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Graham Audio LS5/9

I just searched Google Images for SHL5+ frequency response and Stereophile has measured them:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-super-hl5plus-loudspeaker-measurements

615HLS5fig4.jpg


They look pretty wild up top, then again I've seen other Stereophile measured speakers show similar characteristics so I'm not sure how much trust I'd place in their measurements!


That breakup beyond 20khz is quite normal for a metal tweeter.

What I read over at diyaudio was that when the breakup is excited, it causes problems lower down in the frequency range. I have some hard dome tweeters here that can sometimes sound like there's too much going on when the music gets busy. If I drop the level they sound dull. I spent a long time trying to voice them but I now realise it's just the way they are - No more hard dome tweeters for me.
 
What I read over at diyaudio was that when the breakup is excited, it causes problems lower down in the frequency range. I have some hard dome tweeters here that can sometimes sound like there's too much going on when the music gets busy. If I drop the level they sound dull. I spent a long time trying to voice them but I now realise it's just the way they are - No more hard dome tweeters for me.

That’s pretty much my findings too. It is always the lower-end of a metal dome tweeter that draw attention for me, they seem fine right up to the limits of my middle aged hearing, but less good down where they crossover to the mid/bass-mid. I seem happy enough with metal compression drivers (Tannoy, JBL etc), but I can’t think of a single metal dome tweeter I’ve thought as natural and seamless as a good well integrated soft-dome.
 
Yes.
It is complex. I've heard some 8, 10, 12 and 15" drivers in speakers that were bad at bass (the LS5/9 is not in that list). Do I then say all of those driver sizes are bad at bass? No, because that would be a ridiculously bad extrapolation.
For anyone to come on here and say that "a driver of single parameter x is always going to be better than single parameter x-n" is just far too simplistic (whatever parameter they have chosen) and not at all helpful to those seeking good advice.
id be interested at the good 15 or 12 inch that do poor bass, extension apart.
cause theres many 15” that wont go any lower then a 10”.

have you missed the part i said about good drivers? take any 12 inch or 15 inch from eminence, volt, sb acoustic, jbl, beyma, radial, ect, they all without exception give better bass then a 6,5 or 8 inch. not even close.

thats my limited experience. a good 12 inch woofer (ive had 4speakers using a 12 inch) make bass so incredible and so much better to any of the 8 incher speaker based that its a fair conclusion for me. not even comparable actually. it would be like comparing a V8 vs a V4 car

ive also had enough 5”, 6,5” and 8” based to clearly know what to expect from a 6,5 inch woofer.
 
id be interested at the good 15 or 12 inch that do poor bass, extension apart.
cause theres many 15” that wont go any lower then a 10”.

‘Lower’ is not really the thing here to my mind. What I hear from good big efficient speakers is a real natural scale and effortlessness. I doubt my Lockwood Tannoys actually go deeper in a Hz sense than say a small pair of PMC transmission lines, yet they way they actually put music into the room couldn’t be more different. It is all about moving air mass IME, and the genuinely big speakers be they large panels, horns or speakers with 15” cones, all do a very different thing than the ones that try to move a tiny driver (or multiples thereof) a very, very long way to my ears.
 
I have little experience of any speakers with drivers larger than 8" but I do have some Radford's at present with 12" bass units. One of the most interesting things to me, apart form the naturalness of the bass response, is how little the 12" unit seems to move. If that is what is meant by 'effortless' then yes this particular 12" unit does seem to exhibit that trait.
 
id be interested at the good 15 or 12 inch that do poor bass, extension apart.
cause theres many 15” that wont go any lower then a 10”.

have you missed the part i said about good drivers? take any 12 inch or 15 inch from eminence, volt, sb acoustic, jbl, beyma, radial, ect, they all without exception give better bass then a 6,5 or 8 inch. not even close.

thats my limited experience. a good 12 inch woofer (ive had 4speakers using a 12 inch) make bass so incredible and so much better to any of the 8 incher speaker based that its a fair conclusion for me. not even comparable actually. it would be like comparing a V8 vs a V4 car

ive also had enough 5”, 6,5” and 8” based to clearly know what to expect from a 6,5 inch woofer.

You have, indeed, qualified your thoughts by adding 'good' which wasn't in you original post, but continue to ignore the rest of the 'system' that is a finished loudspeaker, particularly the box.

A better design is better, a good driver of any size can be screwed up by a bad design. All I'm saying is that focussing on one thing is too simplistic.

Listening is the key measure, not diameters.
 
Yes, listening is the key.
From what I’ve heard, a 12” driver can produce more bass but be lacking in other parts of the
audio spectrum.
 
