The Nightingale
By Lars Mytting
02 Nov 1996
How They Cooperated
I do not feel obliged to give so many subjective comments on the sound quality; but I can say that these drivers provide a very good potential. What strikes me most is the cleanliness and clarity in the whole spectrum. When I changed the drivers, the first thing I noted was how voices suddenly sounded less restrained. Often, voices sound like they have a sort of "lining" round them, a mushy edge that clouds the energy of small transients and details. The sense is something like that from a guitar string which is lightly damped by a finger, so that it cannot vibrate freely. But with these drivers, voices now have a far better sense of air and detail around them. There is no magic in this; it all comes down to low distortion levels and less masking of small details, but the subjective result is very pleasing.
The soundstage is very airy and open, with good imaging. Before, when I have played classical music with many violins, I have often missed the certain quality which was well described by hifi-writer Knut Vadseth as "the sound of violins like a bee-swarm". The system provided the necessary detail and micro-energy to provide a full measure of this. So, given that you manage certain crossover problems, a true reference system is within reach.
Watts In A Name
Ah, yes. Finally the hardcore tech-talk is over. Now the name. All speakers should have a romantic name... why not use the opportunity to bring honour to the fairy-tale of the bird who saved the life of the sad emperor with her sweet song. Well; that bird was a Nightingale, and so is this speaker.
The Gerhard Circuit
During the work on this speaker, I made an interview with Joachim Gerhard, head constructor of Audio Physics. He was also amazed of the potential of the magnesium cone, and had gone to great lengths to get rid of the resonance peak of the 4.5" and 5" Excel drivers. These drivers have two peaks at around 10kHz. Although he could not give us the company secret of the exact values, he revealed that he uses another RLC circuit for the second rise. This normally gives two sharp drops in the filter response. But Gerhard's smart trick was to place a resistor between the inductor, as shown. This creates one wide dip instead of two narrow. (See the "magnesium discussion" with Gerhard in the interview for more details). The circuit then looks like the following; and the calculation of values is a job for Calsod or Leap:
---------|-------------|----------
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IND 1 IND 2
|----RES 3----|
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CAP 1 CAP 2
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RES 1 RES 2
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Still curious about the term "hylo-idealistic" used in the beginning? Well, full understanding of the term is difficult, but the following link contains complete reference literature:
http://www.mk.net/~dt/Bibliomania/Fiction/wilde/stories/oscar3.html
Happy listening and happy reading!
Lars Mytting
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