Kuei Yang Wang said:
"Having heard them (Kharma, Pipe Dreams) and many Omni's as well as Full Range Dipoles, oincluding on recordings where I was familiar with the original acoustics and event - they do not reproduce the original event even remotely, they distort it. You may like or not, that is taste."
-I assume here your meaning is that you believe they don't reproduce the event in a "in-room" enviorment, otherwise your premis falls apart.
"Vertical only, horizontally they do not."
-Ahh, but they do. I leave you to contemplate this, but consider how "on earth" a diaphram, (with at best a 200 degrees of surface radiation), reproducing high freq.s with such short wavelengths could display 360's of polar radiation as commonly found in plots of tweeters (though of course off-axis response is decreased).. extrapolate this a bit further and you should get your answer.
"Completely irelevant, UNLESS this is where you listen."
-hardly, its relevance, (which was implicit), was to proove a point about the nature of various imaging cues.. if you choose to take it out of context - so be it.
"They are neither inclusive nore exclusive, they are independent and unrelated (that again is a fact)."
LOL... It is NOT Fact, in FACT it isn't even good fiction.
"Illustrate how it is possible, notably taking account of the fact that if the absobtion of the treatment materials is not even with frequency the remaining diffuse sound is altered in the tonal balance which changes often percieved instrument timbre."
-To treat a room I presume? Then it appears you want the answer qualified so that tonal balance (or spectral balance as I call it) is not altered. Of course you know the answer to this: while it can be done it is quite pricey and requires very broad range absorption OR relies exclusivly on very good diffusion. In othewords don't waste my time with absurd questions we both know the answer to.
-There will obviously be some compromise with "real-world"* room treatment. Tonal balance may be altered some, and you will likely not result in anything near a "non-wall" enviorment. The point is to get it good enough - i.e. decrease correlation in TIME and intensity with the first arrival so that the listener doesn't find it objectionable. Afterall, your premis of limited disperion is not absolute either - in reality the effect is quite similar to what I have suggested and will alter tonal balance in-room. And before you go: "but...", re-read your premis with regard to freq. response.
-*atually, considering the cost some are willing to spend these days It may not be "pricey" at all to them. (back to the real-world though..)
-As for the actual treatment itself, this is dependent on speaker position and your listening position. Books with book shelves make excellent broad-band absorbers and can make fantastic diffusors if you pull them partially out of the book case randomly (this can be done mechanically at the touch of a button as a DIY project) - particularly well suited to sidewalls. The book shelf should ideally span the entire wall. Your front wall center "pilar" is problematic with regard to alteration (both physically, asumming its load-bearing, and acoustically). My suggestion here is GOOD silicon borscilate suspended paint - many layers in whatever color you like. (A wayvee striee effect might help further.) The rear wall (and indeed the sidewall if your not into the bookshelf thing) can easily be taken care of with curtains - wall-to-wall. (also the front wall and the "sides" of the pilar.) When I mention "curtains" I don't mean plurality in that you have one curtain on one side and one curtain on another and you pull them together - instead I'm referring to multiple layers of curtains with different acoustical properties. This can be done with exceptional esthetics AND acoustic properties. Typically to achieve both, the first "visual" layer should be fairly translucent and have either a complemetary or neutral "color" to the next curtain fabric layer. (i.e. somthing like a white chiffon works well as the "first" layer.) One of the "perks" to this is that you can achieve a uniform visual pressence while altering the level of absorpiton (i.e. you can have more layers of different material on wall, or even in one place on a single wall, without altering the look of the wall). Hopefully this will please you and your wife.. (a good couple diy project..)
-as to the rest, well I'm tired and life is to short to play "fact vs. fiction pong".
Konnichiwa,
Clearly not.
That is what I heard.
No, ACTUALLY, they don't. Trust me. Just plot DI vs. frequency and see how wildly it varies, so horizontal dispersion not controlled.
I repeat, if you listen outdoors, many meters from any wall it is relevant. So it is if you listen in an anechonic chamber. Very few people do either, so with those few who are the exceptions excepted it remains completely irelevant.
