tuga
Legal Alien
A tool, e.g. a toohbrush, is only useful if you know how to use it. Measurements do not replace listening, they are complementary.
Finally some high performance Klipsch speakers
- Thread starter tuga
- Start date
A tool, e.g. a toohbrush, is only useful if you know how to use it. Measurements do not replace listening, they are complementary.
Mike Hughes
pfm Member
You keep banging that drum in your padded cell mate.
But you haven't listened to the speaker you started this thread about, have you?
Hazelberry
sister
C’mon boys, it’s only hi-fi! How about dropping your weapons & pouring a drink & putting a record on or something? 
Mike Hughes
pfm Member
Was doing exactly that whilst laughing my way through this.C’mon boys, it’s only hi-fi! How about dropping your weapons & pouring a drink & putting a record on or something?
While I like the idea of active speakers with dsp etc... it just seems in general that there is too much tech (amps, dsp, dac, adc, software etc) all crammed into a small footprint waiting to break.
That's kinda the beauty of seperates... dont really like your DAC or something better comes along.. swap the bugger out. Something breaks then just replace that component.
The use case for these is clear...it boaders on a "lifestyle" product... dont want a whole lotta boxes/want to downsize then this type of product is the way to go but I think for most diehards, these and their ilk probably arent that attractive.
Peter
That's kinda the beauty of seperates... dont really like your DAC or something better comes along.. swap the bugger out. Something breaks then just replace that component.
The use case for these is clear...it boaders on a "lifestyle" product... dont want a whole lotta boxes/want to downsize then this type of product is the way to go but I think for most diehards, these and their ilk probably arent that attractive.
Peter
Thats a fair point,but worse than that is the single powersupply often used in these products, the output stage modulates the powersupply big time, and can cause cancellation and loss of dynamics when playing music..
In my experience that's the problem with most reasonably priced hifi
tuga
Legal Alien
This topic is about performance, not how it sounds to different people.
If you want to talk about that you can start your own thread.
Beobloke
pfm Member
Am I right in thinking that you're referring here to the Japanese amplifiers that were reported to measure almost perfectly but sound below par? If so, then this is a very interesting subject.
I was aware of these sort of items for many years and it was only a few years ago that one of them crossed my path. It was one of the Hitachi MOSFET power amplifiers - I forget which precise model it was, but it was one of the big ones!
It came to me in perfect working order, but it had been clouted in a house move and needed some physical repairs to its speaker terminals. I did this and then slotted it into my system to have a listen to it as I was well aware of its reputation as something that measured well but sounded pretty average, and I was keen to hear how this would manifest itself specifically in sonic terms.
Sadly, the experiment was a dismal failure. I spent nearly a week with it in my main system before it had to go back to the owner and the only conclusion I could reach was that it was, and remains still, one of the best power amplifiers I have ever encountered.
Maybe it was more damaged than I thought?!
S-Man
StrivingON
He’s entitled to his opinion and at least it’s consistent.
Also, consider his non-combative replies to your rather combative posts (you are effectively saying he has mental problems!).
They were not all bad by any means, so you caught one of the good ones
S-Man
StrivingON
With regard to ports, it’s all a question of degree. If you look at the output of the speaker in the time domain, they all have issues, no matter how they are tuned. Some people are used to this, or don’t mind, I find it pretty objectionable.
The “horn sound” manifests itself to me as a sort of beam of sound effect. It’s not just horns, Quad ESL 63s have poor vertical dispersion and the music sounds to me like it’s coming through a letterbox. During my experiments with speakers, I’ve realised that diffraction effects and reflections that disturb the presence region are really quite unpleasant. I don’t know if it’s because this presence region is heightened by Horn type speakers, but I find them less than ideal?
I went through a diy horn phase about 15 years ago, my experence is just that..
They can sound very nice and room filling, but at some frequencies there is reasonances, clearly audible, once you hear it... and it took me quite a few months to identify
A couple of years ago I bought a pair of vintage EV compression drivers with big fiberglass horns, they where touted to be an upgrade for la scala's..
The big horn profile really caused resonance, but I have quite a few horns, and tried them all, the best sound to my ear was with no horn at all.. Crystal clear!
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tuga
Legal Alien
I see what you mean. But for a ported speaker the fact that it's using overdamped tuning makes it a better option than underdamped or even critically damped.
And ports are here to stay I'm affraid, there are very few sealed cabinet speakers being marketed these days...
Horn, dipole and cardiod topologies all share one thing which is reasonably constat narrow directivity.
Narrow directivity has the advantage of being less afacted by room interference above the transition or Schroeder range which results in sharper imaging and smoother tonal balance.
The downside is less 'envelopment' and both images and soundstage are perceived as narrower.
It's ultimately a matter of preference. I prefer narrow directivity and it gives a more accurate representation of the recorded or created space (less of the recording room within the listening room effect).
I've posted this before, a couple of snippets from "Acoustics Of Small Rooms" by Kleiner & Tichy that are worth reading:
Spaciousness and diffusivity
Localization of externalized single sound field components was shown to be fairly straightforward but dependent on many factors. Localization of sound field components that have identical sound levels at the ears will depend on further factors such as phase difference.
When sounds are correlated, such as a monophonic signal that is presented binaurally, the auditory event occurs inside the head, inside head localization (IHL). If the sounds at the ears are fully uncorrelated, such as two separate noise signals that are presented binaurally, there will be two auditory events, one at each ear.
