20-ish years ago, enthusiasts set up a handful of online databases that collected professional, repeatable, standardized subwoofer tests. the result is the mature subwoofer market that you see now--many many options and almost all of them are pretty good. we need some more enthusiasts to do what Danny's doing. he takes a lot of flack but i think it's important for consumers to know what's inside their loudspeakers. shout out to Erin, who's also doing the Good Work
Yep, several examples of diy enthusiasts, ascending up into the best of the industry. Ilkka, Josh Ricci, LTD02 (John), Janowitz, Seaton, etc. After the OG Bass List group ... stacked with luminaries, there was the forums. Out of the forums ... came Ilkka Rissanen, one of the initial forum gurus to branch out. He went from forum guru subwoofer standardization testing, ... to Genelec's Senior Acoustics Engineer, Director of R&D. Josh and John designed some of the greatest most creative power dense subwoofers to date. John, parlayed his into GSG. Janowitz at AE, designs machines and builds some of the finest low distortion woofers in the world. Exciting times w/CAD, CNC, etc, one can bring one's life work to the masses.
I'd have to say that had one of the best cleaned up spectral decay I've seen on your channel. I know there are high end companies just trying to get people into the audio world, but they should never cheap out on these folks. Set them up to win, they're going to want to upgrade anyway....it's just part of the fun! Great video 👌👏
I replaced the 😊cheese in my Focal Chorus 806v to great effect, changing to air cored inductors in the bass circuit was huge. More recently i have been experimenting with foam lining and using thick felt around the tweeter to remove more harshness. All good fun 👍
This is what happens when marketing is in charge instead of engineering. Build the product right, charge fairly and you'll never go out of business. Greed is what keeps most businesses from following this simple formula.
The FR in stock form is still way better than many other speakers that cost way more. And a rising response from 3khz peaking at 5khz, which denotes a sharp rise, will sound bright, couple that with an off axis response that peaks at around 3k will certainly take its toll on the ears. Later Focals like the Chora have an off axis response that peaks at 9khz while remaining flat in the crucial areas, a more desireable trait if you like that sort of thing.
The one measurement Danny didn't show was the On-Axis vs 20 degrees off-axis, which is nearly flat until the dip starting at 8KHz. so that dip at 3-4KHz and the peak at 5-7Khz is largely diffraction issues. So, their best response will be to have them facing directly into the room, with maybe a touch of toe-in.
Horizontal off axis is shown in the vid and there is peaking and bunching at 4khz. That is the cause of the brightness, toeing them out do not solve that problem, treating your room does.
I'm going to argue with sealing up the port. That took away the lower part of the bass response. The question is, is it better having deeper bass or a mild ring?
When a woofer is designed for port box you just can't put put a foam in the hole.. And make it what? A sealed box? No way is going to be..And even if you convert it to sealed the whole total sound would be a disaster.. Even an amateur will never propose to fill the port. And they ask money for that..
@@alexandercyborg5308 Actually a lot of drivers have a Qts that lends them to work well in a ported or sealed box. Going from an ideal ported box to an ideal sealed box will technically require less air space. However, with a lot of smaller speakers the lower ranges can and are often filtered by their receivers. So having the woofer in a larger than optimal sealed box is no issue.
@@alexandercyborg5308 maybe he covert some of the front port not all. its still foam at the end of the day it wont be 100% seal I would think. maybe he can explain that a bit more
Sound deaden the port outside. Line box with fiberglass. Sound deaden the driver frame. Be sure the speakers are aligned with each other. Eq and send it.
@@Starch1b2c3d4a Check out any speaker reviewed done by Stereophile. John Atkinson attaches an accelerometer to the side panels and measures panel resonances.
What is the solution if you want the bass extension the port provides? More fiber fill? A shelf to act as a hemholtz filter? Damping the woofer's frame? If the port is blocked, what happens to the bass extension? What is the before & after -3db high pass point?
