There are many causes of listening fatigue. I consider that the speaker is the most critical. From the speaker itself I can divide a driver related fatigue and a crossover related fatigue. Driver related is not so critical because what you need is an expensive driver with low distortion and smooth response. Crossover only help in cheaper driver or complex response and is not that difficult. But crossover related is more "difficult" because there is no "clue" about designing crossover for minimal fatigue. The main design objective has been to achieve flat frequency response, which is not that important. Fatigue more relates with phase and rarely we have seen phase information is included in a speaker review or project.
Think about this: have you ever heard a fatiguing speaker (which is not driver related) that has incredible imaging?
Maybe so, but that doesn't make it any less of a desirable goal. The word should not be banned, it should be used more often, meaning what it is supposed to mean.
"tomorrow they will have a different opinion"
I don't find this at all..
After a period of time( this time gets shorter with lots of experience with many speakers )listening to new speakers the overall sound becomes obvious and very nuanced and this sound will stay the same day after day for years.
Our ears and brain don't lie.. Measurement don't lie either but I think they're limited..
Characteristics of material will change over time, so sound will change. You can hear it, it is also measurable, but it may not be of concern if it's small enough.
I'm quoting myself to clarify this now that I have real keyboard in front of me, down with phone keyboards.
I am going to address what appears to be the elephant in the room directly just as if this wasn't 2013.
Many mastering engineers do not like to listen to (for pleasure) the speakers they master on, say the ubiquitous B&W 801. An obvious reasons for is these speakers are often very bright (flat) revealing (true, but I hate that word) and they do not have the gentle downward slope that so many of us prefer in our listening rooms. These high end speakers are generally *not* horn loaded, they are almost (like 9*% of all average home speakers) direct radiators.
This is necessary.
ME's are actually trying to hear everything they can in the audible spectrum as *flatly* as possible in order to approximate the *median* room and the *median* speaker for the *median* listener, yet still hear detail that the mixing guy might have missed. Yep, paid for mediocrity.
Fatigue*does* occur.
One reason not often mentioned is power compression. Power compression is occurring in direct radiating lower efficiency speakers at *enormously* higher rates than in vastly efficient horn loaded or otherwise very efficient speaker.
At higher volumes this WILL be audible and WILL be fatiguing, and even at not so high to low volumes used in mixing and mastering For this reason alone I'd rather listen to K-horns or Sentry IIIs or Altec 19's for pleasure than the B&W 801's. Are Sentry III's etc as flat? No. Are there some audible horn resonances? Yeah, if you look for them. The thing is your ear *is* going to hear when drivers are stressed and the chance of them being stressed increases exponentially inverse of efficiency.
The thing is (And horn loaded speaker haters be ummm... darned) That "horny" kind of distortion is a *hell of a lot less fatiguing* than power compression and associated distortions that are *inevitable* when a lower efficiency speaker is used at decent levels.
What I find amusing and ironic is P.W.K. sold high efficiency HiFi speaker that were *often* employed as PA speakers because they could counted on for very low distortion at high volumes, and therefore and inevitably miniscule distortion at lower volumes
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. Now we have a few vendors going full circle and selling what are quite obviously PA speakers with a few (and basically picayune) proprietary "improvements" being "disguised" as HiFi speakers. No need really other than cosmetics. Very good (Altec EV Klipsch etc, PA speakers are, for the most part, HiFi speakers! always have been, always have had less of the really objectionable distortion. Hell they are even more relevant now that subwoofers which extend the lowest octaves are abundant!. Remove all this proprietary smoke and mirror minutia from these "disguised" PA speakers and guess what? You would *still* have great sounding speakers! It is the horn and efficiency of said item and lack of "real and audible" distortion that you are hearing.not the esoteric shapes etc.My experience is well designed horns can sound great and less fatiguing in a lot of shapes we have all witnessed that.
Guess what else? in most cases these beautifully painted and veiled PA speakers *will* be less fatiguing than low efficiency speakers and sound great. If you have the money and the need for the cosmetics buy a set, they are beautiful and look wonderful in a living room, albeit rather large.
Let us not kid ourselves, they are still horn loaded "PA" type speakers and THAT is what just may, just may, just may, make them less fatiguing to listen to than direct cone non compression driver speakers.
We lowly non-tweaky musicians and audio engineers almost certainly used PA speakers at home at some point in our lives, we always knew they sounded "less fatiguing"
Even small ones marketed as HiFi speakers like the Heresy. Fatiguing? Nah, maybe if your 30 year old oil filled caps wore out. The K-horn? Please God, send me another pair, I should never have sold them, they are (10 years later) doing commercial duty in a movie theater and I can sit through a whole concert movie, no "fatigue"And oh yeah God, you don't even have to paint them nice. I know they are PA speakers but I do not need to be fooled. Being fooled? Well that is fatiguing..
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I can't agree with this. Everyone has a right to pick their personal poison when it comes to imperfect speakers. Still, to admit that many horn speakers have strong colorations and chose that over power compression strikes me as misguided.
Power compression, as described a few pages back, is a slowly varying and mild response error. As I said then, I used to make these measurements for JBL (see the 4411 brochure, for example). Slowly running 100 Watt response curves resulted in a few dB of loss for both woofer and tweeter. I can't imagine a more benign form of distortion than a longer time constant volume compression.
