Give it a rest Bear ..... 
The bad sounding speakers you describe in your previous posts has nothing to do with them being multi-way, accelerated drivers have issues that make them sound coloured, they have their purposes and yes you can get dynamic speakers, direct radiating/dipole which will do all that you love in that WE speaker for domestic use.
Commercial , there is no substitute for Horn loaded speakers ......
The bad sounding speakers you describe in your previous posts has nothing to do with them being multi-way, accelerated drivers have issues that make them sound coloured, they have their purposes and yes you can get dynamic speakers, direct radiating/dipole which will do all that you love in that WE speaker for domestic use.
Commercial , there is no substitute for Horn loaded speakers ......
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Bear based on your loaded supposition, what am i to say ...
What is an typical multi-way Speaker...?
If you took the time to read what is on the page you would see that I referred to it several times: one with the xover in the MIDDLE of the spectrum. Pick ur spot. What do you want it to be? 500Hz? 1000Hz. 2000Hz?
How many speakers are made with the xover in this region? Can we safely say MOST?? Rhetorical question, answer: yes.
umm, no you can not stand that close without the phase difference between the tweeter and the rest being significant, unless the speaker is designed for some whacko reason to be listened to in that position. Also the polar response of the tweeter will be off, unless ur on axis, in which case the xover will not work between the two, unless you designed it to work at a distance of 14"... but never mind. that and a head clamp...
there is a large differential between a speaker that is essentially transparent in most regards and one that just sounds like hi-fi. Based on what you are writing, I would guess that your experience is mostly with those that have good bandwidth and moderately good on axis flatness of response. Those are important things, but hardly the holy grail itself.
You want holy grail material you need to go hear Joe Robert's set up or one like it. Until then ur talking Lexus to people who drive IROC and Indy... ok?
_-_-bear
PS. I have not heard Joe Rob's system myself, for all I know it blows chunks!
errr No and you would be wrong ...
there is a large differential between a speaker that is essentially transparent in most regards and one that just sounds like hi-fi. Based on what you are writing, I would guess that your experience is mostly with those that have good bandwidth and moderately good on axis flatness of response. Those are important things, but hardly the holy grail itself.
You want holy grail material you need to go hear Joe Robert's set up or one like it. Until then ur talking Lexus to people who drive IROC and Indy... ok?
_-_-bear
PS. I have not heard Joe Rob's system myself, for all I know it blows chunks!
I have done all that Joe has raved over , even had the great ones stand inline to get a listen, so i don't have to prove anything to anyone, been there did that ..
Never had anyone shed tears thou ... So he has me there ..............
There has been so much dialogue here I just think Mr. Wayne & Bear are getting lost in who said what.....Reset.
Are the WE arrays great, yes, do they sound good? ...As rare as they are only a handful of individuals will hear them.....even less individuals will hear them in a controlled critical listening environment.........the hoopla destroying any possibility of critical listening.
Someone find a cinema that is being refurbished, set up the old WE arrays on the left, a modern array, the right.........draw the curtain. Run some movies for a week.......& hear the complaints start rolling in. "It doesn't sound right" will be the refrain.
10 Db spikes around 3-4K??...way unacceptable........see the response bobbing up & down all thru the ranges YUK! Count me out listening to this.....stuff.
_________________________________________________________Rick....
Are the WE arrays great, yes, do they sound good? ...As rare as they are only a handful of individuals will hear them.....even less individuals will hear them in a controlled critical listening environment.........the hoopla destroying any possibility of critical listening.
Someone find a cinema that is being refurbished, set up the old WE arrays on the left, a modern array, the right.........draw the curtain. Run some movies for a week.......& hear the complaints start rolling in. "It doesn't sound right" will be the refrain.
10 Db spikes around 3-4K??...way unacceptable........see the response bobbing up & down all thru the ranges YUK! Count me out listening to this.....stuff.
_________________________________________________________Rick....
What cinemas are in your area? The typical ones around here are almost unlistenable, save that one with the original WE system , with the bass horns... that one sounds fine, btw.
Probably in NYC and Hollywood there are some good ones... The Ziegfeld in NYC was tremendous back in the 70s, but that's ancient history now.
_-_-bear
Probably in NYC and Hollywood there are some good ones... The Ziegfeld in NYC was tremendous back in the 70s, but that's ancient history now.
_-_-bear
Let's keep things respectful and stick to some degree to the topic at hand. OK?
My take away was that it near impossible to come to a fair and balanced appraisal of a Stradivarius when you know the violin is a Strad. Your expectations are biased that it will, of course, be spectacular. That is why the violinists in the test were forced to wear welders goggles, so that they had no sight clues.
We can't deny that the same is a factor in audio. Compare the demo that Joe puts on with, say the same speakers behind a curtain. Or imagine they are behind a curtain and we tell the audience it is a new prototype by Bose. Let the audience vote on the sound and add up the totals.
Would you espect the same tally?
Vintage Wine or Cheap Plonk? Science Festival reveals experiment results | Edinburgh International Science Festival
(and from another test on wine tasting bias)
"In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn't tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?"
"The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...t-why-we-cant-tell-good-wine-from-bad/247240/
David
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The demo sounds wonderful. But Franco Corelli never sounded like that. He sounded beautiful at the time of that recording but he never sounded like that!
Yes, I agree that was a part of the test, in fact a major part. The headlines seem to boil it down into "Strads are no better than" sort of talk. Not true. In some ways they are better, some ways worse. Reading the blogs of some of the folks in the actual test is fun stuff, if you're interested in violins.
Blind testing is very important and you'll find me saying that throughout this forum. Especially when the differences are small. I've praised the speaker contest in Seattle many times as well designed and well conceived. However; I've had my own expectations dashed when judging speakers. I found that I can't easily predict the sound of a speaker by looking at it, or reading about it. Some, yes, but not all. That was the biggest surprise for me.
Prejudice and expectation do make a difference, but they don't totally obscure our view. You don't have to be a blind bat in a coal mine to tell. Some things actually ARE better than others, in spite their hype.
Excellent post.
I noticed when I was a child that my breakfast cereal always tasted better when I was reading the box. Years later I learned that companies have been aware for a looong time that packaging has a major influence on not only what one chooses to buy, but how they then experience that product, and design packaging deliberately to manipulate both.
The question that occurs to me is if the point of the exercise is the experience, and in fact you do have a very positive experience, then what's the gripe?
Seems the real gripe here is the desire for others to 'agree' with 'our' experience....
Absolutely no problem with the external intangibles making for a great, positive demo experience.
Its just when people then move to the conclusion that "those Western Electric engineers had knowledge that nobody else has" or "nothing has ever surpassed those W.E. speakers", thats where I say "whoa!".
Subjective evaluation is fine. Just be careful about absolute conclusions.
David S.
p.s. I haven't heard about the cereal box but I do remember when a room mate and I used to listen to my system under the influence of a controlled (but organic!) substance. The detail and layering we heard was incredible! I wouldn't claim it was all down to the speaker, though.
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If it's any comfort all that sugar in the cereal was probably far less organic...
Hi Joe,
If your tolerance has allowed you to stick around this far into the thread, I'd be curious to know your take on the GIP and LM field-coil stuff relative to the WE stuff.
And thanks for sharing your *ahem* experience of the WE world - it's so much more refreshing to hear than mere opinion.
Peace!
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