If you would take your speakers outside and measure them properly you would have lots of measurements to compare. This forum alone is literally littered with measurements. But most people at least attempt to do them properly, which means no in room measurements.
As it stands YOU CAN"T COMPARE ANYTHING TO THE MEASUREMENTS YOU POSTED. They are in room measurements with eq applied.
What we can use to compare is AR's own AR1 published measurement, included in the attachment in post 125. Below 40 hz it drops like a rock, it's almost 15 db down at 20 hz and max recommended power is 30 watts. (Note that you will probably destroy the speaker if you play low bass at 30 watts though.)
In other words we have plenty of info to judge the AR1 and as far as producing low bass is concerned it is absolutely terrible by today's standards.
As it stands YOU CAN"T COMPARE ANYTHING TO THE MEASUREMENTS YOU POSTED. They are in room measurements with eq applied.
What we can use to compare is AR's own AR1 published measurement, included in the attachment in post 125. Below 40 hz it drops like a rock, it's almost 15 db down at 20 hz and max recommended power is 30 watts. (Note that you will probably destroy the speaker if you play low bass at 30 watts though.)
In other words we have plenty of info to judge the AR1 and as far as producing low bass is concerned it is absolutely terrible by today's standards.
Don't feed the troll. The only reason we're STILL discussing ancient sealed subs of which you'd need 30+ to keep up with the design described on page one of this thead is because people still think they can convince ben of anything. It's a futile endeavor.
That clip previously posted, can be accessed directly at:
https://soundcloud.com/newyorker/a-clip-from-saint-saenss-organ-symphony-performed-on-hurricane-mama
I can't say what terrible data compression it has suffered, but just had a peek on a real-time analyzer. The tuttis are about as flat a spectrum - top to bottom - as I have ever seen on music. Seriously big peaks as loud as all other peaks on the clip show up at low Herzs at: 16, 21, 33, 41, etc. Not quite the harmonic frequencies you'd expect but clearly big pipe pedals. (I'd rely on Mark to shed light on that.)
In other words, about as dandy a music test clip as you could want for low notes. Of course, since I first heard a pair of AR3A play the Munch/Boston recording in 1966* in the AR showroom inside Grand Central Station, the piece has been a staple of HiFi demos.
Now, I would never use a fourth-hand web clip to assess the distortion and other music-listening parameters I consider primary for my taste, but those don't seem to be the primary concerns around here.
Ben
*umm, pretty sure they had stereo back then...
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Reference Recordings - RR-136 Detail
This is the loudest low bass version and most interesting version I have in my collection. I have been through dozens of different versions over the past thirty years or so.
A little video. Same pipe organ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU_GOaawmM4
Go to 1:45 and you get some snips of the Saint Saen's 3rd.
And it's a Canadian Pipe Organ to boot eh?
This is the loudest low bass version and most interesting version I have in my collection. I have been through dozens of different versions over the past thirty years or so.
A little video. Same pipe organ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU_GOaawmM4
Go to 1:45 and you get some snips of the Saint Saen's 3rd.
And it's a Canadian Pipe Organ to boot eh?
The Cassavant family make beautiful organs - biggies as well as great tracker instruments. And the recording may indeed be profound (although the concert hall acoustics are strange to the ears of regular church organ fans).
But YouTube clips are quite another story.
The sound is wonderfully full and organ-thrilling. Maybe esp nice without church reverberation. That may come as a surprise to those who think going down to 16 Hz is necessary to their happiness in life because this great sound is really coming at you at 55, 41, and 48 Hz with some at 32. But it just ain't low. Dunno if YouTube cut off the low bass or what.
Ben
But YouTube clips are quite another story.
The sound is wonderfully full and organ-thrilling. Maybe esp nice without church reverberation. That may come as a surprise to those who think going down to 16 Hz is necessary to their happiness in life because this great sound is really coming at you at 55, 41, and 48 Hz with some at 32. But it just ain't low. Dunno if YouTube cut off the low bass or what.
Ben
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During the Quiet section towards the end there is some serious soft thunder.
I just missed the peak but you can see how high it got.
And again close to the end. Because of how the chords progress in the music the very end chord is not the lowest. Helps if you can dig up the sheet music and look at the score as you are looking for the lowest notes.
And a look at a blow up of the vertical scale.
It's 10 db per division on the vertical scale. The loudest low notes are almost 40 db louder than the orchestra at some points in the quiet section.
And the orchestra is pretty darn loud to begin with.
In the ending the organ still smacks around the orchestra by 10 to 15 db. 10 db is perceived as twice as loud. But power output is considerably higher.
If you play this at concert levels it is real work out. And can be pretty good at creating shredded woofers.
How do you figure out concert level?
Go to the quiet section Track 4 And crank it up until it's moderately loud, like a not to loud conversation. You can hear and understand the person talking to you. But they are not loud.
