waeah has it correct.
also, the idea raised of low distortion is important. if there is the ability to localize the source of the sound to any specific driver that tends to reduce or eliminate the creation of a virtual soundfield. The case of tweeters with "spit" or other distortions that make them audible is one example.
Another issue is non-flat frequency response, *especially* where there are peaks in the pass band of the tweeter or other HF speaker.
Pumping high SPL into a room is *not* in my opinion required at all. What that may do is to create a very high level reverberant field (unless you have a nearly dead, absorbent room) which will give the illusion of a "big sound".
One can get a very "big" soundstage with relatively low SPL, and with proper speaker placement, sitting in an appropriate position (where that is, is another discussion).
All of this assumes appropriately recorded material and that the rest of the playback gear is also in some assumed range of reasonableness and quality.
_-_-
also, the idea raised of low distortion is important. if there is the ability to localize the source of the sound to any specific driver that tends to reduce or eliminate the creation of a virtual soundfield. The case of tweeters with "spit" or other distortions that make them audible is one example.
Another issue is non-flat frequency response, *especially* where there are peaks in the pass band of the tweeter or other HF speaker.
Pumping high SPL into a room is *not* in my opinion required at all. What that may do is to create a very high level reverberant field (unless you have a nearly dead, absorbent room) which will give the illusion of a "big sound".
One can get a very "big" soundstage with relatively low SPL, and with proper speaker placement, sitting in an appropriate position (where that is, is another discussion).
All of this assumes appropriately recorded material and that the rest of the playback gear is also in some assumed range of reasonableness and quality.
_-_-
Copper Top - you nailed this!
Room characteristics are very important, that is why the same speaker can sound good in the shop and bad at home -and vice versa.
English is native language for some but second or third for many internet users. I usually skip/disregard verbal descriptions of sound, be it Stereophile or 6moons audio. I dont even undestand all Finnish hifi-words! Musicians use different words than audiophiles too! Webster's Dictionary does not help much!
Audio-hifi/english glossaries and articles
Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary | Stereophile.com
Describing Sound - A Glossary
Learn the Language of Good Sound
Room characteristics are very important, that is why the same speaker can sound good in the shop and bad at home -and vice versa.
English is native language for some but second or third for many internet users. I usually skip/disregard verbal descriptions of sound, be it Stereophile or 6moons audio. I dont even undestand all Finnish hifi-words! Musicians use different words than audiophiles too! Webster's Dictionary does not help much!
Audio-hifi/english glossaries and articles
Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary | Stereophile.com
Describing Sound - A Glossary
Learn the Language of Good Sound
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I think we have two kinds of "big" sound under discussion. One is a big, open, natural soundstage (the physical space where the performers make music). This can be realized with low-diffraction speakers with good phase transfer between drivers ... and physically, the loudspeaker can be as small as a minimonitor, or very large, although it gets harder to do with spatially dispersed drivers.
The other kind of "big" sound is the ability to render the physical scale of large instruments like concert-grand pianos, a cello, or a complete horn section. If you're familiar with the sound of live, unamplified instruments, you'll find this is beyond the abilities of most direct-radiator audiophile loudspeakers. That's where high-efficiency systems come into their own. Surprisingly, it's not about loudness; a concert grand piano played quietly still sounds large and powerful, and you can sense the physical size of the instrument ... if the playback system is good enough.
Dipoles, although rendering the soundstage beautifully, may get in trouble with instruments with a lot of power in the bass register, as a result of running out of excursion. Electrostats, likewise. It depends a lot on what you listen to, and what you expect from a hifi system.
The other kind of "big" sound is the ability to render the physical scale of large instruments like concert-grand pianos, a cello, or a complete horn section. If you're familiar with the sound of live, unamplified instruments, you'll find this is beyond the abilities of most direct-radiator audiophile loudspeakers. That's where high-efficiency systems come into their own. Surprisingly, it's not about loudness; a concert grand piano played quietly still sounds large and powerful, and you can sense the physical size of the instrument ... if the playback system is good enough.
Dipoles, although rendering the soundstage beautifully, may get in trouble with instruments with a lot of power in the bass register, as a result of running out of excursion. Electrostats, likewise. It depends a lot on what you listen to, and what you expect from a hifi system.
