people tend to call "warm"

Energy RC-10
frequency_456075.gif


Polk LSi9
frequency_456075.gif


Here are the off-axis measurements of speakers people have called "bright"

Paradigm Signature S1v2
frequency_456075.gif


Axiom M80
frequency_456075.gif


Let me first state that all of these speakers look VERY similar on-axis, all very neutral. However, as soon as you move off-axis, the "warmer" speakers roll off very fast, whereas the "brighter" speakers remain neutral off-axis. Now I'm no physicist but if a speaker is maintaining a similar response off-axis it means the tweeter has very good dispersion, unless I am misunderstanding the definition of the word. Now whether or not you want your speakers to measure this neutral off-axis is a design decision that I'm not qualified to comment on.

Now on-axis is what happens when you put a microphone right between a tweeter and woofer. In other words, you would point the speakers directly to your ears like headphones to achieve the same effect, and even if that was optimal for listening to music, few people would have the space to pull that off. In real listening 99% of the time you are sitting off-axis. I've just noticed this pattern of speakers which are neutral on the off-axis are commonly described as being bright, while the ones that have a steep rolloff are described as being warm.

So this really piques my interest. The speakers people typically complain about being bright/fatiguing are neutral. So maybe crappy radio speakers with terrible dispersion aren't so bad after all? After all you can listen to them a hell of a long time without getting fatigued. Maybe the quest for accurate sound reproduction is a doomed one.
 
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Wow thanks astrallite, these are great graphs. So from what you say, the warmth or brightness of a speaker really is in the difference of the off axis rolloff (I am talking about angular dependent rolloff and not frequency dependent) of the high frequency vs the lower frequency and that warmer speakers tend to have highs that attenuate faster with angle than the lows. If this was the case, then it indicates a few things.

1. Even the warmer speakers will sound bright right on axis and the degree of warmth will depend on the steepness of attenuation as one goes off axis.

2. If so, a warmer speaker will sound even warmer as one goes further off axis. This should be the case until there is some sort of levelling off of the highs with angle.

Finally regarding the standard assumption of what bright means in that it is stronger on the highs than the lows and this seems to be the case. However, it is not that the warmer speakers are more balancing of the highs mids and lows but that it attenuates the highs more once you go off axis. For the bright speakers, as well as the warmer speakers on axis, the speakers seemed to be configured to sound bright with strong highs. If so, do speaker companies in general design their speakers to be bright? Does a flat frequency vs db spectrum mean psychologically bright sounding, and only after rolloff does one get warmer sound? Even on axis, will the sound be warmer due to the reflection of the off axis sound back to anyone listening on axis?

It is an interesting thought, though I am not sure what conclusion to make in terms of speaker preference.

astrallite said:
So this really piques my interest. The speakers people typically complain about being bright/fatiguing are neutral. So maybe crappy radio speakers with terrible dispersion aren't so bad after all? After all you can listen to them a hell of a long time without getting fatigued. Maybe the quest for accurate sound reproduction is a doomed one.
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Haha. Yeah maybe that is why B*SE speakers are so popular with the masses. They actually prefer the crappy radio speakers with terrible dispersion. Hmmm I seem to like my POS Yammies. Maybe I fall into the B*SE fanboy crowd. NOOOO!!!!!!! :eek:
 
Edit: I'm not ignoring the discussion of off-axis response. Those seem like valid observations. Good work.

"bright" is somewhat subjective, so maybe we'll never hit the nail on the head here...
I've heard many setups with very flat frequency response to 20khz - and not all of them were bright. But perhaps people are hearing distortion or shrillness, and calling it "brightness" - I don't believe brightness has the same connotation.

"Shrillness" can come from other sources than the tweeter (as in 1-3khz range). For example, some speakers have metallic or otherwise super-rigid cones. These are great for maintaining piston-like motion, but only within their bandwidth. As a case example, the Seas Excel Magnesium cone series experiences severe and specific cone breakup modes, and again at especially the odd-order harmonics of those breakups.

W22EX breaks up shortly after 1khz
W18EX closer to 1.6Khz (thus at 4.8khz, we'll see some offensive products)
W15cy breaks up at 1.7-2.1khz (wandering over the years, revisits in a nasty way at 6.8-8.5khz)

What do the measurements show? HIGH spikes of odd-order distortion (3rd, 5th, 7th) at these breakups. Thus one cause of apparent "brightness" or "shrillness" is a loss of stability in the cone leading to increased distortion.