@@dannyrichie9743 Yes I understand the bass will roll off sooner. However two questions remain; 1) What does the bass profile look like before & after? 2) Are there any alternatives to blocking the port? I know you generally don't get into cabinet modifications in these videos, other than to recommend some No-Res, or in this case block a port, but it would be an interesting exercise to see if the root cause of the problem could be found & dealt with. As I mentioned to you the other day in a conversation (BTW I received the port tube, thanks) I was able to tame midrange ringing in my Klipsch Cornwall IIIs by adding damping material to the stamped steel basket of the 15" woofer. Sometimes I can't help being a smart aleck, Try this for an analogy; If you step on a nail, you will have an annoying pain in your foot which won't go away. One solution might be amputation, and replacement with a prosthetic foot. You will still be able to get around OK, but you may have a hard time running a sprint. Alternatively, you could pull the nail out, get a tetanus shot and rest up for week or two.
@@paulstearns93 The bass roll off ported versus sealed are easily modeled. The tuning frequency of the ported boxed can also be seen in the impedance curve. Stuffing more insulation in the back of the box near the back side of the port will help and keep some of the port output.
will like to see someone send in their chora 806 to see how much better they will sound with an upgrade crossover. someone send in your chora 806 for me please lol.. I will experiment with the foam on the front port to see if it also makes a difference on the chora 806 in the mean time
A lot of that had to do with the cabinet's front baffle and it's a fairly common problem in many speaker designs. The only way around it would be to modify the baffle to be narrower around the tweeter or mount it into a waveguide, but considering the way the driver is mounted in this model, that's not really something that's fixable for the vast majority of people.
The only thing which would "break" in that crossover is the electrolytic capacitor. Those resistors and inductors are bulletproof despite being low quality... @@dan_hitchman007
Hey GR - first-time viewer who stumbled on your channel. Was wondering what your thoughts are on active crossovers! Particularly converting previously-passive speakers to active, using a discrete amp for each driver. To me, it seems like a logical progression from channel-level DSP.
Actually we are often asked to convert powered speakers into passive ones. The budget level power DSP controlled speakers are so bottlenecked that they are impossible to use in high end applications. Doing it right can get very expensive and in the end the results are little to no different than what you can get out of a well designed passive speaker with good electronics. Plus, with a passive model it is easy to swap out DAC's, pre-amps, and amps more easily.
No, it's a peak cause by edge diffraction, rather than the tweeter itself. Danny forgot to show/mention the on-axis vs 20 degree off-axis measurements I took. You need to point the speaker straight into the room and you will get a nearly flat response until 9KHz, where the tweeter naturally dips. I just added the measurement to the product page.
![If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]](/img/1.gif)
20-ish years ago, enthusiasts set up a handful of online databases that collected professional, repeatable, standardized subwoofer tests. the result is the mature subwoofer market that you see now--many many options and almost all of them are pretty good.
we need some more enthusiasts to do what Danny's doing.
he takes a lot of flack but i think it's important for consumers to know what's inside their loudspeakers.
shout out to Erin, who's also doing the Good Work
Yep! My 2 favorites.
Yep, several examples of diy enthusiasts, ascending up into the best of the industry.
Ilkka, Josh Ricci, LTD02 (John), Janowitz, Seaton, etc.
After the OG Bass List group ... stacked with luminaries, there was the forums.
Out of the forums ... came Ilkka Rissanen, one of the initial forum gurus to branch out.
He went from forum guru subwoofer standardization testing, ... to Genelec's Senior Acoustics Engineer, Director of R&D.
Josh and John designed some of the greatest most creative power dense subwoofers to date.
John, parlayed his into GSG.
Janowitz at AE, designs machines and builds some of the finest low distortion woofers in the world.
Exciting times w/CAD, CNC, etc, one can bring one's life work to the masses.
today's. speaker industries become misleading industry. saw a 1978 consumers electronic catalog on the internet that tell it all.
I'd have to say that had one of the best cleaned up spectral decay I've seen on your channel. I know there are high end companies just trying to get people into the audio world, but they should never cheap out on these folks. Set them up to win, they're going to want to upgrade anyway....it's just part of the fun! Great video 👌👏
I replaced the 😊cheese in my Focal Chorus 806v to great effect, changing to air cored inductors in the bass circuit was huge. More recently i have been experimenting with foam lining and using thick felt around the tweeter to remove more harshness. All good fun 👍
That's great.
This is what happens when marketing is in charge instead of engineering. Build the product right, charge fairly and you'll never go out of business. Greed is what keeps most businesses from following this simple formula.
U guys are great! I learn alot… and im Norwegian so it aint easy!
