Linkwitz Orions beaten by Behringer.... what!!?

[ScottG]

That is not the speaker that I entered in the Challenge. It is my first prototype. It was pretty good, but very large and cumbersome and I wanted to make something so simple and cheap that it would prove my point about radiation pattern being the main design factor in creating the AS. I was just as surprised as the rest of them that it won.

Gary Eickmeier

Greetings!


Very nice to see some experimenting, particularly with a good outcome!

It was also nice reading your older posts on Tom's Hardware - questioning convention.

There are at least a few of us here that are very appreciative of question the "norm" and then doing some personal experimentation.

 

[Melo theory]

Yeah Scott, I guess there are no tweeters? I don't know. I wish he just gave us a couple more sentences, haha!
Just to describe it a little?

 

[ScottG]

You do, yes. You've stated that for years and it's what works for you and for most of your customers. That's great. It's your approach and your goals. It works for you.

But I do not have to throw out the subjective, nor does anyone else "have to." In the end, I have to like the way it sounds. That's the point of a home system, the final determinant. If it's an IMP or an Orion or an Abbey or a Bose, I have to like they way it sounds, it has to meet or exceed my expectations. Good engineering and design are greats way to get there, but they are not the reason to be of the speaker.

I really think that most of us have the same, or very similar, goals. We just get there by different paths.

The sad thing is, if you actually apply that sort of logic: that the subjective and opinion are useless - you really couldn't do anything at all.

Should I get up and go to the bathroom? I feel like I need to but I just can't trust my feelings on the matter. Maybe I should go every 5 minutes? Just what is 5 minutes? Is my clock correct? Am I reading it correctly? Is it a clock? Would I know if it was a clock or not? Just what was I thinking? Am I sure that I'm thinking?

And unfortunately yes, I've seen people behaving like this.

 

[ScottG]

Yeah Scott, I guess there are no tweeters? I don't know. I wish he just gave us a couple more sentences, haha!
Just to describe it a little?

Perhaps in time, and hopefully on another thread where it won't get "swallowed up".

 

[graaf]

A very good point. What do you think? You sat not far from the three judges at the Dayton speaker contest a few years back. I was obvious to us very quickly how a speaker sounded. Few changed character much with the second or third track (some did, tho).

If we had taken the highest scoring three and spent more time with them, would we have changed our minds? I really don't know.

yes - a very good point indeed

reminds me of Norwitz and Qvortrup's "Are You on the Road to Audio Hell":
Are You On The Road To... Audio Hell? by Leonard Norwitz and Peter Qvortrup

The More Accurate System Is The One
Which Reproduces More Difference
-- More Contrast --
Between The Various Program Sources.

 

[6.283]

I think he has nothing to be embarrassed about. The technical approach will get you to the target if done correctly- but setting the target is just as much art as science. This isn't an amplifier we're talking about, with a single valued output for a single valued input, a completely cut and dried bit of engineering- the "accuracy" term is a lot dicier for transducers in rooms.
What should be accurate to what? Are you trying to reproduce the exact soundfield around the listener's head that existed at the microphones (it can't just be at the earholes for a head that's not clamped)? I don't believe that you can. The best that a set of transducers can provide in a room is an illusion, and there's a LOT of conflicting literature about what it takes to do that. Toole has one approach, Linkwitz has another, you have another, Ken Kantor has yet another... What you all share is enough grounding in rigorous engineering to accurately hit the targets you set. What you don't share is the same target, and I submit that NONE of your targets are "accurate," and all provide an excellent illusion in one way or another. The illusions differ, but illusions they all are, and absent a major change in the way soundfields are sampled, encoded, and reproduced, I don't see how anyone can reasonably speak of "accuracy" in the context of speakers in a room.

Excellent post and I glad I read it because I logged on to post something very similar. Focus on Illusion.

I also have to repeat that I completely agree with this.

But maybe I can bring the two expressions together:
Illusions live or die with their quality. How good is the illusion, how convincing to completely fool us ?
I think for that, a certain amount of accuracy is required. I am however not saying that if you make it technically as accurate as possbile that the illusion starts to become real. And we all know that sound reproduction cannot resemble the real thing anyway, right ?
So a certain amount of accuracy is required that nobody of us can quantify and all that is on a sliding scale and depending on many variables.

But, and now comes the trick, this unknown amount of accuracy added to a very basic illusion like stereo turns it into something that we have to perceive as natural. Otherwise it is not convincing and so it becomes the minimum required.
That's why I am looking for naturalness with my designs because then the amount of accuracy added to the illusion is at least good enough to fool me. Perfect accuracy would have to take you physically to the real venue and that is simply not going to happen. And I just don't care if I can hear a mic placement down to the inch on a stage that I cannot see anyway.

All that it takes are, enough clues to have the brain create its own stage and to imagine how the performers up there act and how they are placed. In other words: a natural context.

This is like reading a book vs. watching a movie in the HT. Which one do you perceive as more haunting and/or real ?

And 15" waveguides will never sound natural to me no matter how accurate the are.
Although I find them pretty cool technically and they produce nice graphs as well.

 

[graaf]

I also have to repeat that I completely agree with this.

But maybe I can bring the two expressions together:
Illusions live or die with their quality. How good is the illusion, how convincing to completely fool us ?
I think for that, a certain amount of accuracy is required. I am however not saying that if you make it technically as accurate as possbile that the illusion starts to become real. And we all know that sound reproduction cannot resemble the real thing anyway, right ?
So a certain amount of accuracy is required that nobody of us can quantify and all that is on a sliding scale and depending on many variables.

