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B&W Nautilus 804 inner wiring modification
"Wessel Dirksen" wrote:
...snips to content .....
I don't believe I have used the word "poor" at all in this discussion.
But the original poster did.
But
like most all regular guy's budget, real world, mass produced loudspeakers,
with individual TLC you can often improve things. I find it amazing that
this concept is so difficult to believe.
It's not difficult to believe but I've not seen any concrete evidence that the
usual scheme of replacing parts and internal wiring actually results in
improvement. Indeed it's been fairly well been proven to me that a few feet of
internal wire and capacitor type replacement do not improve performance as is
often claimed. IOW, why fix it if it ain't broke?
OTOH if you have some good evidence that is generally unavailable please share.
It's not about good or bad; its
about performance. Terms like "high end" and "audiophile" usually imply a
search for high performance in sonic reproduction.
IME in audio those terms most often involve a quest for wishful thinking and
better margin :-)
The analogy to
loudspeaker manufacturing does not differ much in this regard to cars, both
in terms of technology advances in time and economic restraints. You could
want a "good" high performing modified race car so to speak and not a "good"
off the showroom sportscar. In which case some people come to me.
I think this is a good analogy. I often see ads for air-flow inlets and filter
devices that claim to add 10 to 20 hp. Yet I've never seen a single
performance test that verifies anything like that. Instead these devices get
co-mingled with big power boosters (superchargers, nitrous, internal engine
modifications) and I've yet to see a single performance verification test.
While I think it is quite possible to 'improve' an OEM loudspeaker system
performance, but with products that have good engineering as a basic this will
not be easily accomplished in a meaningful way by replacing a few feet of
internal wire or bypassing a couple capacitors.
OTOH it is true that there are plenty of not-so-good performing loudspeakers
(even high-end models) but, again, even there some engineering background and
acoustical measurement equipment and bias controlled listening tachniques will
be necessary to figure out if what you get is "improved" over what was already
there.
I'm all FOR D-I-Y; but I think that folks should have a reasonable expectation
that loudspeaker modifications may only give you nothing sonically and may even
degrade performance and will surely invalidate any warranty.
The departure from the original post started as a general indication as to
what the owner could expect to gain from making modifications to his
speakers. I thought I could help. Others seem to be offended to even think
improvement is possible.
In general, with 30 years of speaker DIY and 15 years of professional
experience I've never once seen a speaker that was even moderately 'improved'
with part/wire replacement. Even those that were "rebuilt" with many new
significant (drivers) parts were never verified to better currently available
OEM models that cost less money than the parts cost of the rebuild.
What's the old quip "Any fool can build a loudspeaker; and unfortunately many
do." For we DIY guys - embark on this venture with realistic expectations.
Lastly, yeah I like thinking about kooky and philosophical beyond the
envelope stuff because I have dedicated much of my lifetime to mastering the
technical knowledge to be able to do the regular technical loudspeaker stuff
half of my work week. In this endevour, I have discovered that the tools of
the trade are not comprehensive and the picture is far from complete. It
seems to me that if loudspeakers are by far the worst link in the audio
chain that thinking beyond the current paradigm, even philosphically, should
be paramount.
That's it for this thread for me.
I think we've run this course to a logical end.
Wessel
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