Arguably true, if your speakers at home already have the necessary correction/equalization built in . . .
Which still doesn't address the inherent problems of microphone placement and subsequent mixing.
The problems with non-flat-frequency-response monitors is self-perpetuating.
Most active monitors are active, and have various tone controls.
What better way to set them up than to play some music (mastered on monitors that may or may not have been flat).
Oh look, they sound harsh and forward (previous monitors weren't flat), so lets turn the treble down.
Now our monitors aren't flat either, but we'll master tracks according to them, as they sounded flat with other material played through them.
I found this when setting up some Behringer B2030As. Measurements were enclosed, and showed a flat response from ~50Hz to ~18kHz.
Played some music, and (even after breaking in the drivers) had to back the treble off as far as it'd go (-4dB IIRC) to get a balanced sound.
My hypothesis is that, each time we get some new studio monitors, they're set up to emulate the previous generation.
Breaking free of this would be difficult.
Chris
Most active monitors are active, and have various tone controls.
What better way to set them up than to play some music (mastered on monitors that may or may not have been flat).
Oh look, they sound harsh and forward (previous monitors weren't flat), so lets turn the treble down.
Now our monitors aren't flat either, but we'll master tracks according to them, as they sounded flat with other material played through them.
I found this when setting up some Behringer B2030As. Measurements were enclosed, and showed a flat response from ~50Hz to ~18kHz.
Played some music, and (even after breaking in the drivers) had to back the treble off as far as it'd go (-4dB IIRC) to get a balanced sound.
My hypothesis is that, each time we get some new studio monitors, they're set up to emulate the previous generation.
Breaking free of this would be difficult.
Chris
A solution to recording technique errors can't be built into the speaker design because departures at the recording stage from some imaginary or defined ideal will vary from recording to recording. One thing that can be done is to reduce variations in the power response of the speaker to limit additional errors. In practice the effectiveness of this will depend on room acoustics. After that, as 5th says, it's on to tone controls/ EQ. John was clearly ahead of the game with the Notes- at least in terms of dipole speakers. Earl Geddes was there with boxed speakers before that. That SL has joined the party is not a criticism, it's just chronology. These are all very bright guys and very capable designers- approaches taken are converging because the approach makes sense.
Chris .. I have to ask why one would do that? If the monitors playback is indeed flat ... and they are being used to master a recording ... what need/gain is there to compare their output using "commercial" recordings? They are a tool that isn't being used for it's designed intent. I'd think that if they're to be used in a mastering environment .. they should be set up for flat response and not touched, period.
Looking at it another way .. what's mastered on those monitors, as set-up now, will be 4dB too hot ... right?
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Yep . . . have the same speakers, hear the same thing (including with direct feed from the microphones). They sound much more "natural" with the treble cut . . .
They've been pressed into use as telly speakers, with a passive volume control and switch box - it was those, or go for the full 5.1 AV receiver, play around with upscaling/downscaling images - the telly is not HD, as we found the scaling adversely affect the image, and not in a small way.
All in all, easier to get some decent active speakers and have done with it.
I put some music through them (this, amongst others), and found them unlistenable without dropping the treble.
My point is that, somewhere way back, the monitors were ~4dB not-bright-enough.
Everyone has now calibrated their playback systems (and thus recording) to that.
Chris
if you are talking about CD only, maybe yes. Otherwise SL has played with various unpublished designs a while before that, the L-07 had rear tweeters and small mids to keep a good directivity back in the 80'.
The Audio Artistry line was dipole only til 1.5k, that was..15 years ago.
How would you compare dipoles to bipoles as regards imaging vs ambience ?
From my own experiments comparing monopole-dipole-bipole, I have observed that dipole sounds more pinpoint than a bipole and less than monopole. However, very strangely, dipole sounds more ambient than both bipole and monopole and perhaps more "natural' if I may say.
The only way I could explain to myself about the more naturalness of the dipole compared to the bipole, is that the sideward cancellation of the dipole prevents early reflections from sidewalls but still allows the late rear wall reflections to add to the ambience effect. OTOH, the bipole too has the rear wall reflections, but the sidewall reflections smears the direct sound also, thus reducing spatial localisation.
