Not the most time-coherent speaker available:
Step response B&W Nautilus 801: http://www.stereophile.com/content/bw-nautilus-801-loudspeaker-measurements-part-3
What "image erection"? I've never heard the floor-coupled CBT but I suspect that the sound stage is below ear level.
In my experience a floor-coupled speaker always reveals its location after some listening time. At first some sounds (especially voices) seem to come from higher locations but after a while they are located below ear level.
Some high level process in our brain probably signals that a human voice should come from an elevated location and not from the floor. So the first impression is that the sound comes from straight ahead. A possible explanation is that unambiguous height cues are missing, probably because of the pronounced ceiling reflection from the floor-coupled speaker.
By the way, did you miss my post about the Uni-Q driver? Would it work in the Pluto experiment?
I think that time-coherence of a loudspeaker is a quite separate issue from the question of coherency of the direct sound and the reflected sound.
For the latter it suffices that both the direct sound and the reflected sound are time-incoherent/incoherent in the same way
I believe that the graph that You posted doesn't reveal the real problem.
The real problem would be revealed only in comparison of the step response measured on the 0 deg axis and of the step response measured on the axis of the first floor reflection and on the axis of the first ceiling reflection.
Of course there is no need to make such measurements.
For it is quite obvious that the three responses must be VERY different for a 3-way TMW front-firing speaker.
And this is what I mean by incoherence.
No, ceiling reflections are not automatically bad, and it depends on the design.
I have employed ceiling reflections for benefit at treble freqs whenever there is a need to hide the perceived speaker locations.
One can simply tilt the tweeters upwards. Its great: Speakers disappear, and spaciousness is increased. Both features are desired compared to the lame presentation of stereo triangle alone.
Full carpeted floors are purely an american phenomena, so yourself belong to mimority globally considered.
Exactly !
Vertical localisation ability is heavily subject dependent. I have posted studies showing this.
At the end all this fuss about flooders may be that some individuals have poor pinnas !
- Elias
just the tweeters? what crossover point?
besides the carpet argument is really unworthy of any serious discussion, carpets are in the class E - lowest of the "Absorption classes" according ISO 11654, when adequately padded they perhaps qualify to class D, that's all
what is a "poor pinna"?
Is it possible that tilting the speaker towards full facing the ceiling position did something wrong to Your pinnas making them temporarily poor?
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Is it possible that tilting the speaker towards full facing the ceiling position did something wrong to Your pinnas making them temporarily poor?
You may be refering to my very first flooder report. it was single MONO speaker.
Later I tried two stereo flooders but the sound remained low all the time.
As Markus pointed out, adaptation may have been the case here. First impression is sound not coming from floor, then reality strikes and sound is coming from floor.
Just resently I did tests with bass-midrange floor dipole. Did post it here too. It was unstable in localisation with head movements which located the speaker at the floor.
By adding tweeter at the ear level brought the image at ear level and stabilased it.
- Elias
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Probably true. Besides that, hearing is an accumulation of different processes in our ear and brain carried out in parallel. There are low-level "processing units" that feed high-level processing which forms what we hear.
There certainly are different pinna shapes that result in different or even missing low-level elements between individuals. Then there's also differences in high-level processing. We learn to hear. Only low-level processing is hard-wired.
We have to acknowledge those facts. I can identify a source at the floor (if certain reflections don't override the direction of the direct sound). Others may not.
all other factors the same as in the first test? Is mono vs stereo the only difference between those tests?
But somehow reality didn't strike during the first test?
but the great question is WHY?
oh I see... ...so it is not that You can identify it in all cases
what exactly are those "certain reflections"?
Aren't those "certain reflections" always present? Do You remove I mean absorb/deflect them away from the direction of the listening seat? Why?
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sorry!
Originally Posted by weltersys:
"I had placed the only handy wide dispersion "full range" speaker (a Grundig Yacht Boy radio, 60mm speaker, 35mm cabinet depth) at the floor /wall juncture, closed my eyes, spun around, and from any position in the room the sound was easily determined to be at the floor/wall juncture."
Was it a mono or stereo setup? Have You listen to it in a normal listening position ie. seated 2-4 m away from the speaker? What sort of recording/music it was?
Originally Posted by weltersys:
"This fact is easily explained by the Haas precedence effect (we localize sound sources in the direction of the first arriving sound) and the ear's pinna which account for vertical localization."
the topic has been thoroughly discussed in this thread and seriously I doubt that what You experienced can be explained that way.
It is all puzzling, we have contradicting reports on the same page and we don't know what's the cause of those different results.
The set up was mono, listening to classical music and speech, standing and seated from 1-4 meters from the FCUFS.
