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Hemisphere 
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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 Posted: 13 August 2017 at 4:55pm |
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Crashpc
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Joined: 26 February 2008 Location: Czech Republic Status: Offline Points: 465 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 5:04pm |
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Shots fired. I´m now in active communication with bsacoustic.cz, selling Master Audio speakers, and I might get one. Just to find out, because this arguing is useless.
Edited by Crashpc - 13 August 2017 at 5:05pm |
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 5:23pm |
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It's not been useless at all. Well, I feel like I've learnt masses anyway. I honestly never looked into the relation between the different loudspeaker components, engineering processes and resulting specifications and performance in half as much detail as this before.
Like a lot of people I rely largely on generalities and reputation, and comparing the performance of different drivers. (which is why I think it's recklessly irresponsible to give undue credence to ripoff merchants like Master Audio) It's such an involved and technical field that unless you really sit down to study it in academic texts or take a course or something it's unlikely you're gonna get it, especially not from reading manufacturer's specifications. They're just never that candid or crass about how they describe things. It's never 'interleaved voice coil, fibreglass former and triple aluminium demodulation rings to ensure MASSIVE XMAX'. Even if that's one of the main specifications they know people are looking for in a bass driver. It's more like: "interleaved voice coil to reduce power compression (because you don't really understand what power compression means but you know it's bad!), aluminium demodulation rings to reduce distortion (because nobody likes distortion!), and MASSIVE XMAX (because we're basically wizards.)" Well that's how I always read it anyway, but working through all the examples here, the hazy correlations between physical attributes, construction techniques and measured parameters/performance are becoming increasingly clear. Talking of aluminium demodulation rings, Celestion has a decent explanation about how they work and why they would enhance excursion capacity on their website: http://celestion.com/speakerworld/patech/3/117/Demodulation_Rings/ I reckon that's the trick with the BMS driver I linked to - it's got three of them, and they're probably not cheap as all the drivers that I've seen that use them are very expensive. The thing about these features though, is these are the really blatant optimisations that they list on the spec sheets. As I say, they're not exactly candid about how they describe the techniques for optimisation, it all goes through a marketing filter. What we don't see from the published spec sheets and copy text, are all the tiny little incrementally beneficial optimisations in the design and manufacturing process, that you simply can't derive any benefit out of spinning through the marketing machine. The precision round wire on the voice coil is an example of the smaller optimisations, but there are probably more besides. Non-intuitive methodology, material choices, ferrite suppliers, magnetisation machines, thermal conductivity of adhesives, all that stuff, you know? Little details.
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 5:44pm |
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Crashpc
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 5:43pm |
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Well, I have read tons of publications regarding this. Loudspeaker Desingn Cookbook by Vance Dickason, Tom Danley "everything around the world", JBL white papers, Technical notes and publications, H&K, Altec Lansing, Bose, Powersoft, and more, less known people (like Hubert Mašín (RIP)).
My background is electronics (engineering and technical stuff). Therefore everytime you posted in a manner like "if you knew this", it rather sounded like trolling to my ears, even if you might not mean it really. It´s not absolutely true you cannot learn from specs and tech sheets. They often leave so much additional info in there. Especially in pure electronics. There is so much more than just specs. Additional device behavior measurements, suggested designs with descriptions of "why is it like that". It only takes time to read trough all of it. And If you´re lucky, in one document or another, they leave good info. Then you get hands on many real-world devices, and it surprises you, how different designs lead to unexpected outcome. Some nice stuff measures or sounds like crap, while crappy looking design (I mean even from the functional angle of view, not just the looks in terms of beauty) works very well. After all that. I still can say, that we cannot be sure of those speakers functionality. Can turn out pretty bad - pure scam, and can turn out perfectly working, even exceeding expectations. If the seller is cooperative, I´m going to find out. //edit: That one looks really RCF-ish: http://www.masteraudionline.com/catalogo/ProdottiDett.aspx?id=1393 Edited by Crashpc - 13 August 2017 at 7:20pm |