An interesting effect can be heard when presenting a monophonic wide bandwidth noise signal in stereo (over loudspeakers or headphones) if the stereo signals are out of phase. The noise frequency components below 2 kHz are then perceived as spatially diffuse—having spaciousness— whereas those for higher frequencies are perceived as located between the loudspeakers (or for headphones, IHL occurs). The time difference in the low-frequency components provides phase cues that are ambiguous thus providing apparent sound field diffuseness, whereas the high-frequency sounds are analyzed by their envelopes and those will be identical at the two ears causing a located auditory event.
Similarly, when a wideband noise signal is provided over headphones to a listener and one of the headphones is fed with the signal delayed by a millisecond or more, the sound is perceived as diffuse.
What constitutes a diffuse sound field is thus different in the physical and psychoacoustic domains. In the latter, a diffuse sound field is that that provides non-locatedness of sounds or, alternatively phrased, that provides a sound that is located over all spatial angles (or rather upper hemisphere in a concert hall that has sound-absorptive seating).
In physics on the other hand, a diffuse sound field is defined as a sound field where all angles of sound incidence have equal probability, where the sound from each spatial angle is out of phase, and where the energy density is the same everywhere.
Obviously, the two ideas of what constitutes diffuseness are different in the two sciences. A physically diffuse sound field will also be psychologically diffuse but not necessarily the reverse. From the viewpoint of listening, it is of course the psychoacoustic properties that are of importance, not the sound field properties.
Auditory source width and image precision
As we listen to sounds, the apparent width of the auditory event, often called the auditory source width (ASW), will depend on many issues. To those listening to stereo or multichannel recordings of sound, it is quite clear that the width of the array of phantom sources treated by the recording or playback is determined by not only the layout of the loudspeaker setup in the listening room and the directional properties of the loudspeakers but also on the listening room itself. The more reflections arriving from the sides of the listening room, the wider will the ASW be. However, the ASW will be frequency dependent above 0.5 kHz and a 2 kHz sound arriving at ±45° relative the frontal direction will produce maximum ASW [38,39]. This is to be expected since the masking by direct sound is the smallest for this angle of incidence of early arriving reflections [16]. The ASW also depends on the low-frequency content of the signal, more low-frequency energy increases ASW [38,40,41]. Psychoacoustic testing shows that the spatial aspects of the early reflections are primarily determined by the reflection spectrum above 2 kHz [33].
Reliable data for sound reproduction in small rooms are difficult to find. A single omnidirectional loudspeaker judiciously placed close to the corner of a room may well create as large an auditory image as a conventional stereo loudspeaker setup placed out in the room as discussed in Chapters 9 and 11.
Using digital signal processing, the ASW can be made to extend far outside the bounds set by the stereo baseline. Sound field cancelation techniques
Symmetry
Early reflected sound will confuse hearing and make the stereo stage and its phantom sources appear incorrectly located or even blurred. As explained in Chapter 8 the listener’s placement of the phantom sources is dependent particularly on the transient nature of the sound that comes from the loudspeakers so it will be affected by the early reflected sound from the room surfaces. The early reflected sound will also affect the global auditory source width for an orchestra for example and may make it extend considerably beyond the baseline between the loudspeakers.
In asymmetric rooms where the walls on the left and right of the listener have different acoustic properties, the stereo stage may become biased towards the wall that reflects the most. The curve in Figure 8.23 shows the dependency more clearly for different levels of unbalance as applied to the center phantom source in a stereo loudspeaker system. The intensity will then be higher at that ear and the sound stage distorted. This distortion is usually compensated by changing the balance in amplification between the stereo channels.
At low frequencies in the modal region, symmetry may not be desirable since someone sitting in the middle of the room may be on or close to modal node lines. One way of avoiding such node lines is to make the room asymmetric in the low-frequency region.
This can be achieved by having an asymmetric rigid shell surrounding the inner room which is symmetric for mid- and high frequencies by suitably reflective side walls, ceiling, and floor. The inner room must be open acoustically to the outer shell at low frequencies, for example through ventilation vents, and similar large openings, for example at corners. In this way, one can have the desired listening position sound field symmetry for mid- and high frequencies while at the same time have asymmetric conditions in the modal frequency range. Bass traps to control the damping—and thus the reverberation times—of these modes can be placed between the outer and inner shell. It is important to remember though that noise transmission to the surrounding spaces will then be dependent on the sound isolation of the outer shell that must be physically substantial.
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tuga
Legal Alien
This generally happens when you use an overly wide band for a particular horn, such resonances happen close to the horn resonance frequency.
That is why constant narrow directivity horns need to be at least 3-way + bass bin.
Thetiminator
Painfully virile
I don't know if you're old enough to remember - but in the late 80's Sony and Pioneer created perfectly measuring digital amps. End game. They were perfectly measuring.Not exactly what you're asking for but back in the early '80s Sony showed how 38cm/s (15ips) R2R tape compared to their A/D+D/A converter, the PCM-F1 (vinyl would of course do worse than tape):
Except nobody bought them (or uses them today)....because they sounded like cr4p.
Thetiminator
Painfully virile
Brilliant. Also don't forget we have Tuga lecturing Graham Tricker on hifi design and sound quality.
Psychologically speaking, quite an interesting place to be
Beobloke
pfm Member
Do you have model numbers?
Based on my experience of the Hitachi amplifier mentioned above, I’d be keen to try these, and they should be bargains if everyone knows they “sounded like crap”!