Same reason vinyl, tubes, tape, etc all ended. Convenience, mass-production, profit margins.
Just so much easier and cheaper to make CD's, transistor amps and veneered speaker cabinets with outsourced components in them. You can scratch the hell out of a CD and it will (mostly) still play. You don't have to rebias a tranny amp or worry about replacing the tubes. Your speaker can be mounted up high in the corners (for maximum wife acceptance factor) and you can place the sub behind your sideboard (ditto).
People just don't want to have *sigh* get up and *sigh* change a record half way through! Jeez man! They've got the interweb to be surfing and a trip to the mall in their Suburban Utility Vehicle! They're too busy to *sigh* set the azimuth on their turntable! We want our art packaged in the smallest possible way, delivered at the lowest-possible resolution that removes the responsibility of having to interact with it and *sigh* turn the record over.
Look, horns are ridiculous when viewed from a domestic sensibility. They're big, ugly, expensive, physically imposive and those field-coil ones require *sigh* a power supply that has to be placed... somewhere.
Valves, vinyl and horns make music just fine. Film stock captures images just fine. But they require the end-user to take the responsibility of having to interact with the process of how our art is delivered in a way that is antithetical to the values of domestication and mass-production.
Whether those values have meant a loss of emotional connection with the art somewhere is what I think a lot of this thread in particular is referencing.
The ratio of noise to signal is getting quite high on this thread, and I guess about half the posts here lately are bordering on trollish - they certainly contribute little to the discussion. (Trolls you know who you are!) Can we focus on the topic and leave the squabbling behind?
So has anyone taken a modern headphone diaphram & built a crazy 8+ Ft. long monster horn? The X-max of the current crop of 2" elements can't really be that much..........how bout' this 2" FR..........from a headphone??? Headphone elements scrunched on the ear.....I would tend to believe are loaded with the air-space of the ear-canal & cavities of the ear...???
_____________________________________________________Rick.........
_____________________________________________________Rick.........
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guess that sums the whole thing right there.
what we all knew all along.
' bose is best '
Here is the measurement of WE555 on 900Hz hyperbolic horn. Not bad for so outdated design. 😉
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
A very good question.
The initial design intent was to make the best full range theater system possible. A wide range telephone "receiver" as compression drivers were called in those days, coupled to a very long horn just covered the voice range. The horn was curled because behind screen depth was limited and would subtract from paying floor space. This cost some high end, but optical soundtracks were limited in that regard.
As soundtracks evolved, designers wanted wider range to better cover the range of music as well as the dialog. A tweeter was added and one or more 18" woofers extended the response range. Once it became a three way the long length of the snail horn became a liability rather than an asset. In the first write-up documenting the audibility of time mis-alignment, Hilliard (later of Altec) found that the depth discrepency caused an echo when reproducing tap dancing (early impulse testing!).
The Shearer system was designed to answer the problem. Shorter bass bins and 500 cycle multicell horns got around the "tap dancing" issue and the industry overwhelmingly migrated to the superior system.
Engineering and evolution.
David
😕 and all of that means that anyone that questions why the owners of the WE drivers can't do measurements is being unreasonable? 🙄
Excuse me but the last time I checked, this forum was about the freedom of both sides to vent their viewpoint.You being a moderator should know that and stop taking sides yourself.
As long as the subjectivists keep ranting about measurements not being important and taking potshots at those that do, then I will speak up.I thought this thread was about the WE but instead it's everything but.
My wife and I went to the Picasso exhibit last week. I'm not claiming to be an art scholar but it was interesting to see his prolific volume of work in many different styles and medium.
Now I was thinking that it would have been nice if I could have worn multicolored sunglasses. Maybe blue for the blue period. Rose colored for earlier works.
Or perhaps apply improvements straight to the works. Clear shower curtains in front of some paintings for moody diffusion. Stained glass in front of the pen and ink sketches. What FUN it would have been. (And its all about fun.)
(Maybe speakers should be accurate and neutral. Maybe the sound of the original recording is important.)
David S.
Easy there pal, you are starting to sound "bitter" 😀
I guess any audio component made after the glorious 50's is junk and not progress 😕
Now if only Edison still made those great sounding wax cylinders *sigh*
WOW!!! Thank you, finally a measurement after endless pages of denial.🙂
Not too shabby, looks like a 3db suckout at 3kHz. I presume that's on-axis. Did they do any off-axis measurements too? Low end rolls off at around 500-600 Hz which is probably a good thing. Did they do any distortion measurements?
Yes, off axis measurements would be highly interesting. And perhaps at two different distances...
That's something I have always had a problem with.
I believe that to reproduce a work of art you should not alter it, but reproduce it as the maker has made it.