I expected nothing else
repectfully, I think too many obscure audiophile tales have been created to explain why so much sound like crap
and often repeated almost word for word
imo ... I think that is a big mistake making it 'the norm'
to explain my previous post ...
when I say 'get the best out of every recording', that does not necessarily mean it also sounds fantastic
only that it is still possible to enjoy the music, instead of just being painfully unbearable
and the real sweet surprice is, good recordings still excells, and beyond the believeable
(just to make sure it is not mistaken for a Bose thing, which I suspect it was)
Yup!
And I believe the thread starter was referring to the former - or apparent soundstage size.
Yup!
And I believe the thread starter was referring to the former - or apparent soundstage size.
if you do it right you get both. Why would you want scale without size? I don't understand "high end" audio speak anymore - this makes me happy
Yup!
And I believe the thread starter was referring to the former - or apparent soundstage size.
If that is true (and it would be nice for the OP to join in the conversation), then I believe the conversation on coherence of phasing of drivers/horns should be tempered with a discussion on "apparent source width" (ASW) that Toole carries on about (see pgs. 34 and 50 of his 2008 book Sound Reproduction - The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms for a definition).
Note that you can have both localization and broadening of sound in certain loudspeaker designs (notably horn-loaded), but ASW is what Bose, open baffles and dipole planar speakers use to increase the size of the soundstage:
- Bose increases the soundstage width at the cost of imaging coherence, and
- Open baffle/dipole planars increase the depth of the soundstage via the backwave reflection off the front wall, which also broadens the soundstage if set up correctly in a properly chosen room and speaker/listener/acoustic treatment setup.
PS: The Carver preamp "Sonic Holography" and Polk SDA monitors in the early 80s both used psychoacoustics to dramatically increase ASW, but you have to sit on centerline between speakers that are symmetrically arranged within the room's boundaries to realize the effect. It's startling however when you hear it in person, and you find yourself asking whether it's only two speakers playing, with no surrounds.
Chris
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Actually ASW - specifically relates to source size. Like a cello in an orchestra "pit" becoming physically larger and most particularly *wider* due to the pit's reflections and relative to the listener's distance from the source. (..many concert halls strive to create this effect to a lesser degree - which is part of the reason you'll often see a truncated hall design where the orchestra plays.)
The sound reproduction equivalent would be "image broadening", though it's rarely an effect of room reflections as perceived in a small room. Most of the time it's due to larger sources (larger drivers) or an increased number of sources (particularly horizontally), greater diffraction over a surface area (particularly horizontally), stereo artifacts with increased loudspeaker separation, and of course pronounced freq. aberrations ("peaks") in the lower midgrange (often due to modal effects from the room). Listener distance from the loudspeaker is a major factor with most of these characteristics.
LEV or Listener Envelopment would better characterize an increase in soundstage size. (..though again, it's an artifact of reflections in a large space with sources - and operationally it's not at all the same as those effects that generate a large sound with stereo in a small room.)
if you do it right you get both. Why would you want scale without size? I don't understand "high end" audio speak anymore - this makes me happy
Perspective.
You should have both.. but it should always be proportional.
The argument is that you should have "life size images" - true, BUT life-size at what distance?
The further away you are (or the recording was recorded.. or engineered to replicate this particular effect), the smaller the source should sound.
Actually, Toole restricts LEV to reflections or delays greater than 80 ms (i.e., delayed paths greater than 90 feet/27.5 metres), so that's probably not the effect that's involved...right? LEV is more a room thing - and not for small rooms.
Horn-loaded loudspeakers using high output impedance amplifiers will affect ASW, but probably not LEV, unless the room is large. (My listening room is 15.5 x 40 x 10 feet: I hear axial reflections that approach 90 feet delayed reflected acoustic energy, but probably not higher frequencies.)
Really serious reverb units or HT 5.1 synthesizers might be able to artificially create LEV in smaller rooms, but I've never heard loudspeakers do that without accompanying really large rooms that provide the service.
Chris
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What size? Hmm.. I have recordings that wrap around me and others that have height (well some actually give the sensation of being below the room), depth, and lateral images out as far as the noise floor will allow- without compression that "fit" together as in one homologous sound field with the right size between the apparent sources of the sound. Circle surround used for rear and above (omni horns) with a delayed rear dual 18" sub makes it all work.
For the most part neither ASW nor LEV have anything to do with sound reproduction (or rather, traditional stereo reproduction). It's more a matter of describing an effect.
The "effect" for ASW is broadening of a sound source - as an extrapolation he references that same effect to an image (as opposed to a real source).
The "effect" for LEV is the sense of being in a large acoustic space - as an extrapolation we have the soundstage that represents a large acoustic space (if part of the recording).