But, and now comes the trick, this unknown amount of accuracy added to a very basic illusion like stereo turns it into something that we have to perceive as natural. Otherwise it is not convincing and so it becomes the minimum required.
That's why I am looking for naturalness with my designs because then the amount of accuracy added to the illusion is at least good enough to fool me. Perfect accuracy would have to take you physically to the real venue and that is simply not going to happen. And I just don't care if I can hear a mic placement down to the inch on a stage that I cannot see anyway.

All that it takes are, enough clues to have the brain create its own stage and to imagine how the performers up there act and how they are placed. In other words: a natural context.

agreed 100%, or at least 99% because with one exception of:

And we all know that sound reproduction cannot resemble the real thing anyway, right ?

on the contrary - it can

but agreed on the rest

HiFi is about REALISTIC SOUND REPRODUCTION

it was H.A. Hartley who "invented the phrase "high fidelity" in 1927 to denote a type of sound reproduction that might be taken rather seriously by a music lover"

He understood it as realistic high fidelity, high fidelity = realism of sound reproduction

fidelity to the human experience of the real thing

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/10962-stereolith-loudspeakers-question-39.html#post2525271

 

[6.283]

on the contrary - it can

but agreed on the rest

No, you cannot only because of dynamics

 

[graaf]

No, you cannot only because of dynamics

that strictly depends on the program material

you should not generalize that realism is not at all achievable

 

[6.283]

that strictly depends on the program material

you cannot generalize that realism is not at all achievable

We need to distinguish between reality and realistic (like real but not really ). And I meant reality above.

 

[graaf]

We need to distinguish between reality and realistic (like real but not really ). And I meant reality above.

but my point is that "like real" indeed CAN resemble the real thing, contrary to what You have said above

 

[6.283]

More about my post above:
In order to create a natural experience you need wider dispersion / more of the good reflections in a domestic room than big waveguides or horns can produce. Also constant directivty as such is not a requirement for natural sound reproduction. It is just one measure that could be applied because it does makes sense.
But it is the radiation pattern in its entirety in combination with the room and the listener placement that creates the illusion for the better or the worse. So I completely agree with Gary, welcome him here and wish that he alludes more to his design.

 

[6.283]

but my point is that "like real" indeed CAN resemble the real thing, contrary to what You have said above

No, you mean close to real and that is not reality because of e.g. lacking dynamics.

 

[graaf]

it is the radiation pattern in its entirety in combination with the room and the listener placement that creates the illusion for the better or the worse.

absolutely
how about Gradient Helsinki 1.5?

The Helsinkis' sense of spaciousness was amazing. And it was natural in a way that I found difficult to describe. ...

I paused to listen to a Brahms piano concerto, and thrilled to the strangely great way the sound in my room mimicked that of a concert hall, in a spatial sense.
...
Instruments had presence in a good flesh-and-blood sense, not in that awful, fussy, typical "high-end audio" manner.
...
I can better describe what it is that made the Helsinkis' spaciousness so distinctive: I wasn't hearing an airy artifact, but rather the sounds of instruments and voices opening up naturally before me....
Some individual sounds grew, spatially, as they opened up, yet the overall sound wasn't the least bit airy per se. Even as they decayed, the sounds of violins and clarinets had texture.

from: Gradient Helsinki 1.5 loudspeaker Page 2 | Stereophile.com

The specific area in which the Helsinki 1.5s truly excel is the reproduction of spatial information....

The Helsinki 1.5s not only disappear as sources themselves, they make in effect your listening room disappear from the sonic picture, or at least remarkably close to that.

...
it is overwhelming and immediate. Music recorded in a large space sounds enormous. Music recorded close up in smaller spaces sounds to that scale. And everything in between is similarly reproduced as it is in spatial terms.

from: Gradient Helsinki 1.5 Loudspeaker | The Absolute Sound

 

[6.283]

absolutely
how about Gradient Helsinki 1.5?

I cannot comment on that speaker, although they are somehow cool (visually anyway).

I have neither auditioned them nor seen any measurement how they behave in front of a mic.
So I have no basic data other than visual reference and thus cannot draw any meaningful conlusion based on comparisions with similar speakers or data. It would be pure guessing that leads nowhere.

And those reviews with audiophile verbiage...I could not care less...it is all part of a marketing strategy and as such I primarily consider it as lies until proven otherwise.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

absolutely
how about Gradient Helsinki 1.5?

from: Gradient Helsinki 1.5 loudspeaker Page 2 | Stereophile.com




from: Gradient Helsinki 1.5 Loudspeaker | The Absolute Sound

At CES 2013 I listened to those for a few minutes - and was just blown away. And then the people from Gradient began the pitch for a set of speakers which were more expensive... But sounded worse. I wish they would've left the Helsinki on.

 

[graaf]

I have neither auditioned them nor seen any measurement how they behave in front of a mic.

measurements are meaningless as such

And those reviews with audiophile verbiage...I could not care less...

well, the same can be said about audiophile verbiage abounding here at diyaudio

as the quoted reviews certainly were not - so to speak - commisioned , because in fact they were not at all that favourable but virtually all of them (there are many more, I just quoted two of them) agreed as far as spatial presentation is concerned

so I would say that it is certainly NOT an instance of:

a marketing strategy and as such I primarily consider it as lies until proven otherwise.

 

[lolo]

At CES 2013 I listened to those for a few minutes - and was just blown away..

let's copy them!

 

[graaf]

let's copy them!

actually it is not that difficult to make a loudspeaker with an essentially equivalent radiation pattern

after all Helsinki as far as its radiation pattern above 200hz is concerned is essentially a flooder - slightly elevated and slightly tilted forward, that's all

 

[6.283]

measurements are meaningless as such

well, we don't have to agree on everything