Thoughts on Harbeth vs Spendor Classic vs Graham vs...

[Tony L]

That's why I'm surprised that larger BBC designs work so well in the mids. No horns, no directivity control, just a transition from an 8" mid to a 1" dome.

My guess is dispersion just doesn’t matter to their core demographic. These are serious listening tools, you set them up in a triangle from the listening seat and tune toe-in by ear. How they perform off axis in a family or party scenario is of no real concern to the people who buy them, be that BBC studio engineers in the ‘70s or high-end audiophiles right now.

The obsession with wide dispersion in the more measurement-centred area of audio just baffles me. I don’t get it. From a true audiophile perspective narrow dispersion just means you can get away with a slightly less well treated room. Wide dispersion has no advantage I am aware of outside say a cinema or PA scenario where a whole group of people may be listening in vastly different locations in the room.

 

[Yank]

My guess is dispersion just doesn’t matter to their core demographic. These are serious listening tools, you set them up in a triangle from the listening seat and tune toe-in by ear. How they perform off axis in a family or party scenario is of no real concern to the people who buy them, be that BBC studio engineers in the ‘70s or high-end audiophiles right now.

The obsession with wide dispersion in the more measurement-centred area of audio just baffles me. I don’t get it. From a true audiophile perspective narrow dispersion just means you can get away with a slightly less well treated room. Wide dispersion has no advantage I am aware of outside say a cinema or PA scenario where a whole group of people may be listening in vastly different locations in the room.

I'm not sure there is an "obsession with wide dispersion in the more measurement-centered area of audio". What I've seen over the past few decades is an obsession with consistent dispersion - the avoision* of sudden changes in dispersion, or holes in the power response.

Thing is, ultra-wide dispersion is just a natural trait for dome tweeters.


*it's a perfectly cromulent word