Your welcome! (..as always - treat my ramblings as worth a "grain of salt".
)Yup, the same problems will be present for the khorn.
Of course you aren't going to get the virtues of good horn design with a traditional either. ..and the Synergy has virtues you aren't going to find in other designs. Plus, Tom has several designs - some may prove to be more preferable (to you) than others. Also, consider the wider designs oriented vertically - some really liked a JBL model that did this a couple of years ago, and that didn't have the superior attributes of the Synergy.
If you prefer DIY then have a look at this:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/200539-diy-synergy-horn.html
or perhaps drool at the newer planed project:
Red Spade Audio: Something very cool is coming ...
Of course both are Unity-types, not having the woofers - but then again in the small room context (at least as far as limiting dispersion is concerned), any benefit is largely "lost" by the room's interaction. In that respect the k-horn can be better (by coupling to the room's corners).
Or, maybe you should ask Pano. for a visit?
I'm mean, why does it have to be either or?
Though again - there are flaws in any design (some minor, some not).. (..and that's not even taking about the format itself..
)
I'm fully aware of that and with the chosen "horn" topology it's a given.
But there are other ways to obtain directivity control, like cardioids or dipole which have smaller footprint.
I have no idea what kind of bionic ears you have, but even +/- 1dB is not audiable to the vast majority of people. Look up the definition for a dB in regards to the audibility threshold.
Direct radiators have a narrowing of directivity as frequency increases. That's not uniform either. I guess direct radiators get a free pass.
3. The design relies on compression.
Compressing the polar response (or increased directivity by means of a bounding waveguide) as freq.s increase usually generates two subjective artifacts: reproduced sources or "images" usually move forward and venue effects tend to become less pronounced (relative to those images). The former isn't necessarily something that is "bad", in fact it can be "good". If most images are "pushed into your lap" it's certainly bad, but in the case of comparison with the lower freq. compression, (driver not polar), found in many traditional loudspeakers (that ONLY push lower freq. images forward - like drum kits), the result *may* be better - by maintaining a better depth distance between lower freq. images and upper freq. images. I'm guessing that Tom's designs are in this case "good" - even if somewhat forward overall, and as a matter of preference may be "better" (in that some prefer a closer "auditory scene"). However.. a reduction in venue effects relative to images as they relate to upper freq. effects almost always occurs to some degree (..literally in this case). Additionally, it's not uncommon to have a reduction in lateral image placement (or horizontal image "squashing" - as if sources moved closer together laterally). Typically however this is compensated for by moving the speakers further apart, but this has a further negative effect of lowering the impression of lateral venue effects. (i.e the images have a wider spacing between them, but the venue's side-walls become less apparent and often move closer together). Of course most of this does NOT apply with ambiophonics - where the synergy's would be moved very close together with some minor "toe-out". Additionally Tom has some wider dispersion designs that would likely have less of an effect (..though as a practical matter the wider the better - but with a 110-120 deg. horizontal waveguide often being sufficient enough).
Driver compression is another issue. Driver compression is complex and the subjective results aren't altogether predictable. However, it's often the case that the field of depth is reduced (images moving closer together in the depth plane), and the venue's front wall (or rear depending on your perspective) - also moving forward - further foreshortening the perception of depth. Just the use of a particular (size & construction) compression driver (AND its age and prior use), can make a rather large difference in the overall presentation. This really is a sort of "black art", BUT chances are very high that any of the Synergy's are not providing quite as much depth as they other-wise might with a *very* cherry-picked selection of compression driver, and by comparison less depth to a good traditional design. (..ask Pano more about this..) And that's just the compression driver - then there are the other drivers and their loading (both frontal and enclosure). Ex. closed-back (traditional) drivers *tend* to have exactly this sort of problem (reduced depth perspective), specifically as you go lower in freq.. Of course you can have this problem in even objectively excellent traditional designs - Ex. many of the Revel loudspeakers (that I've auditioned over the years) have this problem, not *badly* - but not particularly good either. Paradigm - dido. Any overstuffed cabinet on a diy design - dido. (..all pretty much relating to mechanical compliance inhibiting movement at exceedingly low excursions, which is ironic when you consider that a smaller rear chamber for the driver increases the value of Qms.
