Speaker voicing question

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#2
I'd think both. Mono can help zero in on a most realistic sound quality of combined drivers. Listening in stereo takes those results and presents the overall image, that would be derived by the xo points, to obtain the most realistic presentation. Tweak as required.
 
#3
I always voiced with one speaker but with source output in Stereo mode. Usually using the right channel only. Once I get what I want, it'll sound wonderful when I play back with 2 speakers.

However, this applies to me only. I know others who work in stereo but with two speakers on. I have great difficulty with that. Try out different ways to see which method works best for you.
 
#6
Since listening to only one speaker will greatly alter the perceived tonal balance compared to listening to a mono signal with two speakers, I would strongly advice against voicing speakers listening to only one speaker at a time.

Speakers in stereo at a normal listening angle will have a very different HRTF from a single speaker in front of the listener so that the projected sound in between the speakers will sound very different from that of a single speaker.

This is why center channel speakers sound so different from L/R-channel even when they are identical.
 
#7
I cannot agree with M4rtin on this. Listening to just one speaker does not, in my experience, alter the perceived tonal balance. (It can alter the bass, just as moving a speaker in the room can).

I always understood that Head Related Transfer Function is not so much about perception of tonal balance as perception of source of sound.

My views are easily confirmed/shot down in flames. Listen to 2 speakers in mono, and then unplug one, adjust the volume to parity, and compare.
 
#8
In my view doing just that will make the single speaker sound more dull/colored with shelved down high frequencies compared to a stereo-pair.

The same goes for comparing speakers that are placed closer or further apart. The ones closer to one another will sound more dull and have less treble.
 
#9
M4rtin said:
In my view doing just that will make the single speaker sound more dull/colored with shelved down high frequencies compared to a stereo-pair.

The same goes for comparing speakers that are placed closer or further apart. The ones closer to one another will sound more dull and have less treble.
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The 'treble' you perceive most likely is coming from reflections. Speakers put out the same amount of treble no matter where they are placed relative to one another. They don't know where they are!!!

Floyd Toole learned many years ago with scientific studies of listeners evaluation of speakers, that a single speaker's tonal balance must stand on its own. Read chapter 8 of Toole's "Sound Reproduction - The Acoustics and psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms" (2008).
 
#10
It's even easier to test this with the built in feature of phantom center channel in surround receivers. Just select "no center channel" and the sound will immediately be more brilliant and less honky, yes even with identical speakers.

There is a "getting used to"-period of about 10 seconds before the ears are re-calibrated, then you don't think about the difference much, but when comparing the two modes: single speaker/double speaker mono instantly the difference is huge.

This is a "defect" inherent in the stereo system itself, trying to project sounds in between the speakers (and not the actual physical sound source itself). Sounds coming from one of the speakers will sound tonally different from those projected in the middle.

To varying extent this is compensated for in the sound of the actual recordings. That is why a single speaker usually will sound more colored and not the other way around.

It's easy to try for yourselves.
 
#11
This is also being discussed on PETT.

Speaker voicing question

I am suspicious of the extent to which people claim to voice their designs, or how much they actually improve performance by doing so. For me, I use stereo and voice only the final setup. I generally use critical listening to accept or reject -- not to tweak -- the configuration or to compare different approaches (say BW3 vs. LR2, or notch vs. no-notch). For me, listening is crucial to determine speaker placement, but not to make incremental modifications to the crossover. Once a crossover is well-designed (with flat on-axis and smooth polar/power responses), one is pretty much painted into a corner.
 
#14
jcandy said:
This is also being discussed on PETT.

Speaker voicing question

I am suspicious of the extent to which people claim to voice their designs, or how much they actually improve performance by doing so. For me, I use stereo and voice only the final setup. I generally use critical listening to accept or reject -- not to tweak -- the configuration or to compare different approaches (say BW3 vs. LR2, or notch vs. no-notch). For me, listening is crucial to determine speaker placement, but not to make incremental modifications to the crossover. Once a crossover is well-designed (with flat on-axis and smooth polar/power responses), one is pretty much painted into a corner.
Click to expand...

I agree with that. Voicing gets awkward with terrible bright but uninformative tweeters, and the hole in power response with Linkwitz-Riley filters. There is no real solution, just various compromises!

