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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Open cell foam in horns and MF drivers
Post Subject: The compression ratio and Mother TeresaPosted by Romy the Cat on: 2/2/2008

 op.9 wrote:
That 18 Sound ND2060A looks very interesting to me. And would fit in with my silly philosophy of only using currently manufactured components... 

That ND2060A does look very interesting. I never heard or even saw it but who knows – it might be good. The type of the diaphragm that they use is very promising… if you lay you hard on this driver then let know… BTW, the “silly philosophy of only using currently manufactured components” is as silly as a desire of a musician to play only currently manufactured instilments, or the music of the currently alive composers. I think the next step would be a desire to use components only manufactured in April, only components in triangle shape and the only components that were touched by a person who saw Mother Teresa between 3 and 4 times… :-)   Manufactures might desire to use the currently manufactured components – it understandable but for us – the people who need juts one set of drivers over entire life - I think this peruse of current components is not reasonable....

 op.9 wrote:
But it got me thinking about compression ratios in general – since 3":2" = 2.25:1 seems very different from 4":2" - 4:1. This must make for a very different type of sound. Any ‘rules of thumb’ here?

None that I personally have seen. Generally I always consider that higher compression ratio eats sound’s fine points (there are reasons why) but I also have seen OK sounding higher compression ratio drivers. I think that it is not about the absence of any “rules of thumb” but about our disability to evaluate the relationship between compression and sound. The problem that each compression level require own proper implementation of loading. We can change compression but we do not know if for the given compression the loading is done identically properly as it was for the former compression. We do not make drivers (at least I do not do) we just get whatever is there and use them. I do not think that this approach permits methodologically correct evaluate the contribution of compression. With all said above I would vote not for more or less compression but for the appropriate loading of a given compression…

The caT

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