Same here
The French do like their cheese
And don't forget the WHINE😅
@@jasontimothywells9895 both of you get a 👍and a 😂
@@krowwithakay in celebration of such garbage I am going to sauté frog legs tonight for dinner . But no cheese .
Oui,, monsieur.
A big improvement to any Focal tweeter is to remove the metal tweeter cover with a ballpoint pen.
The FR in stock form is still way better than many other speakers that cost way more. And a rising response from 3khz peaking at 5khz, which denotes a sharp rise, will sound bright, couple that with an off axis response that peaks at around 3k will certainly take its toll on the ears. Later Focals like the Chora have an off axis response that peaks at 9khz while remaining flat in the crucial areas, a more desireable trait if you like that sort of thing.
The one measurement Danny didn't show was the On-Axis vs 20 degrees off-axis, which is nearly flat until the dip starting at 8KHz. so that dip at 3-4KHz and the peak at 5-7Khz is largely diffraction issues. So, their best response will be to have them facing directly into the room, with maybe a touch of toe-in.
Horizontal off axis is shown in the vid and there is peaking and bunching at 4khz. That is the cause of the brightness, toeing them out do not solve that problem, treating your room does.
31bands of love
Tres Bien. Another one bites the dust. Great job.
« Très » s’il vous plaît 😉
I'm going to argue with sealing up the port. That took away the lower part of the bass response. The question is, is it better having deeper bass or a mild ring?
What happened to the BASS frequency response once you plugged that foam in it? I'd expect it to be less effective now in that regard
It won't play as low, but it will be much cleaner.
When a woofer is designed for port box you just can't put put a foam in the hole.. And make it what? A sealed box? No way is going to be..And even if you convert it to sealed the whole total sound would be a disaster..
Even an amateur will never propose to fill the port.
And they ask money for that..
@@alexandercyborg5308 Actually a lot of drivers have a Qts that lends them to work well in a ported or sealed box.
Going from an ideal ported box to an ideal sealed box will technically require less air space. However, with a lot of smaller speakers the lower ranges can and are often filtered by their receivers. So having the woofer in a larger than optimal sealed box is no issue.
@@alexandercyborg5308 maybe he covert some of the front port not all. its still foam at the end of the day it wont be 100% seal I would think. maybe he can explain that a bit more
Sound deaden the port outside. Line box with fiberglass. Sound deaden the driver frame. Be sure the speakers are aligned with each other. Eq and send it.
Lets see those measurements of GR Research products. Come on, Danny. No-rez first; before and after some of these individual changes…
No Rez controls cabinet resonances (noise). It does not change the measured frequency response.
@@dannyrichie9743Wouldn't powering the Clio up with GR Research B24 power cord increase its resolution to capture those minute differences ?
@@dannyrichie9743Wouldn’t it affect the spectral decay?
@@Starch1b2c3d4a No, the spectral decay only shows stored energy of the drivers.
@@Starch1b2c3d4a Check out any speaker reviewed done by Stereophile. John Atkinson attaches an accelerometer to the side panels and measures panel resonances.
As always, very enlightening , informative video with a side order of cheese 😂
Does the foam need to completely block the functioning of the port (high density foam), or just damp it (loose filling / small ring)?
It can just damp it.
Wouldn't such a low crossover point severely limit the spl?
Not at all.
@@dannyrichie9743 Must be a decent tweeter if you are crossing it at about 1.4khz
@@davidristic3800 It is rolled off pretty steeply, so not a problem.
What is the solution if you want the bass extension the port provides? More fiber fill? A shelf to act as a hemholtz filter? Damping the woofer's frame?
If the port is blocked, what happens to the bass extension? What is the before & after -3db high pass point?
The bass will roll off a little sooner, but it will be much cleaner. Those lower ranges are what subwoofers are for.
@@dannyrichie9743 Yes I understand the bass will roll off sooner. However two questions remain;
1) What does the bass profile look like before & after?
2) Are there any alternatives to blocking the port?
I know you generally don't get into cabinet modifications in these videos, other than to recommend some No-Res, or in this case block a port, but it would be an interesting exercise to see if the root cause of the problem could be found & dealt with.
As I mentioned to you the other day in a conversation (BTW I received the port tube, thanks) I was able to tame midrange ringing in my Klipsch Cornwall IIIs by adding damping material to the stamped steel basket of the 15" woofer.
