markus76 said:
Personal preferences can be inexplicable, of course. However, again, someone may prefer the relative "dullness" and more distant, spacious quality of a phantom center channel compared to an actual one. I don't have Toole's book handy, but I vaguely recall that he cites some listening tests indicating a general preference for a phantom center by single listeners, even though the case for an actual one is extremely strong. Anyway, listeners become accustomed through spectral adaptation, so the introduction of an actual center might sound too "forward" (I don't know what the right word is here, but boosted in the 2 Khz frequency range) and up-front compared to what they're used to. Also, without some early lateral reflections to widen the ASW (and in multichannel listening situations, without a screen to visually anchor one's perceptions), it may also sound too narrow, especially with a larger screen.
Anyway, I don't want to repeat myself further. Yes, actual center channels are better in lots of ways for lots of reasons, if set up correcetly, but some people prefer virtual ones for various reasons, anyway. What can you do?
gedlee said:
I believe that Toole was assuming an audience size greater than one for many of his recommendations.
And I guess I think of the cloth as acoustically translucent because my understanding from the RPG data presented in Toole's book was that cloth can have very different absorption curves when examining normal versus 45 degree incidence, and it seemed to be highly variable and frequency dependent.
Gedlee, thanks for the tip on the sheet. I suspected as much, but it was a pleasure to find the answer to a screen is as simple and cheap as that!
A suggestion: you might wish to offer a lower price tier for kits without crossover components for DIY'ers who prefer to crossover before the output stages and biamp. I would rather go that way than use passive crossovers inside speakers.
I am thinking seriously about buying the waveguides. The price is right in terms of price vs. hassle/time factor in making my own waveguides, as much fun and as proud as I would be of making my own wooden ones.
This guy is a trip, talk about DIY front-horns:
http://www.audiovoice-acoustics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=259
Kinda makes me think of the guys in the ancient world...I don't remember who...but who, upon seeing a dome made in the Roman manner, but not understanding the principle, went home and made their own dome by hollowing out a gigantic boulder! I'm joking, actually, and being unfair to Angelo, those horns of his are quite an accomplishment, and the whole ensemble (three horns in a frame, see adjoining links) is simply stunning.
Any suggestions for cheaper 1" tweeter compression drivers to mate up to the Gedlee waveguide for 1 KHz to 16KHz range?
Re: Audio Nirvana's for center channel. OK, I give up. AN's for cheap back speakers in a 5.1 system. Or perhaps rear-firing, turned down, to simulate a Summa with OB design added. Or (shudder) ebarf.
Best, Charlie
A suggestion: you might wish to offer a lower price tier for kits without crossover components for DIY'ers who prefer to crossover before the output stages and biamp. I would rather go that way than use passive crossovers inside speakers.
I am thinking seriously about buying the waveguides. The price is right in terms of price vs. hassle/time factor in making my own waveguides, as much fun and as proud as I would be of making my own wooden ones.
This guy is a trip, talk about DIY front-horns:
http://www.audiovoice-acoustics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=259
Kinda makes me think of the guys in the ancient world...I don't remember who...but who, upon seeing a dome made in the Roman manner, but not understanding the principle, went home and made their own dome by hollowing out a gigantic boulder! I'm joking, actually, and being unfair to Angelo, those horns of his are quite an accomplishment, and the whole ensemble (three horns in a frame, see adjoining links) is simply stunning.
Any suggestions for cheaper 1" tweeter compression drivers to mate up to the Gedlee waveguide for 1 KHz to 16KHz range?
Re: Audio Nirvana's for center channel. OK, I give up. AN's for cheap back speakers in a 5.1 system. Or perhaps rear-firing, turned down, to simulate a Summa with OB design added. Or (shudder) ebarf.
Best, Charlie
Youngho
There will be a huge difference in the acoustic transmission of variuos fabrics, but what I use is very very open. Any surface will reflect more on non-normal incidence, even the perf screens. The idea is to get the speakers as close to the screen as possible and this will minimize the effect - in the near field the sound wave is far more normal (axial) than it is in the far field.
Radianceaudio
Thats a bit of overkill on the horn IMO. He's doing it for fun not for performance.
I don't recommend active X-overs. They serve no function but to add cost and sell more "gadgets". Save your money and buy better passive speakers.
The DE10 seems like a good cheap driver, but I haven't tried it yet to see if it works well enough. The DE250 works great and isn't much more than a good 1" dome tweeter - but works a whole lot better. I am doing a design now that will use the DE10 and an 8" woofer and 8" waveguide. These will cost about 1/2 of the Nathans. Performance will drop a lot too however.