Despite the good qualities of the dipole mentioned above, I find that it still cannot rival an omnipolar radiation from a pipe mounted 2" FR like in the Pluto. A spherical wavefront can play a unique trick on the human brain..it just can't localise the source, just the direction of sound source remains known !! almost surreal
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Look, my point was that the direct sound should not be altered from the mix. This can only happen if the monitors and home system have the same axial response. It's not wrong in theory or practice. If they speaker have different direct response then the home system needs to be corrected to match the monitors. You may not like what the recording engineer did, but that isn't the point. The rest is the reverberant contribution and that is a matter of polar response and room acoustics, and the associated room delays, etc. The idea that shelving down the top end if the correct thing to do for every recording in every room is nonsense.
If the idea is correct, then it should be applied at the mixing level and embedded int he recording.
As an analogy, it's like looking at a paint. Regardless of the room in which the painting is hung, regardless of the color of the back ground, the colors of the painting don't change. But the perception of the painting can change due to the way light is reflected off wall, etc. So if an artist paints a painting in a studio with white walls does that mean we have to change the color of the painting if it is hung in a room with blue or yellow walls?
I spend enough time on this when it was first proposed it. It's not worth rehashing again.
If the idea is correct, then it should be applied at the mixing level and embedded int he recording.
As an analogy, it's like looking at a paint. Regardless of the room in which the painting is hung, regardless of the color of the back ground, the colors of the painting don't change. But the perception of the painting can change due to the way light is reflected off wall, etc. So if an artist paints a painting in a studio with white walls does that mean we have to change the color of the painting if it is hung in a room with blue or yellow walls?
I spend enough time on this when it was first proposed it. It's not worth rehashing again.
Member
Joined 2009
I for one really like the looks of the new LX521 baffle, more so than the Orion's.
I subscribe to the Form Follows Function paradigm and I was impressed with the new look because it's directivity benefits are obvious at first glance. At the same time the curves inspire an aggressive "Heavy Metal" attitude which I enjoy very much. Outstanding!
If I was to build it however, I would go without the subwoofer cavity and extend down the slim baffle aesthetic. The subwoofers would be truly portable and not attachable to the main baffle. (I understand that they are detached already)
I subscribe to the Form Follows Function paradigm and I was impressed with the new look because it's directivity benefits are obvious at first glance. At the same time the curves inspire an aggressive "Heavy Metal" attitude which I enjoy very much. Outstanding!
If I was to build it however, I would go without the subwoofer cavity and extend down the slim baffle aesthetic. The subwoofers would be truly portable and not attachable to the main baffle. (I understand that they are detached already)
Markus, I have to agree with you here. Most folks have never heard a well designed baffle mounted speakers. It is a different sound(most certainly louder) than what you get from speakers set within the space. Rear reflections are supressed, and you hear more from the recording than you would with a speaker with lot's of rear flying reflections.
Arguably true, if your speakers at home already have the necessary correction/equalization built in . . .
Which still doesn't address the inherent problems of microphone placement and subsequent mixing.
One could make the argument that there are more problems on the reproduction side, than on the recording mixing side.
One could . . . but having seen both I wouldn't. There are certainly enough problems on both ends of the chain, but if it's captured wrong it's wrong forever . . .
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that recording microphones have no pinae like human ears. This is what the "BBC dip" is supposed to be all about. Without the HF directionality of pinae, high frequencies from the diffuse field are over represented in the microphone output. This is a legacy issue going back to the first recordings ever made that tried to capture some "Hall" sound.
Of course the BBC dip is a correction to the direct sound to compensate for a problem in the reverberant sound. Sound familiar?.
Keith
Of course the BBC dip is a correction to the direct sound to compensate for a problem in the reverberant sound. Sound familiar?.
Keith
How would you compare dipoles to bipoles as regards imaging vs ambience ?
