Sure. My comment was just about the drivers. I have just pointed out my priorities (i.e. well behaved in the time domain).
Then the complete loudspeaker and its behavior in my room is another story.
I do not believe in compensation, errors can only add up in a very complicated non-reversible way, according to my brain!
Cheers,
45
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From this conversation I asume that as far as pro drivers go DIYers only use PA drivers and thats what this convesation is about. Dosnt that limit your HF to compresion drivers on horns (not implying there bad)? Has any one tried any high end pro studio drivers, like Genelec, Meyers, or the Adam folded ribbons? Can you even buy these just as drivers?
Hmmm.... I just don't see that big a divide. Or hear it either. I mostly use pro drivers, but vintage ones. Not all pro drivers will sound better for home use than "hi-fi" drivers, not at all. There are plenty of good and bad in both worlds.
It often boils down to a matter of taste. I like pro divers with hi-fi crossovers. How you use a driver can be almost as important as the driver itself. Seems like a lot of the bad rep that pro drivers get is the crossover and the box. These are optimized for P.A. use, not home hi-fi. Different animals.
I just got home from a gig with an all Meyer Sound rig. Nice stuff, but not exactly what you would want for home use. Not the fault of the drivers.
For a fun take on this debate, look up some reviews of the Cerwin Vega CLS 215. Some well known hi-fi magazines were quite surprised! It's sort of a "home meets pro" speaker.
It often boils down to a matter of taste. I like pro divers with hi-fi crossovers. How you use a driver can be almost as important as the driver itself. Seems like a lot of the bad rep that pro drivers get is the crossover and the box. These are optimized for P.A. use, not home hi-fi. Different animals.
I just got home from a gig with an all Meyer Sound rig. Nice stuff, but not exactly what you would want for home use. Not the fault of the drivers.
For a fun take on this debate, look up some reviews of the Cerwin Vega CLS 215. Some well known hi-fi magazines were quite surprised! It's sort of a "home meets pro" speaker.
I have on paper those of my actual Audax drivers which have been slightly modified. The measurements were made by professionals.....
In general, some manufacturers do publish the CSD's of their own drivers ( a good sign for me). Other measurements can be found in the net (home-made measurements can be tricky and almost surely are problematic for frequencies below 1 KHz, anyway they can give some info).
For example: Zaph|Audio
They all are 6.5-7 inch woofers except some PA midranges and full-range drivers.
The B&C 6MD38-8, Beyma 6MI90 are supposed to be midranges but look like having serious troubles around 4-5KHz. A strong break-up. Very probably cannot be cross-overed nearby this point.
6ND430-16 should be a mid-woofer but actually can be used as a woofer only.
The Fostex's are simply orrible!!
Cheers,
45
Good pro sound drivers have a great advantage with lack of power compression but the bass driver bass extension tends to suffer in smaller cabinets, although there are ways around that, IMO. For instance, two 15" pro sound woofers or three 12" woofers in a floor standing tower configuration (with the right bass contour network) can give very good bass extension and high efficiency at the same time while not using up too much floor area. IMO, the best pro sound drivers for hi fi use are the late era alnicos, partly because they're the least expensive way to get this now 'ultra high end' magnet technology, and most of them were designed just before the mega power amps really hit, so they tend to be a bit higher efficiency and/or available with lower Fs's and often more dynamic sounding than the majority of the current pro sound drivers.
I think that even excess midband/hf sensitivity in a pro sound driver provides an advantage because the mere process of padding them down/contouring their response correspondingly limits their thermal compression and tends to reduce higher order distortion products since they are resultingly being driven with source impedances at these frequencies that begin to have characteristics of transconductance amplifiers with their attendant advantages.
The Meyer Sound stuff with the cardioid bass dispersion is excellent for live performances in larger venues, but I wouldn't expect them to be an optimal setup for the average living room.
I think that even excess midband/hf sensitivity in a pro sound driver provides an advantage because the mere process of padding them down/contouring their response correspondingly limits their thermal compression and tends to reduce higher order distortion products since they are resultingly being driven with source impedances at these frequencies that begin to have characteristics of transconductance amplifiers with their attendant advantages.
The Meyer Sound stuff with the cardioid bass dispersion is excellent for live performances in larger venues, but I wouldn't expect them to be an optimal setup for the average living room.
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Not sure which one I've sampled a few years ago, similar looking though but this sentence, from the first review that came up on google, sort of explains my thoughts on it in a nice way:
"If they didn't sound as suave and elegant as my way-more-expensive reference speakers, they were still amazingly good at their bargain-basement price."
This is certainly NOT how I do a design. If a driver has "a sound of their own" then its not a very good driver since I want to hear the music not the driver. So I look for drivers that distinctly DO NOT have a "sound of their own".