Compression provides higher sensitivity and dynamics and a well defined coverage area. It also translates into lower individual driver power compression due to less power being need to achieve the same level SPL.
While there are many other areas I could also write about.. I'll leave it with these "3".
I don't know for sure, but from the way you write about the Synergy horn design it appears you have never listened to one before. Your "issues" with the design in regards to the actual listening experience and their real world results are completely disproportioned. Every speaker makes compromises. However you appear to be extreme in your assessment of those compromises. My Grandfather had a saying for instances like this. He would say, "That's like trying to pick fly sh!t out of pepper". Your nitpicking comes off as if you have an axe to grind. This is very reminiscent of the kind of response Tom got way back when he first presented the Unity horn concept. Those that had an open mind and a thirst for advancement and innovation stayed and learned a lot. The things you try to point out as issues are well managed in the Synergy horn and insignificant when it comes to actually listening to them.
Hi Scott, all
Scott, I don’t think you understand what’s going on in the Synergy horn and clearly you have not heard them. What one hears at the LP is both the direct sound and the reflected sound, if you measure a point source direct radiator side by side with a synergy horn at the LP, one sees the direct radiator may measure + - 10-15dB or more variation where you listen while a Large synergy horn is more like + - 3 or 4dB.
If you measure the ETC of the two systems in the same locations within the room, one sees a much larger amount of late energy from reflections from the direct radiator as well.
Your assertion about in pattern deviations is not correct, in the map plot I included, the “Red” zone the response variation is within + - 1.5dB (and was measured at 7 meters) while the SPL at say 90 degrees off axis is -21 dB or more all the way down to about 800 Hz (the white part of the plot) .
Thus with such a large portion of the total energy contained by constant directivity, the reverberant field has essentially the same spectrum as the on axis sound and the level out of pattern greatly suppressed which produces an unusually large direct field which in stereo helps preserve the stereo image in the recording.
You assertion in 3 is also incorrect, by having all the sources radiate as if they were a single driver at the apex, there is much less spatial identity form the loudspeaker itself, the result is that the location in physical depth is much less pronounced, that is to say, it is harder to hear the loudspeakers depth and instead it sounds like what the recording sounds like (dry or reverberant etc).
In stereo this is most pronounced when you produce a mono signal because you hear a strong mono phantom but do not hear the right and left source that produces the sound. Loudspeakers with multiple drivers usually radiate an interference pattern and so with a mono signal, one hears a phantom image plus the right and left source. While this aspect is not measurable, it is quite audible and sadly, like a great deal of the rest of your speculation, something you would need to hear to firsthand.
Short of hearing them, your best bet to get the effect is a small / good full range driver mounted on a large flat baffle, over much of the range, these also radiate like a simple source. They would have much more room effects / smaller direct field so listening in the near field is how to reduce that problem.
That close listing distance relative to reflections is the point of using small point source speakers on the mix bridge in recording studios.
If you wish to maximally preserve the recorded stereo image you DO NOT want reflected sound from the walls etc, you cannot preserve the recorded information by adding reflected sound related to your room, you do not want to provide multiple arrivals generated by the loudspeakers (or multiple arrivals from multiple drivers in different locations).
You mention Pano who has heard the SH-50’s (albeit a larger situation than a living room), perhaps he can comment on all the flaws you outlined relative to what he heard from them.
Best,
Tom
Scott, I don’t think you understand what’s going on in the Synergy horn and clearly you have not heard them. What one hears at the LP is both the direct sound and the reflected sound, if you measure a point source direct radiator side by side with a synergy horn at the LP, one sees the direct radiator may measure + - 10-15dB or more variation where you listen while a Large synergy horn is more like + - 3 or 4dB.
If you measure the ETC of the two systems in the same locations within the room, one sees a much larger amount of late energy from reflections from the direct radiator as well.