Okay, let me spell this out again so we are clear.
Timing, Time coherence, pluse fidelity and such, to name a few of the labels applied to this is COMPLETELY and ABSOLUTELY independent from Dispersion/Directivity. As is BTW ultimatly the frequency response. We have three seperate issues which we can to an extremely large degree of freedom manipulate independently.
There is only a narrow frequency range where the independent manipulation does not hold, that is the crossover region of non-coincident Speakers. It is surprising (or perhaps not if we consider how much else conventional speakers get absolutely wrong) that this region was chosen to co-incide with that one where the ear/brain system is most sensitive.
That is one of the things most wideband drivers get right, at least the region of extreme shifts of directivity/dispersion off axis are happening where the hearing is less likely to be disturbed by it and with a comptetently designed coaxial driver there is no issue anyway.
You suggested that "Room treatment is easy". I merley asked you to illustrate your claim with facts, giving you some of the main cavats upfront to save time arguing why your specific suggestins are actually not such a great idea.
Then WHY BOTHER if the same net result can be achieved by simply designing speakers that make acoustic sense? That in fact was my point to begin with.
You wish to do that with room treatment, I wish to do it with the inherent design of the speaker as it strikes me as the smarter way to avoid problems than to fix them afterwards.
It deas appear that we seek the same thing on the first (but not second) level, namely to pomote the direct sound (eg the recording) over early reflection and diffuse room sound.
Where we part company is that I feel that what cannot be avoided of room sound should show an even tonal balance throught the fundamental and formant range as the original sound and be complemented with a slow rolloff in the overtones (eg natural room/hall sound charateristics).
Actually, if the off axis response remains flat in terms of energy balance with the desirable slow high freqency rolloff the tonal balance will not be altered, THAT is actually together with increasing the direct/diffuse sound ratio the second main aim of making a controlled dispersion speaker.
In fact, it is sufficiently hard to controll dispersion to a degree sufficient to allow all room treatment to be dsipensed with anyway, but it sure as hell makes the job ever so much easier.
So, I think we are actually attempting to achieve to a reasonable degree the same thing, but from very different angles. Well, that is a relief....
Sayonara
ScottG said:
Clearly not.
ScottG said:
That is what I heard.
ScottG said:
No, ACTUALLY, they don't. Trust me. Just plot DI vs. frequency and see how wildly it varies, so horizontal dispersion not controlled.
ScottG said:
I repeat, if you listen outdoors, many meters from any wall it is relevant. So it is if you listen in an anechonic chamber. Very few people do either, so with those few who are the exceptions excepted it remains completely irelevant.
ScottG said:
Okay, let me spell this out again so we are clear.
Timing, Time coherence, pluse fidelity and such, to name a few of the labels applied to this is COMPLETELY and ABSOLUTELY independent from Dispersion/Directivity. As is BTW ultimatly the frequency response. We have three seperate issues which we can to an extremely large degree of freedom manipulate independently.
There is only a narrow frequency range where the independent manipulation does not hold, that is the crossover region of non-coincident Speakers. It is surprising (or perhaps not if we consider how much else conventional speakers get absolutely wrong) that this region was chosen to co-incide with that one where the ear/brain system is most sensitive.
That is one of the things most wideband drivers get right, at least the region of extreme shifts of directivity/dispersion off axis are happening where the hearing is less likely to be disturbed by it and with a comptetently designed coaxial driver there is no issue anyway.
ScottG said:
You suggested that "Room treatment is easy". I merley asked you to illustrate your claim with facts, giving you some of the main cavats upfront to save time arguing why your specific suggestins are actually not such a great idea.
ScottG said:
Then WHY BOTHER if the same net result can be achieved by simply designing speakers that make acoustic sense? That in fact was my point to begin with.
ScottG said:
You wish to do that with room treatment, I wish to do it with the inherent design of the speaker as it strikes me as the smarter way to avoid problems than to fix them afterwards.
It deas appear that we seek the same thing on the first (but not second) level, namely to pomote the direct sound (eg the recording) over early reflection and diffuse room sound.