Those Seas Excel drivers require steep crossovers and/or notch filters to tame the breakup. Similar problems can be seen in other rigid cone woofers, but not all.

Another source of apparent "brightness" - The Tweeter near the highpass crossover region. Often times a tweeter is crossed too low and will sound strained, metallic, or shrill.

Peerless HDS tweeters shouldn't play below about 1.8khz without a waveguide
Dayton rs28 tweeters shouldn't play below 1.4khz ideally...
Scanspeak 6600 tweets shouldn't play below 2khz or so... (heh... I don't really remember)

and so on... what happens if crossed too low? These tiny tweeters cannot displace enough air to produce high SPL cleanly at lower frequencies. They stress and strain - distortion rises, and then we have shrillness.

It's true that we will often see some clue of this in the frequency response, but that clue may also just be buried in some other representation of the impulse response or in the distortion measurements.
 
I've heard cone resonance being pointed to as a source of perceived brightness. It seems to me if you going to go metal with the woofers, you should go all the way like beryllium. Aluminum is pretty much half assing it with all of the breakup modes.

Heh, I guess this is how Skiing Ninja makes a living, building improved crossover networks for cones resonance.

axiom-m22v2-csd-comparison-lg.jpg
 
Resonance is very understandable in being a issue in the sound characteristic. It has been a major factor for all musical instruments throughout history. It is also one of the reasons I think (JMO and not fact) that the tiny PC speakers in plastic enclosures cannot compare to the bookshelf speakers enclosed in 3/4" MDF as the plastic enclosures resonates at higher frequencies, adding to distortion and shrill. I guess if one designes the enclosures well, one may be able to take the enclsure resonance capability to amplify the sound of the drivers. However, I would not think one can get a flat frequency spectrum with such a design.

I did not know that Be has a better resonance frequency than say Aluminum. I do know Aluminum has the bad habit of case hardening so I would think there would be creation of microscopic dislocations within the material to make it more brittle. How this would affect the resonance (except possibly create uneven distortion peaks) is not clear. By the way, are Beryllium speakers actually made of pure Beryllium, a Beryllium alloy, or some material doped with Beryllium? I wonder this as Bereyllium is a heavy metal and a extremely poisonous one and if such a material would be used in its pure form.

Edit: Oh yeah, one other thing. I notice that for the most part, the frequency spectrum of many of the speakers shown do not have very large peaks that may be associated with some material resonance frequency. However, I am wondering now just how much higher in sound pressure does the resonance have to be to become noticeable. In other words if the human ear can detect and be annoyed by even a slight increase in the sound volume, then it would not take much of a volume increase to become noticeable. Also, if this is a resonance peak then it would remain fixed in frequency. I am wondering if this would be noticeable even if it wasn't a major peak due to its resoance to remain fixed in frequency (and sound) even if the actual music changes. In other words the resonance would be like an annoying shrill of a fixed sound that is noticeable the way a single color dead pixel on a LCD monitor is annoyingly visible (even from one small pixel). It sticks out like a sore thumb. I just wonder this as this would explain why the resonance from a speaker could be so distincive sonically even if the it is not so distinctive when looking at a frequency spectrum graph.
 
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As I understand it, Brush Wellman is the primary beryllium manufacturer for audio drivers. They state that their beryllium is "at least" 98.5% pure with no greater than 1.5% BeO (beryllium oxide); most likely an ultrathin surface layer to prevent oxidation/rust.

The classic tell-tale sign of beryllium-based tweeters is a metal cage surrounding the tweeter, as (pure) beryllium is not only carcinogenic but will cause immediate corrosion if it comes into contact with the skin (although something tells me the BeO on the surface isn't a real issue). I believe the cone drivers with beryllium are inverted (Revel Ultima series uses all beryllium for midrange, woofer, and tweeter). The primary advantage is beryllium is its high rigidity, light mass, and sonic velocity (brush wellman reports 12,000m/s for their drivers, which is 2.4 times faster than titanium and about 3 times faster than aluminum).
 
