Feb 29, 2016 8:37:24 GMT MartinT said:

Feb 29, 2016 8:00:57 GMT @singularity said:

Yes, but a mechanical one rather than an electronic one

Yes, I realise that.  I've always associated doping with those heavily-coned BBC type speakers with slow, coloured midrange. 

I'm going to HAVE to dispute that statement - crash-hats on chaps and apologies in advance.......

The reason why EARLY BBC derived 2cu speakers had a supposed 'slow' sound was BC1 and BC2 drivers that were underdamped, not so much the well doped bextrene cone which actually gave a fine midrange and treble smoother than the evergreen Quad 57 (even Peter Walker himself acknowledged this I understand). You think these cones are heavy? Try 'weighing' in your hand an ATC SCM20 cone-coil assembly out of the drive unit. These weigh a ton and NEED the heavy power-sapping damping in the surround and suspension. The BC1 and sibling LS3/6 (the latter all but passed over by the BBC in preference to the then established BC1 for general 'noise box' duties) were early 70's designs and were never intended for high grade, let alone high level, monitoring. The midrange on these was NEVER EVER coloured - they just didn't go very loud and the loose bass swamped the fine mids if they were set too low (on their trolleys) and too close to the wall. The BBC often had them hanging from the ceiling, so around 5' off the ground angled down to the studio's work station...

The worst 'BBC derived' speaker for bad bass was the Rogers Studio 1 series and the big passive Chartwells and these really could boom if badly set up. The Beeb never bought any of these I believe The Spendor BC series actually had a very tactile midrange and the 100Hz 'honk' in the BC1 only, got better as the years went on - the SP1 was fine! Later smaller models from Rogers and Spendor weren't related to any BBC model so the tonal lushness they had was more for other markets than ours I think.

Sorry, I really think that BC1's and distant relatives have been tarred by a brush often wielded by the likes of 'flat-earth' people where visceral impact and 'speed' (lack of bass makes it sound 'fast') coupled with a squeaky upper mid (Kans, sorry Andrew ) became the thing. early Royds to me were a dreadfully lumpy and un-integrated bag of nails, the Sintras with their 5db too-high tweeter taking your fillings out on anything better than a LP12 in prime fruitbox era...

The drivers used in the Cubes are nothing like the Spendor and Rogers drivers. They're very stiffly suspended for a start and power handling for each size is not an issue. Adding the doping in various layers, mainly around the dust cap, does absolutely nothing to 'slow' the cone response to a signal at all I think, apart from frequencies probably over 1k (I'm guessing) which become progressively absorbed - it's a fairly hard doping. having this driver facing upwards also assists the overall response as heard and the result is never jangly or 'HiFi' although it took me a little while to get used to the slightly more 'ethereal' nature of the less 'projected at you' upper mid. In a suitable room environment, it's an enchanting listen, as Andrew should confirm and bass in ALL of them is tight, 'tuneful' and well defined.