Juhazi,
Ok it is reflected two time but given the distance involved it is still considered as early reflection in my view. Not pointing the fact that it is phase inverted signal at first.
Once reconstructed with direct signal in our brain this will modify the translated message in a time delay and amplitude range which may hurt the signal as an ER does.
Don t get me wrong I do think a dipole can sound good but it is not homotetic to the recorded signal anymore.
This effect can be enjoyable on certain source but not on everything as it stamp eveything played thru it.
Could you explain in what you see it as an advantage (in your point of view)?
Ok it is reflected two time but given the distance involved it is still considered as early reflection in my view. Not pointing the fact that it is phase inverted signal at first.
Once reconstructed with direct signal in our brain this will modify the translated message in a time delay and amplitude range which may hurt the signal as an ER does.
Don t get me wrong I do think a dipole can sound good but it is not homotetic to the recorded signal anymore.
This effect can be enjoyable on certain source but not on everything as it stamp eveything played thru it.
Could you explain in what you see it as an advantage (in your point of view)?
All this talk about reflections (reverbs).....I have a spare air mattress mounted between and directly behind my speakers and this serves to 'eliminate' reflections due to diffraction and cabinet radiation.
The result is dead clean, dead clear, precise and pinpoint imaging, with depth imaging to infinity.
These mattresses (Kmart $12.00) could also be stood in room corners to control corner resonances.
Dan.
The result is dead clean, dead clear, precise and pinpoint imaging, with depth imaging to infinity.
These mattresses (Kmart $12.00) could also be stood in room corners to control corner resonances.
Dan.
Scott yes i already read it, and it is a nice remaining thank you.
Well ok i don t agree with Linkwitz about the in wall impression. Maybe that is me, the different places i listened to it (or the one where Linkwitz did*), the type of loudspeakers involved, etc,etc,... but that doesn t correspond to my own experience neither my personal preference.
I ve heard nice things from dipole speakers (esl63 and Martin Logan) but this is definitely not for me long term, too much (musical)style dependent for me, too much 'coloration' from the room.
In the end i think this is all about personal preference and implementation. I am biased toward inwall and something neither dipole or omni but mastered/controlled in theyr radiation pattern.
Fair enough, each one his (her) own, that is what make life enjoyable after all!
* the reference made by Linkwitz to studio acoustic and room treatments seems old to me, maybe 20/25 years ago it was true, not really anymore. Different approach now exist and from what i ve heard you don t have to use a T.Hidley "zero environnement" approach (basically a very large room full of rockwool) to have great acoustic results.
Well ok i don t agree with Linkwitz about the in wall impression. Maybe that is me, the different places i listened to it (or the one where Linkwitz did*), the type of loudspeakers involved, etc,etc,... but that doesn t correspond to my own experience neither my personal preference.
I ve heard nice things from dipole speakers (esl63 and Martin Logan) but this is definitely not for me long term, too much (musical)style dependent for me, too much 'coloration' from the room.
In the end i think this is all about personal preference and implementation. I am biased toward inwall and something neither dipole or omni but mastered/controlled in theyr radiation pattern.
Fair enough, each one his (her) own, that is what make life enjoyable after all!
* the reference made by Linkwitz to studio acoustic and room treatments seems old to me, maybe 20/25 years ago it was true, not really anymore. Different approach now exist and from what i ve heard you don t have to use a T.Hidley "zero environnement" approach (basically a very large room full of rockwool) to have great acoustic results.
Agreed, I think it is very much a preference thing, and may well boil down to the "I am there" or the "they are here" difference in effect. I can see the advantages of in wall mounting and have experimented with something along those lines and was very impressed with the pinpoint imagery and presence. I think if the speaker system and room are considered together there are a number of different ways to come to a very similar result and the differences can become quite subtle
Krivium, I just like dipole inroom sound more than monopoles. Stereo illusion is must life-like and even mono recordings and speech sound better, played with two dipoles.
I am not a hot-spot listener, but a hedonist! I don't care if image isn't exactly the same as in mixing studio.
I am not a hot-spot listener, but a hedonist! I don't care if image isn't exactly the same as in mixing studio.