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astrallite said:
Let me first state that all of these speakers look VERY similar on-axis, all very neutral. However, as soon as you move off-axis, the "warmer" speakers roll off very fast, whereas the "brighter" speakers remain neutral off-axis. Now I'm no physicist but if a speaker is maintaining a similar response off-axis it means the tweeter has very good dispersion, unless I am misunderstanding the definition of the word. Now whether or not you want your speakers to measure this neutral off-axis is a design decision that I'm not qualified to comment on.

Now on-axis is what happens when you put a microphone right between a tweeter and woofer. In other words, you would point the speakers directly to your ears like headphones to achieve the same effect, and even if that was optimal for listening to music, few people would have the space to pull that off. In real listening 99% of the time you are sitting off-axis. I've just noticed this pattern of speakers which are neutral on the off-axis are commonly described as being bright, while the ones that have a steep rolloff are described as being warm.

So this really piques my interest. The speakers people typically complain about being bright/fatiguing are neutral. So maybe crappy radio speakers with terrible dispersion aren't so bad after all? After all you can listen to them a hell of a long time without getting fatigued. Maybe the quest for accurate sound reproduction is a doomed one.
Click to expand...


really really like this :cool:
perhaps part of the issue with brightness is simply reflected sound? (so if there is no HF rolloff off-axis, and the dispersion pattern is fairly wide, that makes it more likely to be reflected off of walls/furniture/etc (yes, sort of like Bose's design intention with their speakers, I guess))

I think theres also a dash of poppycock in the whole "this speaker sounds like a strawberry" classification system as well, as I've seen the same speakers/headphones/etc described with exactly opposite adjectives, thats fairly fluffy imho

Zenshi said:
Edit: Oh yeah, one other thing. I notice that for the most part, the frequency spectrum of many of the speakers shown do not have very large peaks that may be associated with some material resonance frequency. However, I am wondering now just how much higher in sound pressure does the resonance have to be to become noticeable. In other words if the human ear can detect and be annoyed by even a slight increase in the sound volume, then it would not take much of a volume increase to become noticeable. Also, if this is a resonance peak then it would remain fixed in frequency. I am wondering if this would be noticeable even if it wasn't a major peak due to its resoance to remain fixed in frequency (and sound) even if the actual music changes. In other words the resonance would be like an annoying shrill of a fixed sound that is noticeable the way a single color dead pixel on a LCD monitor is annoyingly visible (even from one small pixel). It sticks out like a sore thumb. I just wonder this as this would explain why the resonance from a speaker could be so distincive sonically even if the it is not so distinctive when looking at a frequency spectrum graph.
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depends on at what frequency the noise exists, as to how loud (alternately at what SPL) it would have to be for "us" (people) to notice it and take objection, our hearing is the most sensitive in the "mid range" (roughly the range of human speech), so that would be the "worst place" for such distortion or whatever other gremlins to appear

but I think you're really on to something (however, just like astralite, I have no professional credentials to say if any of this is right or wrong, but it reads fairly logically based on what I do know/have studied of psychology and human perception)

good thread though, lots of interesting facts and some good graphs
 
astrallite said:
It seems to me if you going to go metal with the woofers, you should go all the way like beryllium. Aluminum is pretty much half assing it with all of the breakup modes.
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I have no experience with the Wellman Be drivers, but they look neat.

However ZAPH produced a budget aluminum cone driver to compete with the Seas Excel w15 series (one of the best ever made), and it seems to have BESTED the Mag-cone somehow:

http://www.audioheuristics.org/measurements/Testing/ZA14/ZA14.htm - measurements
http://www.zaphaudio.com/ZA14W08/ - Zaph's T/S page

It's a small little driver, but could be good (ported) for an amazing computer speaker, or in a line-array.

http://madisound.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=zaph - madisound's ZAPH page.
Zaph pairs the ZA14 mid with a Vifa DQ25 tweeter to save cost. He admits that the recent SB Acoustics SB29RDC dimple tweeter is a better pairing, but not a better value at 3x the cost ($16 vs $50 per tweeter).

http://www.zaphaudio.com/tweetermishmash/ - tweeter roundup with javascript comparison applet (wherein nonlinear distortion is most important).

