The official DUNU folks here on headfi made some interesting comments about the lining/material of drivers: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-discovery-thread.586909/page-2968#post-15288735 "The PVD layer has to be thick enough and the microscopic grain pattern has to be regular enough to confer that pistonic motion beryllium is so famous for. That's why our sub-$100 products (DM-380 and DM-480) are still titanium drivers. Even the TITAN 6, at $139, is only coated on one side."
but isn't it plastic and beryllium have difference in the frequencies they are able to vibrate? I am wondering that the only sound vibrations that will be transmitted to the beryllium are the same as only what the plastic can provide, isn't it better to just use plastic for the whole diaphragm?
It depends on what you consider 'a step forward'. For me, if it doesn't decrease distortion, makes the transducer more stable by eliminating or reducing resonances, and making the frequency response more linear to your preferred target, I think it would be a step forward. But if there are no measurable improvements, changing the material to that rare metal will only increase the bill of materials and the final price you have to pay.
It's pointless to theorize on what it *might* do. The audio industry is famous for coming up with "revolutionary developments" that make very little difference in practice. They publish reams of semi-technical advertorial articles to convince you that their product sounds better before you've even heard them. Too often these "revolutionary developments" are solutions to problems that don't exist. But the expectation bias has already done its job convincing the consumer that it is an improvement.
I wouldn't recommend theorizing on a new technology based on advertising until you've heard it. If you can clearly hear an improvement, THEN go looking for why. But keep in mind that the *implentation* of the technology is just as important, if not more important than the technology itself. There may be more than one way to skin a cat.
“There are only two audiophile IEM companies that create dynamic drivers with rolled-foil made from Beryllium and DUNU (with their LUNA) is one, along with Final Audio (with their A8000 IEM) being the other. Many manufacturers are advertising Beryllium, but use a process like PVD to coat the driver. DUNU introduced their prior DK4001 flagship (before the LUNA) with a PVD driver.
Materion Corporation is actually the foil diaphragm creator and the only producer of beryllium ore in the United States. DUNU designed the driver and paid for the tooling in the US then Materion stamped them out. Materion creates 90% of all this magic alloy in the world. The Spor Mountain area in Utah is currently the largest supplier of beryllium in the United States, with a proven 14,000 tons of beryllium reserves mined by open pit. That’s a lot of magic foil!
Why the heck am I rambling about beryllium here, the SA6 has none in its construction? I’m simply substantiating DUNU’s ability to design and create. Technology companies will often create elaborate flagships to showcase their innovation and tech savvy. DUNU reached success with the LUNA due to driver adhesive formulation and creating the LUNA diaphragm surrounds! These statement products are always reached via a learning curve which then does a trickledown to new future products. Also with the Luna DDs made in the USA............it shows DUNU as a growing international presence.”
Quoting myself from the SA6 review.
Basically who cares, have you seen speaker surrounds before?
The quality of headphones and speakers depends most on the design and the manufacturing tolerances. The materials used to make transducers aren't all that exotic. Usually when you see advertising copy mentioning what drivers are made of, it's just that... advertising copy. There are great headphones and speakers in a lot of different designs and materials. Designing a transducer is the process of making trade offs. Each trade off comes with an advantage and a disadvantage. How you balance those makes the difference. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Words like "pure" are a sure sign of snake oil and audiophoolery. They use words with good connotations in different contexts to infer quality. "The drivers are PURE unobtanium, therefore the sound must be pure too!" Some people never learn critical thinking and they fall for this stuff every time. Then they wrap their ego and biases around their misconceptions and they get belligerent and can't learn anything at all.
The quality of headphones and speakers depends most on the design and the manufacturing tolerances. The materials used to make transducers aren't all that exotic. Usually when you see advertising copy mentioning what drivers are made of, it's just that... advertising copy. There are great headphones and speakers in a lot of different designs and materials. Designing a transducer is the process of making trade offs. Each trade off comes with an advantage and a disadvantage. How you balance those makes the difference. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Words like "pure" are a sure sign of snake oil and audiophoolery. They use words with good connotations in different contexts to infer quality. "The drivers are PURE unobtanium, therefore the sound must be pure too!" Some people never learn critical thinking and they fall for this stuff every time. Then they wrap their ego and biases around their misconceptions and they get belligerent and can't learn anything at all.
You're so wrong sometimes that it is painful to read. The Focal Utopia does use PURE beryllium drivers. It's not snake oil. It's pure fact. And there are certainly sonic advantages for using that material.
The thing is that the beryllium material used is exotic. It IS expensive. And it is said to offer a better stiffness to weight ratio. If I remember right DUNU had the most trouble formulating the glue to attach the plastic to the beryllium. There are also time constraints. This driver takes two days for the glue to dry.
There is also interesting work done on the DUNU Eclipse driver system which has stuff they learned from the production of the LUNA driver. The Eclipse driver uses the strongest magnet there is for a IEM DD driver. But also they increased the wiring ring in circumference. Which means it’s placed farther out on the diaphragm to increase control. Note in picture, the outer (color-change) area of the driver is also the wiring ring placement. So the conventional driver has a smaller ring, the LUNA and Eclipse driver have the ring father out near the outer area of the driver.
Below is a quote from my ZEN review. While not a beryllium driver, it uses what they learned from the LUNA IEM.
