Modifying Speaker Drivers

[rjharle]

I ran across this article and found it somewhat interesting. I'm not going to do any of these mods and wouldn't suggest them to anyone else. I would only like to put it out to the forum for your thoughts. Would any of the mods in this article improve the performance of a speaker?

This is the article: https://www.enjoythemusic.com/diy/0310/modifying_ff85ken.htm

 

[ryanosaur]

I'm not going to pretend that every driver from every manufacturer is perfect. That would be silly and indefensible.

At the same time, ask yourself, since a 2010 publication date... almost 12 years ago, now!... how meaningful is this without more documentation and actual useful product in the intervening time.

A lot has changed recently in design and modeling capabilities. Some designers are employing FEA software to aid in their Driver design, figuring out what can be done prior to building and optimizing a concept without spending a dime on materials. Certainly not everyone is using this process but I do know of several designers that are.
Beyond that, look at the cost per unit of a raw driver as utilized in this article and compare that to something like a SEAS Extreme or ScanSpeak Revelator.
If you are looking at Dayton Drivers, you are already weighing the compromise in quality. Is spending a few hours per driver fiddling with it going to make such a significant impact in the final product that it is worth the cost of your labor time alone... or paying somebody else to do it? At that point, why not invest in a more premium driver which is likely much more accurate to its initial design spec.

While I love to tinker, myself, and am open to a reasonable suggestion for modification, one does have to consider the reward.
I took my old Tenor to a shop specializing in Saxes to solder the first joint between body and bow. The idea is to improve the resonant characteristic by unifying the component parts. If I had it to do over again, would I... and would I have him do the Bow to Bell joint, as well? My answer is a complicated "yes."
I did find, what I believed to be, an increase in the overall resonance of the horn. Was this placebo or real... ???

Now ask yourself how significant are the changes in those graphs from that 2010 article that show some slight changes. Are those changes significant enough that they would impact the complete complex system of the entire Speaker in an absolute audible manner?

For what its worth, after engaging with several boutique designers in the past few years, I have not had a single person swear by wrapping the frame of the driver to reduce internal acoustic reflection of a Speaker cabinet.
If cats who are selling Speakers on the boutique level aren't doing this...
Well...

That should tell you something.

 

[rjharle]

I'm not going to pretend that every driver from every manufacturer is perfect. That would be silly and indefensible.

At the same time, ask yourself, since a 2010 publication date... almost 12 years ago, now!... how meaningful is this without more documentation and actual useful product in the intervening time.

A lot has changed recently in design and modeling capabilities. Some designers are employing FEA software to aid in their Driver design, figuring out what can be done prior to building and optimizing a concept without spending a dime on materials. Certainly not everyone is using this process but I do know of several designers that are.
Beyond that, look at the cost per unit of a raw driver as utilized in this article and compare that to something like a SEAS Extreme or ScanSpeak Revelator.
If you are looking at Dayton Drivers, you are already weighing the compromise in quality. Is spending a few hours per driver fiddling with it going to make such a significant impact in the final product that it is worth the cost of your labor time alone... or paying somebody else to do it? At that point, why not invest in a more premium driver which is likely much more accurate to its initial design spec.

While I love to tinker, myself, and am open to a reasonable suggestion for modification, one does have to consider the reward.
I took my old Tenor to a shop specializing in Saxes to solder the first joint between body and bow. The idea is to improve the resonant characteristic by unifying the component parts. If I had it to do over again, would I... and would I have him do the Bow to Bell joint, as well? My answer is a complicated "yes."
I did find, what I believed to be, an increase in the overall resonance of the horn. Was this placebo or real... ???

Now ask yourself how significant are the changes in those graphs from that 2010 article that show some slight changes. Are those changes significant enough that they would impact the complete complex system of the entire Speaker in an absolute audible manner?

