Das Mookid
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2009
- Posts
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- 26
I was replying specifically to a quote calling out the 'critics' of these pairs on a lack of engineering expertise lol. You don't like an appeal to authority? Take it up with the original poster that made it, and better yet don't just regurgitate one back: 'but teh audeze engineers!'
For those of you actually interested in the physics as to why this design is likely the result of having emerged fully formed from the cocaine encrusted ******* of corporate marketing rather than any legitimate engineering endeavor:
This is the output of a fullwave simulation showing the interface between an ideal plane wave on the left passing through what is actually a comparably forgiving taper mockup (VERY gradual in terms of wavelength scale, compared to what you'd need for these cans!). This planar waveform source to the left is what Orthos like Audeze proper cans do a better job at producing than edge excited diaphragms like traditional dynamic elements. As this waveform propagates towards the right, it hits the aperture of our tapered transition and we can see the reflections and discontinuities that result from this impedance discontinuity. Because of the nice taper design, most of the energy couples through the transition, but as you can see the resulting waveform that emerges from the taper to the right is non-planar.
The resulting harmonic distortion can be compensated by eq'ing out the impulse response of the transition (and enclosure which isn't even present here!) to accomplish linearity or -as is more often the case with these newer phones - achieve a specific 'desired' coloration. This is exactly the boat you are in with dynamic elements!
To be clear, the transition in this case would actually be far more abrupt, and the plane wave source is actually much, much closer to the discontinuity (meaning the deformation from reflection, even at the source will be far more severe).
So you are paying a high price for a transducer that will have very little positive benefit physically. Good if you want to 'differentiate your product' from the market, stupid if you want to do design according to several centuries of established physics.
I am sure that these will sound good. My $10 Koss KSC75s sound good (with a better warranty than these to boot!) - you add in a sunk cost fallacy and brand loyalty (mmmmm soft science!) and you have yourself a promising recipe for FOTM here at Head Fi. But I really doubt people will still be talking about these in 20 years in the same way that they do quality BA and Ortho cans.