Magnesium-aluminum Alloy dome DD with a specific W-shaped Morphology (note picture above)
Later (if you’re still with me) we will get to this whole innovation feature list. But...the last one really had me wondering? Are they simply renaming a regular Dynamic Driver Diaphragm? As you will see this driver (while resembling the 10mm DUNU LUNA in look)………..IS truly different than any IEM driver ever made. Supporting that “W-shape” buzz word diaphragm IS a bigger in circumference voice coil ring, and supporting this wild looking driver is an innovative driver surround ring. The center of the driver “alloy dome” actually has the added nanoDLC, which makes it different than what’s regularly found industry wide.
When you read about the tickle-down LUNA technology............one of the biggest hurdles was developing the LUNA surround-ring adhesive which takes 2 days to dry. Here our new “decoupling” surrounds again are another new innovation special and unique to the DUNU ZEN IEM.
So don’t question this nomenclature as it’s DUNU looking for words to try and convey their new developments and patients.
DUNU ZEN DRIVER TECHNOLOGY with nanoDLC:
nanoDLC increases rigidity of the center alloy dome by filling microscopic pores in the metal with non-hydrogenated, tetrahedral carbon. (sp3-hybridized). In simple terms it’s just another coated diaphragm....the breakthrough is that it surpasses the PECVD process.
The ZEN is DUNU trickle-down engineering at it’s best. The same magic (of aesthetic design) can be seen in both IEMs as well as carryover driver technology accomplishments. The LUNA is titanium yet the ZEN is 316 stainless steel. I’ve never heard the LUNA, but part of me wonders........if the ZEN is also a small step forward in ideas made into reality as a subtle improvement over the LUNA? Rumor has it the ZEN is better tuned yet not quite as capable in areas.
The ECLIPSƎ system “W” driver shape offers both added surface area and ridges. So this results in the 13.5mm circumference surface area being actually larger and potentially pressurizing more space than a standard 13.5 mm driver.
The ridges offer increased structural integrity much like Ruffles potato chips or corrugated aluminum/fiberglass sheets. Then rigidity/hardness is then improved even more with the nanoDLC treatment to the dome area. A more rigid diaphragm, results in better responsiveness at the voice coil.
And……….. Why are all these manufactures pushing diamond-like hardness of the diaphragm membrane?
The answer is actually very simple. Phase cancellation occurs when the driver moves in “off” places. “Driver-flex break-up mode” is an IEM dynamic driver moving in the opposite direction resulting in phase cancelation.
Due to the 13.5 mm circumference ECLIPSƎ driver (which is actually larger due to the “W”) a 1.8 Telsa magnetic flux strength motor assembly was needed.
1.8 Telsa is the highest number achieved across the industry for strength directly at the voice coil. This exact ring type assembly is slated as a component in future ECLIPSƎ platform DUNU creations.
Zen weight 21 grams
LUNA weight 10.3 grams
I’ve never tried the LUNA, but nozzle length has been increased for the ZEN as well as physical weight, adding to placement feedback. This is DUNU listening to community communication and making a better fitting IEM with a longer nozzle. This is DUNU making a resonance absorbing 316 stainless steal shell to increase feedback of placement positioning.
Single DD verses all BA or Hybrid:
And while it’s easy to start to get excited about this single DD methodology, how can one driver be good? Typically balanced armatures have been added to single dynamic drivers to increase technicalities in midrange and treble.... thus the hybrids. So why at this point in time do we want to take all the parts back-out? Balanced armatures are special as they are small and will produce a desired (focused) frequency response. BA drivers offer a quick attack sonic edge. If asked I would say the biggest issue with BAs is off-timbre and grain. In the list of things people criticize BA drivers for it's typically a lack of bass decay, metallic sheens and/or nasal tone. Surprisingly some all BA IEMs will seem perfectly fine until that guitar part (you’ve heard for 20 years) comes up and it’s obvious that the tone/timbre is way off, surprisingly off. When that happens you’ll never look at that IEM the same way again…..yet other better all BA IEMs seem to walk around such pitfalls?
DUNU-Topsound @CT007 We used the term "nanoDLC" because of peoples' familiarity with the term DLC. The main crux is, amorphous carbon isdiamond-like carbon. Diamond-like carbon is a blanket term meant to encompass amorphous (i.e. non-crystal lattice) forms of carbon that take on some diamond-like (i.e. sp3 hybridized) properties. The nanoporous amorphous carbon that we coat atop the Mg-Al alloy dome is a form commonly referred as ta-C (tetrahedral amorphous carbon), which is used to describe a DLC subtype with a very high sp3/sp2 hybridization ratio, resulting in a very hard surface coating.
Feb 3, 2021 Report Like
Reactions:You, Dionietzscheus and CT007 [IMG alt="DUNU-Topsound"]https://cdn.head-fi.org/avatars/s/176/176477.jpg?1614392144[/IMG] DUNU-Topsound @CT007 Because we're coating ta-C on a metal alloy, we use a high-temperature process called filtered cathode arc deposition (or sometimes referred to as 'arc-PVD'). This kind of high-temperature process is not possible on speaker diaphragms with polymer substrates, because the process temperature is too high and will melt or distort the thermoplastic polymer. Hence, most speaker diaphragms coated with DLC are coated with a process called plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD, or sometimes referred to as PACVD, plasma-assisted CVD). This process results in a variable ratio of sp3/sp2 hybridized amorphous carbon. One of the slides on our announcement page (first post) goes into detail about this.
Feb 3, 2021 Report Like
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