The Advantages of Floor Coupled Up-Firing Speakers

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Those wouldn't happen to belong to a tall guy in Paris, would they? I built a Hiraga 20W for a buddy who has a pair.

Sorry no, cant say I have been in Paris :eek:
No, a local guy, and Hiragas were mine
Maybe 30years ago :wchair:

Heard a pair of tall slim Audiostatic once, ok sound
And the BIG Magnepan, I think it was
HUGE impressive sound
Never could afford that expencive stuff, still cant

But thats also DIY I guess, make the cheaper stuff sound better than the rest :D
But my reference is ok I think :)
 
Did someone else try Key's files?

Yes I did. Talking about Pharsyde only. What I heard was definitely not my TASTE of music, but that is not the topic, I believe. ;)
Seriously, some effects worked for me 180° - easily. I could not find any distortion within the frontal 90°, but the outer edges (+/- 90°) were sort of diffuse or "spacy".

Some observations:
I think that I got somewhat preconditioned by that repeating "wocawocawocawoca" sound from 90° left and right. When only starting into the last 20 seconds of the track the 180° were less convincing than when listening from the first second.

Retreating into the far field actually enhanced the effect in my room. It became ever more convincing. Extreme near field made the effect vanish.

My speakers are no perfect match and the symmetry of the room isn`t perfect too. So I don't consider the 'match' argument a valid one.

I get the same 180° when listening to "Weightless" from the 1997 album "Andromeda Heights" by Prefab Sprout. Key's samples certainly are of better sound quality at extreme angles than PS, but voices for example refuse to wander as far off axis as that diffuse "woca" does.

I forced my son to listen into Pharsyde too. He heard that "woca" at +/- 90° too, but found almost everything else confined to 90° in front of him. Could it be that these effects are only half physics and half "acoustic brainwash"?

Rudolf
 
If you use the ceiling as the first reflection with a fllor that is heavily carpeted and hence quite absorbent this may work t a reasonable degree

yes, this is my case

I can see issues with tonal balance though.

yes, some frequency equalization may be necessary

If this implemented with drivers having a frequency response that is boosted at high frequencies and narrows at frequencies it may kind of work.

yes, this is exactly the case of the flooders

Where I tried the Carllson Sonab's the floor and ceiling where acoustically highly reflective. As is the case with my current living room.

I rather doubt that under those kind of conditions you would like your flooders

yes indeed :) in a bare room without sufficient amount of absorbtive elements like carpets, curtains and upholstered furniture the reverb is really unbearable
but it is not a question of early reflections that allegedly destroy imaging/soundstaging but of late reverberation

best,
graaf
 
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Please remember Im not "advocating" omnis, or anything else for that matter

neither am I

all that I am advocating is freedom of TIY - "Try It Yourself"

I am openly against discouraging people from TIY just because the books say it can't work

this is all I am saying - don't listen to the naysayers! just try it yourself!
take Your chance - it is worth it because it is possible that You are going to like it a lot

All I know, it CAN be made to work
I dont know yet which design parameters to rely on
I could fear its having the drivers placed on the floor, and being dipole
Pretty strange
And I perfectly understand why noone believes that
Im surpriced too

yes indeed

and I also perfectly understand reaction of disbelief but I don't understand raction of fanatically discouraging other people from trying it themselves

and I oppose strongly against such destructive attitude, totally alien to the very idea of DIY

best regards,
graaf
 
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Quad and Beveridge as well are very directional speakers

are You sure?
I always thought that Harold Beveridge intentionally designed His speaker to have uniform 180° horizontal dispersion
white_paper

as to Peter Walker's FRED with concentric delay lines it was intentionally designed to simulate point source as much as possible with panel ESL speaker and in such a way to overcome very directional problems of earlier simple panel ESL-57

some directivity remains but it is closer to dipole of a Linkwitz Orion kind and it doesn't meet requirements of Dr Geddes:
Index (DI) should be above 9 dB above about 500 Hz

so FRED is better than the Orions in that regard but not good enough from perspective of theoretical requirements of sufficiently high and constant directivity above 500 Hz

In the light of the foregoing can we really say that Quads are very directional?

best regards,
graaf
 

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In the light of the foregoing can we really say that Quads are very directional?

best regards,
graaf

So we should leave the "very", no problem with that.
Quad and Beveridge as well are speakers with directivity changing
only smoothly with frequency.

The directivity is much higher than in common multiway designs, which
may serve as a reference to the common listener especially below
say 1Khz.

The Beveridge is a line source which has very narrow vertical dispersion.

Neither Beveridge has 180 degrees horizontal dispersion nor is the
Quad a virtual point source. Those are instructive design goals proposed
by the designers and the quality of the speakers comes also from
the fact that these design goals have not been achieved as
proposed in their entirety.

I am pretty shure the designers themselves know that at best ...

An instructively presented working principle of a speaker which
is posted to the public is something different than real technical
design goals IMO.

We listen to the real loudspeakers, not to the proposed goals of
the designer or a companies marketing department.
Luckily this is a fact which holds for every loudspeaker and
in that sense "all loudspeakers are created equal" ;)

Best
 
as to Peter Walker's FRED with concentric delay lines it was intentionally designed to simulate point source as much as possible with panel ESL speaker and in such a way to overcome very directional problems of earlier simple panel ESL-57

Above must read "as to Peter Walker's FRED with concentric delay lines it was intentionally designed to simulate a two-point source as much as possible with panel ESL speaker and in such a way to overcome problems with directivity changing along frequency of earlier simple panel ESL-57"

Directivity alone doesn't help much if it is not kept constant with changing frequency. I believe that is the central message those "theoretical requirements of sufficiently high and constant directivity" are trying to tell you.