Furthermore, in his tidbits section: http://www.zaphaudio.com/tidbits/ - the 2nd entry reviews the Usher 9980 Be tweeter, which seems to be almost the same as the Dayton RS28. If you read his assessment, he suggests that there is no evidence that Be drivers are any better than Aluminum or other rigid materials.

Those are just his observations, and he doesn't like super-exotic (read: expensive) drivers much. I do know that the majority of the Accuton ceramic drivers did not perform as well as expected (with 1 exception - which did quite well). Furthermore, I haven't seen any good measurements on Be drivers... in fact, I've seen so few objective Be reviews to begin with. I might look into that.

Point is: Zaph's Aluminum ZA14 mid is well-executed...certainly not half-assed.
 
Archmage said:
Furthermore, in his tidbits section: http://www.zaphaudio.com/tidbits/ - the 2nd entry reviews the Usher 9980 Be tweeter, which seems to be almost the same as the Dayton RS28. If you read his assessment, he suggests that there is no evidence that Be drivers are any better than Aluminum or other rigid materials.
Click to expand...

As I understand it Usher uses a titanium tweeter with a small trace of beryllium...about 0.07%. It's fairly obvious it's titanium because the measured breakup mode is about 30KHz, way below the typicaly 40-50KHz range of pure beryllium. Apparently though, even such a minuscule amount of beryllium was able to accelerate its sonic velocity by nearly 10% compared to a pure titanium driver.

So their marketing ploy is kind of dishonest, but the Tiny Dancer was still good enough to be rated Stereophile Class A. It was designed by Joe D'Appolito so I guess it shows, design is far more important than material.
 
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astrallite said:
As I understand it Usher uses a titanium tweeter with a small trace of beryllium...about 0.07%. It's fairly obvious it's titanium because the measured breakup mode is about 30KHz, way below the typicaly 40-50KHz range of pure beryllium. Apparently though, even such a minuscule amount of beryllium was able to accelerate its sonic velocity by nearly 10% compared to a pure titanium driver.

So their marketing ploy is kind of dishonest, but the Tiny Dancer was still good enough to be rated Stereophile Class A. It was designed by Joe D'Appolito so I guess it shows, design is far more important than material.
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Danny Richie of GR Research designed the crossovers for the American version of the Tiny Dancers. So it's not a solo Dr. D'Appolito design.
 
persisting1 said:
Danny Richie of GR Research designed the crossovers for the American version of the Tiny Dancers. So it's not a solo Dr. D'Appolito design.
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They say he "voiced" the crossover for the US market, whatever that means. I wonder what was wrong with D'appolito's design that they would need a change.
 
astrallite said:
They say he "voiced" the crossover for the US market, whatever that means. I wonder what was wrong with D'appolito's design that they would need a change.
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Hmmm, is this like he looked at the crossovers and say "yeah they're ok" and went away? Is this what they mean by "voiced"? :confused:

Ok so one thing I got out of this discussion, "don't try to eat any speakers that contain Be drivers." :p

Going a bit off topic. Aside from the Ascend 170 and Usher s520, what else is decent in the price range? I want small, decent piano black finish if possible, around $400 or less, and preferably bi-ampable. I was thinking of the Aperion Intimus 4B, the Infinity Primus 152, and the Epos EL3. Mosty interested in the Aperion and Ushers, for really no reason except looks (both have piano black finish) and reputation. :p
 
I don't think there's really much of a point buying $400 speakers and passively bi-amping them...first of all, the benefits electrically are very minor since the majority of that extra power just ends up dissipating as heat at the speakers crossover section, and secondly, none of these speakers would present enough for an impedance load that something as minor as passive bi-amping would really affect its performance.

That said, I passively bi-amp my desk speakers for the hell of it (I had some extra 6ft. pre-terminated speaker cables lying around and the Onkyo receiver has a passive bi-amp mode, I figured what the hell)...I doubt it's doing anything more than adding 0.2db headroom, max...

Now if you are actually thinking of bi-amping with separate amps (as in, with their own power supplies, not just some funky receiver mode) I think you need to be buying much more expensive speakers before you dabble into something with as much diminishing returns as that...

Yeah don't eat Be speakers, I'm guessing it's about as hygienic as pouring battery acid into your stomach.

