4 ms·
The weakest "link" in the "audio-chain" (if you exclude the room) are passive speakers with distortion above 1% The best speakers i heard to date are from a ge
by scns 8y ago
The weakest "link" in the "audio-chain" (if you exclude the room) are passive speakers with distortion above 1%
The best speakers i heard to date are from a german company called Backes & Müller. Active crossovers, each speaker has its own poweramp and a sensor attached to the membrane. The signal of the sensor is fed back into a comparator which calculates the difference to the music signal, this is then used to force the speaker to follow the music signal exactly.
>On the basis of physical factors all drivers make mistakes, which one must accept in passive and uncontrolled systems. In contrast, all BM drivers are a part of active error correction systems.
>Active loudspeakers know no conduction loss, no impedance issues; have faultless crossover performance, exact phasing, an optimal amplifier-chassis ratio, more actual output stage power at their disposal, quicker impulse processing and higher dynamics. All of this produces active regulatory intelligence. A sensor system continuously compares and corrects the membrane movements with the actual music signal.
>B&M uses two types of negative feedback: inductive and capacitive. Intelligent electronic fuses ensure that the entire system is reliably shut down in the case of an impending overload. The BM electronic crossover splits the music signal into individual paths of respective frequency ranges and allocates these to their individual output stage. Every individual output stage drives to its respective driver, optimised for its frequency range.
from http://www.backesmueller.de/en/b-m-technology.html http://www.backesmueller.de/en/b-m-technology.html
Pricey and not DIY friendly, but you can pick them up used on ebay for "peanuts". W0as thinking about buying an BM8 (3-way) refurbished for 2800 Euros, BM10 (4-way) refurbished costs 10000 Euros, got a BM12 (5-way) used for 1400 Euros.
The company is now owned by http://ksaudio.com http://ksaudio.com
- S_A_P 8y agoThose look intriguing. I would like to hear them. One of the things I’ve lamented as time and technology march on is how high fi seems to have lost it’s mainstream appeal. It seems like when I was growing up there was a wide continuum of commodity grade to mid grade to prosumer to high end gear available. There was always ridiculous high end stuff but even companies like Sony pioneer and technics had a higher end line. Then there were the smaller companies like adcom, carver, McIntosh, etc that had a reasonably large product line. Now it seems that it’s just commodity or niche boutique gear. Most of those companies still exist, but with a far smaller product assortment or they were absorbed into an audio conglomerate like harmann and badge engineer from some other product line.
- scns 8y agoIts like cinema for the ears. Once started talking normally and i could not hear the music anymore because the volume was so low yet all the details and bass were still there. When i heard them for the first time there was opera playing, felt like the orchestra was in the same room. It was a small 2-way system.
- dr_teh 8y agoWe had some older B&Ms at our house back in the day (also an audiophile middle class household). As a musician myself, I'd say they're worth the money if you can afford it. (I think they were around $8000 each or something).