Sometimes I can't help being a smart aleck, Try this for an analogy;
If you step on a nail, you will have an annoying pain in your foot which won't go away. One solution might be amputation, and replacement with a prosthetic foot. You will still be able to get around OK, but you may have a hard time running a sprint. Alternatively, you could pull the nail out, get a tetanus shot and rest up for week or two.
@@paulstearns93 The bass roll off ported versus sealed are easily modeled. The tuning frequency of the ported boxed can also be seen in the impedance curve.
Stuffing more insulation in the back of the box near the back side of the port will help and keep some of the port output.
Well done!!! My focal Chora 806 were the exact same way!! Nice work there. 🎉🎉
Did you upgrade them? With what kit?
@@Cabernetor no. I was just saying that the 806 had basically all the same downfalls. 😊👍🏼
will like to see someone send in their chora 806 to see how much better they will sound with an upgrade crossover. someone send in your chora 806 for me please lol.. I will experiment with the foam on the front port to see if it also makes a difference on the chora 806 in the mean time
The video title alone earns a like :)
Give that one to my editor. He comes up with all of the titles and thumb nails.
The tell tale sign is the clustering of energy around 3Khz in the off axis responses.
A lot of that had to do with the cabinet's front baffle and it's a fairly common problem in many speaker designs. The only way around it would be to modify the baffle to be narrower around the tweeter or mount it into a waveguide, but considering the way the driver is mounted in this model, that's not really something that's fixable for the vast majority of people.
You can design a good crossover and speaker with cheesy parts. It’s just better with the good stuff.
The trouble is that the cheesy parts tend not to last. These speakers are built to break.
The only thing which would "break" in that crossover is the electrolytic capacitor. Those resistors and inductors are bulletproof despite being low quality... @@dan_hitchman007
My chorus started to lose the "wood" skin hahaha now I changed into another french one, Triangle... Ill see...
show me which brand puts into thier crossover Poly caps under $400 loudspeakers, would be curious
If there is one thing that companies can learn from this, change the color of your internal parts. No more cheese 🧀
Hey GR - first-time viewer who stumbled on your channel. Was wondering what your thoughts are on active crossovers! Particularly converting previously-passive speakers to active, using a discrete amp for each driver. To me, it seems like a logical progression from channel-level DSP.
Actually we are often asked to convert powered speakers into passive ones. The budget level power DSP controlled speakers are so bottlenecked that they are impossible to use in high end applications. Doing it right can get very expensive and in the end the results are little to no different than what you can get out of a well designed passive speaker with good electronics. Plus, with a passive model it is easy to swap out DAC's, pre-amps, and amps more easily.
Good job, Hobbs!
Good job Hobsie! 👍🏻🔈
Resume. Are they good or not??
BTW Danny I'm taking delivery Friday on a couple of F12Gs, so in a way, i'm your customer now
D, I follow Zeos, so headphones listener. I can only think, where does Focal cut corners on headphones?. Best, D.
Is it safe to assume the Aria 906 is the same/similar?
They had their issues: ruclips.net/video/0xhmY2XOiO8/видео.htmlsi=fGvgFFsn9FXKEZDD
Good work as usual. Ever look at a full range speaker?
All the time. I have measurements on a lot of them, and I show some of them in a video that I did a few weeks back.
I have a pair of nht super ones that are about 30 years old would you like too work with them.
I think I have some measurements on those already.
Was there a notch filter for the 5k Hz issue?
No, it's a peak cause by edge diffraction, rather than the tweeter itself. Danny forgot to show/mention the on-axis vs 20 degree off-axis measurements I took. You need to point the speaker straight into the room and you will get a nearly flat response until 9KHz, where the tweeter naturally dips. I just added the measurement to the product page.
Niiice work
Very nice .
No wonder these are always on sale.
The Chorus 605s ARE always on sale? What year are you living in? Chorus has been discontinued years ago.
@markwinston3119 that's great ahole! Go check safe and siund
Got the cheese, just need some bikkies.
Camembert.
Hey, thats my state.
I participated in a Senior Games competition there to get that shirt.
Thankfully I'm not listening to measurements.
In this case thought, the measurements are highlighting audible issues.
French and cheese 🙄 not you!
cheap speakers = boring