There will be a huge difference in the acoustic transmission of variuos fabrics, but what I use is very very open. Any surface will reflect more on non-normal incidence, even the perf screens. The idea is to get the speakers as close to the screen as possible and this will minimize the effect - in the near field the sound wave is far more normal (axial) than it is in the far field.
Radianceaudio
Thats a bit of overkill on the horn IMO. He's doing it for fun not for performance.
I don't recommend active X-overs. They serve no function but to add cost and sell more "gadgets". Save your money and buy better passive speakers.
The DE10 seems like a good cheap driver, but I haven't tried it yet to see if it works well enough. The DE250 works great and isn't much more than a good 1" dome tweeter - but works a whole lot better. I am doing a design now that will use the DE10 and an 8" woofer and 8" waveguide. These will cost about 1/2 of the Nathans. Performance will drop a lot too however.
markus76 said:
Markus,
not many control rooms, if any (at least ones I've seen, including on the web) use constant directivity monitors. Typical examples K+H and/or ATC, neither really that big on CD; although they are kind of 'trying' neither is even close to the extremes of Summa like speakers in that respect. Hence, power response (spectral bias) 'dialed in' by the master engineer on recordings made on those must be all wrong played on your Nathans, no ? Also, typical mastering room will be much more anechoic than a typical domestic setup, again affecting the recorded 'preempahsis' wrt power reponse ? How do we deal with that ?
Regards,
Bratislav
Recording engineers also need to have a giant metal desk right in front of them with 48 faders or whatever on it and tend to put their speakers on the back edge of this. Rackmount gear within quick reach is needed as well, racks that are the size of a mini fridge usually. I don't recommend any of these furnishings or arrangements for a home listening environment, even if it is the way the engineer heard it. He didn't have a choice 
Markus,
I have no personal experience whatsoever wrt recording. But from reading here I am under the impression that in many cases mastering is not done to sound good in the control room, but to sound good with "standard" gear in "standard" homes (or cars?).
One may argue that those recordings are below acceptable standard anyway. Or would you expect the control room acoustics simply to be "improved" home acoustics?
I have no personal experience whatsoever wrt recording. But from reading here I am under the impression that in many cases mastering is not done to sound good in the control room, but to sound good with "standard" gear in "standard" homes (or cars?).
One may argue that those recordings are below acceptable standard anyway. Or would you expect the control room acoustics simply to be "improved" home acoustics?
Rudolf said:
True, that is the ''translation check''. They use smaller speakers that tend to comply well with what casual listening on TV, cars, etc. by the general public, might be considered as legible and nice enough. NS10s used to be the top example of a translation mix tool. They even used full range little speakers earlier. Also Koss headphones and boom boxes. When for the ''Club Mix'' in dance music, they only mix on very big far field monitors at 105 dB SPL and over (average at listening position).
Many get lazy and just check on their small near field monitors, and that's all. Experienced engineers that have worked with really popular artists and are aware of pitfalls do much more checking.
very good
and I did wrote this pages before,
Maybe me a blonde i do have to blow my trumpet twice.
Go an the Linkwitz page and read please.
Orion came up not to bother with the shortcomings of ESL
to have a system stable working quite with every power amp
and easily mated with a sub-woofer.
Linkwitz is very high regarding the ESLS.
Look on the Manger page.
The are regarding ESL very high but made the Manger
with a different philosophy.
What is the bottom line.
The first micrscond of the impulse has to be accurate
to give the information on Music.
An x-over between 100 cycles and the almost the end will be the first problem
to de-form the impulse and round it up.
That is not a technical picture
but a visual one.
and I did wrote this pages before,
Maybe me a blonde i do have to blow my trumpet twice.
Go an the Linkwitz page and read please.
Orion came up not to bother with the shortcomings of ESL
to have a system stable working quite with every power amp
and easily mated with a sub-woofer.
Linkwitz is very high regarding the ESLS.
Look on the Manger page.
The are regarding ESL very high but made the Manger
with a different philosophy.
What is the bottom line.
The first micrscond of the impulse has to be accurate
to give the information on Music.
An x-over between 100 cycles and the almost the end will be the first problem
to de-form the impulse and round it up.
That is not a technical picture
but a visual one.
From an old article, ~5 years back if memory serves me right.
Tony Faulkner was using Quad 989, driving them with tube amps.
Main reason was that the speakers were consistent in different rooms. He said he could find monitors that were equal in sound quality but were more problematic when put in different environments.
Which puzzles me, when thinking back. It sounds like he was mastering in the same place as the recording took place. Will have to find the article...
Peter
Tony Faulkner was using Quad 989, driving them with tube amps.
Main reason was that the speakers were consistent in different rooms. He said he could find monitors that were equal in sound quality but were more problematic when put in different environments.
