Proprius Speaker Mounting

They look wonderful Andrew and I'm sure they sound sublime from what you say. Have you worked out where on each of the speakers you would attach the Proprius amp?

We British are good at promoting faddiction...

Whereas the Portuguese and Spanish were bringing back gold and silver from their overseas escapades, the British had no such luck! We did however discover sugar, tea (tcha), coffee and tobacco and made the world faddicts in exchange for their gold and silver.

Alongside the enterprising Dutch we went even further and China still remembers it!

So are vibration cures faddiction and just another way of milking you for money?

Could they be your favourite mojo or actually based on real science?

And I'm sure there are more than the Brits marketing such things - don't the French love coffee? Wasn't the cigarette a worldwide hit!

When I can't give a definitive answer I - as well as giving entertaining introductions - look at "what we know" and in my case I understand a few things as follows:

Most speakers contain electronics called crossovers. Many are simply glued or screwed to the inside of the speaker cabinet, anchored to a printed circuit board or a tag strip.

Some of these speakers give wondrous performance - some don't.

I received a pair of a particular "some don't" about two years ago. They had the "Audiovile" wound paper in oil capacitors. They sounded as if they were stuffed with autumn leaves! I messed about changing the stuffing and altering the porting all to no avail - so I reverted them to standard issue. I then replaced the oil and paper caps with some rather boring good quality (from an engineering standpoint) stacked foil polyester capacitors. Huge improvement!

Maybe the speaker vibrations were causing the paper in oil to change value during play? I have no proof.

A passive crossover has no gain (put correctly it has unity gain or less) - it is not an amplifier.

If we add gain we increase the magnitude of the signal and the effects of vibration on that signal (should it exist).

Integrated valve amps of the type when I was about knee high had to feature extremely high (by today's standards) input impedance because they were called upon to match ceramic or crystal phono cartridges, tape heads (yes direct!) and microphones.

If you unplugged an input whilst that input was selected (before all the "girly" relay protection circuits you get in modern amps) you'd often hear a "ping". This was a case of vibration shaking the "filaments" - the grid, anode, cathode and heater of the valve causing a bit of oscillation for a fraction of a second.

I'm sure guitarists have noticed similar on their amps - especially valve jobs.

So that suggests solid state inputs can be susceptible to vibration too? Yes, if they are high enough impedance they will often "ping" or "ring" on connection/disconnection.

Once an input is connected however, few will be upset to such an audible extent. The source impedance (usually at least ten times smaller) damps it.

So what "pings" the high impedance solid state input? There are no valves here! Often there is a semiconductor we can term as being "loose" in the signal path: it's a capacitor of the electrolytic variety. Given sufficient circuit gain and high input impedance it can "ping" on unplugging the source. Electrolytics being polarised are actually semiconductors. Yes, including uni-polar devices which are simply two polarised caps in one can pointing in opposite directions.

What is the gain of a Proprius? It is much lower than a phono stage, mic amp or guitar pick-up amp. The gain is 25.

Does it use electrolytics in the input signal path? No, but it does use them elsewhere after a low output impedance front end - it may have some effect but I've not noticed any personally.

Can vibration influence any other part of the circuit? Obviously it must, but to what degree and will it make any difference?

I'm sure there are manufacturers and their anonymous supporters who will swear the difference is large enough to make people worry. It makes perfect financial sense for them to do so.

I'm not saying it does or doesn't, but I will conclude by asking you to read what the reviewers say about active loudspeakers they've reviewed - these contain amplifiers.

PS: In my experience it has been common practice in studios for many years to screw mono amps to the back of speakers to create an ideal amplified loudspeaker to the satisfaction of the sound engineers and producers.

PPS: Aren't quality speaker cabinets supposed to minimise cabinet vibrations? Otherwise they'd be highly colored?

Graham

I was a cable cynic too Drewan until a set of Spatia speaker cable arrived! A very noticeable improvement in bass response, imaging, soundstage, detail . . . .