A Question That Has Burned In My Mind For Years...

With all this prattle going back and forth, we forget one very important thing: THE BRAIN! The brain knows what an oboe sounds like, knows how it differs from a violin. It filters what we hear, what we see, what stimuli requires immediate response and what can go on the back burner. It determines what is shit and what is caviar. It can pick out what it wants and discard what it doesn’t, and can pick specific sounds from complex ones.

We’ll never understand this...

I think I’ll go shopping for some mushroom spores now...
 
Mark---" DON'T HIDE IT, DIVIDE IT" that's what we used to say...
 
pennysdad said:
Thanks for that, but I've been through it all, but I still can't relate as to how in such a multiplex of frequencies and energy how the hell do we still have the ability to distinguish amongst all that's going on, the separate sound sources [instruments] all at the same time being produced by a cone of paper moving backwards and forwards in a magnetic field whilst being energised accordingly.
eg, strike a triangle and listen to it sustain. Record that. Now strike a guitar chord with lots of distortion. Record that. Now play them back both at the same time. How the hell can you still hear a triangle sustaining whilst there's a guitar crunching both at the same time through a single medium that's trying to reproduce BOTH sounds at the same time? You would think the cone would do one or the other if the note was to remain pure, but it doesn't, so therefore there must be some sort of trade off. And yet, there doesn't sound like there is, or is there?
Something's not 'clicking'. No amount of throwing pebbles in a pond watching waves propagate is letting me see it.
I need a bigger brain.
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Amen George...
 
George S. said:
But consider being at a pin point somewhere on the surface. You would be buffeted by a complex wave form. What's happening elsewhere on the surface I think wouldn't matter, what matters is the frequency and amplitude of the waves at that pin point.
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Now that I can understand, but .....that still doesn't explain how a single driver can respond to multiple frequencies AT THE SAME TIME...
Guys I know it may seem I'm simple minded about this, but how is it possible for a single mechanism to do two freq's at once...
I have run up against other concepts in my 65 plus years on this planet that i can't seem to get past the first steps...perhaps I have been born in the wrong century. Pumping units, treaters, workover rigs, drilling rigs....those i understand because I can see them.

I guess I'm gonna have to quote the "Larrt" on this , it's just PFM---Pure Fuckin Magic...
 
laatsch55 said:
Now that I can understand, but .....that still doesn't explain how a single driver can respond to multiple frequencies AT THE SAME TIME...
Guys I know it may seem I'm simple minded about this, but how is it possible for a single mechanism to do two freq's at once...
I have run up against other concepts in my 65 plus years on this planet that i can't seem to get past the first steps...perhaps I have been born in the wrong century. Pumping units, treaters, workover rigs, drilling rigs....those i understand because I can see them.

I guess I'm gonna have to quote the "Larrt" on this , it's just PFM---Pure Fuckin Magic...
Click to expand...

Back to the beginning... the driver is responding to the composite complex waveform it is being given by the amp. It is that crazy looking signal that you see on the scope when you play music. It is not 2 pure frequency tones coming at the driver. It is that non sinusoidal waveform that the speaker is following. Those signals were joined long ago in the audio path when multiple instruments combined in the air.

Think of a squiggly line coming out of a paper strip chart recorder at some reasonably slow speed. Your task Lee is to with a pen, follow that squiggly line as it exits the chart recorder and draw your pen line on top of the line that comes out. That is exactly what your drivers are attempting to do.

You manage to drive down twisty roads and stay reasonably in your lane while driving on them. Same deal. Speaker drivers attempt to stay in their lane too.
 
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That I get!!
 
Joe, ya did it again....I think we need a "Patience" award around here...for you would surely get it after your numerous attempts at explaining something to me in terms I can understand..
 
George S. said:
But consider being at a pin point somewhere on the surface. You would be buffeted by a complex wave form. What's happening elsewhere on the surface I think wouldn't matter, what matters is the frequency and amplitude of the waves at that pin point.
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But we're not a pinpoint on the surface. We're at a distance observing the whole thing.
 
Continuing with Joe's great analogy of the pen tracing the complex wave...
When that voice coil tries to follow it's signal, it is attempting to push and pull the cone or diaphragm along with it. Neither of these are infinitely rigid. They exhibit compliance as well as resonant factors along their surface. Different portions can react better to different frequencies. A speaker cone does not act as a rigid object. A high speed video of cone action is very interesting.
 
Vynuladikt said:
Continuing with Joe's great analogy of the pen tracing the complex wave...
When that voice coil tries to follow it's signal, it is attempting to push and pull the cone or diaphragm along with it. Neither of these are infinitely rigid. They exhibit compliance as well as resonant factors along their surface. Different portions can react better to different frequencies. A speaker cone does not act as a rigid object. A high speed video of cone action is very interesting.
Click to expand...

Spot on. They try to make cones as rigid/stiff as possible and with as low mass as possible but the real world gets in the way. This usually leads to a set of conflicting goals. Low mass has a tough time being rigid. Rigid has a tough time being low mass. The compromises made lead to imperfect behavior for sure.
 
That "different portions can react better to different frequencies" comment remided me of the Walsh driver early Ohm speakers had. Titanium, aluminum and paper sections of the cone were supposedly responsible for different frequency ranges.
 
62vauxhall said:
That "different portions can react better to different frequencies" comment remided me of the Walsh driver early Ohm speakers had. Titanium, aluminum and paper sections of the cone were supposedly responsible for different frequency ranges.
Click to expand...
And those “whizzer cones” with a single voice coil, supposed to extend the highs.
 
The Ohm Model F's I had were the purest sounding thing I had ever heard till I heard Craig's Summits...
 
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