Your Experience- Design & Soundstage/Imaging

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Hello all!

I'm looking for everyone's personal experiences and a discussion on speaker design choices and the effects on your soundstage and imaging.

A few examples of design choices are: Narrow vs wide directivity, designs which try to achieve constant directivity vs designs which ignore directivity and just try and achieve a flat on axis, tweeter/driver sizes and types, baffle width, baffle roundovers and shapes vs flat baffle, frequency response/ house curves, enclosure types, etc.

Any input goes! Really what I want to do here is find the most frequent commonalities in a large sample size of anecdotal experiences. Hopefully with enough input we can find out how to design speakers to maximize spatial experience. Cheers everyone! :cheers:
 
Last edited:
My opinion follows, and it lacks any credentials other than a steady approach over decades.

Tone and timbre trump all else for me.
If a loudspeaker plays upright string bass well, it will handle most vocal material.

I prefer to have drivers that either hand off to a compression driver just below 1kHz (few dome tweeters can play so low) or have a midrange driver that extends toward the limit of my hearing.

The Quad ESL63 and my current Bastanis wideband driver manage this.

Large drivers will 'beam' as frequency rises which compromises the speaker's lateral response.

Here's the upshot - the listening position will be narrow, and what of it?

If you're building for a solo listener, and most of us are - maximize performance for tone, dynamics and imaging in your choice seat - and worry less for the rest. See Troels Gravesen for an excellent exploration on these design choices, and the necessary compromises required.

Lastly, have your hearing measured.
Why spend money on the bandwidth you don't use? For me, that cutoff is around 13kHz.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
An excellent choice, and a clever design.
I applaud engineering that has 'designed complexity out'.

Simple is good.



Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Clever is the word I'd use. Seems to me he's stepped back so he could see the wood from the trees. If I could afford his plans and a kit I'd pull the trigger now. His site is a treasure.

Then there's the work of Gedlee, Danley horns and even the intrigueing world of omnis and offshoot like Audio Kinesis.

More than one way to skin a cat and all that.
 
Anji I'm curious if you have tried multiple CD's and if so what is your current favorite. I was planning on a Seas A26 kit but as of last night decided to do a Fusion-12 Tempest kit instead. I just can't deny the advantages of constant directivity- or atleast I'm just super curious on the constant directivity "sound".

Honestly I'd prefer to pay a bit more for the B&C driver over the supplied Denovo DNA-360, but DiySoundGroup states "no substitutions or subtractions". No idea how well subbing out a DE250 would work with the crossover either. Oh well, the Fusion-12 kit will be good enough to see if I like the sound or not to find out if I should learn crossover design and do something similar with the DE250.
 
Omni

I'll add my 2cents for omni.

If they are true omni, the directivity is constant and its 360deg, they sound the same from every angle. The soundstage is large, as they create better lateral reflections off your room walls. Imaging is good, only now its a line (path) between the speakers, not a point (sweet spot) like conventional speakers. The sound is spacious due to those reflections, and if your room is large enough the sound will envelope you. They fill the room and I never get fatigue.

However, there are no kits (maybe LX mini) and you will have to build and tinker with everything. You will loose sound "precision" if you are a highly technical listener.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/303941-omnidirectional-work-progress.html
 
DonVK have you looked at Audio Kinesis? Late ceiling splash is interesing.

AudioKinesis Home Audio Speakers
Those are interesting. They use a lot of drivers, but they are after the same effect as I want. I wonder if the "ceiling box" can be tilted to account for flat ceilings, otherwise a lot of sound will bounce straight down instead of out.

I bounce a tweeter off an angled cathedral ceiling that spreads sound to the room.
 
Briefly:

More directivity = easier to use in small/ less treated rooms. Higher clarity. Best imaging in sweet spot.

More dispersion (wider) = needs more space / room treatment. Good off-axis imaging .

Having a smooth off axis roll off is important, but becomes most important with 3+ way drivers.

Most people seem to like wide, as it gives best off axis imaging, but personally I bat for the narrow, focused team, and would rather have stellar imaging in a small location.

Best,

E
 
Great discussion so far! I wasn't expecting this many replies so quickly :)

I noticed a lot of talk among Linkwitz, Geddes, and Audio Kenesis (which I have to admit is a first for me :eek: )

I just wanted to point out the work of Mr. Elias Pekonen which is one of the most interesting and unfortunately ignored work I've ever seen. It was certainly the first time I've ever seen wavelet analysis. I think it was largely ignored due to the difficulties of language barriers unfortunately.

If anyone is interested in checking out his work, his website is here.

http://elias.altervista.org/html/SingleSpeakerStereo.html
http://elias.altervista.org/html/2_vs_3_stereo_high_freq.html
http://elias.altervista.org

And one of the threads on DiyAudio here

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/200040-stereophonic-sound-single-loudspeaker.html
 
Last edited:
Great discussion so far! I wasn't expecting this many replies so quickly :)

I noticed a lot of talk among Linkwitz, Geddes, and Audio Kenesis (which I have to admit is a first for me :eek: )

I just wanted to point out the work of Mr. Elias Pekonen which is one of the most interesting and unfortunately ignored work I've ever seen. It was certainly the first time I've ever seen wavelet analysis. I think it was largely ignored due to the difficulties of language barriers unfortunately.

If anyone is interested in checking out his work, his website is here.

http://elias.altervista.org/html/SingleSpeakerStereo.html
http://elias.altervista.org/html/2_vs_3_stereo_high_freq.html
http://elias.altervista.org

And one of the threads on DiyAudio here

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/200040-stereophonic-sound-single-loudspeaker.html
This still uses 3 FR drivers. He's only solving the placement problem by using a single cabinet (like some Bose products). I can see some advantages to having a synthetic center channel from a stereo amp and using the walls to get lateral sound to the ears.
 
Anji I'm curious if you have tried multiple CD's and if so what is your current favorite. I was planning on a Seas A26 kit but as of last night decided to do a Fusion-12 Tempest kit instead. I just can't deny the advantages of constant directivity- or atleast I'm just super curious on the constant directivity "sound".

Honestly I'd prefer to pay a bit more for the B&C driver over the supplied Denovo DNA-360, but DiySoundGroup states "no substitutions or subtractions". No idea how well subbing out a DE250 would work with the crossover either. Oh well, the Fusion-12 kit will be good enough to see if I like the sound or not to find out if I should learn crossover design and do something similar with the DE250.
I have some more expensive CDs and find the horn in front of them makes more difference to the overall sound than the drivers.

Most of my listening at home is under 95 db peak output, so modern CDs are loafing to handle their load.

The Tempest kit is optimized to the Denovo and there are thousands of happy builders.

It's a proven, stable approach that's hard to fault against most of your criteria.

Are you in the US?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.