Tweeter and midrange distortion solved?

[Davey]

I'm not sure how many of you read The $ensible Sound, but there's an interesting quote from Glenn Strauss in the latest issue in his review of the Paradigm Studio 100 v.3 speaker system.

"As far as distortion is concerned. I only measure bass distortion these days, as I have not found midrange and tweeter units these days to distort significantly - the audio industry seems to have resolved that issue for good."

Just caught my eye.

Cheers,

Davey.

[Scott Simonian]

as I have not found midrange and tweeter units these days to distort significantly

"Significantly" seems to be the key word here. Maybe he doesnt do high SPL distortion testing.

[Davey]

Yeah, I figured "significantly" was kind of a subjective level in his view.

Anyways, IME the relative distortion levels of different drivers (tweeter, mid, woof) are pretty similar. (At least when driven at nominal levels they would see in normal use.)

Here are a couple of Seas tweeters I was testing this evening:

http://home.comcast.net/~dreite/drivertest/seas_tweeters_1500.jpg

There's definitely some significant distortion there.

Cheers,

Davey.

[jkrutke]

You know, I'd expect nothing less that total idiocy from magazine reviewers. The real problem is that most people read that and believe it.

Good vs Bad

His statement might be a little more believable if he had said that generally, designers these days are smart enough to use drivers within a bandwidth that their distortion is lower, but unfortunately I don't think that's the case either. (ProAc Response 2.5 anyone?)

[Mark K]

As you can imagine, I don't think much of the statement. It's akin to saying, "well, we've got that FR thing beat." If he means that, in the average 2 way with a 1" dome being crossed at 2.5k to a 7" midwoof, distortion isn't that much of a problem. Well, yes, I suppose that's probably(though not always) true. Of course, if you look at the data, you find a lot more going on than that.