No, never said that. What I have said, is that getting to that level has been extremely frustrating because the slightest problem somewhere in the setup is sufficient to kneecap, sabotage my efforts. I used to regularly get it even in the beginning, but found that the electronics wouldn't stay stable, for a variety of reasons. This was many years ago, and I went around and around in circles trying to work out the "magic tricks" that would retain the quality in the sound. Only over many, many years have I built up a toolkit of knowledge, techniques to get me there with reasonable certainty, but it hasn't been easy ...
Because I've played with at least 4 sets of relatively conventional drivers, and got the "disappearing" trick with each I know those aren't a major part of the battle. Of course, the speakers were worked over at a basic level internally, junk cap's in the crossovers were replaced with something decent like Solens, and every connection was hard-wired. A key thing I do is to stabilise the carcase very firmly with respect to the room, Blu-Tack has always been used, and plenty of extra mass to effectively clamp the speaker to the room structure.
Latest speakers are fairly cheap and "nasty": simple full range units, directly coupled to the output stage. They have to be thoroughly conditioned from cold each day, by driving them hard for an hour or so, to get decent sound. That's the downside of lesser drivers, they need a major warm-up period every time; something that would be far less of a problem with premium drivers ...
Frank
Last edited:
I don't think anyone has actually posted this: Mr Linkwitz has responded to this thread on his website (taking into account the 2013 developments).
Linkwitz Orions beaten by Behringer ........ what!!?
This is a DIY Forum discussion that started in 2010, died down and was brought back to life again in 2013. It is about a listening test that took place in response to my 2009 AES Convention paper "The challenge to find the optimum radiation pattern and placement of stereo loudspeakers in a room for the creation of phantom sources and simultaneous masking of real sources". At the 2010 AES Convention David Clarke presented the paper "Listening Tests for the Effect of Speaker Directivity and Positioning on Auditory Scene Perception" ( Preprint #8307). I refrain from a comparative discussion of claims, observations and conclusions of the two papers. A critical analysis of Clarke's paper will show the inadequacy of listener selection and training, program material selection, and statistical analysis to validate or refute my paper. Also note that Preprints are not peer reviewed, unlike papers published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Convention papers are mostly about work in progress and not as definitive as Journal publication. Reader beware.
The renewed DIY Forum discussion in 2013 ranges far and wide, which is not surprising, given the obviously wide knowledge and experience range of contributors. Agreement and consent are elusive, though many valid observations and some solid material are presented. Wade carefully through the mass of writings and skip over the dirt.
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion_reviews.htm
Linkwitz Orions beaten by Behringer ........ what!!?
This is a DIY Forum discussion that started in 2010, died down and was brought back to life again in 2013. It is about a listening test that took place in response to my 2009 AES Convention paper "The challenge to find the optimum radiation pattern and placement of stereo loudspeakers in a room for the creation of phantom sources and simultaneous masking of real sources". At the 2010 AES Convention David Clarke presented the paper "Listening Tests for the Effect of Speaker Directivity and Positioning on Auditory Scene Perception" ( Preprint #8307). I refrain from a comparative discussion of claims, observations and conclusions of the two papers. A critical analysis of Clarke's paper will show the inadequacy of listener selection and training, program material selection, and statistical analysis to validate or refute my paper. Also note that Preprints are not peer reviewed, unlike papers published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Convention papers are mostly about work in progress and not as definitive as Journal publication. Reader beware.
The renewed DIY Forum discussion in 2013 ranges far and wide, which is not surprising, given the obviously wide knowledge and experience range of contributors. Agreement and consent are elusive, though many valid observations and some solid material are presented. Wade carefully through the mass of writings and skip over the dirt.
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion_reviews.htm
I find it fun to have others around to enjoy music. But even if I listen alone, I hate to have to sit in one location where the sound image changes with a move of the head.
With binaural recording, certainly spacial presentation can become more convincing, but with earphones, you need significantly less power to get the full scale dynamics. The problem is most earphone drivers and earphones are not properly designed. For example, if you put a zobel with the earphones, you can hear the sound field expanding beyond the head. There are also a bunch of other things involved. But you normally can hear the improvement with just a zobel.
Last edited:
Lolo, Markus,
I have done some experiments with a board between the speakers, many years ago, and I just did it again to verify my earlier observations. It does indeed make a slight difference, but much less than you would expect if there really was a serious issue with interaural cross talk. I get the same pin point localization of phantom images with or without the barrier.
