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Powersoft's M-Force - alternative?

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speaker monkey View Drop Down
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    Posted: 24 May 2017 at 7:07pm
Hello,

I was just wondering whether there was any product out there that competed with the Powersoft M-Force linear motor*.  A quick google says nay, even on a more DIY level.

Anyone know any different?

Monkey x


*(nobhead prize goes to the first person who tries to point out that any pro voice coil driven driver can compete with it - you know that's not what I'm asking Tongue)
And God said "Let there be light" and there was light.
But for him to speak, sound must have come first.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 7:24pm
Frankly no, it took Powersoft a shed load of time and R&D money to develop and it's still frankly in that process. I would not expect a DIY effort to come close for many, many years in magnet setup let alone the software and associated hardware side.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gen0me Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 7:34pm
Whats with the magnet?
Its reversed and flat?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 8:46pm
It's four magnets. There's a technical paper on their site.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Teunos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 8:49pm
Linear motors arent new, they have been around for many many years.
Manipulating the parameters to optimizing both hardware, electronics and dsp controlling surely is a difficult task. But with modern day science, to be honest, it shouldnt be that much of a big deal. Its a speaker for christ sake, not a linear magnet actuated elevator that travels at 5m/s with sub mm precision repeated millions of times going any imaginable direction while keeping its passengers safe.

I applaud the innovation, but its quite a surprise its taken this long to come into development, let alone being sold on (relatively) open market.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote snowflake Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 9:19pm
anyone designed an enclosure for the ipal. i tried putting the parameters into hornresp and it came out with complete rubbish
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2017 at 9:54pm
Originally posted by Teunos Teunos wrote:

Linear motors arent new, they have been around for many many years.
Manipulating the parameters to optimizing both hardware, electronics and dsp controlling surely is a difficult task. But with modern day science, to be honest, it shouldnt be that much of a big deal. Its a speaker for christ sake, not a linear magnet actuated elevator that travels at 5m/s with sub mm precision repeated millions of times going any imaginable direction while keeping its passengers safe.

I applaud the innovation, but its quite a surprise its taken this long to come into development, let alone being sold on (relatively) open market.


The problem is the time and tools needed to do it. Powersoft is a pretty unique company in that respect and they have ties to other industries that have tooling and techniques that maybe others in the industry don't so easily. It all comes down to justification, if you're making good money on traditional transducers or whatever it can be hard to convince the guys holding the purse string to sink a shed load of cash into an experiment.

I'm pretty sure that this one isn't yet paid off to be frank despite the surge in products using it. And more to come...

Originally posted by snowflake snowflake wrote:

anyone designed an enclosure for the ipal. i tried putting the parameters into hornresp and it came out with complete rubbish


It's more a case of working with them, the driver and ipalmod combination technically allows you to get close to an ideal transducer for a design. There's more to the platform than just the driver, if you work closely with them there's a pretty good technical support network there it seems.

Edited by toastyghost - 24 May 2017 at 9:57pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kevinmcdonough Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 May 2017 at 1:13pm
hey

yeah the only thing that was ever even kind of similar was the motor system that was used in the famous old servodrive subs of the late 80's/early 90's, developed by Tom Danley. But even they weren't exactly the same as they used a belt drive motor. 

The principal of the M-force motor is basically to reverse the traditional cone we have now.  At the moment, we have a stationary magnet, and inside that a moving electromagnet coil.  As it's part of the cone, the coil has to be relatively small and light so it can move at the speeds needed for reproducing sound, and so it can only take a given amount of current. 

M-force does it the other way, and the electromagnet is now the stationary part wrapping around the outside, and the Neo traditional magnet is the part in the middle attached to the cone. 

This way the electromagnet part can be as big as needed, and it can take much more current. In turn, this means it can push with much more force, and so we don't need to have super thin/light paper cones. They can be big ridged plastic things that move much more like a piston, and wont bend or flex, and the motor still has enough strength to move them as needed. And again, because they don't flex and break up, this in turn means they can be the much bigger sizes we see: 24, 30 and even 40 inch. 


And yeah, in terms of the iPal driver you need to think of it as much more of a "system" than just the driver.  The idea with that one is it has a very stiff motor system, qts i'm sure is in the teens rather than the ususal .30 ish you'd see for a big 18" reflex driver for example. In it's raw form, it's way too stiff to give an ideal response for a reflex cab or even a lot of horn cabs, and is much less sensitive to changes in box volume than a driver with a looser suspension would be. 

(A loose suspension would mean it would rely on the volume of air in the box to act as a large part of its 'spring', and thus be much more sensitive to volume changes. The LAB12 driver from the lab sub for example, has a very loose suspension because it relies on the spring provided by the air in the sealed rear chamber to control it's movement. Which is why it's so easy to destroy drivers in it if you have any leaks!).

However the iPal drivers work in conjunction with a pressure sensor that measures the actual air pressure output of the driver and compares that to the input signal in real time. You can then set it up to apply dynamic EQ, compression, limiting etc to the signal in real time, and so you can force the driver to react in whatever way you want, and in effect "tune" the driver's characteristics to what you need it to do within that design.  That way you're not just tuning the wood/volume/hornpath of the cab to the driver, you can also tune the driver to the cab, and meet somewhere in the middle to give you what would be in theory the perfect driver for whatever cab you designed. 

(And it certainly seems to work well, if the Martin MLX is anything to go by, which is regarded as pretty much the best big festival/outdoor sub available just now!)

As Kyle said, there is technical white papers for all this stuff available, and there is a paper (by AES if I remember right?) on how to design cabs using M force as well. 

K

 



Edited by kevinmcdonough - 25 May 2017 at 1:16pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Ricci Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 May 2017 at 6:22pm
I'd echo what the others have said and point you to all of the available patent papers and application documents available at PS and also a few hints at B&C and 18 Sound.
 
One reason that the drivers for this system have so much motor force is for efficiency. Another is the simple fact that you can make a very strong driver (High motor force, power handling, xmax) act like drivers which are weaker but you cannot make them effectively behave as stronger ones.
 
I have an IPAL module and have used the B&C drivers for a while but it is a bit more complex system which requires some time invested for the driver/cabinet/application. Much tuning is involved to optimize it. Also it is difficult to get ahold of and if you are a small time operation good luck getting support or having questions not covered in the literature answered.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote speaker monkey Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 May 2017 at 7:10pm
thanks for the input guys Thumbs Up

someone told me that the very first transducers were moving magnet so I was curious to see if any other tech existed in this format.
And God said "Let there be light" and there was light.
But for him to speak, sound must have come first.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote doller Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 May 2017 at 4:32am
I was listening to a 1930's magnetic speaker just the other day. I don't think it is close in design. May be wrong. The said speaker had a heavey guage wire attatched to the cone. Then fed through a magnet. I will have a better look when I see the guy next. He has a few. Still working surprisingly.
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