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  »  New  Other Ways of getting Special Tone from a loudspeaker...  Paul S....  Horn-Loaded Speakers Forum     8  86253  11-27-2009
09-16-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
stuck.wilson
Hyattsville, MD, US
Posts 21
Joined on 09-04-2006

Post #: 1
Post ID: 2856
Reply to: 2856
Hmmm... the sad truth about BMS..
agh..

well.. i can see that you'd never be over for a beer and listen session, romy!  not that i wouldn't invite a curmudgeon such as yourself.. but my own system might not make the cut!

i just finished off a little 2 way bms/altec system (and i do mean little.. ) for a small listening room..  the passive crossover nearly killed me as it was my first effort-- but with first orders and oil caps, and humble means... i'm very happy for now!   melquiades 5 way it is not..  she'll do in the meantime..

BUT--

as is always the case, i'm looking forward.  would you have any suggestions for a relative newcomer to horns, but lifer musician, for a NON-tonally challenged compression driver for 1k on up, possibly to a supertweeter?  right now i'm using an 800hz fiberglass horn with a BMS 1" driver crossed at 1000 hz (i know.. close to the margin), and using an altec 414b in a BR box.  it's a humble start..  but certainly a far cry from my previous B&Ws (aaaauuggh!) and spendors- although the size is comparable.  keep in mind-- i've got limited space-- i live in a small bungalow, and there is NO room for a dedicated room.. unless my wife puts me on the back porch..

i can guess 3 things -- 'no bass reflex!', and 'bigger horn', and 'another driver or 2'.  the choices already were compromises for space..  but if there's COMPACT solutions, man would i love to hear 'em!

thanks in advance--

dan
09-16-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 2
Post ID: 2857
Reply to: 2856
Re: JBL 2440

I did not see in your post any “sad truth about BMS”

I would stick in the JBL 2440. It is relatively inexpensive. Has practically the same performance as the hipped JBL 375 and all together a good performer. It’s diaphragms are wildly available and it’s easy to used.

http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/specs/pro-comp/2440.htm

Some people use the newsiest diaphragms in there and suggest that it give “an improvement”. I personally did not  play with diaphragms and can’t say. The JBL 2440 would not have the “something” of some of the best vintage driver but it is not too aggressive in the modern Sound ether. It is not a gourmet cooking but it is not a fast food as well. Continuing this analogy the JBL 2440 is rather a decently cooked meal in a restaurant where a main curse cost $12-$14 (Presuming that you are not in Wyoming or Nebraska but in the coast cities)

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
09-16-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
stuck.wilson
Hyattsville, MD, US
Posts 21
Joined on 09-04-2006

Post #: 3
Post ID: 2858
Reply to: 2857
Re: JBL 2440
the sad truth was the space, the finite funds, and the available bms pucks!  the sad truth also, i suppose,the lack of available, and sensitive horn users to bounce off of!

i could probably see what your dislike of the bms stems from-- i tried to get rid of the 16-20k 'bump'.. but to no avail (with an inductor as an experiment, which killed everything else..).    kinda gives that fakey tizz to everything..  i tried every combination of bypass cap and attenuation possible.. but if you fix one thing, you lose another!

the 2440 goes up- looks like-- safely to about 8k- i'll have to look and see what horns'd be compatible.. my current driver is a 1", as is the throat of the horn.   seems like it'd follow a pretty traditional cap, lpad, and compensation cap passive crossover, and a good supertweeter might come in around 11k-ish?

or maybe i should tax the little altec a little less and cross it over lower.. that'd probably be even better.

if i was to take it up a tier from the 'casual dining' to the 'collared shirt/no jeans'.. not quite the 'jackets required..',  what might be that step- or would a different bass box pretty much be the necessary component?

world class... well.. that might never be me.. but i'm doin the best i can with what i've got.

thanks much for the feedback-

d.
09-16-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 4
Post ID: 2859
Reply to: 2858
DIY against Real Sound and Real Audio

Dan,

I do not know were you’re going with “next step”, but I do see that some people treat interaction at this site as another swamp of DIY movement. This endless DIY paranoia when people pursuit abstract BS objectives and fulfill bogus frustrations via capacitors, horns, tubes, frequencies responses and solder guns.  Certainly I do not accuse you in the DIY syndrome but still, among what you said I did not see any thoughts about sound… What should be a next step after of any privies step? I know only one answer: any step in audio should be observed thought the prism of the following:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=432

I do not have any further thought and I do know how to make a conversation about audio more interesting for myself if a conversation does not observe actual Sound. To talk about drivers, kHz and bumps without perspective on “anything else” I think is a worthless DIY activities...

