Small space speaker placement problem

S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
An upcoming review… interesting. By any chance, would this review have anything to say about a certain speaker company's abandoning its highly recognizable yellow Kevlar drivers after all these years?
I wont mention any names :cool:.
Well, I am not at liberty to reveal the identity of the manufacturer of the next review speakers, but, let's just say.. they .. are a recognizable brand ...that...are well-known for...

Actually, the review will just be of the B&W 603 speakers.
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Seriously? There R&D budget likely exceeds all "boutique" speaker and driver manufacturers total expenditure and revenue combined. It's ignorant to assume that B&W doesn't have a cutting edge R&D department.
Yesterday, I deliberately avoided responding to this post. That lasted about a day :rolleyes:.

You cannot talk about B&W's R&D budget without knowing how much that company also spends on marketing, advertising, and promotion – not to mention manufacturing, distribution, and other production costs. I don't know that info, and I doubt if you do.

Suffice it to say that B&W is a very large company that relies heavily on manufacturing it's own drivers, drivers that they use exclusively on B&W's finished products. You cannot buy B&W drivers from sources that sell separate woofers, mid range drivers or tweeters made by many other companies.

To me that was a marketing decision. I think they wanted to keep their main identity, those highly recognizable yellow Kevlar drivers, theirs and theirs alone. Apparently, B&W also decided, years ago, that they not only wanted people to see those yellow Kevlar drivers, they wanted people to hear them. When those drivers weren't misbehaving, they added an edginess to the sound, often above and beyond the sound of the original instruments. That appealed to many potential buyers at first, but it eventually caused enough "listener's fatigue" that people grew tired of their speakers. People who started with the less costly 600 series either abandoned the B&W brand or moved up the line to B&W's higher priced models. This was clearly unrelated to R&D. It screams Marketing.

Drivers with woven Kevlar fiber cones suffer from loud break up noises that begin at a low frequency – low enough that a 4 kHz crossover frequency doesn't suppress that break up noise. If you've heard enough different B&W speaker models, its easy to hear that some speaker models suffer from this problem, and others do not. To my ears, most of the 600 series speakers had this problem to varying degrees depending on whether 5" or 6½" mid woofers were used. The mid price level CM or 700 series speakers dealt with this problem somewhat better. And the high priced 800 series speaker essentially eliminated the problem. They all had yellow Kevlar drivers. It probably came down to just how much money was spent on narrow trap filters in the crossovers that suppressed the break up noise. It came down to crossover complexity, part counts, and cost. B&W could have easily solved the problem by moving the crossover frequency lower. But this would have also prevented people from hearing that edgy yellow Kevlar sound that became B&W's product identity.

It always seemed to me that B&W was at least two different speaker companies. Speaker designers & engineers called the shots for the B&W 800 series, and marketing & advertising people called the shots for the other two series.

Now that B&W is under new management, it will be interesting to see what changes occur. The obvious change so far is that they have abandoned those yellow Kevlar drivers.
 
P

Pam jost

Enthusiast
Yesterday, I deliberately avoided responding to this post. That lasted about a day :rolleyes:.

You cannot talk about B&W's R&D budget without knowing how much that company also spends on marketing, advertising, and promotion – not to mention manufacturing, distribution, and other production costs. I don't know that info, and I doubt if you do.

Suffice it to say that B&W is a very large company that relies heavily on manufacturing it's own drivers, drivers that they use exclusively on B&W's finished products. You cannot buy B&W drivers from sources that sell separate woofers, mid range drivers or tweeters made by many other companies.

To me that was a marketing decision. I think they wanted to keep their main identity, those highly recognizable yellow Kevlar drivers, theirs and theirs alone. Apparently, B&W also decided, years ago, that they not only wanted people to see those yellow Kevlar drivers, they wanted people to hear them. When those drivers weren't misbehaving, they added an edginess to the sound, often above and beyond the sound of the original instruments. That appealed to many potential buyers at first, but it eventually caused enough "listener's fatigue" that people grew tired of their speakers. People who started with the less costly 600 series either abandoned the B&W brand or moved up the line to B&W's higher priced models. This was clearly unrelated to R&D. It screams Marketing.

Drivers with woven Kevlar fiber cones suffer from loud break up noises that begin at a low frequency – low enough that a 4 kHz crossover frequency doesn't suppress that break up noise. If you've heard enough different B&W speaker models, its easy to hear that some speaker models suffer from this problem, and others do not. To my ears, most of the 600 series speakers had this problem to varying degrees depending on whether 5" or 6½" mid woofers were used. The mid price level CM or 700 series speakers dealt with this problem somewhat better. And the high priced 800 series speaker essentially eliminated the problem. They all had yellow Kevlar drivers. It probably came down to just how much money was spent on narrow trap filters in the crossovers that suppressed the break up noise. It came down to crossover complexity, part counts, and cost. B&W could have easily solved the problem by moving the crossover frequency lower. But this would have also prevented people from hearing that edgy yellow Kevlar sound that became B&W's product identity.

It always seemed to me that B&W was at least two different speaker companies. Speaker designers & engineers called the shots for the B&W 800 series, and marketing & advertising people called the shots for the other two series.

Now that B&W is under new management, it will be interesting to see what changes occur. The obvious change so far is that they have abandoned those yellow Kevlar drivers.
So after all of this, which I thank you all for, the first thing the hifi shop owner suggested when I told him my situation was, “Sounds like the tweeters are blown.” He demo’d What it’d sound like and there it was. My bloody tweeters are blown! And there also may be something wrong with my 2.5 yr old Cyrus One, which he corroborated. I should’ve known something was up when using headphones suddenly sounded horrible.

Onto the speaker repair shop, but if it’s only B&W parts that’ll bring them back to life, I think I’ll buy new speakers. It’s time anyway. And this is a good excuse.
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Ha!
Lets hear it for all us armchair quarterbacks! Woot-Woot!
Bummer about the Amp. Hopefully that can be repaired easily.

You've already heard from us about speaker options you should consider! :p

Cheers!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
I would also be amazed if being installed in this little boxy area didn’t create its own set of modes that would destroy clarity.
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Hi William! For the doodle alone!
You should start signing those. :)
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Hi William! For the doodle alone!
You should start signing those. :)

Thanks for the idea! I’ll try to remember that in the future! First one!

How’s work? Seems like busy season just opened up for you?
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
@Pam jost glad you got it figured out. Telling someone a main part of their speakers aren't working via description over the internet can be hard :)
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
So after all of this, which I thank you all for, the first thing the hifi shop owner suggested when I told him my situation was, “Sounds like the tweeters are blown.” He demo’d What it’d sound like and there it was. My bloody tweeters are blown! And there also may be something wrong with my 2.5 yr old Cyrus One, which he corroborated. I should’ve known something was up when using headphones suddenly sounded horrible.

Onto the speaker repair shop, but if it’s only B&W parts that’ll bring them back to life, I think I’ll buy new speakers. It’s time anyway. And this is a good excuse.
I certainly would not have guessed that, but I'm glad you found an answer. If nothing else, all the back & forth gave you an opportunity to think about what was wrong as you tried to describe it. Describing sounds with words is difficult.

Both tweeters blown out does suggest something is wrong with your amp. Any idea what it would cost to repair it?

Choose speakers first – then find an amp that has adequate power to drive them. Spending more money on speakers and shopping for them carefully will provide greater audible benefit than spending more money on amplifiers. Of course an amp must be reliable and not eat tweeters for lunch.
 
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