Thanks for the link scottjoplin. So much information on the Linkwitz website that it takes a long time to trawl though (I have read many, many pages)... an amazing contribution by Siegfried.
I found the following information particularly useful:
"The type of dipole speakers I have worked on, all try to duplicate the on-axis response for off-axis horizontal angles up to +/-60 degrees, albeit at decreasing levels and up to about 5 kHz. This has two effects. The level of the reflected sound is angle dependent and can be reduced by speaker orientation. The acoustic features of the reflected sound are consistent with the direct sound. Both of these help in suppressing a perception of timbre change and decrease a sense of the room's acoustics. Consequently, you hear more of the speaker and less of the room."
"I have observed that a certain amount of lateral reflection is necessary for creating a believable illusion of the space in which the recording took place or to give a satisfyingly rich musical experience [3,4,5]. Flush (soffit) mounted speakers strike me as producing a sound that is two-dimensional, analytical, but ultimately lifeless. Highly directional horn speakers create a similar negative impression. In the tweeter range, wide horizontal dispersion removes harshness and adds airy-ness in my experience. This only makes sense if the reflected sound intensity has been increased. It might also explain why ribbon tweeters, which can be very narrow sources leading to wide dispersion, are so highly regarded, despite their poor vertical polar response."
This is not to say that depth of soundstage cannot be achieved by other methods - for example Legacy Audio Silhouette, but I take this as evidence that the perceived soundstage will differ between Linkwitz designs and in-wall/flush loudspeakers. Linkwitz always backs up his claims - so perhaps the designs by Linkwitz could be thought of as controlled directivity for both direct and reflective sounds, and he uses the reflective sounds to further bolster the perception of soundstage beyond what you might get from other designs (my practical experience would support this).
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Same here - I also do not like being fixed to one position. A relatively wide listening area is pleasurable.
Juhazi,
thank you for your impression. I like the use you make of hedonism in this context.
However 'life like' and 'hot spot' are open to discuss.
'Life like' if you take it literaly would mean a system able to play at same SPL than instruments used to produce the music. This isn t trivial to achieve from a loudspeaker. And worse, from an acoustical point, a room able to reproduce this kind of message is even harder (let alone in the fact that not to swamp the message you should have ER which are longer than the one coming from the recording space-if you listen to classical music i let you imagine the size of the room needed!).
So i don t think that life like is appropriate in the choice of word, i think that 'confortable illusion' is more.
Hot spot i suppose you refer to listening position (as Strechneck comment confirm). Well i agree that in some case in studio there is one such 'hot spot'.
But you ll probably be surprised why: most of the time this is related to the mixing console which is a big reflector and which can skrew the image in a manner that small lateral movement make drastic change in rendering.
Once you take away the console there is still an "optimal listening zone" but (if room size allow) this zone can be relatively wide (something like 4 to 5m large and the same in depth in the bigger control room i ve been in this despite the use of horn loaded system). If you go out this zone rendering of stereo image and sound quality may degrade more or less gradually ( it depend of choices made by the acoustician).
All that to tell you that this is a myth that system used in studio do require a small listening area. It happen yes but as said previously this not really related to a specific need or law.
Well you can ask why i talk about that then as it may seems unrelated to the subject (domestic room)?
Because whichever space you are listening into with a pair of speaker is subject to the same thing. If you want an optimal rendering you need to be along one of the apex of a triangle! This is clearly specified by Linkwitz too by the way... Whatever happen outside this place is in practice wrong.
The fact that Linkwitz proposal happen to be a 'confortable illusion' on other place in the room doesn t imply that the stereophony depth or other parameter is true ( or there is depth in it... quite the opposite in fact as information about the message stereo depht are very likely stamped by the room... rendering his own signature). It is just that in the choice made in the couple room/speaker as imperfect as it is, you use the room own signature as part of the rendering.
This is a 'wrong' theorical rendering of the message clues about the space the music was recorded into, so a distortion.
This doesn t imply this isn t comfortable or enjoyable for the listener.
Strechneck i m sorry (again!) to repeat but have you read the bbc report linked? Most info in there related to this and other things related...
And check your pm please.
thank you for your impression. I like the use you make of hedonism in this context.