If you have a better explanation than the Haas effect and pinna vertical location of the initial sound source of the FCUFS I'm "all ears".
Today I repeated the experiment, putting the FCUFS on the narrow end of the kitchen (my living room has shelving around the room which would interfere with a FCUFS) and listened to speech and music from 1 meter to 8.5 meters, standing and seated.
My tape measure is in inches, requiring extensive calculation for conversion
.I tried listening with the blinds above the speaker open and closed, not much difference was audible.
At 1 and 2 meters, the source was obviously the FCUFS location, at 3 meters, more ambiguous but still a definite downward location.
At 4 meters and further, legato passages became hard to locate, while percussion and vocals still sounded as if they were located at the floor wall junction.
Sitting midway in the room where the kitchen table blocked a direct path to the FCUFS, the sound location was ambiguous, I would not be able to point to a single source.
At any rate, I don't find it at all puzzling that different ears and brains in different rooms hear and interpret what they hear differently.
If you came in to my room and had a totally different impression, it would be no more a surprise than finding our record collection, and taste in liquor differed.
You will notice there is no carpeting on my floor, though I'd prefer it acoustically, living here in Madrid New Mexico next to a pile of blowing coal dust and dirt it would soon be like a sandbox. Hard enough to clean the throw rugs, at least they can be taken outside and beaten into submission.
Art
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Not interested in opinions, I want actual tests. This is why;
and this;
Popcorn ceiling come in many different forms as stated in the thread. There is very fine(probably does nothing to the sound), medium (which can be diffusive at high frequencies), and coarse and very coarse patterns(which absolutely does diffuse the sound at lower treble and higher frequencies).
Once again, too many variabilities for definitive answers.
They have figured out console reflections were a problem years ago, and started putting speakers on tall stands and using heavy absorption to strongly suppress any reflection around the console.
If you are going to comment about studio acoustics, at least keep up with they are doing.
What is bad, and what is a preference are two different things. I have never heard anyone state that ceiling reflections were a good thing. I have heard nothing but the opposite. Folks can point their speakers in any direction they choose, its their speakers - they built or bought them.
The problem I have Elias is the spaciousness is artificial, and it smears the fine detail in the mix. I like to hear everything there is in a recording, and my experience with flooder's tells me that would not be possible with that design unless the room was really small. I would imagine in a really small room the design would work really well.
If I wanted more spaciousness, I would go with multichannel audio where the ambiance is in the mix. My main problem with stereo(and why I stop recording in that format) is you have to try so many tricks and effects to get it to sound right(with right being the live event which is my reference). You have speakers with rear firing tweeters and midranges, the Bose direct/reflecting concept, AR's magic speaker, DBX's Soundfield One loudspeaker, Flooder's, and omnidirectional speakers. All of these designs are built to create artificial reflections to increase the perception of spaciousness. With multichannel you don't have to do any of that, the mix does that for you. It is also done with the correct spatiality - ambiance coming from the sides and rear of the listening position. This best approximates what you will hear in a live event. A live event is not full of front loaded reflections, they come from all around you. Our hearing is not front loaded, it is binaural. I think you come much closer to binaural with multichannel audio than with stereo.
I don't think my point was about majority or minority. It was about variability. Highly textured walls and ceilings, and larger room sizes are also an American phenomena. My point is you cannot make definitive statements about what works everywhere when you only point of reference is one regional area.
Graaf is trying to tell me a flooder will work in all rooms, and my experience tells me his beliefs are all theory and not based in reality. There are too many variables between listening rooms for this design to work everywhere.
Not the most time-coherent speaker available:
Step response B&W Nautilus 801: B&W Nautilus 801 loudspeaker Measurements part 3 | Stereophile.com
You are right, it is not particularly time coherent which is why I choose not to buy it for my mixing and mastering room. I think the reason it is in so many studios is because it is a very unforgiving speaker that just happens to sound really, really good as this statement says;
Do I fail in my audio-pickiness quotient if I say that the Nautilus 801s never sounded less than fantastic in my system? From turn-on and throughout my listening, they produced thoroughbred sound at all times.
and this;
But don't assume the Nautilus 801 is just a big bully kicking bass booty and pounding sand. It had a clarity and tonal truth that I've heard very few speakers match. B&W claims extraordinarily low distortion for the 801; having heard it, I believe.
This is why it is in so many studios.
Poor, or just different? Who get's to decide which ones are poor, and which ones are best?
Personally the three flooder's I heard did not sound like they were coming from the floor. However I did notice what Art noticed. As you get further away from the speakers, the sound became an ambiguous sonic wash(or mess as I call it).
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