Which puzzles me, when thinking back. It sounds like he was mastering in the same place as the recording took place. Will have to find the article...
Peter
markus76 said:
Hi markus76
It would be system, user and room specific. In my case I do not have a dedicated HT room and HT does not have the same priority as my main stereo equipment that is in the same location. The room where I do the viewing performs several functions plus I use a Plasma display which makes effective positioning of the centre more difficult. I think a centre does require careful positioning to be effective and mine was always a compromise.
Even though the "6" in the 6.1 used the same drivers (except different tweeters in the rears), the soundstage across the front with a centre was not as convincing as without the centre. Both LR fronts are placed close to the screen unlike music stereo speakers where they are placed much wider apart. This has the effect of keeping the sound close to the action on the screen plus due to the small distance the dialogue is locked in the centre or where required. In addition it has made the LR panning smoother and more real for me. I have tried wider LR placements and you can get the effect of an actor with a 3m wide mouth or holes in the soundscape / soundstage. This possibly may be an offshoot of 40 years of stereo listening so maybe I feel more comfortable with it as it sounds more natural for me.
There is one other issue I found with centres is all movie soundtracks are not created equal and a centre can highlight some of the poor mixes unfortunately.
I found the centre rear a waste in the majority of movies and can only recall a few where I thought it was useful so since the front centre went, the rear centre followed. The rear speakers I use are a bit unusual as they are located behind a sofa, below ear level and fire sideways to utilise reflected sound for ambience and works better than I expected for localised effects. Sort of does a pseudo null in the viewing position. The idea came from some M&K information. I'm happy with the arrangement.
In the end I'm enjoying the sound of the movies more with 4.1 and my HT amp has less work to do so has more in reserve. It also left me more room for my stereo equipment so when the centre left I added 3 new stereo components. A win all round for me.
"Orion sounds great because dipole"?
I now think so. Dipole is probably the main contributor to the characteristic Orion sound.
Last night, I was thinking hard about how my stuffed U-frame speakers (currently being worked on) sound so different from the NaO speakers. I started doing some experiments removing and adding damping material (sheep wool) from and to the back of the U-frame.
I was shocked by the difference it made. The internal sides of the U-frame were still damped well with 8mm thick wool batts. When I left the mid section open to the back without damping, the speakers then sounded very similar to the NaO dipole speakers. The sound characteristic or presentation was nearly identical. When I added back all the wool (including high density wool batts as thick as 180mm), the speakers sounded like good monopole speakers.
I found the sound became much more open when the back is left open. I was more happy with the illusion the speakers then created. However, since they don't have a rear tweeter, it was evident that the power response became less even, and the midrange sounded a bit prominent. I played with different thickness of woof batts and experimented the effects. At the end, I preferred the open back even if I had to live with the colouration of uneven power response, to "closing" the back with wool damping. My optimal result was to apply only one layer of lower density woof batts of 6-8mm thickness. This provided the best balance.
I was very pleased with that finding, because my U-frame speakers were designed based on everything I had learnt from building the NaO (which is a very good sounding speaker) and most of the stuff I read from this forum, yet I initially found I did not get the charming sound of the NaO from my U-frame. I have now found the answer, which hopefully will turn into a solution.
Note that my speakers are placed 1.7m from the wall behind it. The backwaves bounced off the wall are delayed 10ms. All first reflection points on the side walls, ceiling and floor are damped.
My experiments suggest to me that "box colouration" may be less of an issue and may not be the main factor contributing to the Orion sound. It is the radiation pattern, i.e. strong back waves bouncing off the front wall with 10ms delay, probably creating the illusion of more "ambient" sound, "hall effects", "air", "live presence" or whatever you call it, that some people (including myself) like, and of course, likely, some people dislike.
Regards,
Bill
I now think so. Dipole is probably the main contributor to the characteristic Orion sound.
Last night, I was thinking hard about how my stuffed U-frame speakers (currently being worked on) sound so different from the NaO speakers. I started doing some experiments removing and adding damping material (sheep wool) from and to the back of the U-frame.
I was shocked by the difference it made. The internal sides of the U-frame were still damped well with 8mm thick wool batts. When I left the mid section open to the back without damping, the speakers then sounded very similar to the NaO dipole speakers. The sound characteristic or presentation was nearly identical. When I added back all the wool (including high density wool batts as thick as 180mm), the speakers sounded like good monopole speakers.
I found the sound became much more open when the back is left open. I was more happy with the illusion the speakers then created. However, since they don't have a rear tweeter, it was evident that the power response became less even, and the midrange sounded a bit prominent. I played with different thickness of woof batts and experimented the effects. At the end, I preferred the open back even if I had to live with the colouration of uneven power response, to "closing" the back with wool damping. My optimal result was to apply only one layer of lower density woof batts of 6-8mm thickness. This provided the best balance.