However 'life like' and 'hot spot' are open to discuss.
'Life like' if you take it literaly would mean a system able to play at same SPL than instruments used to produce the music. This isn t trivial to achieve from a loudspeaker. And worse, from an acoustical point, a room able to reproduce this kind of message is even harder (let alone in the fact that not to swamp the message you should have ER which are longer than the one coming from the recording space-if you listen to classical music i let you imagine the size of the room needed!).
So i don t think that life like is appropriate in the choice of word, i think that 'confortable illusion' is more.
Hot spot i suppose you refer to listening position (as Strechneck comment confirm). Well i agree that in some case in studio there is one such 'hot spot'.
But you ll probably be surprised why: most of the time this is related to the mixing console which is a big reflector and which can skrew the image in a manner that small lateral movement make drastic change in rendering.
Once you take away the console there is still an "optimal listening zone" but (if room size allow) this zone can be relatively wide (something like 4 to 5m large and the same in depth in the bigger control room i ve been in this despite the use of horn loaded system). If you go out this zone rendering of stereo image and sound quality may degrade more or less gradually ( it depend of choices made by the acoustician).
All that to tell you that this is a myth that system used in studio do require a small listening area. It happen yes but as said previously this not really related to a specific need or law.
Well you can ask why i talk about that then as it may seems unrelated to the subject (domestic room)?
Because whichever space you are listening into with a pair of speaker is subject to the same thing. If you want an optimal rendering you need to be along one of the apex of a triangle! This is clearly specified by Linkwitz too by the way... Whatever happen outside this place is in practice wrong.
The fact that Linkwitz proposal happen to be a 'confortable illusion' on other place in the room doesn t imply that the stereophony depth or other parameter is true ( or there is depth in it... quite the opposite in fact as information about the message stereo depht are very likely stamped by the room... rendering his own signature). It is just that in the choice made in the couple room/speaker as imperfect as it is, you use the room own signature as part of the rendering.
This is a 'wrong' theorical rendering of the message clues about the space the music was recorded into, so a distortion.
This doesn t imply this isn t comfortable or enjoyable for the listener.
Strechneck i m sorry (again!) to repeat but have you read the bbc report linked? Most info in there related to this and other things related...
And check your pm please.
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With regard to depth of soundstage, and this is just my subjective observation, is that speakers with an attenuated top octave ie. ~ 8khz to 16khz shelved down a db or two have deeper soundstages than speakers which have a flat response. A bright top octave to me, tends to localize the sound somewhat.
^The second paragraph you quoted above is supposition, so how can it be "so true"?
Simply put, because by the very fact of superimposing the listening room's acoustics onto the recording venue's acoustics in such a way that the former overbear the latter (by allowing/inducing early reflections which are too high in level), one is significantly altering (and hence distorting) whatever original depth cues there might have been in the recording.
The early reflections are reduced by the radiation pattern, the late reflections from the front wall are a different animal, to re-quote a section from Linkwitz's article I linked to
"The type of dipole speakers I have worked on, all try to duplicate the on-axis response for off-axis horizontal angles up to +/-60 degrees, albeit at decreasing levels and up to about 5 kHz. This has two effects. The level of the reflected sound is angle dependent and can be reduced by speaker orientation. The acoustic features of the reflected sound are consistent with the direct sound. Both of these help in suppressing a perception of timbre change and decrease a sense of the room's acoustics. Consequently, you hear more of the speaker and less of the room."
"The type of dipole speakers I have worked on, all try to duplicate the on-axis response for off-axis horizontal angles up to +/-60 degrees, albeit at decreasing levels and up to about 5 kHz. This has two effects. The level of the reflected sound is angle dependent and can be reduced by speaker orientation. The acoustic features of the reflected sound are consistent with the direct sound. Both of these help in suppressing a perception of timbre change and decrease a sense of the room's acoustics. Consequently, you hear more of the speaker and less of the room."
My Mobile phone changed one critical word, I meant to say "more life-like". My room is rather good, I can listen loud too, but I prefer moderate level, peaks roughly 93dB even for serious listening. Most of my hifi friends turn volume up and it still works. RT20 is 0,4 EDT a bit lower. Measurements can be found by the link in my signature.