Your assertion about in pattern deviations is not correct, in the map plot I included, the “Red” zone the response variation is within + - 1.5dB (and was measured at 7 meters) while the SPL at say 90 degrees off axis is -21 dB or more all the way down to about 800 Hz (the white part of the plot) .
Thus with such a large portion of the total energy contained by constant directivity, the reverberant field has essentially the same spectrum as the on axis sound and the level out of pattern greatly suppressed which produces an unusually large direct field which in stereo helps preserve the stereo image in the recording.
You assertion in 3 is also incorrect, by having all the sources radiate as if they were a single driver at the apex, there is much less spatial identity form the loudspeaker itself, the result is that the location in physical depth is much less pronounced, that is to say, it is harder to hear the loudspeakers depth and instead it sounds like what the recording sounds like (dry or reverberant etc).
In stereo this is most pronounced when you produce a mono signal because you hear a strong mono phantom but do not hear the right and left source that produces the sound. Loudspeakers with multiple drivers usually radiate an interference pattern and so with a mono signal, one hears a phantom image plus the right and left source. While this aspect is not measurable, it is quite audible and sadly, like a great deal of the rest of your speculation, something you would need to hear to firsthand.
Short of hearing them, your best bet to get the effect is a small / good full range driver mounted on a large flat baffle, over much of the range, these also radiate like a simple source. They would have much more room effects / smaller direct field so listening in the near field is how to reduce that problem.
That close listing distance relative to reflections is the point of using small point source speakers on the mix bridge in recording studios.
If you wish to maximally preserve the recorded stereo image you DO NOT want reflected sound from the walls etc, you cannot preserve the recorded information by adding reflected sound related to your room, you do not want to provide multiple arrivals generated by the loudspeakers (or multiple arrivals from multiple drivers in different locations).
You mention Pano who has heard the SH-50’s (albeit a larger situation than a living room), perhaps he can comment on all the flaws you outlined relative to what he heard from them.
Best,
Tom
I've no axe to grind.. and nitpicking was actually ASKED FOR. i.e. "NO drawbacks or issues."
In fact I even tried to start and end (with my first post), with a positive comment DESPITE what was asked for. Plus, I really didn't want to spend the time writing anything more - but was asked to do so.
Finally I even applied caveats.
As for the rest - it's not worth the time to respond..
People probably don't realize the scale of achievement in Tom's design. Horns and horn technology is pretty old. To develop something unique and new in this field is to be applauded.
myhrrhleine,
I've read literature stating broad, very broad peaks of 0.5 db can be heard. 0.1 db? Not so sure. Besides, please tell us which speakers you have that are more linear than Tom's design and your measurement gear and measurement technique that allows you verify that response has been changed by 0.1 db.
Finally, what according to you are the best possible horns?
myhrrhleine,
I've read literature stating broad, very broad peaks of 0.5 db can be heard. 0.1 db? Not so sure. Besides, please tell us which speakers you have that are more linear than Tom's design and your measurement gear and measurement technique that allows you verify that response has been changed by 0.1 db.
Finally, what according to you are the best possible horns?
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The “just noticeable” change in level one can detect in auditory testing for many is about 1dB or a little less under ideal conditions, for most people it’s more like 2dB.
In any case, this is nearly irrelevant since a detectable change in loudness is not a measure of what variation in frequency response amplitude is detectable with a broad band signal, It also ignores the fact that where one listens in room, the raw response can easily be altered by + - 10 or 15 or more dB .
A 20 or even 30dB alteration in response at the LP doesn’t stop people from listening to those systems, it is the only reference most have.
Those variations are what people live with, not how a loudspeaker measures at 1 meter. If you have any doubt, please measure your loudspeakers response from the listening position and evaluate how much it has changed.
Here is where directivity is a huge advantage, what arrives at the LP is much more like the original than a wide dispersion loudspeaker.