I was very pleased with that finding, because my U-frame speakers were designed based on everything I had learnt from building the NaO (which is a very good sounding speaker) and most of the stuff I read from this forum, yet I initially found I did not get the charming sound of the NaO from my U-frame. I have now found the answer, which hopefully will turn into a solution.
Note that my speakers are placed 1.7m from the wall behind it. The backwaves bounced off the wall are delayed 10ms. All first reflection points on the side walls, ceiling and floor are damped.
My experiments suggest to me that "box colouration" may be less of an issue and may not be the main factor contributing to the Orion sound. It is the radiation pattern, i.e. strong back waves bouncing off the front wall with 10ms delay, probably creating the illusion of more "ambient" sound, "hall effects", "air", "live presence" or whatever you call it, that some people (including myself) like, and of course, likely, some people dislike.
Regards,
Bill
I just finished Toole's 'Sound Reproduction' book, and am very impressed. Besides Linkwitz's site, I've never found such a concise and useful collection of real information. Anyone who builds speakers should read it.
One of the main things I was thinking about after reading the book, was from something towards the end - chapter 20," the Klippel experiment". One of the important findings was the high desirability of about 5dB more reflected sound than direct sound when reproducing music, contributing to a highly regarded "feeling of space". Included was a graph showing the frequency response and sound power, showing how between 500Hz and 5k, this was roughly satisfied, while above 5k, due to the tweeter's beaming, this ratio dropped. What I was thinking (and is just an idea) was the significance of this for open baffles, particularly OBs with rear tweeters, like the Orions. The Orion's may be a good example of the validity of Klippel's conclusions. Wish I had a pair to measure (10m off the ground)...
One of the main things I was thinking about after reading the book, was from something towards the end - chapter 20," the Klippel experiment". One of the important findings was the high desirability of about 5dB more reflected sound than direct sound when reproducing music, contributing to a highly regarded "feeling of space". Included was a graph showing the frequency response and sound power, showing how between 500Hz and 5k, this was roughly satisfied, while above 5k, due to the tweeter's beaming, this ratio dropped. What I was thinking (and is just an idea) was the significance of this for open baffles, particularly OBs with rear tweeters, like the Orions. The Orion's may be a good example of the validity of Klippel's conclusions. Wish I had a pair to measure (10m off the ground)...
HiFiNutNut said:
Great post, loved it, inspiring and helpful. Question: how are the first reflection points sides, ceiling and floor damped? With absorption treatments of the room?
cuibono said (paraphrased) that the reflected sound should be 5 dB higher than the direct....
now, that's a wowser!!
so, just to make sure I read that right....the reflected sound from the front wall should be louder than the direct sound from the drivers? Or, the TOTAL reflected sound (still a wowser), including rear reflections, should sum up to 5 dB more than the direct sound from the drivers?
I gotta get that book!
Best, Charlie
Great post, loved it, inspiring and helpful. Question: how are the first reflection points sides, ceiling and floor damped? With absorption treatments of the room?
cuibono said (paraphrased) that the reflected sound should be 5 dB higher than the direct....
now, that's a wowser!!
so, just to make sure I read that right....the reflected sound from the front wall should be louder than the direct sound from the drivers? Or, the TOTAL reflected sound (still a wowser), including rear reflections, should sum up to 5 dB more than the direct sound from the drivers?
I gotta get that book!
Best, Charlie
A perfect dipole speaker would radiate 4.8dB less reverberant sound. I can't see how the "Orion sounds great" would match that description.
I suspect that where the reflected sounds come from and how long they are delayed would play an important role.
Supposed all first reflection points are damped and the floor is also carpeted.
In the case of dipole, the strongest reflected sound come from behind the speakers with a delay of 10-15ms. The side wall and ceiling reflections are weaker due to the dipole nulls. So the front wall reflected sounds dominate. They may "re-enforce" the sound directional cue coming from the front.
In the case of monopole speakers, the strong high frequency (above baffle step, e.g. 300Hz -600Hz) reflections do not first come from the front wall. They probably come from the rear wall (the wall behind the listener) the strongest (depending on room dimensions and listeners position) and the opposite side walls (if first reflection points are damped), after a round trip they would hit back to the front wall then back to the listener, but by then they are at least 100ms delayed. The reflected sounds from the front wall are significantly weakened and delayed therefore probably have little effect.
I guess it is for this reason that dipole speakers sound very different from monopole speakers. Of course, whether this sounds great or not is more of less a personal preference, rather than one is better than the other.
I prefer dipole sound over monopole sound in my room. I had suspected that was the case until I came to that conclusion from last night's experiments.
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