As far as Danny Ritchie's contribution, I don't honestly know, I do know he replaced the stock internal wiring with some fancy high-end (aka brand name) ...I guess to justify the fact that it's basically $1500 speakers in Asia and is selling for twice as much in foreign markets. Of course value is very different in Asia due to lower manufacturing costs, and labor costs are the #1 value added component of manufactured goods.

The Ascends are not going to be in your price range if you want a fancy finish...you have to contact Ascend and they will give you a quote but I am guessing the 170SEs will probably run close to $550 with an automotive finish. If you want small with piano black you may want to look at the NHT Classic line.
 
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Zenshi said:
Hmmm, is this like he looked at the crossovers and say "yeah they're ok" and went away? Is this what they mean by "voiced"? :confused:

Ok so one thing I got out of this discussion, "don't try to eat any speakers that contain Be drivers." :p

Going a bit off topic. Aside from the Ascend 170 and Usher s520, what else is decent in the price range? I want small, decent piano black finish if possible, around $400 or less, and preferably bi-ampable. I was thinking of the Aperion Intimus 4B, the Infinity Primus 152, and the Epos EL3. Mosty interested in the Aperion and Ushers, for really no reason except looks (both have piano black finish) and reputation. :p
Click to expand...

He did a lot more than that. According to Usher: "Usher's long-serving technical consultant, provides crossover tuning here in the 'States. Crossover parts and JPS Labs internal wiring are made in the USA.
Design wizard Danny Richie, of Texas based GR-Research, boosts the stock crossover's performance to unprecedented levels by selecting premium crossover parts, altering parts values, re-tuning baffle step
compensation and smoothing out the speaker's vertical off axis response."

How will you be using these speakers? Will you be using a sub?
 
@astrallite I am not sure how dollar value indicates the value of bi-amping vs not. I can understand that higher priced speakers uses larger drivers that require more power so bi-amping may be useful if the amp cannot provide enough power to both drivers. However, I am not sure if this is the only reason one bi amps. The reason I am considering this for the Usher is that I have heard that the crossover for the Usher has been questioned and that it tends to put a strain on the tweeters vs the woofer. I am not sure if bi-amping will help balance this but I want to have the option of driving these separately.

@astrallite and persisting1: Thanks for the suggestion of the NHTs. The Classic Absolute Zero is a very beautiful speaker! Nice size too. I would think my wife would like these things. Kind of looks like a PC speaker shape but with quality MDF enclosure and drivers and a very beautiful finish. Its priced pretty nice as well.

The only thing I wonder about is the aluminum tweeters vs the silk tweeters of the Usher and Aperion speakers. I think NHT does the crossover right so that they keep the tweeters only to the highs where there is no breakdown. Still I was more intrigued in getting an silk tweeter since I hear they sound very natural. Maybe I am worrying too much considering Energy Veritas speakers use Al tweeters as well and they are very well regarded.

In any case thanks again. :D
 
To my understanding soft domes and metal domes are complete opposites. Soft domes have a resonant frequency is usually in the lower midrange, whereas metals resonant in the high treble frequencies. So for soft domes, the lower the resonant frequency (and further from the crossover point) the better. With metal, the higher the resonant frequency, the better.

Aluminum is the "mainstream" metal which resonates just above 20KHz. Add to the fact that most sources are 44.1KHz (with a brickwall at 22.05KHz), you are getting a ton of ringing at the edge of the typical hearing spectrum. However, aluminum is sort of an expected compromise at the typical entry hifi price range.

With silk domes since the resonant frequency is typically in the mid 1KHz range, most companies are leery to lower the crossover point on a soft dome below 2.2KHz. With the really pricey softdomes though, you can go as low as a 1.8KHz crossover point, though I suspect with a sharper roll off of the x-over.

But the main concern about aluminum is with the midbass drivers. I'm sure NHT knows what they are doing with their crossovers to limit ringing...(something Axiom Audio doesn't seem to bother with too much).

EDIT: Disregard everything I said about tweeters. Metal tweeters have the same lower midrange resonances (free air) as soft domes.
 
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Thanks for the information astrallite. Its very useful. Though I really like the NHT look of their speakers, I have this personal curiosity of getting a soft dome tweeter for my next speaker set so I think I will still stick with either choosing Usher or Aperion for the moment. Those NHTs do look like something my wife may like to get. :)
 
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