Then listen and wait for the Kaboom.
Oh it is so good to live out in the sticks. Closest neighbors are almost 500 feet away.
I just missed the peak but you can see how high it got.
And again close to the end. Because of how the chords progress in the music the very end chord is not the lowest. Helps if you can dig up the sheet music and look at the score as you are looking for the lowest notes.
And a look at a blow up of the vertical scale.
It's 10 db per division on the vertical scale. The loudest low notes are almost 40 db louder than the orchestra at some points in the quiet section.
And the orchestra is pretty darn loud to begin with.
In the ending the organ still smacks around the orchestra by 10 to 15 db. 10 db is perceived as twice as loud. But power output is considerably higher.
If you play this at concert levels it is real work out. And can be pretty good at creating shredded woofers.
How do you figure out concert level?
Go to the quiet section Track 4 And crank it up until it's moderately loud, like a not to loud conversation. You can hear and understand the person talking to you. But they are not loud.
Then listen and wait for the Kaboom.
Oh it is so good to live out in the sticks. Closest neighbors are almost 500 feet away.
Apparently, you don't listen to Hip Hop or EDM. The title of this thread is a song by Public Enemy, which is the #1 sampled Hip Hop artist and the #2 artist to James Brown. "Some 32" ain't cuttin' it. Like I said before, ain't nuttin' wrong with trying to get "Louder Than A Bomb" (another PE song)!
Would you please post a real-time analysis of those recordings like Mark and I have. Then we can all see the frequencies you are talking about reproducing.
My experience is that super-over-cooked-and-processed music of the sort you have in mind tends not to have really low notes in it. Just low enough around 50 Hz, maybe, to make cheap systems sound booming and good systems sound falsely grand*.
So post those RTAs and we can all see for sure.
Ben
*that's not to deny some recording engineers and their clients don't stick in some weirdo low bass rumbles for kicks now and then on some recordings.
As far as I can tell the two images you posted were in room measurements with eq applied so they mean nothing at all. And the second one you posted didn't have any bass, you even said so. 20 hz is 10 or 20 db down.
I assume Mark posted a FR vs amplitude analysis, not measurements. His images are not too bad, some strong 16 hz content. But he did say specifically "Helps if you can dig up the sheet music and look at the score as you are looking for the lowest notes. it's not hard to find random low notes.
This is not a game you can win, Ben. For every image you post up I'll put up two that beat it.
Here's some quick analysis screenshots I did up just for you.
Top row pic 1 and 2 - Bass I Love You, a couple of quick 2 second grabs
Top row pic 3 - Bass I Love You entire track - this shows the low notes are ALL the way through
Second row pic 1 and 2 - Crack the Window, a couple of 2 second grabs
Second row pic 3 - Crack the Window entire track - this shows the track doesn't have a lot of low bass, just a few prominent hits
Third row - a couple of 2 second grabs from 3 different tracks, from right to left Scary Christmas, In My Trunk and Hoods Run Down
Bass I Love You in particular with it's strong 7 hz content makes you organ music look pretty silly as far as low bass. The first grab in the second row also kicks organ butt.
The rest are nothing really special but in most cases hit as low as your organ music.
Just low enough around 50 Hz, maybe, to make cheap systems sound booming and good systems sound falsely grand, eh?
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Just for reference that's what a "normal" track looks like, Dixie Chicks, Goodbye Earl.
And if my 5 tracks above are not enough, here's a list of 188 more. Rules to get on this list are "The rules where a set 0 dB level that the music normally plays at in the measurement setup, and information between 0-20 Hz has to be 50 dB above that to earn a place in the list. We also set up a rule that no more than 3 tracks from the same artist can be on the list.
I don't have Spotify so I can't look at all the tracks, just had a quick peek at the track list images, and it seems to be mostly (if not completely) modern music, the type you say doesn't have any low bass.
I didn't make this list and I'm not going to vet it, I did see Mick Jagger, Joni Mitchel and Miley Cirus in there so I'm not sure if they were just measuring noise in some of these but I bet there's a good bit of solid bass in this list.
Music whit <20Hz bass - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews
This is now the second major derailment of this thread, hopefully it doesn't take a 3rd silly turn. You are aware that you can start new threads for new topics, right?
Interesting. I appreciate the comparisons.
The part that interests me the most is that the amplitude of the live acoustic concert is pretty close to that of some of the peaks you show. The 17 hertz tone peaks out at -17db. The 60 to 80 hertz stuff is a bit higher. I didn't post that.
I have used the soundtrack form the last TRON as it has pretty high amplitude low end as well. I forgot to post it. And I'd have to find the tracks. I buried them somewhere for sure.
Few systems that anyone has in a home are capable of high output at the single digit peaks you are posting. So it makes me wonder the point of including it on a song in the first place. Then again in a car you can do it. So that is probably the main target audience.