In neither case are you actually *creating* either effect under the same conditions as required by those terms (..despite Toole's desire to do so with ASW in later chapters). (..there are of course some exceptions with really large domestic rooms and ASW.)
Most sources on ASW condition a 1st order delay of more than 20 ms (up to about 50 ms) - and it usually needs to be from *near* lateral walls from the source.
LEV - generally later than 80 ms and near 90 degrees +/- from the listener's front (0 degree).
Neither ASW nor LEV "fit" for most listening rooms.
Yes, multi-channel can actually create BOTH effects - though within our two topics this is usually only done for LEV's creating a sense of "being in a large acoustic space". (..and in this sense both terms are very much relevant to sound reproduction.)
Yes, but there are some systems that do large images generically (or regardless of recording).
Listening to line arrays (particularly those with larger diameter drivers) at many meters distance in only a moderate size domestic room. Such a system almost always imparts images that are "over-blown" regardless of the recording's soundstage/mastering intent.
This is probably an issue for most large venue sound reinforcement "gig.s".
This is done artificially in the studio via sum and difference processing (M/S or mid-side). The sum is everything that is mono, IE speaker diaphragms move in unison, the side is everything that is stereo, IE diaphragm movement is opposing (or one side moving only). It's created manually by multing L+R to pan left (mid) and L-R (polarity flipped on one) and panning right. Decoded by panning M center, and multing side to L and to R and flipping the polarity of one of those two.
You would be hard pressed to find many recordings made in the last 20+ years that weren't manipulated via M/S. This is why records in the last number of years are wider than the eras before.
FWIW; very few engineers/producers carry any sort of attachment to the idea of recreating reality (even any modern classical record is multi-miked and *enlarged*). By my estimate records average about 8-10dB brighter than acoustic events (more if you count close miking and the lack of HF dissipation).
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I just started reading that Toole book, so I will have to come back later to clarify my question with any more precision. However, I don't think I am referring to "soundstage size" since you could just move the speakers further apart.
Maybe it would help if I gave a few examples:
I have listened to a couple of Martin Logan's smaller electrostat speakers. They did seem to sound "smaller" than their bigger brothers. But even the little speakers have about 2-3 sq feet of radiating area, so therefore I don't think that metric is the main one.
I also walked into a room where a set of Neat Motive 3s were playing. (British bookshelf speaker), and it was just some random female vocal track. Yet the voice sounded really big and the sound filled the room. The midrange / woofer driver on that speaker is a dinky 4 or 5 inches. I later found out that this speaker has a bass boost around 120 Hz or so due to port tuning.
The next examples are in the same listening room, maybe 10 x 15 or so. One set of speakers was Golden Ear Triton 7, which are small floor standing speakers. They claim to play down to 29 Hz and were aimed in the short direction of the room. They sounded ok, I guess. The other set of speakers, while being spaced even closer together, were aimed in the long direction. I forget which model, but it was some larger and much more expensive Totem speakers. Even after just a few seconds of playing, it was immediately obvious that the sound was much "bigger".
I was also prompted to ask this question because a lot of times I read about people that prefer sub + satellite system over the big floor standing speaker, even within the same model line. For example, B&W 802 vs 805. What would be the difference in sound between these setups, assuming the sub can extend the frequency of the satellite system down as low as the floor standers? They have the same tweeter, and almost the same midrange driver.
Maybe it would help if I gave a few examples:
I have listened to a couple of Martin Logan's smaller electrostat speakers. They did seem to sound "smaller" than their bigger brothers. But even the little speakers have about 2-3 sq feet of radiating area, so therefore I don't think that metric is the main one.
I also walked into a room where a set of Neat Motive 3s were playing. (British bookshelf speaker), and it was just some random female vocal track. Yet the voice sounded really big and the sound filled the room. The midrange / woofer driver on that speaker is a dinky 4 or 5 inches. I later found out that this speaker has a bass boost around 120 Hz or so due to port tuning.
The next examples are in the same listening room, maybe 10 x 15 or so. One set of speakers was Golden Ear Triton 7, which are small floor standing speakers. They claim to play down to 29 Hz and were aimed in the short direction of the room. They sounded ok, I guess. The other set of speakers, while being spaced even closer together, were aimed in the long direction. I forget which model, but it was some larger and much more expensive Totem speakers. Even after just a few seconds of playing, it was immediately obvious that the sound was much "bigger".