As to other distortions of low efficiency speakers, we would need to look at them on a case by case basis and also consider the intended listening level. Of course we have to compare the numbers to the typical 2nd harmonic distortion of most horn loudspeakers before we condem the low efficiency system.
I am sure there are some people here that want to listen at such a level that a Voice of the Theater has a real advantage over an 801. That is legitimate reason for chosing the highest efficiency systems. When I outfit a larger theater I need to be able to get to about 130 dB at 1 meter to approach 105 mid audience. I won't be using B&W for that. But at home I would chose a clean and uncolored speaker over a colored PA based system every time.
Distortions of timbre are there, always present, at high volume and low. If they are mild then you may get used to them and hear past them, but isn't that one of the contributors to fatigue? As to distortion from inefficient speakers, this is starting to sound like a Paul Klipsch white paper. He always had an axe to grind and they were never all that convincing.
David S
Agree that generalization is misguiding but there is some truth here. It is the relation between amplifier and speaker. Some amplifiers do not have sufficient "capability" to drive speakers unless the speakers are of low efficiency. You want an EFFORTLESS SOUND to avoid fatigue.
Jay, Perhaps I should have included the other distortions that are heard because of driver stress, perhaps I lumped them all into the "power compression" boat. Short story here but VERY VERY VERY true story> Less driver movement to get where you need to be = less distortion, and if I am not mistaken, this is exponential and manifests itself even at low volumes. A7s? hmmm.. I too would choose and 801 to listen over an A7 for other reasons. but *not* over a Klipschorn or some othe horn loded JBL Altec etc designs. I'm sitting right next to a set of 801s. they are an expensive truck that must be used for work, the damn Klipschorn, and many, many of the JBL Altec EV etc designs are Cadillacs to listen to comparatively, at least IMO, and this is all I've ever done so I hope I have some tiny credibility to say that.
Jay, just noticed the P.W.K. white paper comment, Yeah you are right,. When I first read it all I could do was nod my head and then nod my head more.Well hell! When you are right you are right, and I think the old boy was right, even if all he ever did was to be one of the first to repackage and market theater for PA horn speakers for home use. I have noticed my car suspension (the surround?) distorts more when it has to travel faster and further on bumpy roads and needs alignment more (wear from heat due to stress?) than when it is on the highway, hurts my back more too.I am guessing that is due to the non-linearity of a dirt road making the car (cone?) travel farther to complete the cycle of getting me to Krogers and back ( a wave? Bad analogy, but I think you get the point.)I am no scientist, but it seems pretty obvious that any movement of mass will deviate more from where you want it to go, the further it is from an imperfect suspension point, and are not they all? Amazing to me that woofers are listenable at all with all of that Doppler inter-modulation going on when you see them move. And I swear on my trailer, bible and my pit bull that I have noticed more distortion from woofers commiserate with "seeing them move" I have also spoken through a fan quite often as a child, a very inefficient coupling to air (-: I am assuming what I heard was Doppler or inter-modulation distortion which surely must be occurring on drivers in motion.
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Yet, drive an average efficiency speaker with thoroughly competent electronics and be prepared for a big surprise - I have done this many times now, and any preconceptions about efficiencies of speakers fall away ... the mouse that roared and all that sort of thing ... 😉
Well, lets see, a pair of 801's through a Rotel or a Crown vs. a set of K-horns through a Pioneer receiver both heard in the same room at lower to low-mid levels. (ok not at the same time) as judged "fatigue wise" by a man who has done nothing at all with his life but mix and master audio and can still hear (amazingly). Not that the 801's sound bad, they do not, they sound and measure great. There is something going on with however good horn loaded speakers.and I have always and sometimes grudgingly noted it. No way to master audio on K-horns though they are not in the least representative of the "median" and the FR is a bit too rough.I'll stick with the B&W "truck" for that. I know I'm not alone here either.
You are not alone, peteleoni.
I do know where you are coming from, hence why now I run a close-to-full 5-way front horn loaded system (bass horn can only play down to about 50-60hz. Ended up using 12" rythmik direct servo sealed box to cover below that).
Least fatiguing sounding speaker setup I have owned (though visually I admit it is quite fatiguing to look at, being so big and DIY looking). Note that it is not due to FR of the speakers (I use eq).
I do know where you are coming from, hence why now I run a close-to-full 5-way front horn loaded system (bass horn can only play down to about 50-60hz. Ended up using 12" rythmik direct servo sealed box to cover below that).
Least fatiguing sounding speaker setup I have owned (though visually I admit it is quite fatiguing to look at, being so big and DIY looking). Note that it is not due to FR of the speakers (I use eq).
Oh no doubt my friend. There is no question in my mind that my next personal system will be an all horn loaded 4 way built with a couple of DCX 2496's and components. I have to admit though Tom Danley's Synergy concept for 2/3's of it looks like it might be even better than separate cabs. Are there any sonic draw backs at all to the synergy? Does not seem as if there are.
the Synergy based horns do look like it has the least number of drawbacks regarding multi-way based front horn loaded systems.
Very very interested in hearing a pair of them one day.
I've seen a few photos of them being paired with 1 or 2 15/18" woofers in a cab to cover the bass range where the horn drops off.
Oh, yeah I'll go right out, going to get some really really really good power cable and "interconnects" too. God Bless you whereever you are to Mr. Peter Aczel and his PowerCube machine. 😉
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