Rgs,
Romy the caT


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
09-17-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
stuck.wilson
Hyattsville, MD, US
Posts 21
Joined on 09-04-2006

Post #: 5
Post ID: 2863
Reply to: 2859
Re: DIY against Real Sound and Real Audio
fair enough-  you're absolutely right, i didn't!

it's difficult to get that perspective on sonics without legitimate guideposts-- even with a lifetime of playing and recording music, it's difficult to know what the parameters of recorded sound are without a little help.  there are a lot of  drivers and implementations out there (any mix of the two could be great OR terrible) and finding folks who've heard and used a few of them definitely helps to get a sense-- but no, you're right, i didn't mention any sonic goals.  by and large, though-  i'm also trying to see what you've got to say about gear for 'normal folks'.. not to say you're abnormal (well.. maybe)...  most audio folks 'round these parks are making low to mid 6 figures.  i'm most definitely not-- and there's some inherent economic bias involved in the world catering to such folks-  which bugs me, not only as a person working for a living.. but also as a musician, full well knowing i'm VERY privileged to have even the tiny window on decent sound reproduction i have that my more insolvent, very good musician friends can't!  this isn't to say that really high quality transformers, drivers, amp topologies, etc are worth less or getting any cheaper.. they're expensive to make- i know..  but my point is,  there ARE ways of doing ok with less.  dining on the decently prepared, but not gourmet meals, so to speak.

to this point-- my experiences with horns have been with large onkens loaded with altecs (416s or 515s), BMS horns, and western electric drivers.  of the two, only one is affordable..  but the westerns and onkens sound very thick, not very light on top,  and have amazing texture and meaty mids.. spatially they're odd because they seem to throw a really deep sense of space that i'd LOVE to emulate.  the BMS by comparison seems really light and lively-- but synthetically hot up top, and a little flat in the way solid state amps seem sort of flat.   not nearly as thick through the middle because the upper mids seem kinda hard- and you can't beat that damn hi frequency lift.  i'd just as soon get rid of THAT.. it's too electronic.  the larger driver (the 4592- not what i have) seemed a little less exaggerated in that regard, but had more similarities than differences.  they were also being played through an audio note m8, which costs more than my house.

but to say, i'd like to split the difference between western electric and BMS is absurd too..  give the space and tonal thickness of a 2" driver with monstrous alnico magnets to the airier lightness of a new 1" production driver (?!)...  besides.. the implementation of that western could've just been plain old wrong on that we 555.  hard to say- especially without other folks who've been tweaking and listening for years around.  besides-- the territory between the two is enormous-- 60 years, and a whole lot of audio history in which lots of good musicmakers were made, and several formats of music reproduction phased in and out.  what i CAN tell you, is both share a fantastic ability to startle me with dynamics that i've never had available to me before more than any other speakers at my disposal or plain old live music.  i can also tell you that they're both tonally on different continents..

so i guess the reason i didn't talk sound, is that my benchmark for sound is still either LIVE or the junk we listened to as kids, obsessive altec/western collector, the BMS presentation, or the relatively polite constrained and inefficient 'hi-end' box speakers with little drivers that're everyplace,   none of which is the REALITY of what can be done by someone seeking a better  benchmark with the best stuff i've heard and can afford.  i'm honestly not trying to be difficult-  but looking to lean on the experience of folks who value REAL dynamics, accurate timbre and harmonics, emotional conveyance, and good live recordings of music outside of studio trickery.  in many ways-  this blog is a goldmine for good sense in reproduction and ditching the expensive snake oil,  but not so much for finding how to make these goals happen, so i asked!