We also hear “time” related effects, the amount of late energy that arrives after the direct sound is much larger in the wide dispersion loudspeaker in room AND unless one has DSP correction of time, all traditional crossovers spread out a single impulse in time, delaying the lower part by 90 degrees times the order once past a first order.
The Synergy design on the other hand preserves time, an SH-50 can reproduce a square wave over more than a decade wide bandwidth without any DSP correction, spanning both crossover points.
The latter aspect is why there are people that prefer a single full range driver over a multiway system even including the other limitations of the single driver.
The Synergy horn is a way to create a powerful source that acts like a single driver in time and space while providing the directivity recognized as needed in large scale sound..In a living room, that directivity produces a much flatter response at the LP than the wide dispersion speaker and has much less “late” energy from reflected sound.
Tom
In any case, this is nearly irrelevant since a detectable change in loudness is not a measure of what variation in frequency response amplitude is detectable with a broad band signal, It also ignores the fact that where one listens in room, the raw response can easily be altered by + - 10 or 15 or more dB .
A 20 or even 30dB alteration in response at the LP doesn’t stop people from listening to those systems, it is the only reference most have.
Those variations are what people live with, not how a loudspeaker measures at 1 meter. If you have any doubt, please measure your loudspeakers response from the listening position and evaluate how much it has changed.
Here is where directivity is a huge advantage, what arrives at the LP is much more like the original than a wide dispersion loudspeaker.
We also hear “time” related effects, the amount of late energy that arrives after the direct sound is much larger in the wide dispersion loudspeaker in room AND unless one has DSP correction of time, all traditional crossovers spread out a single impulse in time, delaying the lower part by 90 degrees times the order once past a first order.
The Synergy design on the other hand preserves time, an SH-50 can reproduce a square wave over more than a decade wide bandwidth without any DSP correction, spanning both crossover points.
The latter aspect is why there are people that prefer a single full range driver over a multiway system even including the other limitations of the single driver.
The Synergy horn is a way to create a powerful source that acts like a single driver in time and space while providing the directivity recognized as needed in large scale sound..In a living room, that directivity produces a much flatter response at the LP than the wide dispersion speaker and has much less “late” energy from reflected sound.
Tom
Actually, I think I really do get it. I see a possible paradigm shift. In other words I think we may have many horn and other speaker designs out there that are in essence dead, but no one has noticed yet because the body isn't stinking yet. When I opened this very pointed thread it was with the intentions of finding a REAL tangible problem with these designs. Not only have I not found any of these yet but I have nothing but pluses. As of this point I am thinking these horns are a definitive paradigm shift. I believe from the data that I am seeing that if a properly shaped version of these speakers were included in Floyd Toole's famous test, we would possibly have a *clear winner*. And that thought is fascinating all by itself.
Tom,
If I could fit Synergy horns into my living room's floor plan I would, I'd prefer hearing less "room" and more speaker than the 6" and dome tweeter + 2x12" sub that I use presently.
That said, indoors, at the listening position (near center of the room, 3 meters from the speakers), my little speakers are about as flat as an SH-50 outdoors.
Although a speaker's raw response may be altered by + - 10 or 15 or more dB by a room, the fact is that does not happen in all rooms with all direct radiator speakers.
Art
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Also, we don't quite hear like a microphone measures. The microphone adds late arriving reflections to the frequency response based on amplitude and phase. However, we can ignore some of these reflections depending upon their amplitude and delay. In other words, it's not an apples to apples comparison to say that conventional speakers have high variation as measured at the listening position whereas the synergy doesn't.
The key is raising the direct to reflected ratio compared to a direct radiator. By being able to hear more direct sound and being able to ignore the late arriving reflected sound (compared to a direct radiator, where reflected sound might arrive sooner), we are able to better extract timbral and spatial properties. This is what we might perceive as increased clarity and being able to hear the recording more.
The key is raising the direct to reflected ratio compared to a direct radiator. By being able to hear more direct sound and being able to ignore the late arriving reflected sound (compared to a direct radiator, where reflected sound might arrive sooner), we are able to better extract timbral and spatial properties. This is what we might perceive as increased clarity and being able to hear the recording more.
