Greetings from South Australia

[Keith Taylor]

I am subscribed to a few audio forums and find I rapidly tire of reading about proprietry products and would much rather try to improve my understanding of the things that really count in audio hardware. After retiring from working in the field of fault finding television and radio transmission equipment my work has become my hobby. Loudspeakers are my main interest, but since building a pair of Linkwitz Orion dipoles in 2004 I can see that any future advances in audio reproduction are going to come from a paradigm shift away from what we call stereo to wavefield synthesis, ambiophonics or what ever.

Part of the reason for this belief is that I hear a lot of live music, being a member of two choirs and often being involved in recording. On returning home from a recording job and playing the DAT tape one is immediately struck by one thing. The sounds from the speakers come from a very limited range of angles compared with the recording venue and the lack of sounds from above is particularly apparent. Besides the foregoing the generation of phantom sources that is central to stereo is a very poor substitute for a real source.

In Adelaide there is quite an active Section of the AES (Audio Eng' Society) of which I am a committee member. Adelaide has had some world class speaker manufacturers in the past 20 odd years, probably the most well known being Duntec, sadly being no longer in business. The thing that pushed me over th edge to sign up on this forum was the thread about the Heil Air Motion Transformers in the planar etc speaker forum. I intend posting there as I believe there is still untapped potential in this transducer principal. Dr Heil was a very creative guy having invented the FET, but I would respectfully suggest that acoustics was not one of his strong points!

Bye Keith

[quasi]

Another South Aussie, yeah!

Cheers Keith, welcome to the forum. There's a few of us now.

Cheers
Quasi

[Cal Weldon]

Hello Keith and welcome to the forums.

[abzug]

Hello, I am very interested using an AMT mid-HF in 2way system... I plan to build something like the JBL 4435 , with 2x 15" (one only helps in under 100hz , so overall "just" 95.4 sensitivity) this is where the similarity ends, cause instead of the "babyface" horn I wish to mount an AMT ~ The 100° dispersion is quite similar though. Instead of the factory 12db/Oct I plan to use homebrew digital crossover with the required steepness, even up to 90dB. One thing that scares me is the mixed comments about the perfomance of AMT around 1khz , some go as far to say that only 12db/Oct crossover can sound good with the ANT (I dont really beleive this one) and such ... I dont know where is the truth? I became aware of the dedicated ADAM midrange AMT 2-3 days ago, so their AES paper is quite welcome read!

[syntheticwave]

Originally posted by Keith Taylor
...I can see that any future advances in audio reproduction are going to come from a paradigm shift away from what we call stereo to wavefield synthesis, ambiophonics or what ever.
...

Besides the foregoing the generation of phantom sources that is central to stereo is a very poor substitute for a real source.

Bye Keith [/B]

Hi Keith,

I am by the same opinion. Sometimes I see a user from Adelaide by my www.syntheticwave.de site, which describes the wave field synthesis principle. You are the user downunder?

Greetings from Germany

[Keith Taylor]

Syntheticwave, thanks for your response. I have read that generating phantom sources in the mind is a "learned experience" and that 1 in 5 of the population do not find it very convincing. I think I am one of these!. No, I have not been visiting your site, but I will have a read of it. Sorry if I am pushing your English language to the limit!
Auf wiederhoren
Keith

[syntheticwave]

Keith,

I see you speak German language a little, possibly better as I am English. It’s indeed a problem for us East Germans which have only education in Russian.

If possible for you, read the German version. It includes a description why phantom source imaging hasn’t the ability for restore the spatial impression.

Greetings around the world

Helmut
www.syntheticwave.de