True. I too had this question but found the answer. They all are stretched on a wooden piece. But the tone, texture, composition of bass from a mridhangam, tabla and melam is totally different from a drum. Even the skin used for a mridhangam and melam is different. A
s per your theory, a drum and a tabla should sound exactly similar. Are they?
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No No thats not at all what I meant, the
principle of each of the drum is the same but the
tonality is very different because of the shape /material of the enclosure, tension of the hide etc etc..hence every drum sounds very different from the other in terms of the tone and the timbre.But i was not sure how one can make a speaker sounds good for western drums but not for indian as there is no way to differentiate that for a driver ( unless i am missing something ). The timbre and tone is made up of Sub harmonics and overtones over and above the fundamental frequency and its the combination which gives the tone and the texture of each drum. in fact there will be differences in sound even between each tabla depending on the tuning .
so I dont think your theory of indian drivers playing indian drums better is valid.
If most drivers can produce all frequencies efficiently, what is the need to invent specialized tweeters, mid range, mid bass and SW to effectively produce a particular range? Can a SW driver be used for high freq? SW drivers that go down to 20hz +/-3db will make 200 hz vanish in thin air at equal volume. Do you think all the 12" SW drivers produce the same sound? Different drivers are tuned for different freq range. Similarly, I believe out of my limited experience that these drivers are tuned for effective reproduction of the sounds from western instruments. I may be wrong too.
Again not what i meant.. since you had specifically mentioned that the driver behaves differently, that too specifically in the 70-200hz range, please do not bring in Subwoofers and tweeters as they operate much beyond this range and no designer in the right mind would use a driver in range it is not designed for.
From what I do know, for most 2 way speakers (most common), the main bass/midrange driver is used upto maybe 2Khz (varies a lot ) and only after that does the tweeter take over. So the entire 30Hz -1Khz is by one driver.
I sincerely doubt if there is any tuning for only one set of instruments
btw i dont intend here that the indian drivers are not good..just that Driver design is an exact science while speaker design is an art.
I dont uderstand why people use SW?If my normal speakers cover all the frequencies I think there is no need of using a sub.My system is a two way and covers 35hz to 20khz.
hi flute, you'd be surprised at the amount of music present in the 20-30Hz region. if you have not heard it, then you can enjoy the music even without it, but once you hear it, you will really miss it if its not there
My speaker goes down to 29 Hz and i can hear a small bass thread on some tracks.With a full range that becomes essential to the music since its that thread which provides the background continuity to music. I never heard it with my previous bookshelves until i put to subs on to it and after that cannot stand those tracks without the bass !
eg Unplugged by Clapton. Dire straits albums even some vocals which sound like acapella on a usual speaker but with a base undertone on a full range which completely changes the experience.
The sub just tries to do that, But it needs to be a good sub which articulates the notes of the bass and not the thump at a single frequency which only ruins the experience. no sub is preferred for that. The thumb rule for a sub is that you should not hear it when on but miss it when off
But again, most indian music do not go that low so for that a 35Hz bottom end is perfectly fine