From my own experiments comparing monopole-dipole-bipole, I have observed that dipole sounds more pinpoint than a bipole and less than monopole. However, very strangely, dipole sounds more ambient than both bipole and monopole and perhaps more "natural' if I may say.
The only way I could explain to myself about the more naturalness of the dipole compared to the bipole, is that the sideward cancellation of the dipole prevents early reflections from sidewalls but still allows the late rear wall reflections to add to the ambience effect. OTOH, the bipole too has the rear wall reflections, but the sidewall reflections smears the direct sound also, thus reducing spatial localisation.
Despite the good qualities of the dipole mentioned above, I find that it still cannot rival an omnipolar radiation from a pipe mounted 2" FR like in the Pluto. A spherical wavefront can play a unique trick on the human brain..it just can't localise the source, just the direction of sound source remains known !! almost surreal
maybe you want to read point Z:
Spatial distortion
You are talking about two different things. Accuracy is a D/R ratio problem. Put a dipole in a very dead room, you will see what I mean. They can be very accurate giving you pin point imaging to the highest level. Now, with reverberation into play you obviously trade that quality off, dipole or not.
I think pin point imaging is surrealistic, it never happens in real life and a disease pop recordings and HT has induced into the whole music business. I am amazed to see how many audiophiles still judge speakers by this ability to pin point.
I much prefer a clear "cloud" of music if you see what I mean, that's the presentation I hear in the hall and the one I wish at home too.
But, more generally you might not like the reverb added by dipoles. Yes that's what they do, they add reverb. SL had a interesting recording the mic in his listening chair, talking from the Orion then played on the speaker. You could clearly spot extra reverb between the two tracks.
Any decent movie theatre has in wall speakers. I would not want that sound for music at home, sorry. One just need to listen to SL's own recordings sample CD to understand it's another paradigm, not just a variation of a concept.
As for the shelving, the Pluto did not seem to need one. That's disturbing.
Still, most headphones have a downward slope and every hall has extra reverb in the lows, that's a fact. You may not need to tame the highs in a dead room or outside, but we live in reverberant spaces and we have ears, not microphones!
Keith, you made a very interesting remark.
One has also to understand what goes on in a hall. The first task for the conductor is to balance the orchestra and set the tempo depending on the hall reverb, then only comes "the interpretation". It means there is no simple and only solution to how a material should be played, it totally depends on the acoustics of the space, that's why Celibidache never wanted to record anything as he had no control over the reproduction chain, hence a destruction of the original. Might sound extrem but it makes one understand what can be done and what cannot work.
What response does the system need to have in a bathroom, in a large living room, in a closet, etc etc.. I feel it really goes beyond the usual simple solutions.
At least now everybody agrees on some fundamentals, like CD.. But it's not enough. Maybe we can dream one day there will be a way to record that gives us a good illusion every time, not just ocasionally
maybe there is more than "just" the recording and that "more" is not "evil"?
As a sidenote... Recording engineers. How many of them listen to the live event only through headphones? How many really attend concerts and get out of their dead walls? Why should they be right, and us wrong?
Recently I went to a nice Michelin restaurant with my wife. Next to us sat a food critic. He frantickly made notes on every bite he had. We enjoyed our dinner very much and had a great time. Him? I don't know..
There is a chapter on Toole's book about reflexions. Engineers hate them, but listeners found them enhancing the experience. Do we work with sound or do we enjoy ourselves? If the goal is to reproduce what they had in mind mixing, all we need to do is get a pair of Genelec and a LEDE room. Is that the way to pure audio Nirvana?
Recently I went to a nice Michelin restaurant with my wife. Next to us sat a food critic. He frantickly made notes on every bite he had. We enjoyed our dinner very much and had a great time. Him? I don't know..
There is a chapter on Toole's book about reflexions. Engineers hate them, but listeners found them enhancing the experience. Do we work with sound or do we enjoy ourselves? If the goal is to reproduce what they had in mind mixing, all we need to do is get a pair of Genelec and a LEDE room. Is that the way to pure audio Nirvana?
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