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September 5, 2014 - 6:51pm
#1
Tune your speaker drivers
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My speakers have each driver mounted on a separate plate, this being fixed to the box by torx screws. Between the plates and the box is a - you guessed it - rubber gasket. While I did not remove it (it looks like being non-removable without permanent damage), I found out that adjusting the compression of the rubber changes the sound.
This worked mostly on the ribbon tweeter and the midrange: the bass units benefit from being held tight against the box.
I was hoping you were going to come up and share your driver tuning.
Have you done the binding posts plates ever?
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
Next thing to try is the aluminium "spine" of the speakers, but there are no less than 24 screws on each speaker so I guess this will have to wait.
However I am imagining some kind of "tension device" (kind of a wrench) with only one big screw that I could activate by hand. Hard to explain without a drawing but I guess you can figure out the idea.
Hi Costin
Once experiencing, does make the mind start thinking about how much hidden music is there waiting. When I began to tune and realized that every step along the way was giving me control of the system and unlocking doors I couldn't by swaping components or doing, as you heard me say many times, "fixed" moves it was like game over. I had no choice but to keep exploring what all was variable.
I promise you, there is so much music hidden in your setup that is waiting to jump out at you. Just like you found with the drivers, the whole system is something that you can variably tune.
With my journey, I didn't just wake up one day and say "simple is better" and "high end is over built". Business wise this is the worse move I could make, but once I started to explore I couldn't stop myself. I literally ended up taking apart everything in my store and rebuilt it tunable. I was blown away by what I was hearing and so was everyone I showed. The manufactures I took this to as well as reviewers said "no way". Not because it didn't work, but because "we would have to change everything" (Audio Magazine). Even though this was their first response I knew that high end audio needed to go tunable. Sooner or later and maybe one screw at a time this industry will get to the place where they realize they have hit the performance wall. The trading off good for another good will always be a trade, but with tuning this trade does not need to happen. Ultimately we will go from jumps to a slide scale, from hit and miss to right on the tuned money. Exactly like musical instruments do, and you by making your drivers tunable are proof, along with all those who are practicing variable tuning as apart of their listening norm.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
I'm sure there are others as well. Wilson, on the other hand, is quite secretive about the material they use.
I'll tell you the truth, most of the people I have seen tweak the inside of their cabinets use hardly any filler at all. Maybe a little for voicing certain things in. Those folks use the ceiling panels not the loose batted.
Another major tweak is if you have a cabinet using MDF, and the MDF is raw on the inside, finishing with water based poly and sanding after a good dry will transform the speaker.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
Was one of the most amazing speakers I ever had, and they were veneered both on the outside AND the inside.
Furthermore, the only inside filler they had was a thin layer of bitumen-like goo (supposed to be used to reduce vibrations in the space shuttle).
A great speaker, I wish I had kept those for a secondary system... rarely heard such a soundstage and imaging before (and even after) coming from bookshelfs.
In many ways, they were amazing for their size. But, they couldn't reproduce a piano very well at all. I decided after a couple of months that his voicing was more toward horns at the expense of the percussion instruments. They did play horns with amazing bite and had the widest stage I ever heard...easily surpassing the walls of the room.
How about earbud drivers? They're like miniature speaker drivers. Any tips on tuning those?