Perhaps I just have very good speakers
.
Pano,
I read a couple of posts ago that you are listening to a fine pair of Altecs. The first time I had the experience that all sounds came from the right spot and in the right quality and quantitiy was almost 40 years ago with a pair of Altecs driven by a McIntosh SS. I can still remember exactly when and where I heard this, and even which music (Eagles, Early Bird) was being played. It was a formative event in the life of a, then still young, audio nut.
I have done some experiments with a board between the speakers, many years ago, and I just did it again to verify my earlier observations. It does indeed make a slight difference, but much less than you would expect if there really was a serious issue with interaural cross talk. I get the same pin point localization of phantom images with or without the barrier.
Perhaps I just have very good speakers
.Pano,
I read a couple of posts ago that you are listening to a fine pair of Altecs. The first time I had the experience that all sounds came from the right spot and in the right quality and quantitiy was almost 40 years ago with a pair of Altecs driven by a McIntosh SS. I can still remember exactly when and where I heard this, and even which music (Eagles, Early Bird) was being played. It was a formative event in the life of a, then still young, audio nut.
Between the speakers? Where exactly did you put the board? How big is it?
I was not referring to electronics or recording issues, it's just what I said:
If you negate to the sound the space to travel, it means that it hasn't any (recognizable) form; it's out of space ! Also out of time, somehow ....
It has to do with everything written before about boundaries, first and second reflections, interference between the two sources-the so called 'stereo'- and also indoor or outdoor.
The only music that may permit to make judgements IMO is only Classical
Music
the effect is "crazy" for effects mostly, the ones meant to spread further from the usual speaker angle, for electronica and such. For most of my recordings, I fell back in the traditional angle=microphone setup, but as said, with a slightly better ambiance retrieval. I guess it would work very well for binaural recordings but I don't have many of those.
+1, opera, loud bariton voice can be very revealing, large chorus+ full orchestra crescendo are a b..... to render. maybe these are better because we are meant to know how real instruments sound and not syntetic studio mish mash mosh?
I personally use everything, from gothic medieval ensembles to zing zing electro.
Last edited:
Yep, very similar for me, I was in my 20s and still remember it well. Strong emotions can cement a memory amazingly well. It happened to be TAD drivers in custom boxes and horns with SS amplification on the bottom and SET on the top when I first heard it. It took about 15 minute to go from disbelief to amazement to "I want that!"
From about 1990 to 2005 I simply gave up recorded music, so poor were the results I could achieve with my budget and living accommodations. And I was working in live music anyway, so why listen to the real thing all day only to come home to a pale, anemic, lifeless facsimile of the real thing? It simply did not interest me. During that time the sum total of my home audio gear was a clock-radio.
While I understand that, and sympathize, I disagree. I do own and love a lot of classical recordings, but they are not the only good recordings around. There are any number of well engineered, well produced jazz, folk, traditional, even some really good rock and pop - and yes, hip-hop - that really shine on good speakers and electronics. Even recordings that are complete studio fabrications can be a lot of fun, sonically, if the are well engineered. There is craft in that, too.
Rather amusing ...almost a perfect correlation to the time period when I also couldn't be bothered. I had kept all the bits and pieces from my first enthusiastic foray, but they weren't in good shape, scraping speaker driver, broken amp -- needed to go a good high end show for the 'Awakening' ...
Frank
I wrote this a month ago. In another thread about Y/N and why pro drivers are no good for hi-fi use, or if they are, it's very difficult for the different topology.
I think that Nashville Skyline is a very good album
But his voice......
I find that quite surprising! Headphones mostly have a relatively flat impedance, don't they? What values are you using on the Zobel and what do you think it's doing?
The "In My Head" sound of headphones bothers me so much I rarely use them. Anything that helps pull the sound out would be welcome.
Yes, when I did the experiment a log time ago, I was more or less mimicking the setup known from that picture (I think of Don Keele) in front of the Harman North-Ridge facility. When I redid it just now, I placed a 1 x .8 m.board between two excellent bookshelf speakers. I was about 1 m. from the speakers.Surely enough there is a difference, but what do you expect? By placing the board you change the acoustics of the room. However, the effect on imaging is not strong even if it exists at all.
Yes, that's what I'm thinking about. I'm actually en route to building my own version of it. Will start a thread about the process when I have enough to post. (Don't hold your breath).