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 7:20pm |
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Fair enough, and sorry if it sounded like I was trolling. We're obviously looking at this from very different angles and with expertise in different areas. My understanding of the electronics and science of it all is severely lacking, but I like to think I have a fairly solid grounding in the material and economic realities involved, as I give that sort of thing a lot more consideration than I would care to admit. A lot of that comes from extrapolation and experimentation in design, and a lot from surface level research and analysis of the markets and all the products in it. I have a fair few partially developed, highly ambitious designs on the go, some of which I've spoken about in the past (most of which are shooting way beyond my current level of knowledge and will see substantial revision before realisation), so I have a very patchy understanding of a lot of fields, but I've also got something of a feel for what's involved in the process of developing and delivering a competitive precision engineered product. The difference between 'reasonable' and 'good' in a seriously competitive field like large format high power pro audio drivers is light years, the obstacles to get a successful product to market are almost insurmountable. The thing about pro audio drivers in particular is that it's a very saturated market, very competitive, very engineering driven, and - especially at the mid to high end, it's very firmly based in raw material costs, tooling costs, and manufacturer reputation/turnover. I wouldn't say it's quite like PC CPUs, but there's definitely an element to that to it. Just because you can have a budget CPU or a high end CPU, the top manufacturers of CPUs are still going to make the best quality even in the budget range, because they have the tooling, the branding, the distribution, etc. If you've got a good reputation and high turnover, then you can justify higher development costs and you can operate a production line, which drives per unit costs down massively. I think that's why at the very high end you've got a handful of manufacturers with an almost cartel-like lock on the market. It's not that there's no room for competitors but it's very difficult to get in and compete for such a potentially lucrative segment as high performance budget drivers. To produce a really high quality budget driver you should first be able to produce a really high performance premium driver, then you've got a more solid block to shave your costs from. Simple economic realities suggest if you're designing products for the markets of the poorest parts of Eurasia, then your production costs are going to have to be incredibly low, and that's when you hit up against the inflexible barrier of raw material and tooling costs. There's only so much you can practically cut those costs just by making things in a poor country, unless you're willing to significantly sacrifice performance in the product. That's what makes Master Audio's products so unbelievable. We know that their production costs must be kept mercilessly low, and yet they visibly employ luxuries like cast aluminium frames, sculpted magnet assemblies, advanced venting systems, and just about everything else that people associate visually with quality in a woofer (coincidentally), but their costs remain among the lowest in the world, even after the cut of the middleman (or two middlemen), even against the budget woofers from well established companies with huge production lines, huge distribution networks, many decades of experience, in-house engineers and so on. It just doesn't add up.    That's what a budget woofer looks like. All the best value for money budget woofers in the world look like this. Stamped steel frame. Generic magnet. Small voice coil. Properly engineered with proven well optimised designs with published specifications. All mass produced in China on even tighter margins in enormous quantities and effectively distributed globally with well established networks under a proven and respectable brand with a reputation for quality and consistency to uphold and a solid history of doing so. If you can come anywhere near the price of these with an unproven, unbranded (essentially) generic clone while also featuring huge voice coils, cast frames and advanced venting systems, and still manage to sustain an extra Italian middleman company on top of all that, then you've cut corners where you shouldn't have done. No mythically ultra-low cost facility in China can change that. The other thing of course is that if you could somehow do all those things you'd set up a company, hire a few designers, create a brand and make a success for yourself, because why not?
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 7:46pm |
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Crashpc
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 7:42pm |
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Yes. That´s a question. Margins, real world raw materials, development/engineering, logistics and added value costs for support and stuff. Then few middlemen.
