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Your loudspeaker holy grail

TAD Exclusive 2401's for me. I've gotten pretty close in terms of dynamics and scale with the JBL loaded Westlake TM1 clones I had out of PlutoSound studios a few years ago but the extra refinement of the TAD horn and beryllium hf Dias would top things off to perfection.


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James said:
Single driver loudspeakers don't suffer phase discontinuities in the way multi-driver ones do; that's well understood. What is less well understood is that it is entirely possible to design a multiway loudspeaker such that is sounds completely coherent like a single driver; at least along the design axis. Time-of-flight differences etc. can mostly be ameliorated by clever and thoughtful crossover design. So, whilst your eyes may suggest there should be a lack of integration, the only way you can be certain is listening with blindfolds or in the dark.

I haven't heard NBLs properly, so I cannot comment on how coherent or integrated it sounds (or not). The other point about driver spacing is that the wider they are, the narrower the design axis (assuming that it was designed with one) is. That is possibly why small loudspeakers and more tightly spaced drivers are more forgiving of off-axis listening.
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I completely agree about what is possible to achieve with multiple drivers, a mate of mine uses a pair of fane 12" twin cones, its been good to compare my loudspeaker along side his.
I still have a few pairs of full range drivers / speakers, I've spent hours comparing crossovers to no crossover when I first went multi way.

For me loudspeaker speaker selection is the key to good sound, once you get drivers that work together and are seamless across the frequency range, then getting a (cabinet ?) to produce realistic bass, which I found was actually the hard part..

I think back 20 years ago when I found that my lowthers merged seamlessly with vintage goodmans 301s, both drivers in open baffle, there was the same transient speed and tone, but if i put the 301s in a box, then that all that changed, transients where suppressed.
So I've avoided boxes since, as, unless they are very big they start to stifle what the driver is capable of producing.
 
Tony L said:
IIf my preference was to listen as far away from the speakers as you do I may well be more tolerant of driver placing.
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I'm not sure how big you think my room is, but my ears are about 2.5m from the loudspeakers, currently multiway NS-1000Ms. I guess that is more midfield than far.
 
James said:
I'm not sure how big you think my room is, but my ears are about 2.5m from the loudspeakers, currently multiway NS-1000Ms. I guess that is more midfield than far.
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The picture made it look larger than that! I could likely deal with NS1000s at that distance, but not anything with a much bigger spread between driver centres. When I had LaScalas in the alcoves of my TV room my listening distance was 3.5m, but they are unusual as the mid horn is so wide handling everything from 400Hz to 6kHz, i.e. all the mid comes from one place. Their time domain is a total mess though!

FWIW I think one of my issues is I spent quite a bit of time with a Linn/Naim/Isobarik system in a very small room. That taught me so much about driver integration, and sure, you can argue that was a worst case scenario (short of NBLs!), but once really learned it can’t be unlearned. I hear it with very high-tech modern speakers such as JM Labs etc too, they just don’t sound like a point source. Again the opposite is true, so hearing and really getting to know true point sources such as Quad ESL 63, Tannoys, LS50s, MEGs etc nails down what a point-source is and what I like so much about them.

I’m not saying my experience is universal, but for the way I hear/listen, my priorities etc I am absolutely convinced a point-source or as close as one can possibly get to one is my preference. I would certainly prioritise it far above bass extension or max volume capability. Others can obviously make their own choices.
 
I should add Quad ESL57 or 63 to my holy grail list. The only Quad ESL I heard were the 2905s; I thought they were a little underwhelming. But they were playing at the store bang in the middle of a large area, so probably not optimally positioned.
 
James said:
I should add Quad ESL57 or 63 to my holy grail list. The only Quad ESL I heard were the 2905s; I thought they were a little underwhelming. But they were playing at the store bang in the middle of a large area, so probably not optimally positioned.
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Definitely. They are an essential stop on any journey to understand what is possible in loudspeaker design IMO. They are very subtle and it takes a little time for the penny to drop that you are hearing things without all the issues of multi moving coil drivers, cabinets, mass, time-smearing etc. That done and once acclimatised you will find much to like. They may well be my favourite speakers. I’d personally concentrate on the two Walker-era speakers, the 57 & 63. The former is simply astonishing, a speaker from 65 years ago that is still genuinely better than about 98% of modern loudspeakers regardless of price (IMHO, obvs). It is just so natural, so open, so clear, so quick, so coherent, so right.

The 63 raises that technological bar even higher by being a true time-aligned point-source, and one with far better bass. They are pretty much the best pair of Stax headphones in loudspeaker form. Nothing else does what they do, though like everything else they do have flaws (in the dynamic domain mainly, they’ll clearly never rival the very best high-efficiency horns etc no matter what the amplification when it comes to life and lightness of touch).

I’d view both the Quads as near to midfield speakers, you need to get fairly close to them for the real magic IME. If I ever land a pair of 57s (my choice as more valve friendly) I’d use them much the same way I use LS3/5As & JR149s, i.e. sitting on a beanbag up pretty close.