Cone diameter is an intriguing subject that I haven't really delved into in any great detail. The improved sense of scale and effortlessness portrayed by a larger cone... Does the "scale" part come from the sound radiating from a larger point source, if I can put it that way, which is a more realistic representation of how low frequency sound radiates from unamplified instruments? And does the "effortlessness" part come from the larger cone area being able to shift more air with less excursion** and therefore greater control/speed (all else being equal of course)?

I suppose this makes sense intuitively, but when comparing the various speakers I've had in my listening room I've not managed to draw definitive conclusions because it's very difficult to separate the effect of driver size from the effect of enclosure design, and the way that both of these factors combine to interact with the room to produce significantly different responses. The difference between a 12" and 6" driver is of course plainly obvious even to the untrained ear, but once you get to comparing say a 15" to a 12" driver, things become less black & white and the more important optimised enclosure design becomes IME.

The main thing I notice with increased driver size is the increase in impact of the initial transient of a percussive instrument, e.g. a kick drum, tom, snare, etc, which seems to hit harder the larger the driver is. This presumably has little to do with low frequency extension but more to do with the speed at which the driver is able to propel a large volume of air?

As has already been noted, the larger the driver diameter, generally the less well behaved it becomes at higher frequencies, which may or may not compromise the overall performance of the speaker, so as ever, it's all a very fine balancing act. 12" drivers are the current sweet spot for me as an (almost) full-range loudspeaker in my size of listening room (4.2m x 3.8m), but that could just be because I've yet to hear a 15" driver in an enclosure that's fully optimised for it.

** I've often wondered if it's the laws of physics that accounts for the difference in excursion between a small and large diameter driver, or if it's because the small diameter driver has been EQd in the crossover to boost low frequency output to counteract its shortcomings? i.e. lets assume we have a 6" and 12" driver that are otherwise identical in all other aspects of their design (surround stiffness, etc). If we were to connect each driver directly to the amplifier with no crossover, would the 6" driver naturally show greater excursion when fed a 2.83Vrms input of a 20Hz sine wave than the 12" driver, or would they have the same excursion?
 
** I've often wondered if it's the laws of physics that accounts for the difference in excursion between a small and large diameter driver, or if it's because the small diameter driver has been EQd in the crossover to boost low frequency output to counteract its shortcomings? i.e. lets assume we have a 6" and 12" driver that are otherwise identical in all other aspects of their design (surround stiffness, etc). If we were to connect each driver directly to the amplifier with no crossover, would the 6" driver naturally show greater excursion when fed a 2.83Vrms input of a 20Hz sine wave than the 12" driver, or would they have the same excursion?

Assuming the same proportion of magnet and voice coil they’d move the same amount, though obviously the larger cone will be hugely more efficient/louder as it moves so much more air due to larger surface area. The smaller driver needs to move massively further to produce anything even approaching bass, so effectively needs the tweeter turning down by the crossover due to this lack of efficiency in converting movement to sound. There is no replacement for displacement! Doppler effect is apparently another factor when you have a tiny bass-mid that is bobbing in and out by a couple of cm trying to reproduce really deep notes, i.e. the midrange pitch is less solid as it is not coming from a remotely stable platform.

I rather like the phrase ‘small speaker fist punch’ to describe large excursion modern ported speakers, it makes for a nice logical comparison to the effortlessness of a large driver that barely moving.
 
Yes.
It is complex. I've heard some 8, 10, 12 and 15" drivers in speakers that were bad at bass (the LS5/9 is not in that list). Do I then say all of those driver sizes are bad at bass? No, because that would be a ridiculously bad extrapolation.
For anyone to come on here and say that "a driver of single parameter x is always going to be better than single parameter x-n" is just far too simplistic (whatever parameter they have chosen) and not at all helpful to those seeking good advice.

Mid-woofers are a compromise. Ideally one should have at least 3 ways, each of them dedicated to a particular range.

6.5" or smaller mid-woofers in small cabinets will therefore struggle both with sub-bass reproduction and max SPL capabilities.

So even though I agree that the size of the mid-woofer alone is no guarantee of better performance (this also depends on the other design aspects, driver performance and implementation) a larger mid-woofer has the potential to be better in the two aspects that I mentioned.
 
I have little experience of any speakers with drivers larger than 8" but I do have some Radford's at present with 12" bass units. One of the most interesting things to me, apart form the naturalness of the bass response, is how little the 12" unit seems to move. If that is what is meant by 'effortless' then yes this particular 12" unit does seem to exhibit that trait.
And as far as I know, less movement means less distortion.
 