Scott, this is not supposition but a fact. I don t want to impose rather long and maybe boring discussion about that (acoustic) so try to simplify the matter the most i can.
To be simple let s say once you have experienced an RFZ, if you move outside of it you'll have the feeling that other listening place within the room is really worse than the optimal listening point. This will jump at you really. If there wasn t an RFZ in the room this will probably be less obvious as the artefact from ER are present wherever you are in the room. The contrast make it obvious.
There is no such things as late reflections in my view. There is an area in the timeline where our brain is not able to discern direct sound and first reflection ( between 0 and around 5ms iirc) then a second zone where it is (from about 5 to 50ms). In playing with the level of this reflections and a time gap we allow our brain to extract the direct sound easily.
Once you are past 50ms depending of the nature of the reflection(s) (specular being the most offending as it ll be interpreted as a slapback) you enter reverberation (a cluster of multiple reflection hopefully unrelated in phase, amplitude and delay-decorelated).
The purpose of Linkwitz to position your dipole at 1m from wall make the 'late reflection' in the 6ms zone more or less which enable Haas effect (precedence effect) to kick in.
This is not really different from an LEDE requirement by the way as it is usually accepted in a range of 5/6ms to around 50ms for the time gap between direct sound and first reflection.
The real difference being in the fact you won t have enough attenuation from Linkwitz proposition versus LEDE. In practice this is interpreted by your brain as a 'reinforcement' of the directsound, adding a sense of 'enveloppement' from the room the system play in.
Note i don t use depth but enveloppment because as Marco explained better than me this is a distortion of original material and depth clues are very probably lost.
The fact that dipole behavior does limit sidewall reflection (thanks to toe in) is nice but it doesn t from the backwall neither from ceiling or floor which are usually the most detrimental for rendering of sound image or other artefacts.
ER are not to be killed either, just to be attenuated and if possible delayed enough to enter Haas effect zone if you want as little stamp of room acoustic as possible.
In the last post you made you quote S.Linkwitz where he said that his choice does 'decrease a sense of room acoustic...hear more of the speaker than room acoustic'. Well, given that you are on the edge of Haas effect and there is likely little attenuation of reflections i would have said it differently: it make the couple loudspeaker/room appear to be one and only signal probably homogenous and add a sense of enveloppment to signal played back.
In the end this is a valid approach and this brings us to personnal preference about it.
To be simple let s say once you have experienced an RFZ, if you move outside of it you'll have the feeling that other listening place within the room is really worse than the optimal listening point. This will jump at you really. If there wasn t an RFZ in the room this will probably be less obvious as the artefact from ER are present wherever you are in the room. The contrast make it obvious.
There is no such things as late reflections in my view. There is an area in the timeline where our brain is not able to discern direct sound and first reflection ( between 0 and around 5ms iirc) then a second zone where it is (from about 5 to 50ms). In playing with the level of this reflections and a time gap we allow our brain to extract the direct sound easily.
Once you are past 50ms depending of the nature of the reflection(s) (specular being the most offending as it ll be interpreted as a slapback) you enter reverberation (a cluster of multiple reflection hopefully unrelated in phase, amplitude and delay-decorelated).
The purpose of Linkwitz to position your dipole at 1m from wall make the 'late reflection' in the 6ms zone more or less which enable Haas effect (precedence effect) to kick in.
This is not really different from an LEDE requirement by the way as it is usually accepted in a range of 5/6ms to around 50ms for the time gap between direct sound and first reflection.
The real difference being in the fact you won t have enough attenuation from Linkwitz proposition versus LEDE. In practice this is interpreted by your brain as a 'reinforcement' of the directsound, adding a sense of 'enveloppement' from the room the system play in.
Note i don t use depth but enveloppment because as Marco explained better than me this is a distortion of original material and depth clues are very probably lost.
The fact that dipole behavior does limit sidewall reflection (thanks to toe in) is nice but it doesn t from the backwall neither from ceiling or floor which are usually the most detrimental for rendering of sound image or other artefacts.
ER are not to be killed either, just to be attenuated and if possible delayed enough to enter Haas effect zone if you want as little stamp of room acoustic as possible.