I don´t know the grand scheme. Seems you know better. Only thing I know is, that these chinese manufacturers have greater market, and might keep up with production volumes, because they often have billions population to serve. In Europe, we don´t. They don´t sell that much. They have maybe hundreds of direct customers in our country. No more. Also those copy cats don´t have to do so much engineering. Also margins in our country for well established products like these is very high. 80-120%. If there comes a guy, getting these chinese drivers first hand, and only needs to make living for himself, one peasant and an accountant, then he has great chance being significantly cheaper. I see what´s going on here, and on auction servers. 200-400% margins for certain items, and local people are still buying it like crazy. That way, if I´m seeing Cheap Fane or Eminence or whatever brand driver, in that pressed steel basket with low specs, I instantly can shave 50% off, and that´s the real price before the most hungry middleman. Then it turns out, that it is actually almost half price of that chinese drivers we´re talking about. Again, might be true, or it might not. I´ll try to dig deeper, if the seller will be cooperative, giving me some guarantee.... //The accusation was for different thing than design copying though. :-) Now we se that they officially really COPY stuff. We can only wonder if they do it good enaugh. I somehow cannot imagine a 12yr guy making inner winding of the coil. Edited by Crashpc - 13 August 2017 at 7:44pm |
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 8:11pm |
The trouble with the unbranded generic pro audio market is that you have no motivation to make a high quality product, because your investment in development (not just development of the technology but also development of a brand reputation for quality), can never pay off. Do you think it's just one factory making these clones? I reckon that these designs gradually float into the public domain over the years, as factories hire new workers and some of the workers go off to start their own factory and so on. Nobody owns the technology, nobody owns the designs, so it's free for all. I think you can even see that to a certain extent with the Italian PA driver manufacturers. There's certainly a lot of them, and there's bound to be a degree of talent and expertise that just floats around as people leave and join companies, or as they study one another's efforts and learn from them. Similar to Silicon Valley in America with all the tech companies. But in China and India it's much more Wild West. It's certainly like that with a whole lot of other cheap Chinese generic products. Browse Alibaba or somewhere like that and you'll see hundreds of factories all claiming to be able to produce the same items. Obviously in some cases they're just resellers who want you to believe they're the OEM, but it's certainly not always the case. The other thing is, as several users here mentioned, you can buy fairly high quality knock-offs of European branded drivers in China and India. The thing is over there you can actually get away with selling an RCF badged driver in a shop or something. In Europe you just won't find people willing to risk their reputation selling dodgy fake branded gear, even if the quality is 90% of the real deal. Obviously importing European drivers at European prices into China is going to look crazy to the Chinese market, so that gives a really high apparent relative value to a half decent fully badged knock-off. $350 to import, or $150 for a local copy. $150 in China will get you a bloody good copy!
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 8:31pm |
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 8:44pm |
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Case closed tbh imo lol :D
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 8:46pm |
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Crashpc
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 8:59pm |
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The link propably doesn't work well. Redirected...
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 9:03pm |
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Yea I got that as well I can't work out how to fix it.
This one works. The other link had them for $30. The company description is worth a read. I'm certainly assured now that I know they have multitudinous technologists in order to gain the market rivalrousness. Edit: Shit, I think it's a problem with the forum. Probably a spam filter because alibaba = bad/spam. Copy it manually?
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 9:04pm |
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Crashpc
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 9:14pm |
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Yes, copying helped. It's not the same version of the backplate, but we got the picture. Some guys on AVS forum went for some 24", but I don't know how it ended up. At least I'll find how the seller behaves, and rather turn into car hi-fi. There are some nice drivers for that price.
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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Posted: 13 August 2017 at 10:13pm |
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Maybe there should be a sticky thread about cheap knock-offs so people don't get burned. Having some actual tests versus other budget woofers to go with it would definitely give it some authority though.
I generally agree there's no use making a moral argument about these things, and honestly I don't rule out the possibility that sometimes, there can be an application for a generic unbranded driver, but 99% of the time I think people are expecting something and getting something else, due to the looks. I've actually modelled a design which makes effective use of the 8" Pioneer clone driver, which is really nothing spectacular but if you can get hold of the driver for $11, and you're only ever going to put 50w max into the driver, then for portable boombox application it's totally reasonable. If you read the Parts-Express product reviews it's full of absolutely glowing experiences of people who can't believe how good it is. But they're using it for home hifi or boombox use, of course, not PA use. $22 drivers, $10 battery, $15 for a cheap amp (can get you 2x50w these days) throw a box together from scrap wood, odd nails/screws and thrown away paint and power cords, and you've got a bloody good time for less than $50. But that's just fun and games. Spend ages building professional PA sub enclosures (like the hog scoop builds on YouTube), and load them with junk like this, and you've basically been conned.
Edited by Hemisphere - 13 August 2017 at 10:17pm |
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