PS I sit about 2.4m away from the front grille of my Tannoys.
 
James said:
That was taken with a 12mm rectilinear lens on Pentax K5. It is comfortably sized at 6.3m wide, 4.05m deep and 2.7m high.
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Hopefully your head is at least a meter from the wall behind? Difficult to see, but from the measurements you give it seems so.
 
darrenyeats said:
Hopefully your head is at least a meter from the wall behind? Difficult to see, but from the measurements you give it seems so.
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More or less. Baffles are 80cm proud of the front wall. My head is about 50cm out from the back wall. Near perfect equilateral triangle formed by me and the loudspeakers, which are about 2m from their respective side walls.
 
A year-ish ago I moved my speakers nearer to the wall behind them, and my listening position more into space (now my head >1m from nearest boundary). Was very beneficial here.

Often the problem with moving speakers nearer to the wall behind them, is they then sit near to or behind large objects like fireplaces, racks, TVs etc. In your case, it's a plain wall, except for the bookcase which I guess is fine.

I'm envious about your room!
 
I do not have a loudspeaker lust, probably due to not hearing that many.

The speakers I have now (from new) are good enough, and I don’t think I am missing much. If I wasn’t pleased with the sound, then I would have a list to try.

Also I am not in a position to swap around speakers financially or physically. ( I would have to get bigger speakers if I was going to change them)
A slightly bigger Music Room would be nice, but I am blessed to have a dedicated room with a view.
(It is worth noting that I don’t have anything HiFi-wise that I am unhappy with. Same with The Wife, my car and my ears - I would like new knees, hands, wrists, eyes etc. though :))
 
James said:
The other point about driver spacing is that the wider they are, the narrower the design axis (assuming that it was designed with one) is. That is possibly why small loudspeakers and more tightly spaced drivers are more forgiving of off-axis listening.
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When you say 'design axis' are you referring to the vertical axis of the speaker? And likewise when you refer to 'off-axis listening', are you again referring to the vertical axis or the horizontal axis or both?

I'm trying to get a better understanding of Tony's apparent acute sensitivity to the lack of integration of multi-driver loudspeakers. In my admittedly limited experience, even if a multi-driver loudspeaker sounds disjointed at certain listening heights, there is usually at least one height at which it sounds convincingly integrated and, if you position the speakers and listening seat to coincide with this optimal height then you should hear an integrated sound and not one that is disparate. That's my experience with Celestion Ditton 66's at least, which is a speaker that has a rather ropey vertical off-axis response. I don't see how this is all that different to the limited sweet spot that a Quad 57 or 63 provides. Listening to 63's in a smallish room I felt as if I almost had to keep my head in a vice to maintain optimal HF extension.
 
There is a point where they're optimally integrated. That's not the same as perfect.

As Tony mentioned, what about for example ceiling and floor reflections. What is integrated on axis is unintegrated off axis - especially with large driver spacing.

Am not convinced quad ESL rings with delays work as a true point source once you move off axis, similar deal. I find them to have a small sweet spot.

For this reason coaxial drivers are best. Second would be closely spaced mid/tweeter (and as a lower priority LF/mid).
 
My criteria are less strict than a lot of people. I am totally fine with drivers that aren’t even vertically aligned — IF the speakers have drivers in a mirror image configuration between the two speakers. E.g. my JBL4312As are perfectly good for me, whereas I couldn’t own a pair of 4311s because they are all identical, not mirror imaged. Also, I know how popular Shahinians are here, but it drives me bonkers that a several thousand dollar speaker isn’t built mirror imaged. Having the center of HF shifted to one side compared to the center of midrange output is a deal breaker, and not something you can fix with accessories!
 
ToTo Man said:
I'm trying to get a better understanding of Tony's apparent acute sensitivity to the lack of integration of multi-driver loudspeakers.
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You definitely need to factor-in my preference for near-field/mid-field listening. Basically the place I want to sit is just too close to the vast majority of big three-way speakers. As an example, much as I really like them, I’d hear a height difference between the treble, mid and bass ranges of the Ditton 66. Another maybe more extreme example is the typical Martin Logan hybrid ESL/MC where in effect you have a very large tall tweeter and the bass slumped on the floor (they actually crossover far higher than one initially expects, a lot of mid-bass comes out on the floor!). They are an amazing speaker in many ways, I’ve heard them sound absolutely stunning, but I could never block out the ‘that bit is up there, and that’s all down there’ aspect in a typical UK listening room.

PS I’m absolutely not criticising any of these speakers, they all have context, I’m merely explaining why I’m personally drawn to other approaches.
 
Point source seems to equal "head in vice", listening alone, keeping still, concentrating...

Not my idea of hi-fi's purpose... I like to conduct, or play air percussion!

YMMV, naturally...
 
The opposite, point sources work better off axis all else being equal. It's non-point sources that lead to a smaller listening spot.

"All else being equal" is a big caveat admittedly.
 
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