John Devore says this:
Originally appeared on HiFi.com, 1998

Buying Speakers: A Speaker Designer's Perspective

By John DeVore

It is a commonly held belief that speakers are the most important part of a stereo system, or home theater. This is basically true, though not to the extent that many experts would have you believe. The speakers control how much of the music you hear. By that I mean they will usually be the limiting factor in terms of how deep the bass is, how extended the treble is, and the overall amount of detail that is allowed to pass through. In other words, speakers determine the outside edges of the performance envelope, and the other components determine how far you fill that envelope.

There exists a mind-boggling amount of information and misinformation about speakers and what they are capable of. If we go back to the root of why stereo exists, it is to enhance the realism of the listening experience. The one thing a stereo pair of speakers can do that its single mono sibling cannot is create a soundstage. A soundstage is the illusion of music and sound coming from the space between two stereo speakers. For a pair of speakers to do this they must be set up along the same wall, facing towards the main listening area. Think of the speakers and the listener's seat as a triangle, with the distance between the listener and each speaker equal. In other words, as the listener sits in his or her spot and looks straight ahead, they should be looking at the spot on the wall exactly centered between the two speakers. Properly set up, a stereo pair of speakers should create the illusion of musicians in the room with you, playing in the area between the speakers. Imaging is the quality of pinpointing the exact spot in the soundstage where the particular sound is coming from. For example if you're listening to a well done recording of a jazz trio, a system capable of good imaging will let you hear the pianist to the right of center, the bass player a bit behind him on the left, and the drummer centered and at the back. Thus the illusion of this jazz trio playing in your living room is even more realistic. This is the ultimate goal of the audiophile system: to convincingly portray the original musical event, be it Bach, Beatles or Beastie Boys.

Detail is an important quality of a good loudspeaker. Detail, or clarity, has to do with the amount of information you hear. The more detailed a speaker system is, the more musical information you get to hear. This aspect of a speaker's performance is one of the most often misunderstood, and many mediocre speakers have been touted as having exceptional clarity when in reality they are overly bright, or artificially emphasized in the higher frequencies. This misrepresentation of clarity has made it more difficult to separate brightness from detail, especially for the novice speaker-buyer. A bright speaker is designed to stand out in a sound room when a listener is auditioning a number of speakers. It has a boost in the upper midrange that makes vocals, violins, drums, and other such instrumental sounds snap out at you and sound very sharp and present. It often sounds impressive in a sound room with a quick demonstration, but over time this exaggeration can be tiresome and annoying. A bright speaker will emphasize the "S" and "T" sounds in vocal recordings, making them pop out, and sound disjointed and disconnected from the rest of the voice. ...snip
Click to expand...

You'll find the whole thing here in "Buying Speakers". about DeVORE FIDELITY.
 
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#15
system7 said:
I agree with that. Voicing gets awkward with terrible bright but uninformative tweeters, and the hole in power response with Linkwitz-Riley filters. There is no real solution, just various compromises!
Click to expand...
The lack of a "real solution" is, I suppose, what allows speaker design to retain some degree of "art" in comparison to amplifier design. But I think you'd agree that there are certainly mistakes to be made. A severe dip in the power response is one of them. Yet, we see 7" woofer crossed to 3/4" tweeters all the time because the tweeter is so "revealing". What?
 
#16
jcandy said:
This is also being discussed on PETT.

Speaker voicing question

I am suspicious of the extent to which people claim to voice their designs, or how much they actually improve performance by doing so. For me, I use stereo and voice only the final setup. I generally use critical listening to accept or reject -- not to tweak -- the configuration or to compare different approaches (say BW3 vs. LR2, or notch vs. no-notch). For me, listening is crucial to determine speaker placement, but not to make incremental modifications to the crossover. Once a crossover is well-designed (with flat on-axis and smooth polar/power responses), one is pretty much painted into a corner.
Click to expand...

Agree. I mostly correct errors when doing the final listening evaluation rather than voicing the speakers. In my 4-way design I essentially did the crossover in one-shot except for a small adjustment in phase integration between the midrange/treble that was determined to be necessary through listening but was re-simulated in the design.

I think that it is important to do the listening in the final intended positioning and listening environment. The right angles towards the speakers etc. Otherwise you might compensate for things that really is not an error in the speakers but in the way you are using the speaker.
 
#17
I think that different people have different ideas as to what "voicing" is. To me, it is not to do with errors, simulations, or even measurements. It is to do with Sound. What voice you want. And it certainly involves more than crossovers. Stuffing (material and amount) as an example. And voicing can only be done by listening.
 
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