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Big E speakers: Pt 2

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#502
christw said:
I'm 50/50 on the pick and finger mangling distorted Ricken rock and the delicate finger fingerstyle so I need to work out a budget for the 210.

I've found that my four 6's can keep up with the JBL E155 loaded Ampeg and Faital/Emi loaded Kustom as far as overall volume goes. They take the transients a lot more gracefully. I haven't pushed their low end yet in an A/B but I do think the Ampeg 810 has more to give overall. Oh yeah, the dispersion is much better than any of the big guns.
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No way 4x6 is going to compete with an 810! I wish!
A 46 (or two 26's) will compete with a 410. It would likely take two 46's. But it will have a much bigger low end and extension.
 
#503
Thomas Ewers said:
First I would like to thank all the members for allowing Mike to introduce the MVW technology to the Bass Community. Thank you all for your interest and patience. We will be revealing more insights into the technology as the days go forward as our Utility Patent is now well underway.

The most important aspect for us is: Does our loudspeaker do what it needs to do for you, the player? It is our continued commitment to do so. Keeping the details of our technology under wraps has allowed for many to focus on the end result. The musical extension and output of the cabinet more so than, rather than the technical details of the alignment. Once again thanks for being open minded enough to allow this. Now that it is established that it the MVW alignment works..... Here's a little on how.....

The basic magic is as Leland and Mike posted earlier is rooted in Labyrinth technology. However, the MVW system is not tuned specifically to a frequency but allows wide range to pass and amplify. Obviously the port flare is like horn bell but is more akin to a venturi. We will publish illustrations at the official product launch this summer on Mike's, Duke's, and Leland's forthcoming
websites.
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Welcome aboard, Thomas! Whatever happens, please remain calm - this discussion thread has experienced heavy turbulence (non-manipulated vortices) at times. ;) Thank you, thank you, thank you for your contributions to this advance in sound production technology! It's truly exciting to see (and experience, when Mike sends me one) something new under the sun... :cool:
 
#507
Once Steve and Tom had my signed non-disclosure agreement in hand, they sent me pictures of the innards of one of their speakers, and asked what it looked like to me. They wanted to see what someone with some background in speaker design would conclude based on an armchair analysis. Well, it looked like Pablo Picasso had tried to build a transmission line: Sure it looked cool, but the proportions and angles were all wrong. And having built more than sixty different transmission line designs, most of which sucked (though one made it into SpeakerBuilder Magazine), I knew a bad transmission line when I saw one. And this one was just terrible: Tapers all wrong, idiotic choke points, and obviously too short to generate any bass.
 
#508
So is it safe to assume that there is a specfic time delay between the arrival of the front wave due to the 360 degree phase shift of the back wave? Is that a part of what accounts for the hanging stops and funky psychoacoustic characteristics of these cabinets or is it much more complex than that?
 
#509
christw said:
So is it safe to assume that there is a specfic time delay between the arrival of the front wave due to the 360 degree phase shift of the back wave? Is that a part of what accounts for the hanging stops and funky psychoacoustic characteristics of these cabinets or is it much more complex than that?
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I think what comes out of the bells (vortex openings) is more de-correlated than would be implied by "360 degree phase shift", but that's not a bad first approximation. All I can say is, in the measurements I've taken, I don't see obvious signs of the output from the bells going in-and-out of phase with the direct sound off the woofer cone, which we would see if it was behaving like a horn or an undamped transmission line. I think it's more like the output from the bells is in semi-random phase, but with amplification.

My best guess as to why the Big E cabs have such precision and articulation down low is, psychoacoustics. They play to how the ear/brain system works, and in this case, it's counter-intuitive. Okay, why don't recording engineers use headphones exclusvely, and just eliminate the room entirely? One reason is, it's really hard to get bass instruments in proper balance, and the bass level EQ'd right, via headphones. Headphones don't give you any room reverberation in the bass region, and the ear/brain system uses the multiple "looks" of room reverberation in the bass region to get a fix on the pitch. (In high-end home audio, we find that small rooms don't have too many bass modes - they have too few! The increased modal density of big rooms contributes to better bass clarity.) So, what I think is happening with the Big E cabinets is, they are doing a better job of giving your ears multiple "looks" at the bass energy (at all of the energy, for that matter), so it's easier to hear the pitch. As for why the stops are so quick, when the system probably has poor time domain performance, I do not know... I'll have to think about that some. Maybe because their room interaction results in measureably smoother bass than conventional cabs, and smooth bass = subjectively "fast" bass.

One thing to keep in mind is, how slow the ear/brain system is at low frequencies. The ear cannot even detect the presence of bass energy from less than one wavelength, and it takes multiple wavelengths for the ear to hear the pitch. Think of how long bass wavelengths are, and you'll see that a lot has happened by the time we can really even hear low frequencies. So a little bit of time delay in a Big E cab may be of negligible consequence compared to how long it takes the ear to correctly interpret low frequency energy. Whatever mechanisms are involved, the net subjective result clearly seems to be more good than harm.