Yeah, I think the only caveat might be HOMs but they probably could be diminished enough by Geddes's foam treatment....
The exponential Klipsch are more efficient (on axis) than the conical Synergy horns, but do not have constant directivity.
The Synergy horn reduces distortion over those designs because the midrange goes through acoustic band pass ports which reduce upper harmonics, and allow the HF driver to cover far less bandwidth (reducing excursion by a factor of four or more) than the HF compression driver covers in the Klipsch designs.
The Klipsch designs (unless DSP is used) also suffer from a lack of time alignment, bass lags behind the midrange by many cycles, and the La Scala midrange also lags behind the highs by several cycles.
Of course, the Haas effect determines that which we hear first sounds loudest, the Klipsch will sound "brighter" than a Synergy
.I find the term "Homs" amusing. In the old Khorn owners community long before the internet was popular, a lot of owners just called each other by phone. We knew that you could take a ring of light felt and place it into the mouth of the mid horn where there were parallel surfaces and ending before the flare. It worked perfectly, it still works and as far as I am concerned it works better (at least on an exponential horn) than filling the whole with 30 ppi OCF and losing a couple of db overall. It seems to ameliorate only the offending range though I did not measure, it was clearly an audible improvement. The only thing we did not do was reverse engineer that common sense tweak, find the physics that applied to it' write it up and give it a name and a patent. We just cut up a hat and fixed the speakers instead (-; I used a Stetson............Here I'll give it a name now. "The Quadratic Stetson Effect" *see pic At any rate more conical horns like Tom's do not seem to suffer from this enough to worry about it
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I agree, it's a fantastic achievement.. but it's not what is being asked for in this thread.
That it is a fantastic achievement is already a "given". In the short term anyone can here a minute *change* in intensity, though more so at higher freq.s than low. It really takes longer periods of listening though to detect broad-band deviations - which is where you start getting descriptors like "bright", "dull", etc.. (..and again, usually biased toward higher freq.s). This get's back to that "fatigue" thread. It's tougher to detect narrow-band changes relative to the play-back material, far more so "dips" than "peaks".
Btw, most who have worked on fairly traditional crossovers (particularly near 2-3 kHz) will say that a change in .5db is easily detectable from more than a meter away and in a small room. I don't think this is a case of super hearing,, but it is an example of a listener consciously listening for this *change*.
In my mind and in the mind of thousands the Khorn just misses being an ideal compromise for those who want the experience of a concert. It is the point of reference period. This is why it still sells great and has for 60 years! It is almost ideal. Again it *is* a point of reference. The question is can a version of Tom Danley's speakers unseat the king.
1. Does it sound flatter and measure flatter than the Khorn at LP and off axis in a reasonable room?
2.Does it suffer from the same dynamic range compression that nearly all other speakers save for the Khorn and a few others do?
3.Does it solve the point source problem?
If all of the above are positively answered that we have a no contest speaker.
1. Does it sound flatter and measure flatter than the Khorn at LP and off axis in a reasonable room?
2.Does it suffer from the same dynamic range compression that nearly all other speakers save for the Khorn and a few others do?
3.Does it solve the point source problem?
If all of the above are positively answered that we have a no contest speaker.
I agree, it's a fantastic achievement.. but it's not what is being asked for in this thread.
In the short term anyone can here a minute *change* in intensity, though more so at higher freq.s than low. It really takes longer periods of listening though to detect broad-band deviations - which is where you start getting descriptors like "bright", "dull", etc.. (..and again, usually biased toward higher freq.s). This get's back to that "fatigue" thread. It's tougher to detect narrow-band changes relative to the play-back material, far more so "dips" than "peaks".
Btw, most who have worked on fairly traditional crossovers (particularly near 2-3 kHz) will say that a change in .5db is easily detectable from more than a meter away and in a small room. I don't think this is a case of super hearing,, but it is an example of a listener consciously listening for this *change*.
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