Loudspekers that alter the sound interprete what the maker of the work of art intended. I believe we should try to avoid that.
jan didden
i love the way this discussion keeps getting turned on it's head.
it was NEVER a matter of the modern stuff having failed to live up to it's requirements... which have been clearly laid out in this thread: cheaper, easier to make, and profitable. predictable could also be squeezed in there too, but i accept a bit of controversy there. no one will question the success of the "business" in this regard. it is fading now, replaced by other more relevant contemporary products. but it had it's day! the interesting question is whether or not it has delivered on the quality side of things. quality, unfortunately for the so called "objectivists", is such a thoroughly subjective value, and it is disturbing that this isn't more clear. it is clear to everyone else. "bling", for example, is held in HIGH esteem in pop culture, at least for the moment. check on it again next week. "resale value" is another... the wealthy are usually big on that. (in that case, very little made in the 20th century has held it's value better than western gear...) car owners (especially american car owners) wring their hands over it, though. a "true" measure of quality if there ever was one. i could go on...
"the linear model" is an important reference for engineers and scientists working with reproduced sound and light, and the ability to compare one's "device under test" with reality is a measure of quality for many engineers... a pity it isn't recognized more often. that their particular linear model (a particular speaker, amp, etc.) compares favorably with the reference (reality) is used in marketing all the time. the problem for engineers that make speakers today that is posited in this thread, is that the experience of revisiting the first speakers (from 1926 - 1930) shows off a certain cultural drift that has in fact occurred: there is a gap between the qualities most often reached for in the "business" and in the ones reached for by the end user... and that this gap has probably widened over time. the attempts to discredit this observation with "science" are for me, clearly defensive and small minded. the tone of this thread is all the proof one needs to show that. the number of people who REALLY enjoyed the silba exhibit at munich is an indicator that the topic of this thread is indeed relevant. more interesting is "why is there a gap?" "what is the gap?" not, "is there a gap?"
it has NOTHING to do with measurements but everything to do with what is measured and how.
all horns have throat resistance, and noise and distortion associated with it. the rectification effects of it have been heavily studied as well. does it surprise you that engineers at western electric defined and measured it first. to use that as an argument to dismiss all compression drivers is curious.
the western electric 594 is a compression driver in the modern sense, the first one and the most expensive one. remade today it costs about 20K$. not one other company in the world has spent so much on the materials of the driver. the permendur pole pieces used in it alone would cost more than any 10 entire jbl compression drivers. the only improvement upon it in terms of performance has been in the upper frequency... there are drivers today that can go higher... but have many problems. the 594 measures fantastic in it's range... and very low distortion.
the we 555 is not anything like a modern compression driver. it is a "full range driver" from the time when it was determined that the most important range of hearing was 50Hz to 13KHz (the range of human hearing determined during the 20's... clearly connected to the microphones of the day!) the 555 has a res. freq. of 50Hz, not 350Hz. it is used in full range horns. the 15A is "flat" +/- 6dB from 80 to 6.5KHz. there is a dip around 2.4KHz (an "advent dip"?) but the trend is modern. there was no source material of any quality at the time of "the jazz singer" but the speaker technology had to be first rate to make the source intelligible. there was no need for deep bass until the shearer time (1938).
the main reason for coiling the horns was so they fit behind the screen. the main reason for leaving the wide range horns for the shearer multiway systems was time alignment... going multiway increased the bandwidth, but creatred many other problems. but the shearer system did NOT fix that. it wasn't solved before late 40's and even then there were problems because of the crossover. problems that persist to this day. whoever said that crossovers are no problem is either an idiot, or has never made anything.
jaime martini, the famous mexican american stanford student, better known as the namesake for the company you work for david, is one of the engineers who worked with the shearer team to transition the cinema system to create the modern speaker, which has barely evolved today. all the physics used today to describe how a dynamic moving coil driver and all compression drivers function was defined before 1932, and you above all should know it was bell labs who did that work. a part of western electric.
why mention all this? because the way history connects directly to the present day is being swept under the rug with all this subjective/objective drivel. it is the SAME technology. today it is mainly CHEAPER and more poorly made. silbatone rightfully asks "what have you got for your savings and your trouble?". not as much as you think probably. i think MOST of the visitors to the room agree with this. those of you who were there and don't agree (outnumbered by the opposite view) have some cred. you been there and done that. but for those who weren't there, and dismiss what you don't know, i would simply ask you to make your ignorance clear before you rip into stuff you simply have no way to know.
as for the bias against wide range horns... i also will defer to the work of tom danley. good luck ripping him up. you would have to go back to school for a long time.
as for a "tower of direct radiators" being the equal of a highly optimized horn system... i can think of one situation where this could be possible: a line array of smallish drivers in a small to medium sized room. i have built several systems like that and have a good deal of experience with it. besides the comb filtering and crossover issues, it is a workable approach. by the way, western electric was the first to do that too. well before you were born.
jc
it was NEVER a matter of the modern stuff having failed to live up to it's requirements... which have been clearly laid out in this thread: cheaper, easier to make, and profitable. predictable could also be squeezed in there too, but i accept a bit of controversy there. no one will question the success of the "business" in this regard. it is fading now, replaced by other more relevant contemporary products. but it had it's day! the interesting question is whether or not it has delivered on the quality side of things. quality, unfortunately for the so called "objectivists", is such a thoroughly subjective value, and it is disturbing that this isn't more clear. it is clear to everyone else. "bling", for example, is held in HIGH esteem in pop culture, at least for the moment. check on it again next week. "resale value" is another... the wealthy are usually big on that. (in that case, very little made in the 20th century has held it's value better than western gear...) car owners (especially american car owners) wring their hands over it, though. a "true" measure of quality if there ever was one. i could go on...
