Hi Adam!
I have tried YPAO but that didn’t fix the problem. Is the Emotiva power as important in the matter of the bright/warm sound as the Yamaha used as PRE/pro?
Thank you !
Julio welcome to a new member especially from Brazil. There are some people that can listen to a speaker and find the problem or problems fast. They will do it time and again.
Now thanks to Rickter's post I see what is bugging people about these speakers.
I'll make some general comment first. A good speaker designer builds a good speaker round the sum of well chosen compromises. So lets take a look at the design choices here.
Now bear in mind this speaker is small. Now it is a good idea to minimize the number of crossover points, especially in the midband. What do we have here? Two crossover points at 800Hz and 3.2 KHz. Now there are plenty of good units that can cross over with one crossover point and not two in that size of driver.
Crossover points add driver overlap, with comb filtering, and above all phase and time aberrations. Yes they all do. So rule 1. NO more crossover points than absolutely necessary.
The next issue is related. Avoid putting significant power to a driver out of its pass band, especially at its resonant frequency (Fs of woofers excepted) whether damped or otherwise.
So what do we have here? We have a small 2" metal dome crossed over from the woofer at 800 Hz 12 db per octave. Now if you look at the frequency response curve, the trained eye can pick out that peak from the mid dome driver's resonance. It is around 400 Hz. The driver is only 12 db down at that point. It is not 24 db down until 200 Hz! Remember it is only a 2' dome.
I would be prepared to bet Julio, that your atuned hearing found that resonance like a laser beam. That accounts for the reports of harsh sound in this thread. That is how it would sound to the astute of hearing.
Now I grant you the gap will be filled with ferrofluid which will damp but not remove the resonance. That resonance is in a very critical part of the hearing range, where even small aberrations are unpleasant. Even with ferrofluid damping, driving any dome to the resonance in the critical midband will upset a lot of listeners. It certainly does me. So to not excite the resonance, the driver needs to be 24db down at Fs in my view. I think Julio this is the major problem you object to, and you can't EQ this problem away, as you found out.
Now the enclosure is sealed which is a reasonable choice. However you will see in the frequency response a hump centered around 100 Hz. One of the problems with sealed enclosures is this rise in output before the 12 db per octave slope cut off. This is known as ripple. It is very hard to control and seldom eliminated. The ripple in this design is pretty typical of what can usually be achieved. Some people actually like it, especially in small sealed enclosures as it adds "artificial warmth". I suspect this might account for the "chocolaty" remarks.
So in essence the designer picked a three way design, when there was no need to, and paid the penalty of his decision.
