bockaudio said:
Sounds like we've had different experiences in the PRC.
In all business, you have to
know your supplier. Gold Peak bought KEF & Celestion in the early 90s. They sent one of their factory managers to the UK to see how to make quality speakers (they already supplied speakers to Philips and some of the better car audio people. This guy was a caricature of a Chinaman, with thick glasses & buck teeth; always polite & humble. He spent time in all departments and happily swept the shop floor. All the other engineers laughed at him and didn't believe me when I said he was probably a
king in his own factory. When I visited his factory, I was astonished at the progress he had made. Within less than 12mths, his factory was producing better quality than the UK factories. And yes, it was good to have a
king in China who felt he owed you something. 8)
But, to the credit of your forward looking statement, I do know of at least <one> builder in PRC who has successfully made good sounding production capsules, even with improvements.
Fantastic! Care to tell use who?
Just to clarify, you are using a two way speaker with a crossover for microphone measurements?
As I said, the most important criteria is "response smooth and doesn't vary too much with small variation of measuring position."
Small 2 way 'monitors' are usually good for this. There is a small issue with velocity response not being quite pukka cos the units are spaced but I get around this by measuring on bass rather than treble axis to get this right at LF. At HF, 1m is far enough for 'plane wave' at HF.
The 200Hz 'anechoic' limit is set by the room ceiling height. All the stuff I'm playing with is single diaphragm so I can make accurate estimates below that even for cardioids & fig-8s.
A small speaker also means your S/N at LF is limited but again, single diaphragms are precisely predictable from data above 200Hz and comparison with an omni reference below that.
David, I see you are a fan of the AKG C12 type capsule. Calrec's heritage is via Bernhard Weingartner who did C12 for them so we sneer at the Neumann centre terminated rubbish ;D
I was saddened to see AKG have gone over to the
dark side in some of their China made stuff.