I was also prompted to ask this question because a lot of times I read about people that prefer sub + satellite system over the big floor standing speaker, even within the same model line. For example, B&W 802 vs 805. What would be the difference in sound between these setups, assuming the sub can extend the frequency of the satellite system down as low as the floor standers? They have the same tweeter, and almost the same midrange driver.
If I were intelligent enough, this is what I would have said. Good job Lynn.
...And sitting closer to the speakers (if they can resolve their images at a closer distance), and toeing-in the speakers toward the listening position. You also need to control early reflections from front and side walls using treatments, since you are placing the loudspeakers closer to the corners or other boundaries of the room to do this.
Note the comment above regarding electrostatic loudspeakers and their inability to provide the diaphragm excursions necessary for dynamic or louder music performance. Limited excursion is also related to low efficiency of the direct-radiating drivers that require dramatically increased input power and diaphragm motions to reproduce the source music somewhat realistically. Higher diaphragm motion of lower efficiency loudspeakers also results in dramatically higher modulation distortion, which detracts most significantly from the illusion of "big".
This sounds to me like you are describing the effects of higher efficiency loudspeakers. I'd really recommend listening to something that is horn loaded - such as some of the better Klipsch models - even if they are floor-standing HT models. Note that the room, speaker placement within the room, and acoustic treatments (if any) really affect the perception of "big".
Being able to place your lowest-frequency driver or subwoofer horn in a location to activate the room's LF modes (there are at least two JAES articles on this subject written by different authors that are not related) and also breaking up the LF spectrum using separate drivers will reduce modulation distortion of the LF drivers. This also adds to the sense of naturalness and presence at higher SPLs - supporting the illusion of "big".
Chris
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I'd try to separate Toole's actual research from his conclusions.
Ymmv.
Since all speakers are a compromise, there is no panacea in any given speaker type, just yin/yang and which compromises you can accept vs. which benefits.
Personally, I am not a fan of "activating room LF modes", although I suppose in some situations that's an acceptable compromise.
Although it's not perfectly "blameless high-end high fidelity" it is interesting to try SRS (a free download) on ur computer to see what a complex sound processing algorithm can do. It does a bass "trick" wherein with proper harmonic relationships the ear actually creates and fills in a lower fundamental. Also it does some sort of higher frequency spatial stuff - the highs DO tend to get boosted, so that somewhat confounds things, but with the highs re-EQ'd (easy enough on a computer) this SRS thing does really amazing things for live "bootleg" type recordings.
Why do I mention this, because here's some serious research that has led to processing algorithms implemented as a commercial product that completely alters the spatial characteristics (mostly for the better). The paid version, or versions that come with some other stand-alone products have adjustable parameters, which makes it easier to tune-in and eliminate the excess HF effects while maintaining the benefits.
These sorts of algorithms show that there is more going on with the spatial presentation than meets the eye, and this SRS clearly *alters* the presentation of any set of speakers *dramatically* - and not merely by EQ, you can't do this stuff with EQ.
Try it.
I have zero connection with the people or company that does SRS...
...would love to find some papers that give some insight into the underlying principles though!
_-_-
Ymmv.
Since all speakers are a compromise, there is no panacea in any given speaker type, just yin/yang and which compromises you can accept vs. which benefits.
Personally, I am not a fan of "activating room LF modes", although I suppose in some situations that's an acceptable compromise.
Although it's not perfectly "blameless high-end high fidelity" it is interesting to try SRS (a free download) on ur computer to see what a complex sound processing algorithm can do. It does a bass "trick" wherein with proper harmonic relationships the ear actually creates and fills in a lower fundamental. Also it does some sort of higher frequency spatial stuff - the highs DO tend to get boosted, so that somewhat confounds things, but with the highs re-EQ'd (easy enough on a computer) this SRS thing does really amazing things for live "bootleg" type recordings.
Why do I mention this, because here's some serious research that has led to processing algorithms implemented as a commercial product that completely alters the spatial characteristics (mostly for the better). The paid version, or versions that come with some other stand-alone products have adjustable parameters, which makes it easier to tune-in and eliminate the excess HF effects while maintaining the benefits.
These sorts of algorithms show that there is more going on with the spatial presentation than meets the eye, and this SRS clearly *alters* the presentation of any set of speakers *dramatically* - and not merely by EQ, you can't do this stuff with EQ.
Try it.
I have zero connection with the people or company that does SRS...
...would love to find some papers that give some insight into the underlying principles though!
_-_-
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