Best case material for a minute repeater?

[VFA]

Does this question have a definitive answer? I am not asking which case material produces the best sound as I believe that would be subjective.

But we can talk about the loudest sound. Is there a concensus on which material is the loudest?

Is it gold? J, R, G?
Is it carbon?
Is it titanium?

Or is it wood? The answer doesnt have to be realistic as long as its scientific

What material would produce the loudest noise?

[tyler1980]

i'll go with titanium mainly because thats what AP used in the RO Concept Supersonnerie

I have no scientific basis for that but im sure they do otherwise they would have used a different material.

[PJ S]

Loudness is a function of inner volume and lack of attenuation.
Stiffer materials inherently have greater transmission properties, albeit frequency biased – carbon fibre is excellent for midrange frequencies, where our ears are naturally more sensitive than the upper and lower end of the audio spectrum.
There’s a whole lot more to it than this, but a lot of it is complex, and I don’t fully appreciate all that there is to understand – so explaining would be rather convoluted if I tried to.

AP’s MR as fitted to the RO Concept Supersonnerie is worth watching, but Chopard have just recently done something no other manufacturer has managed or considered previously.
At the risk of repeating the same links as the thread in the Patek section…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vehKYsjOEI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghazOR4_4GA

[VFA]

Excellent info PJ

Did I understand correctly that the gongs and the sapphire is one continuous piece of saphire on the LUC?

[fmc000]

Journe makes all his repeaters and sonnerie watches in steel because it's less dense than gold / platinum. He says that the sound transmission is better.

[PJ S]

Originally Posted by VFA

Excellent info PJ

Did I understand correctly that the gongs and the sapphire is one continuous piece of saphire on the LUC?

Yes, all one piece of sapphire – supreme engineering from a “tiny” independent.

[MILGAUSS88]

I remember Thierry Stern saying rose gold was the best.
Which seems to make sense to me, after all large bells are made of bronze, a copper alloy.

https://www.patek.com/en/company/sav...ters/acoustics

[MILGAUSS88]

I find that if you put a music box or repeater on a flat wood surface you will get a much richer and full sound.

[PJ S]

^
Thank the Lord Patek doesn’t design hi-end (or otherwise) loudspeakers as a sideline then!

Church bells are not a reference for materials or design in a wristwatch or pocket watch repeater.
Their design is aimed at carrying sound over a large distance – that means bass frequencies, which are a function of internal volume and mouth dimension.

The copper content in bronze gives it certain properties, but one of them most definitely isn’t acoustical. Most likely it’ll be corrosion, castability, and strength/durability.
No point having a bell made from cast iron, which disintegrates upon first usage, due to its inherent brittleness.
The weight is immaterial, once installed – the rope mechanism operates on a force multiplier design. Bells like that in Big Ben, have too much mass to be set in motion, so those are anchored and struck on the outside.
It’s also advantageous, as the extra mass adds reverberance, which means the note decays slowly, therefore it’s heard for longer.

[PJ S]

Originally Posted by MILGAUSS88

I find that if you put a music box or repeater on a flat wood surface you will get a much richer and full sound.

Slight amplification as a result of coupling to a larger surface area, which will set of different resonances at different frequencies to that of the watch itself.

[MILGAUSS88]

Originally Posted by PJ S

^
No point having a bell made from cast iron, which disintegrates upon first usage, due to its inherent brittleness.

You mean like this:

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

[MILGAUSS88]

I see you are from the UK, and probably have never been to the US Midwest, so I will forgive you being uninformed.
Cast iron Bells were used at virtually every one room School, small Prairie Church and a lot of farms.
They are over a hundred years old now and you can still find thousands of them. And they still work.

[tyler1980]

Originally Posted by MILGAUSS88

I see you are from the UK, and probably have never been to the US Midwest, so I will forgive you being uninformed.
Cast iron Bells were used at virtually every one room School, small Prairie Church and a lot of farms.
They are over a hundred years old now and you can still find thousands of them. And they still work.

pretty sure old bells in the UK would precede any found in the new world in age so im not sure how that is relevant. 100 years is nothing.

[MILGAUSS88]

Originally Posted by tyler1980

pretty sure old bells in the UK would precede any found in the new world in age so im not sure how that is relevant. 100 years is nothing.

I was trying to politely point out that the member did not know what he was talking about, by showing that cast iron bells have indeed been made and have been in use for many decades if not centuries.

I thought by doing this it would then be obvious that his entire argument was not valid.

Apparently, it was not.

i never imagined that it was debatable that the use of bronze in bells or say brass in instruments was not due to the sonorous quality of the metal.

Lets think about this. What is bronze with out copper. It is tin. Tin bells were used for years on cows and make a loud clacking sound. What happens when copper is added to the tin. It now has a much smoother mellow sound, that will resonate.

I understand that people have different tastes, you may prefer the clacking sound of a cow bell, but I prefer the more mellow resonating sound of a well made bronze bell.

Therefore, for repeaters, I prefer the one style of case that has a copper alloy. Rose gold.

[VFA]

Originally Posted by PJ S

Yes, all one piece of sapphire – supreme engineering from a “tiny” independent.

That is increadible and very impressive. And at the same time we have rolex who cant make the cyclops as one piece with the crystal. So they make 2 pieces and glue them to each other. Shaking my head.

[PJ S]

Originally Posted by MILGAUSS88

I see you are from the UK, and probably have never been to the US Midwest, so I will forgive you being uninformed.
Cast iron Bells were used at virtually every one room School, small Prairie Church and a lot of farms.
They are over a hundred years old now and you can still find thousands of them. And they still work.

I was probably thinking more of pig iron, but nonetheless, I’d obviously forgotten anything I once knew about CI bells from the distant past.
Thanks for filling the gap in my knowledge.