Augene - Hear the real thing!

New design.

While trying to solve production problems with the Lullaby, we continued to develope an active speaker for a lower price market. Here is what the speaker will look like.

posted by George @ 6:05 PM 0 comments

Internal components and wiring

It's been quite some some since the last post. During this period, while working through production issues, we have also spent time on selecting the best sounding components and wiring withing a reasonable cost range and form factor. The critical part is establishing measureable differences to determine what is good and can expect reliable quality. Most component and wire manufactures either only take specific measures at specific points, or only assume the the manufacturing process will produce repeatable quality, what we have initially established is graphs of harmonics introduced by various wires and components, so as to cross check quality in case we hear some difference in components.

posted by George @ 5:36 PM 0 comments

An interesting listening experience

I recently attended a small seminar given by a local magazine chief editor. The topic was about room arrangement and demo of what he means when he uses certain expressions.

The listening demo was on a system retailing around US$67500 including a pair of Warfedale speakers with an ELAC super tweeter, a Maranze SACD player, and a set of tupe amps the brand of which I cannot remember. I am not saying that this setup is perfect, but it did demonstrate quite clearly the specific characteristics in various instruments which also made me find some very undesireable signatures in may own system. I think this is one of the better high priced arrangement that I have heard recently, and a truely educating experience for me.

Now the difficulty is how to find out where the specific signature is coming from.

posted by George @ 11:39 PM 0 comments

Passive components provide an extra mile

While still being a bit frustrated with the power coating, we started nit-picking on the sound of our speaker. Noticing it still not being as clean and quick as we would like it to be, we started looking at passive components and it's effects. Since the enclosure design is pretty much final, there was not much room for exotic components that are usually quite large, so we started to focus on parts that would fit in. Since the driver itself was good enough to clearly identify absolute polarity, each change in component that we made did effect the sound. Up to now we have narrowed down to a short list, and hopefully things will come together soon,

posted by George @ 8:34 AM 0 comments

Measurements

There has been lots of discuusion about measuring speakers and how to get full free field measurement results without an anechoic chamber. One of the methods that came up was Ground Plane measurement where the mic is placed on a flat reflective surface and the speaker is raised to a level and angled at the mic. However, articles that explain this method show that the test needs to be done out doors, in order for the low frequency results are acceptable. But there is also one problem, the reflective surface always reflects waves back to the speaker and then to the mic so MLS windowing is still limited. In order for the reflection to be eliminated so that windowing is not limited, part of the reflective surface needs to be an absorbing surface, and there needs to be a reflective surface placed on the border of the reflecting surface and absorbing surface; this additional reflective surface would be placed at an angle parallel to the sound source vectors 30 degrees off-axis so as to not interfere with wave propogation, but still preventing reflective waves from going back to the raised speaker.

posted by George @ 9:55 AM 0 comments

Measurements

There has been lots of discuusion about measuring speakers and how to get full free field measurement results without an anechoic chamber. One of the methods that came up was Ground Plane measurement where the mic is placed on a flat reflective surface and the speaker is raised to a level and angled at the mic. However, articles that explain this method show that the test needs to be done out doors, in order for the low frequency results are acceptable. But there is also one problem, the reflective surface always reflects waves back to the speaker and then to the mic so MLS windowing is still limited. In order for the reflection to be eliminated so that windowing is not limited, part of the reflective surface needs to be an absorbing surface, and there needs to be a reflective surface placed on the border of the reflecting surface and absorbing surface; this additional reflective surface would be placed at an angle parallel to the sound source vectors 30 degrees off-axis so as to not interfere with wave propogation, but still preventing reflective waves from going back to the raised speaker.

posted by George @ 9:55 AM 0 comments

Drivers ready

While waiting for the powder coating manufacturing process to finalize, we continued improvement of the driver. The manufacturer was kind enough to implement some changes that were necessary, but there were some that they were not able to do in time. Taken the quantities we want to limit in the first year, we decided to do the additional process in house. I must say, finding the right combination was not easy. We had to review all driver aspects to every detail, doing iterations of listening, analysis, processing, and testing. One day we finally hit a sweep spot, and processing procedure for the driver was repeatable to a reasonable degree. We should be sending some to evaluators to finalize on what we think is the best. We do expect further enhancement in the driver in the future. We certainly hope our MDF powder coating manufacturer can finalize on their process as well.

Meanwhile we have started development of an MTM version based on this design. I will talk about this in the near future.

posted by George @ 1:37 PM 0 comments

Enclosure samples at last.

The sample enclosure was very promising. We got to see it, feel it, and dream about it. Water based paint gave us the best results. However, the process development was not easy. Filler formula, base paint formula, and final coating all made a difference. The results are presentable, but not perfect. We expect to experiment continously thoughout the years to come.

The stand is a challenge as well. After running some samples though power coating, things looked promising. but we still have our fingers crossed because some improvements are still necessary till it's presentable.

In the excitement, we are starting to establish customer service policies and procedures. Well, other projects are in the works as well.

posted by George @ 9:05 AM 0 comments