Where we part company is that I feel that what cannot be avoided of room sound should show an even tonal balance throught the fundamental and formant range as the original sound and be complemented with a slow rolloff in the overtones (eg natural room/hall sound charateristics).
ScottG said:
Actually, if the off axis response remains flat in terms of energy balance with the desirable slow high freqency rolloff the tonal balance will not be altered, THAT is actually together with increasing the direct/diffuse sound ratio the second main aim of making a controlled dispersion speaker.
In fact, it is sufficiently hard to controll dispersion to a degree sufficient to allow all room treatment to be dsipensed with anyway, but it sure as hell makes the job ever so much easier.
So, I think we are actually attempting to achieve to a reasonable degree the same thing, but from very different angles. Well, that is a relief....
Sayonara
I have a somewhat less esoteric response to the question of what speaker designss try to implement some of KYW's priorities, namely, Legacy Focus and Whisper. Rear-firing woofers for omnidirectional LF, D'Appolito arrays to control vertical reflections, Quad arrays to control horizontal reflections and directivity, substantial midranges crossed at 300 and 3000 Hz, drivers sized appropriately for their ranges, supertweeter (highly directive), high sensitivity and low THD, high power handling for headroom. They no doubt suffer from some compromises, this being the real world and all, but apparently Bill Dudleston is implementing the same design philosophy as KYW advocates, and doing so in a commercial package that approaches affordable (at least in the "high end" world). And, as KYW might predict, his design has been criticized (in an audiogon.com forum posting, at least) for not being perfectly flat when measured in the laboratory.
Konnichiwa,
Darn it, I forgot about Legacy and the Whisper. The Whisper was prompted me first to reconsider the old "box thing" seriously and to start thinking things really through (prior to that I had used all sorts of speakers over the years though ones with certain design features stayed more than others, design features which with respect fit into my "now" philosophy rather well).
Yes, Bill D is well "on it".
Not surprised at all.
Let me tell you something. At the last London HiFi show we where showing a dipole speaker (a rather compromised one, admitedly - commercial products invariably are). Okay, I admit to hiding the subwoofers out of sight, but the X-Over was only around 40 - 50Hz anyway.
Now I had at least a dozend designers of conventional speakers rotate through the room. They all could not believe what they heard/saw. It is rather amusing to see such serious guys walking around, looking behind the speakers and do all sorts of contortion to work out "why this works". They all knew it cannot work. They all noticed it did.
What tickled me most was to have Eduardo de Lima over and to have him listen to the system and have him spend quite a bit of time and saying "excellently done."... Yup, that EDL from Audiopax whose Monoblock Amp's cost more than the whole system we where actually playing at the time (3D Acoustics by Shanling SACD Player & Tube Integrated Amp, 3D Sonics Fullrange Dipole Speaker and a pair of REL Quake Subs).
Sayonara
mcargill said:
Darn it, I forgot about Legacy and the Whisper. The Whisper was prompted me first to reconsider the old "box thing" seriously and to start thinking things really through (prior to that I had used all sorts of speakers over the years though ones with certain design features stayed more than others, design features which with respect fit into my "now" philosophy rather well).
mcargill said:
Yes, Bill D is well "on it".
mcargill said:
Not surprised at all.
Let me tell you something. At the last London HiFi show we where showing a dipole speaker (a rather compromised one, admitedly - commercial products invariably are). Okay, I admit to hiding the subwoofers out of sight, but the X-Over was only around 40 - 50Hz anyway.
Now I had at least a dozend designers of conventional speakers rotate through the room. They all could not believe what they heard/saw. It is rather amusing to see such serious guys walking around, looking behind the speakers and do all sorts of contortion to work out "why this works". They all knew it cannot work. They all noticed it did.
What tickled me most was to have Eduardo de Lima over and to have him listen to the system and have him spend quite a bit of time and saying "excellently done."... Yup, that EDL from Audiopax whose Monoblock Amp's cost more than the whole system we where actually playing at the time (3D Acoustics by Shanling SACD Player & Tube Integrated Amp, 3D Sonics Fullrange Dipole Speaker and a pair of REL Quake Subs).