From what I’ve heard, a 12” driver can produce more bass but be lacking in other parts of the
audio spectrum.

A mid-woofer is a compromise. A three way speaker allows each driver to operate in optimal conditions (though for sub-bass one could argue that a sub-woofer would improve performance) and reduce intermodulation distortion.


PgkRyUp.jpg
 
** I've often wondered if it's the laws of physics that accounts for the difference in excursion between a small and large diameter driver, or if it's because the small diameter driver has been EQd in the crossover to boost low frequency output to counteract its shortcomings? i.e. lets assume we have a 6" and 12" driver that are otherwise identical in all other aspects of their design (surround stiffness, etc). If we were to connect each driver directly to the amplifier with no crossover, would the 6" driver naturally show greater excursion when fed a 2.83Vrms input of a 20Hz sine wave than the 12" driver, or would they have the same excursion?

I just had a quick play in some software, and it looks like the smaller driver with the same specs (magnet, suspension stiffness etc) will have much lower efficiency, so for the same input power, it will have a much lower output.
 
Slightly OT, but has anyone come across a comparison chart for all the BBC-style speakers? Would be nice to have a quick reference for size and other basic specs. Googled for about 10 minutes with no luck. Thanks!
 
You have, indeed, qualified your thoughts by adding 'good' which wasn't in you original post, but continue to ignore the rest of the 'system' that is a finished loudspeaker, particularly the box.

A better design is better, a good driver of any size can be screwed up by a bad design. All I'm saying is that focussing on one thing is too simplistic.

Listening is the key measure, not diameters.
normally, a 12 or 15 needs a big box. however, i still find that a 12" tannoy in small cabs offer bass that no 8 inch can match no matter how big the 8 inch box is

and a 12 inch beyma woofer in my 150L cabinet made bass that was truly incredible and so powerful yet tight and articulate as to make any debate between 8 inch vs 12 or 15 inch seriously ridiculous. and I mean it, ridiculous.
 
‘Lower’ is not really the thing here to my mind. What I hear from good big efficient speakers is a real natural scale and effortlessness. I doubt my Lockwood Tannoys actually go deeper in a Hz sense than say a small pair of PMC transmission lines, yet they way they actually put music into the room couldn’t be more different. It is all about moving air mass IME, and the genuinely big speakers be they large panels, horns or speakers with 15” cones, all do a very different thing than the ones that try to move a tiny driver (or multiples thereof) a very, very long way to my ears.
exactly
its not about going low, big drivers bass is about the impact and sense of power in the bass and midbass directly related to how much air is moving...

I must add to my Seas a26 post that I dont understand the Seas measurements at all regarding their tweeter resistor. in my treated room, with the mic pointed in between the tweeter and the woofer, with the 15 ohm resistor install, I get a very flat FR. with 10 ohm resistor install, which is their "neutral" tweeter level stock, it is too bright and measurements show it is not a neutral response, more tilted up.

I must add that their tweeter offset dont work at all. if you put the tweeter on the outside and measure at the listening position: tweeter on the inside is flat FR, tweeter outside give a ****ed up -4 db between 2 khz up to 5-6khz. therefore, tweeters offset must be placed on the inside for neutral response.

furthermore, the A26 measurements are very height dependent. too high or too low you get a -3db response between about 2khz to 7 khz. so the A26 must be listened with the upper part of the woofer at ear level. the off axis response is surprisingly even, with a nice tilting down of the treble.
 
‘Lower’ is not really the thing here to my mind. What I hear from good big efficient speakers is a real natural scale and effortlessness. I doubt my Lockwood Tannoys actually go deeper in a Hz sense than say a small pair of PMC transmission lines, yet they way they actually put music into the room couldn’t be more different. It is all about moving air mass IME, and the genuinely big speakers be they large panels, horns or speakers with 15” cones, all do a very different thing than the ones that try to move a tiny driver (or multiples thereof) a very, very long way to my ears.

This has also been my experience: speakers with large woofers sound a lot more real. I am yet to be convinced that speakers using multiple small woofers (three 7" woofers have a slightly larger radiating area than a single 12") can play in the same league.

One of the areas where I notice an advantage is in the recreation of the venue ambience with orchestral music recordings, and the timpani sound a lot more realistic.
 
I can't see the strictly stereo measurements, they are not online anymore.
I don't understand if the 5/9 have a flat response or not.
Is the mentioned "BBC dip" realistic and if yes, in which frequencies?
I have the 5/9, and I think they have the voices in evidence, but I don't think they are warm speakers.
Thanks
 


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