Rudolf
 
In that point there seems to be much agreement ... :)

yes indeed, I can see no controversy on that point, horizontal directivity should be constant in any case, and vertical dispersion shoul be narrow unless something else is done WRT interaction of speakers with floor and ceiling

The Beveridge is a line source which has very narrow vertical dispersion.

Neither Beveridge has 180 degrees horizontal dispersion

narrow line source means also very wide horizontal dispersion
in comparison to "common multiway designs, which may serve as a reference to the common listener" as You have rightly observed, and with recommended placement in the room it is practically as if 180°, real 180° would make no difference
in His patent HB claimed at least 150°:
Patent US3980829

only coincident flooders can possibly be better in this respect with horizontal dispersion being perfectly constant and 360°

best,
graaf
 
Somehow i anticipated, that the ceiling flooder would come
into play ... ;)

and? what is the point?

don't You know that it is the main topic of the thread?
so everyone can expect it to come into play all the time

this is the topic of this thread
this and other unusual setups

What do You think? Any suggestions? Ideas? Your own unusual setups?

no need to anticipate, You can simply expect the topic of thread to emerge in it at least from time to time, wouldn't You agree?

best,
graaf
 
I love that logan's run got in here, thanks for that.

Toole's book is absolutely worth reading for anyone who's participating in this hobby or this site. You might agree or disagree with points in it, I know Earl Geddes disagrees with some of Toole's conclusions, but at least he knows what he's disagreeing with and the data is pretty hard to argue. It's a data and research based book and that's pretty rare in this hobby. Did I read you saying Markus that it doesn't address omnis? I don't know about that, it argues for equal or at least smoothly changing on and off axis response. Sounds like an omni qualifies. A lot of things could, it's not the means we're after it's the end. It's clear from the book that some kind of "shaded" line arrays were Tooles current thought-flavor of choice but that doesn't mean much. He's after a result, not the one true way. Wide directivity designs can achieve that, narrow directivity/waveguide speakers can too. In the book he didn't go so far as to stake out one camp or other, but we know from his work he actually favours wide directivity.

ps. Markus, vlc plays flac flawlessly on my machine. Not sure what issues you're referring to. It can't convert other files to flac etc but that's not the point of the program, just a player.
 
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yes indeed, I can see no controversy on that point, horizontal directivity should be constant in any case, and vertical dispersion should be narrow unless something else is done WRT interaction of speakers with floor and ceiling

We really need to use precise definitions - otherwise we are talking about different things - resulting in the usual misunderstanding. :(
I don´t know of any loudspeaker concept were directivity changes with angle along the vertical or horizontal axis. What does change is the sound pressure level as a function of the directivity index. So did you mean "horizontal and vertical SPL level should be constant in any case"? That would mean a directivity factor of 1 or directivity index of 0 dB.

Same for "and vertical dispersion should be narrow unless something else is done WRT interaction of speakers with floor and ceiling". A narrow vertical dispersion (high vertical directivity) would mean maximal excitation of floor and ceiling reflections compared to horizontal, yes? Is this a recommendation for your "flooder" only or meant "in general"?
 
I don´t know of any loudspeaker concept were directivity changes with angle along the vertical or horizontal axis.

?? I am not sure what You mean

So did you mean "horizontal and vertical SPL level should be constant in any case"?

absolutely not
what does constant directivity mean to You?

because for me Dr Geddes speaker is an example of constant directivity speaker and also Beveridge line source ESL is

A narrow vertical dispersion (high vertical directivity) would mean maximal excitation of floor and ceiling reflections compared to horizontal, yes?

of course not - the opposite

You are kidding, right? But what's the point?
 
Sounds like an omni qualifies

It sounds like this to me as well. And it is nothing new, we can find this requirements in earlier Toole's publications
Toole also asserts that horizontal early reflections are not detrimental to quality of sound reproduction.

and I really agree with Toole's conclusions, and I know His conclusions, no need reading through hundreds of pages to know conclusions

Yet Markus has been beating me precisely with this book for some 500 posts now. I really don't know why :confused:

it cannot work! it is not right! go read the book! and so on and so on... :sigh:

best regards,
graaf
 
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parts of my first post, for clarification of some things:

(...)
I have very unusual loudspeakers which I have built some time ago with those room-speaker interface things in mind. These are very short omnidirectional loudspeakers. They are just 20 cm high and have 8 inches wide range driver on top and firing upwards.
The loudspeakers are to work on the floor – the driver is only 20 cm above the floor – and against the wall.
(...)
my first and main aim was to eliminate the detrimental effect of early floor and ceiling reflections without resorting to unavailable true linesource (like Beveridge)
(...)
But frankly speaking I wasn’t thinking a lot and I think now that I really didn’t know what I was doing ;) and still I don’t – I have no technical background – and it was and it is all mostly intuitive. :)
(...)
But the outcome appeared to be quite satisfying.
(...)
I am considering positioning the speakers against the opposite longer walls (scheme attached). Stereo basis would be 330 cm. The listener is to be located 200 cm from stereo basis, 250 cm from both speakers
(...)
To my not very big surprise the resulting set up happens to be very much like Beveridge positioning of his line source electrostatics.
(...)
What do You think? Any suggestions? Ideas? Your own unusual setups?

I claimed no right of inventing the wheel, nor any extraordinary expertise (quite the opposite actually)
I haven't attacked any other design nor anyone personally
I asked for help.

What did I get here in response during the last two years? Mainly beating

what do You think? - We think this is a distaster!
any suggestions? - it cannot work!
any ideas? - go read the books!

and all these mainly from certain manufacturer and a certain open admirer of certain commercial product