Sayonara
Mudge said:I'm still pondering how controlled directivity speakers destroy imaging
Clearly, they don't. However, speakers with uncontrolled directivity do destroy tonal balance, and they do so depending on the listening room's properties. (A feature which makes them nice to DIY for a specific situation but a pain in the afternoon to commercialize for general purpose. But, for some reasons unkown to me, high-gloss magazine reviewers don't care about tonal balance. At least so it seems when you check what kind of speakers are successful.)
Cheerio,
bk
Kuei Yang Wang said:
You mean the 3D Sonics 'The transparence' right? http://www.realhi-fi.com/products/transparenceinfo.html . Not displaying a photo on there, but I did find one:
http://events.audiogon.com/i/en2004/h/1097264929.jpg
They look an awful lot like your own (lacquered 215 Sig BC's). You did mention you had something custom-made. Can you elaborate on that?
If it is the case that these are similar to yours, then what do you mean by 'a rather compromised one, admitedly'? Are you then talking about the sub?
I don't know if you've seen it in 'System descriptions' but my 215 setup is now like this: http://www.prijsindex.net/fotoboek/quasar.html. Which afterwards reminded me about a speaker you once did (two drivers placed close together without filtering).
I'm not sure how it compares with the subwoofered -variant but I sure am happy with the sound.
Konnichiwa,
Yup, that is the one.
And one with the original prototypes (but basically the same system) at the Show in the Spring 2004:
It is pretty notable where the differences between prototypes and finished product are.
Mine are the original Prototypes. We sommothed out some rough edges. The Drivers we use have certain of their (measurable) properties changed and yes, they are C37 laquered (sorry, what is changed is not for the public domain).
No, I am talking about the main system. The dynamic range is just not there. They do okay up to a point, then they are at the endstops. Arguably that point is pretty loud, but they just cannot quite match systems with something like a 12 - 15" coaxial....
Well, that reminds me of my early Axiom 80 & Axiom 201 experiments....
Don't get me wrong, I'm rather happy with the sound as well, it is a very good compromise, but domestic acceptability has been traded for dynamic range. BTW, at home I use a dual 12" Mono Sub, not the 2pcs of REL.
Sayonara
Nielsio said:
Yup, that is the one.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
And one with the original prototypes (but basically the same system) at the Show in the Spring 2004:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
It is pretty notable where the differences between prototypes and finished product are.
Nielsio said:
Mine are the original Prototypes. We sommothed out some rough edges. The Drivers we use have certain of their (measurable) properties changed and yes, they are C37 laquered (sorry, what is changed is not for the public domain).
Nielsio said:
No, I am talking about the main system. The dynamic range is just not there. They do okay up to a point, then they are at the endstops. Arguably that point is pretty loud, but they just cannot quite match systems with something like a 12 - 15" coaxial....
Nielsio said:
Well, that reminds me of my early Axiom 80 & Axiom 201 experiments....
Nielsio said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm rather happy with the sound as well, it is a very good compromise, but domestic acceptability has been traded for dynamic range. BTW, at home I use a dual 12" Mono Sub, not the 2pcs of REL.
Sayonara
454Casull said:
Actually, the Focus and the Whisper differ in this regard. Dudleston's explanation to me about the Focus was that since measurements of box speakers show them to be nearly omnidirectional at the low frequencies anyway, why not use the back side of the box to fit one of the woofers? I don't know that this is trying intentionally for making them more omnidirectional than they otherwise would have been, but it certainly is saying that directionality matters less for the low frequencies than the high. I think he also mentioned that at low frequencies in typical listening rooms it might make more sense to think of the woofers as pressurizing the room rather than as emitting waves that bounce around it, in which case the notion of reflections ceases to apply. On the Whisper, however, he has tried, by unboxing the woofers and using them in acoustically-coupled pairs, to make the bass emissions more directional and reduce the number of reflections.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.