More PWK kudos

[ClaudeJ1]

Got this from "The Good Sound Club" website by some guy who calls himseld Romy the Cat

"Some of the initial
inspiration wrt. distortion in speakers came from reading articles and
JASA papers by Paul Klipsch, who also always insisted that distortion
in speakers generally is inversely proportional to efficiency. As my
own studies progressed, however, I've come to view Klipsch's
explanations for this to be somewhat simplistic. Or, rather that he
could have argued more convincingly by pointing at the fact that
something like a dozen significant nonlinear factors are "forcibly"
linearized in high efficiency small excursion designs. The cumulative
effect of simultaneously reducing nearly all these dynamic
nonlinearities in a fell swoop makes for a perceptible improvement in
clarity, articulation, dynamics, effortlessness etc. Klipsch, however,
tended to emphasize reduced intermodulation distortion in horns which
is ONLY due to reduced diaphragm velocity. This distortion mechanism
exists independently of nonlinear parameters in the driver itself, as
this generation of nonharmonic sidebands is due to the doppler effect
and is proportional to the product of peak diaphragm velocity and
bandwidth. It is therefore not related to efficiency or driver
nonlinearity as such. Neither does it explain the improved dynamics and
other advantages of high efficiency speaker design"

[Daddy Dee]

I wonder what Mr. Paul would say in response to that?

[IndyKlipschFan]

[bs]

[ClaudeJ1]

I wonder what Mr. Paul would say in response to that?

No one knows for sure, but having heard first hand from he and Jim Hunter back in 1985................they worked hard on the very DISTILLATION of the whole thing to make it a simple as possible to explain to everyone. Romy does just the opposite.........he tries to make it more complicated, but in effect, he really is agreeing and saying the same thing except for the last 2 senctences where he trips up a lot................just using more words that are confusing and unnecessary.

He does love horns, though, AND Classical music as PWK did.

The reason PWK was always careful about saying that distortion (in all forms) was APPROXIMATELY inversely proportional to efficiency is because it wasn't a perfectly linear relationship...........it was actually better than stated with the "approximately" caveat. He stated "a significant percentage of distortion" was attriutable to that inverse relationship. Therefore, the higher efficiency, the lower the distortion.

When citing one of his original experiments (I have a video recording of him saying this) PWK built a box with a direct radiator in it that could attach to a horn. Comparing the same direct radiator with a 1 Watt input, with and without the horn, gave the following: a 15 decibel increase in output with the horn, and, more importantly a 25 db REDUCTION in distortion.This is why he said "approximately." So basically the horn increased the sound output 31.6 times higher and decreased the distortion 316 times lower. I would say that was a pretty convincing experiment.

If a driver moves, it produces distortion, so reducing the motion with a horn, reduces distortion in accordance with this relationship.

With my "stack" in the AvatarI went from 105 db efficiency in Khorns/LaScalas to 109 db efficiency, so I reduced distortion by 2.5 times because I reduced amplifier power by 2.5 times. So I went from 1/4 watt to 100 milliwatts to do the same job, with 1 Watt PEAKS in the MWM woofers under normal listening. Movies with explosions are 10x higher than this so I hit 10 W peaks once in a great while.