For what its worth, after engaging with several boutique designers in the past few years, I have not had a single person swear by wrapping the frame of the driver to reduce internal acoustic reflection of a Speaker cabinet.
If cats who are selling Speakers on the boutique level aren't doing this...
Well...

That should tell you something.

I see your point. But I don't think the article was advocating that these mods will change a $25.00 speaker into a $500.00 one, or that the speaker will have all its shortcomings addressed. As you pointed out, the data in the article shows a modest change at best. As far as cost benefit goes, we are talking a couple of dollars in materials and an hour or two of time. However, I don't think any of these mods are a viable path to speaker Utopia, just maybe something that improves the sound of the modest speaker.

I don't think an idea should be discarded because it has aged. Has the raw speaker/cabinet relationship changed that much in the past fifty years. Manufactures have been claiming that their newest model is "The One". While the materials may have changed, but has the sound experience really changed? I would say that if the function of the speaker is to place you in the performance, then IMO it has improved, but we have away to go. Are we getting close with "The Ultimate Speaker" at 1 million dollars each speaker? Possibly, but I don't have 2 million lying around to find out. I don't even think I could afford them at "Open Box" on "Black Friday"

I await the day when a pair of speakers in any room would allow me to experience "George Thorogood @ Madison Square Garden" or the "New York Philharmonic @ the Lincoln Center"

 

[ryanosaur]

I don't think an idea should be discarded because it has aged.

I didn't suggest this. Rather, if this were a worthwhile pursuit, I would expect more people to be doing it. This is not evidenced by anything I've seen in DIY threads since I started getting into that myself.

Having been a performing musician, I wouldn't use pro sound reinforcement in a large venue as a basis for what good sound is. I've even been in concert halls where the sound quality fell through the floor as soon as it got off stage.
This isn't to say that you should not feel as excited by a home system as you are in real life at a live event. However, the two are different.

Speakers capable of accurate reproduction are readily available and accessible by many. In fact, most here would argue that you shouldn't need even 200ths of that 2mil to build a high quality surround system if you are smart about your expenditures. Certainly, the sky is the limit if you choose, but there are many manufacturers out there charging way more than the actual value of what is delivered on the basis of perceived value alone, based on custom paint or hand crafted cabinets, etc... I'll take a Duratex cabinet if the SQ is where it needs to be!
Sure, I spent a little (very little) extra to get my blue dyed cabinets made. Yet for what I spent on my mains, I think you would be surprised. They would still be an exceptional value at twice the cost and likely compete at 5x the price I paid.

Regardless, we tend to undervalue the worth of our time. My learning to build Speakers is one thing, and an extravagance of life I am grateful for. Tinkering with a Driver for two hours and a .01% improvement in performance that may in fact not even be audible is not worth it. If I reinvest that two hours of my time by purchasing a better Driver which doesn't warrant tinkering with, I come out far ahead.
Mind, I am not opposed to using a budget Driver if it performs. One of my favorite Speakers utilizes an $18 Mid range Driver. That Speaker, like my Mains, also punches way above its cost, even at the price being charged today.

I think any of the DIY crew I've talked to would agree: Learning to build the entire system properly, from Driver selection to Cabinet design and optimizing the XO... doing this with great care and precision... will result in a product that far outweighs the benefits of anything discussed in that article.
Beyond that, I would rarely advocate for modding a finished Speaker unless you know for yourself how to take accurate measurements yourself and can see something amiss. Damaging the complete system of an OEM Speaker would be much more difficult to overcome than simply attempting to mod that $30 Driver discussed in that article. Moreover, there are cats out there offering XO mods that are likely nothing more than just a fancy way of getting you to part with a few hundred clams, all in the name of "milking an extra 1% SQ gain from something.
What would happen if people stopped buying sh!tty Speakers and looking to improve them? What would happen if people spent that extra $500 on a pair of better Speakers in the first place?

All of this is interesting. Please do not misunderstand me. My perspective is that I simply do not see the value in attempting this.