Any or all of the above may be totally incorrect and/or inapplicable; I really can't say that I know how these cabs work, much less why they work.
 
#510
spiritbass said:
It's truly exciting to see... something new under the sun... :cool:
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^^This guy gets it!!^^

That's why I played my "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" card as quickly as I could. My inner child told my inner skeptic, thanks for your input now shut up and learn.
 
#512
DukeLeJeune said:
My best guess as to why the Big E cabs have such precision and articulation down low is, psychoacoustics.
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This, I'm pretty sure, for all the frequencies amplified by the bells. Reinforced by our experiences with the hearing impaired. Pretty amazing to see the smile on a face when they pull their hearing aids out.


DukeLeJeune said:
Any or all of the above may be totally incorrect and/or inapplicable; I really can't say that I know how these cabs work, much less why they work.
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This too. :hiding:
 
#513
I see there's still speculation about WHAT the system actually does in terms of added amplification.

I would still like to see measurements(frequency response AND impedance) of (all) these VMW cabs with the "bells" closed/opened and at different powerlevels (1watt, 10watts, 100watts).
This would tell a lot about what it does.

Btw. since there are several cabs with different sizes and driver combinations you would think there IS a mathematical theory (or model) behind the VMW. Else it's (lots of)trial and error to get the same added amplification for all these different VMW sizes and driver combo's. Think about that.......
 
#514
I got my 4x6 yesterday, and took it straight to a gig. Having already played a bunch of different venues with my 2x6, I decided I’d try to go without PA support for the first set.
This is a club with room for 100-120 people. About 75 ft by 25 ft.

I’ll do a proper review later if anyone’s interested, but I’ll leave it at this for now: A fellow bassist sat in for a few tunes, and I got to hear the cab from the back of the room. The place was thumpin. You’d NEVER guess that there wasn’t PA support. Loud drums, electric guitar, electric piano and vocals.
 
#515
DukeLeJeune said:
Once Steve and Tom had my signed non-disclosure agreement in hand, they sent me pictures of the innards of one of their speakers, and asked what it looked like to me. They wanted to see what someone with some background in speaker design would conclude based on an armchair analysis. Well, it looked like Pablo Picasso had tried to build a transmission line: Sure it looked cool, but the proportions and angles were all wrong. And having built more than sixty different transmission line designs, most of which sucked (though one made it into SpeakerBuilder Magazine), I knew a bad transmission line when I saw one. And this one was just terrible: Tapers all wrong, idiotic choke points, and obviously too short to generate any bass.
Click to expand...

LOVE it!
 
#516
And this one was just terrible: Tapers all wrong, idiotic choke points, and obviously too short to generate any bass.
Click to expand...

Thnx for the info Duke.
I can imagine it may work for one enclosure (just trial and error). But how can one make it work consistantly through different sizes and different drivers if there's NO mathematical theory or model for it..... Then all you can do is trial and error and measure it to VERIFY that you get the same EXPECTED result so one can claim it's a NEW type of enclosure.
Simple logic.
 
#517
Yes we have so known constants and equations we use. We will not be releasing such info. As we go along we do find drivers that break from expected results and learn from them each and every time. As for a true model not yet. There is some trial and error to optimize for a single driver but generally speaking we can pretty much use a 3" driver or a 21" driver based on the same formulas and constants.

That said the RachE subs are a result of such experimentation and learning and furthermore why they are different.

And as such why we can predict results in a window generally and why it is a type of ENCLOSURE and if you go back look up a Labyrinth. Accepted type of enclosure since the 30's and it was done by trial and error per driver!!! just seeing modeling for those available now......

BigE
 
#518
Thomas Ewers said:
Yes we have so known constants and equations we use. We will not be releasing such info. As we go along we do find drivers that break from expected results and learn from them each and every time. As for a true model not yet. There is some trial and error to optimize for a single driver but generally speaking we can pretty much use a 3" driver or a 21" driver based on the same formulas and constants.
Click to expand...

I understand you don't release such info. But if you use some (existing) formules and get the same expected results(within a certain window) then a model may not be far away.

Thomas Ewers said:
And as such why we can predict results in a window generally and why it is a type of ENCLOSURE and if you go back look up a Labyrinth. Accepted type of enclosure since the 30's and it was done by trial and error per driver!!! just seeing modeling for those available now......
Click to expand...

Labyrinths (horns/bassreflex/transmissionline/bandpass) can all be predicted with the same calculation algorithm. Check AJhorn http://www.aj-systems.de/Manual.htm#Kap1
There's a big chance the same can be used to simulate VMW's
 
#520
That AJHorn looks really cool. Not sure on the surface how it would/could accommodate several points of the MVW alignment. Soon you'll get to see the basic internal layout and maybe make some suggestions on how to attack it in AJHorn or which ever horn software.

BigE
 
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