In the last post you made you quote S.Linkwitz where he said that his choice does 'decrease a sense of room acoustic...hear more of the speaker than room acoustic'. Well, given that you are on the edge of Haas effect and there is likely little attenuation of reflections i would have said it differently: it make the couple loudspeaker/room appear to be one and only signal probably homogenous and add a sense of enveloppment to signal played back.
In the end this is a valid approach and this brings us to personnal preference about it.
Juhazi,
thank you for your impression. I like the use you make of hedonism in this context.
However 'life like' and 'hot spot' are open to discuss.
'Life like' if you take it literaly would mean a system able to play at same SPL than instruments used to produce the music. This isn t trivial to achieve from a loudspeaker. And worse, from an acoustical point, a room able to reproduce this kind of message is even harder (let alone in the fact that not to swamp the message you should have ER which are longer than the one coming from the recording space-if you listen to classical music i let you imagine the size of the room needed!).
So i don t think that life like is appropriate in the choice of word, i think that 'confortable illusion' is more.
Hot spot i suppose you refer to listening position (as Strechneck comment confirm). Well i agree that in some case in studio there is one such 'hot spot'.
But you ll probably be surprised why: most of the time this is related to the mixing console which is a big reflector and which can skrew the image in a manner that small lateral movement make drastic change in rendering.
Once you take away the console there is still an "optimal listening zone" but (if room size allow) this zone can be relatively wide (something like 4 to 5m large and the same in depth in the bigger control room i ve been in this despite the use of horn loaded system). If you go out this zone rendering of stereo image and sound quality may degrade more or less gradually ( it depend of choices made by the acoustician).
All that to tell you that this is a myth that system used in studio do require a small listening area. It happen yes but as said previously this not really related to a specific need or law.
Well you can ask why i talk about that then as it may seems unrelated to the subject (domestic room)?
Because whichever space you are listening into with a pair of speaker is subject to the same thing. If you want an optimal rendering you need to be along one of the apex of a triangle! This is clearly specified by Linkwitz too by the way... Whatever happen outside this place is in practice wrong.
The fact that Linkwitz proposal happen to be a 'confortable illusion' on other place in the room doesn t imply that the stereophony depth or other parameter is true ( or there is depth in it... quite the opposite in fact as information about the message stereo depht are very likely stamped by the room... rendering his own signature). It is just that in the choice made in the couple room/speaker as imperfect as it is, you use the room own signature as part of the rendering.
This is a 'wrong' theorical rendering of the message clues about the space the music was recorded into, so a distortion.
This doesn t imply this isn t comfortable or enjoyable for the listener.
Strechneck i m sorry (again!) to repeat but have you read the bbc report linked? Most info in there related to this and other things related...
And check your pm please.
Hi krivium - yes I scan read the paper - I think it is very interesting to use hard surfaces to control the dispersion. An idea I had not come across before. Mght be good if you has a home cinema room, but would not work practically for me (domestic living room).
"Note i don t use depth but envelopement because as Marco explained better than me this is a distortion of original material and depth clues are very probably lost."
I am not sure if this is true - I don't think it is distortion, I think the perception of depth on the Linkwitz speakers is basically a result of controlled direct and indirect sound, and the indirect sound is used to enhance the psychoacoustic effect. So perhaps you might call it an additional effect above and beyond what other constant directivity designs might deliver. I do agree that this is a choice of personal preference - the Linkwitz design is very pleasing and natural to my ears.
The person who demo'd the LX mini's for me in my living room said he had heard the Kii Three's and his impression was that they had an even deeper soundstage (I have never listed to the Kiis so cannot confirm).
I am not sure if this is true - I don't think it is distortion, I think the perception of depth on the Linkwitz speakers is basically a result of controlled direct and indirect sound, and the indirect sound is used to enhance the psychoacoustic effect. So perhaps you might call it an additional effect above and beyond what other constant directivity designs might deliver. I do agree that this is a choice of personal preference - the Linkwitz design is very pleasing and natural to my ears.
The person who demo'd the LX mini's for me in my living room said he had heard the Kii Three's and his impression was that they had an even deeper soundstage (I have never listed to the Kiis so cannot confirm).
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