sorry for the long post-- just didn't want to be misunderstood as a ratshack diy'er asking for a more expensive option to look forward to, but more as a person with similar sonic priorities looking for potential options with a tight budget, space constraints, and a very incomplete sense of what IS available in the cloistered and very undocumented world of horn implementation. i'm definitely willing to go this alone, and have been-- i voiced my system by listening, not by prescription or purchased crossover or behringer digital crossover.  audio asylum hasn't proved especially useful, as the egos involved destroy any usability-- it's not really an open forum, but is a lot more like a high school cafeteria: popular kids here, nerds there.   i know just enough to appreciate what compression drivers do.. but i just don't have the access to the best of the lot and figured i'd throw it out there to folks who've been on the search for a while!

yrs

dan
09-17-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 6
Post ID: 2864
Reply to: 2863
BMS, DB-design and the reference points of “absolute tone”.

Well, since this thread is about the BMS drivers then what can I say? When I tried the BMS driver I felt that their “absolute tone” ability was at the level of demands of school auditoriums.  Read more about “absolute tone” at:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=2784

What is important to understand that “absolute tone” has little relation to amplitude deviations and in the drivers even with 12dB jump the presents of “absolute tone” still breaks through. It is like a nice looking woman – no mater how ugly you dress her -  her attractiveness still cracks through all external "impediments". 

Someone at DB Design forum (http://www.bd-design.nl) after reading my negative comment about BMS suggested following:

“All 'n all his expression about the BMS driver, and listening to Bert about this earlier, is true ... when not applied properly in the horn consistently, and with the appropriate filters and some tweaks.”

Yes, this person partially is correct: if we spend time to work with drivers then we can get out of them much more. However, there is no known to me filters or tweaks that would make a driver that has no “absolute tone” to get it. Change magnet? Change a diaphragm? Change suspension? I do not think that they do it and if even if they do then there are more fruitful driver-candidates to do it. I would not even mention that I have no idea what “applied properly in the horn consistently” would mean....

Frankly speaking, I do not feel that DB-design folks actually know what they deal with. Well, they know that they deal with "facilitation of knowledge” for DIY-minded community but it is fa undamentally faulty objective “to get Sound”. As I can see, DB-design attempts/designs are juts not even a “half-ass” but “128th ass” efforts that DB-design hides under mask of humility.  Nothing wrong with it of course but I it is a too simplistic way of thinking on the subject of Audio. This simplistic Sound that they det is a direct result of their simplistic thinking... Perhaps it sound too arrogant but arrogance and continence are the similar worlds and they distinct only in perception. I have head what BMS drivers did tonally and I have seen how they converted all tones into a TV with high B/W contrast but low color saturation screen. This all, as I feel it, give me some right to me very arrogant, something that I never refuse to do…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
09-18-2006 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
stuck.wilson
Hyattsville, MD, US
Posts 21
Joined on 09-04-2006

Post #: 7
Post ID: 2867
Reply to: 2864
Re: BMS, DB-design and the reference points of “absolute tone”.
speaking what you really think is often percieved as arrogance.. so i wouldn't worry about that, and i wouldn't take offense at somebody who's worked on their system extensively (even with similar drivers) speaking their mind.  kinda the point of exchange..  only intellectually weak folks'd get offended at disagreement.

i'm pretty puzzled by the notion of applying a driver 'properly in the horn consistently' as well.. maybe that just means 'wrong implementation, wrong horn, wrong crossover'.  got me..  but i don't know much at all about db design, so i can't speak to that.

hm.. well- i'll keep on the search for a less 'tonally-challenged' driver, but moreso, keep the ears open for drivers with different sonic signatures for comparison.  we've certainly got widely disparate applications on our hands-  but thanks for the input regardless.  gotta get information from a whole lotta sources to make sense of it, and then put it to the ears to prove it..

d.
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  »  New  Other Ways of getting Special Tone from a loudspeaker...  Paul S....  Horn-Loaded Speakers Forum     8  86253  11-27-2009
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