Its complex, but for our purposes here, its what makes the horn sound like a really good Hi-Fi driver, but with 20 dB more efficiency, about 40 dB more head room, and virtually no thermal compression. Whats not to like?
Ah, the classic "if it sounds good to me then it IS good" argument. "Good" in reproduction is not a personal thing, accuracy is accuracy and "good" is a word that should be reserved for the performance not the loudspeaker.
So answer me this: If a loudspeaker makes a bad recording sound good, is it a bad loudspeaker or a good loudspeaker? Does accuracy not matter?
Last time I will say this. There specifically designed (from the drivers to cabs to xovers to amps) for PA as there studio series is specifically designed for more smaller rooms.
IMO this is what seperates hi end studio monitors from hi end home speakers. How can you make great mixes on speakers that everything sounds good on (its possible but not easy)? At home even most studio engineeers prefer speakers that make it all sound good, but not at work.
So the answer to the queation is, good for what. Accuracy matters in the studio, at home it depends on the person, IMO most prefering "sounds great" over acurracy.
I sit about 11 feet away from my speakers and I don't have a clue what distortion you are talking about, not even if I push them well beyond what is realistic listening levels to me. Perhaps if you want to recreate an amplified life rock show and the neighbours are on leave. 😀
Well surprise, all drivers sound different, everything have an influence on how it sound, from cone material to cone size, magnet size and surely a lot more.
I've listened to something similar a while ago, must say I've appreciated the foam, without it my ears wanted to bleed but with the foam the effect was similar to listening to speakers with grills attached. So when it comes to listening to normal 🙂 music, I don't see the need for that.
No that is exactly the opposite of what I've said.
Are you talking about measured accuracy or accurately reproducing the sound of an instrument? They are not necessarily the same.
Then it is a bad loudspeaker in my eyes, I want to hear exactly what come from the amplifier.
Well, according to Bose, it's a GOOD loudspeaker. Haven't you seen the Wave Radio commercials where the vaguely academic couple say that when they turn it on, 'no matter what they're doing', they start dancing?
Must suck when it's a news break.
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Correct, perhaps, but that's NOT High Fidelity, thats marketing.
That comment doesn't make sense.
I certainly do not agree with that comment. They are absolutely the same thing. Are you saying that a "distorted" loudspeaker can more "accurately reproduc the sound of an instrument"? Thats imply does not make sense.
This is a direct contradiction of what you said above and exactly where your position gets you. Either you want accuracy and all that goes with it, which includes the fact that your personal opinion has no bearing on the situation, or you want "sounds good to me" in which case accuracy is not relavent and it's not "High Fidelity". You can't have it both ways.
The real dynamics of the speaker in the room does not depend on the max e min SPL only. From my point of view it is better measured by the information you get.
A big speaker (as is a high efficiency multiway speaker) has a much stronger interaction with the room and what you measure is not what you perceive for a simple fundamental reason: the microphone does not know what music is. It does not know the masking effect!
It just makes "sums" while the listener elaborate a time-dependent selection of the information in order to make it as real as possible.
A "bookshelf" 2 o 3 way speaker can in principle give a better integration in the room and thus it can generate a superior sonic sensation (i.e. better dynamics).
There is a double event happening in re-production: one is that happening in the recording place (live or not, it does have ambience info) the other happening in my room. The superposition of these two events just follows the laws of acoustic physics from the point of view of the microphone while generates masking, or loss of dynamics if you like, from the point of view of the listener. It is a loss because the listener must put effort in making congruent two different events (or better "one event happening twice in two different rooms")!
Thats why I just care about the time domain behavior of the speaker in anechoic condition: time is real variable.
Then I go on following the same idea: make sure only the original event arrives to my ears. In real life the result cannot be perfect because an anechoic listening room does not work at all. However you can "orthogonalize" (separate) as much as possible the two events. This can be done to a quite lower degree with big floorstanding speakers.
I know my point of view is rather radical but I am quite sure what I am talking about because I can listen to "3D instruments playing in the space" rather than "the sound of the instruments as almost point-like objects in an imaginary soundstage". In other words a true holographic event where the perception of the soundstage is truly 3D. Moving from one listening position to another you have the real sensation you are moving around the musician playing his instrument!
Cheers,
45
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That is one reason why I call my 2-way 100 liter 100db/w/m 40hz - 18khz Iron Lawbreaker 'The World's Largest Bookshelf Speaker'.😀
More seriously, I believe the smallest and particularly narrowest possible front baffle and a deeper cabinet to make up the necessary volume tends to create less of this 'interaction' in most rooms than the alternatives, as well as making it a little easier to brace & damp the enclosure.
You guys have it mixed up here. The narrower the directivity of the speaker, the less it will interact with the room. A small speaker sends sound in all directions - omni-directional - and interacts with the room to the largest degree. It takes a large speaker with a large baffle to create a narrow directivity.
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