There are as many answers, as there are "ideals" .
I prefer a polar pattern that covers the listening area in a room with as little as possible "spill" to areas other than where the listeners are.
The required polar pattern would be different for different rooms to satisfy that preference.
Others like a wide or omni pattern that reflects much of the radiated pattern off lateral walls, some others even like nearly all the radiated sound to be reflected, some even prefer a floor mounted speaker bouncing the sound off the ceiling.
Others like a narrowing pattern at high frequencies- you need to decide what is "ideal" for yourself, there is no accounting for taste
.Because there isn't a standardized method of recording (/mixing) for stereo and a standardized room for listening in stereo. So... I guess you can return to reading the monster thread.
There are as many answers, as there are "ideals" .
I prefer a polar pattern that covers the listening area in a room with as little as possible "spill" to areas other than where the listeners are.
The required polar pattern would be different for different rooms to satisfy that preference.
Others like a wide or omni pattern that reflects much of the radiated pattern off lateral walls, some others even like nearly all the radiated sound to be reflected, some even prefer a floor mounted speaker bouncing the sound off the ceiling.
Others like a narrowing pattern at high frequencies- you need to decide what is "ideal" for yourself, there is no accounting for taste
first of all why do you prefer as little spill as possible?
If you had a piano in your room there is plenty of spill coming off that. Different instruments have different spill levels and a loudspeaker has to produce all instruments and sounds. Therefore it must be able to produce different spills. So here is the problem. a speakers inherent polar response is fixed. But we dont want a fixed polar pattern because of the reasons I just gave. so what is the answer? Its certainly not what you claim, that it varies according to preference or room acoustics.
but you don't have a piano in your room and you are doing is attempting attempting to reproduce the recorded sound of a piano (from another room) in your room with a pair of loudspeakers. The more control that you have of where your loudspeakers send their sound (directivity) the less impact that your room will have on the sound that your loudspeakers are reproducing. The less directivity you have the more the loudspeaker "spills" sound into your room where it will reflect and bounce around off of walls and furniture and all of that reflected sound is distorted sound. Does this help? Best regards Moray James.
That seems like pontification too. I think we all think we are right. I am not entirely sure what you mean by monotonic. Can you clarify?
Rgds, Lilun
All these issues have been long discussed in these pages.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/195124-what-ideal-directivity-pattern-stereo-speakers.html
The consensus (if there was any) was that the polar response depends on the speaker, room and distance from the source -- there is no ideal.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/195124-what-ideal-directivity-pattern-stereo-speakers.html
The consensus (if there was any) was that the polar response depends on the speaker, room and distance from the source -- there is no ideal.
Speakers can be made consistant. Rooms can't. We tend to "difflicate" things here for no good reason. Obviously there are biological and physical properties of snot, but all that is needed is a Kleenex. Sometimes its amusing, but too much of the time it is just obfuscation and b.s.
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The beam should be how wide?
How should the beam reduce at the edges?
How should the beam integrate with the room modes at low frequencies?
Etc...
Your analysis would be (sort of) correct IF all we listened to with our home speakers were recordings of instruments in anechoic chambers. In that case, and only in that case, the "spill" would contribute to the illusion that the instrument (e.g. the piano) is in your room.
HOWEVER, good acoustic recordings already include the reverberation ("spill") of the original acoustic space (room, concert hall, ...) in which the instrument(s) (piano, etc.) were originally played. So, when the recording is reproduced in your room, it is arguably preferable to be able to convey that built-in "spill" to your ears (by means of controlled directivity), than to add additional "spill" that is caused by your room reflections.
The latter may sound "spacious", but it destroys the accurate portrayal of the original sound space that's there in the recording to begin with.
In a nutshell, it boils down to reproducing a "you are there" effect, rather than producing an artificial "they are here" one.
Marco
My response was intended to be somewhat tongue cheek but the width and shape do matter in that a loudspeaker in a room will sound different as they are varied. A narrow beam width compared to a full 360 beam width will sound different in a room. Perhaps you disagree with this?. If not, what is a good choice for beam width?
i agree with you. I don't agree about adding additional spill. This is what I meant. If you add a cardioid spill from the speaker, it will always be a cardioid pattern and this will be added to every recording and will be coloration. That was the problem I meant.
Also you forget that we DO listen to sounds recorded in anechoic chambers. These include all electronic instruments as well as vocals recorded in anechoic vocal booths.
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One problem is it is hard to reduce the width of the bass. It tends to always be omni. So we can only match the tweeters dispersion to the bass by making it wide dispersion, or we can gently narrow it by using felt or changing the shape of the baffle etc
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