"the linear model" is an important reference for engineers and scientists working with reproduced sound and light, and the ability to compare one's "device under test" with reality is a measure of quality for many engineers... a pity it isn't recognized more often. that their particular linear model (a particular speaker, amp, etc.) compares favorably with the reference (reality) is used in marketing all the time. the problem for engineers that make speakers today that is posited in this thread, is that the experience of revisiting the first speakers (from 1926 - 1930) shows off a certain cultural drift that has in fact occurred: there is a gap between the qualities most often reached for in the "business" and in the ones reached for by the end user... and that this gap has probably widened over time. the attempts to discredit this observation with "science" are for me, clearly defensive and small minded. the tone of this thread is all the proof one needs to show that. the number of people who REALLY enjoyed the silba exhibit at munich is an indicator that the topic of this thread is indeed relevant. more interesting is "why is there a gap?" "what is the gap?" not, "is there a gap?"
it has NOTHING to do with measurements but everything to do with what is measured and how.
all horns have throat resistance, and noise and distortion associated with it. the rectification effects of it have been heavily studied as well. does it surprise you that engineers at western electric defined and measured it first. to use that as an argument to dismiss all compression drivers is curious.
the western electric 594 is a compression driver in the modern sense, the first one and the most expensive one. remade today it costs about 20K$. not one other company in the world has spent so much on the materials of the driver. the permendur pole pieces used in it alone would cost more than any 10 entire jbl compression drivers. the only improvement upon it in terms of performance has been in the upper frequency... there are drivers today that can go higher... but have many problems. the 594 measures fantastic in it's range... and very low distortion.
the we 555 is not anything like a modern compression driver. it is a "full range driver" from the time when it was determined that the most important range of hearing was 50Hz to 13KHz (the range of human hearing determined during the 20's... clearly connected to the microphones of the day!) the 555 has a res. freq. of 50Hz, not 350Hz. it is used in full range horns. the 15A is "flat" +/- 6dB from 80 to 6.5KHz. there is a dip around 2.4KHz (an "advent dip"?) but the trend is modern. there was no source material of any quality at the time of "the jazz singer" but the speaker technology had to be first rate to make the source intelligible. there was no need for deep bass until the shearer time (1938).
the main reason for coiling the horns was so they fit behind the screen. the main reason for leaving the wide range horns for the shearer multiway systems was time alignment... going multiway increased the bandwidth, but creatred many other problems. but the shearer system did NOT fix that. it wasn't solved before late 40's and even then there were problems because of the crossover. problems that persist to this day. whoever said that crossovers are no problem is either an idiot, or has never made anything.
jaime martini, the famous mexican american stanford student, better known as the namesake for the company you work for david, is one of the engineers who worked with the shearer team to transition the cinema system to create the modern speaker, which has barely evolved today. all the physics used today to describe how a dynamic moving coil driver and all compression drivers function was defined before 1932, and you above all should know it was bell labs who did that work. a part of western electric.
why mention all this? because the way history connects directly to the present day is being swept under the rug with all this subjective/objective drivel. it is the SAME technology. today it is mainly CHEAPER and more poorly made. silbatone rightfully asks "what have you got for your savings and your trouble?". not as much as you think probably. i think MOST of the visitors to the room agree with this. those of you who were there and don't agree (outnumbered by the opposite view) have some cred. you been there and done that. but for those who weren't there, and dismiss what you don't know, i would simply ask you to make your ignorance clear before you rip into stuff you simply have no way to know.
as for the bias against wide range horns... i also will defer to the work of tom danley. good luck ripping him up. you would have to go back to school for a long time.
as for a "tower of direct radiators" being the equal of a highly optimized horn system... i can think of one situation where this could be possible: a line array of smallish drivers in a small to medium sized room. i have built several systems like that and have a good deal of experience with it. besides the comb filtering and crossover issues, it is a workable approach. by the way, western electric was the first to do that too. well before you were born.
jc
"Highly optimized" is the key phrase for any of the approaches. I'd be interested in comparisons cubic foot by cubic foot for a highly optimized multiple driver direct radiator versus a highly optimized horn. Measurements, on and off axis, and controlled listening comparisons. I wish I had the time and money...
for those of us who have been listening for years, it's not so complicated... only here. in discussing it.
It isn't really a good analogy. It depends if the paintings were actually a reproduction. Your example is an equivalent of hearing a live performance and covering your ears.
I'm not against scientific facts backing up perceptions. In fact it would be most desirable but i doubt we have that knowledge yet. Each person has come to collect only fragments of these scientific facts but it's never enough to complete the puzzle.