 

[rjharle]

I didn't suggest this. Rather, if this were a worthwhile pursuit, I would expect more people to be doing it. This is not evidenced by anything I've seen in DIY threads since I started getting into that myself.

Having been a performing musician, I wouldn't use pro sound reinforcement in a large venue as a basis for what good sound is. I've even been in concert halls where the sound quality fell through the floor as soon as it got off stage.
This isn't to say that you should not feel as excited by a home system as you are in real life at a live event. However, the two are different.

Speakers capable of accurate reproduction are readily available and accessible by many. In fact, most here would argue that you shouldn't need even 200ths of that 2mil to build a high quality surround system if you are smart about your expenditures. Certainly, the sky is the limit if you choose, but there are many manufacturers out there charging way more than the actual value of what is delivered on the basis of perceived value alone, based on custom paint or hand crafted cabinets, etc... I'll take a Duratex cabinet if the SQ is where it needs to be!
Sure, I spent a little (very little) extra to get my blue dyed cabinets made. Yet for what I spent on my mains, I think you would be surprised. They would still be an exceptional value at twice the cost and likely compete at 5x the price I paid.

Regardless, we tend to undervalue the worth of our time. My learning to build Speakers is one thing, and an extravagance of life I am grateful for. Tinkering with a Driver for two hours and a .01% improvement in performance that may in fact not even be audible is not worth it. If I reinvest that two hours of my time by purchasing a better Driver which doesn't warrant tinkering with, I come out far ahead.
Mind, I am not opposed to using a budget Driver if it performs. One of my favorite Speakers utilizes an $18 Mid range Driver. That Speaker, like my Mains, also punches way above its cost, even at the price being charged today.

I think any of the DIY crew I've talked to would agree: Learning to build the entire system properly, from Driver selection to Cabinet design and optimizing the XO... doing this with great care and precision... will result in a product that far outweighs the benefits of anything discussed in that article.
Beyond that, I would rarely advocate for modding a finished Speaker unless you know for yourself how to take accurate measurements yourself and can see something amiss. Damaging the complete system of an OEM Speaker would be much more difficult to overcome than simply attempting to mod that $30 Driver discussed in that article. Moreover, there are cats out there offering XO mods that are likely nothing more than just a fancy way of getting you to part with a few hundred clams, all in the name of "milking an extra 1% SQ gain from something.
What would happen if people stopped buying sh!tty Speakers and looking to improve them? What would happen if people spent that extra $500 on a pair of better Speakers in the first place?

All of this is interesting. Please do not misunderstand me. My perspective is that I simply do not see the value in attempting this.

First, that is one million dollars per speaker; not a system.

Back in the day, I didn't have enough money to buy a set of speakers. So I read everything I could on building them, from paperbacks to Audio Cyclopedia. I built open back, ported and air suspension. Built my own crossovers from capacitor selection to winding my own inductance coils. Worked out the cubic feet for the box based on the free air resonance of the woofer and adjusted ports with a battery. Air suspension, no leaks with a heavy cabinet. None of the speakers I built ever sounded as good as the ones in the audio showrooms. Maybe it was because I couldn't afford good drivers. I would always go through the math again and again; no luck.

Finally, I saved up enough money to buy a pair of Acoustic Research AR3a. I never could figure why those AR3a speakers sounded so much better than the ones I built. I think I would've welcomed the internet for some answers.

However, I just bought 7 Focals Aria 2) 936, 1) CC900, 4) 906. I hope they sound better than the Klipsch they are replacing.

 

[kevintomb]

I think most of this stuff is a "one off" thing that never took off in the DIY community.
It was mostly a sales pitch, not some universal thing that "really" works.

 

[rjharle]

I think most of this stuff is a "one off" thing that never took off in the DIY community.
It was mostly a sales pitch, not some universal thing that "really" works.

Thank you for your response.
Never expected them to work. Just wanted the forums thoughts,