Are these speaker measurements or the amplitude versus frequency types that I did?
Measurements of speakers are kind of useless because few people have exactly the same setup.
The recording I posted is acoustic. You have no amplification or artificial generation of anything. My wonderment leads me to this question. Does anyone listening to their concerts expect them to reproduce this seven hertz peak? If I do the math on the displacement needed to hear these effects in a large venue I stop rather quickly. No one can truck around that many enclosures and make money. And you would need a completely custom designed setup to even begin to reproduce those ultra low effects.
So I wonder what the real life experience of listening to these guys is like?
My guess is a great deal of upper harmonics.
In a similar manner the same goes for a symphony orchestra and a large pipe organ!
It isn't portable either. But you do actually get to hear the thunder and jack hammers in all their glory. Yes the pipe organ makes soft thunder and has on some stops the ability to sound like tuned jack hammers.
So one last point. The recording I posted is a live representation of what was heard by the people at that concert. The 7 hertz peak you posted in Bass I love, although definitely impressive is almost assured to have not been present in any concert that group could produce in a venue large enough to be worth performing in.
Long live the synthesizer!
That in itself makes these comparisons unique I guess.
So Anthony, have you ever worked with a system that plumbs the depths of sound that you are showing here?
The part that interests me the most is that the amplitude of the live acoustic concert is pretty close to that of some of the peaks you show. The 17 hertz tone peaks out at -17db. The 60 to 80 hertz stuff is a bit higher. I didn't post that.
I have used the soundtrack form the last TRON as it has pretty high amplitude low end as well. I forgot to post it. And I'd have to find the tracks. I buried them somewhere for sure.
Few systems that anyone has in a home are capable of high output at the single digit peaks you are posting. So it makes me wonder the point of including it on a song in the first place. Then again in a car you can do it. So that is probably the main target audience.
Are these speaker measurements or the amplitude versus frequency types that I did?
Measurements of speakers are kind of useless because few people have exactly the same setup.
The recording I posted is acoustic. You have no amplification or artificial generation of anything. My wonderment leads me to this question. Does anyone listening to their concerts expect them to reproduce this seven hertz peak? If I do the math on the displacement needed to hear these effects in a large venue I stop rather quickly. No one can truck around that many enclosures and make money. And you would need a completely custom designed setup to even begin to reproduce those ultra low effects.
So I wonder what the real life experience of listening to these guys is like?
My guess is a great deal of upper harmonics.
In a similar manner the same goes for a symphony orchestra and a large pipe organ!
It isn't portable either. But you do actually get to hear the thunder and jack hammers in all their glory. Yes the pipe organ makes soft thunder and has on some stops the ability to sound like tuned jack hammers.
So one last point. The recording I posted is a live representation of what was heard by the people at that concert. The 7 hertz peak you posted in Bass I love, although definitely impressive is almost assured to have not been present in any concert that group could produce in a venue large enough to be worth performing in.
Long live the synthesizer!
That in itself makes these comparisons unique I guess.
So Anthony, have you ever worked with a system that plumbs the depths of sound that you are showing here?
The point of including it is because there are people with systems that can handle it and those people want it. The car audio crowd is probably the target audience but there are at least a few dozen home systems on AVS that can play this just fine. Probably the average system owned by the regular contributors on AVS is eight high excursion 18s in sealed boxes with kilowatts of power behind them. Some of those guys have sixteen 18s in a concrete bunker (basement HT room). This target market DOES exist.
Just for fun here's what this song LOOKS like in a target market system. Notice the 7 hz notes are not causing the visible impact, it's the higher notes that get her moving. You can see the 7 hz fluttering the woofers but there's not much visceral impact. I bet she can feel it though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQjVN13dI10
This is Audacity's "Plot Spectrum" feature, it has nothing to do with speakers. If you recall, I just got done telling Ben in room speaker measurements are useless.
See the video above of what the real life experience of listening to the track is like. I seriously doubt this was ever intended to be played in a concert setting.
The point here is that low tones DO exist in several genres. Ben said there was nothing below 50 hz in genres outside of organ music, and voila, here it is. There is a target market for it and that target market is fully capable of playing it quite loud.
7 hz is not really my thing, but yes, I have had systems that could do it. Not as loud as the video but I have had car systems too. If you clip off the 7 hz stuff I've played it in the house too, I have subs that will do 20 hz at moderate volume. Quite a bit louder than an antique AR1 anyway.
This isn't really a big deal for people that are motivated to get single digits. Maybe 4 high excursion 18's in a normal room (nearfileld position would help) and a regular pro amp for a total of about $2000 gets you in the game. There are thousands of people with systems like that. Maybe not on this forum, but check avs and look at stuff other than horn discussions.
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Although there are no portable live sound systems capable of 7 Hz reproduction at near the relative level present in the "Bass I Love You" track, the headphones DJs and recording engineers typically use for monitoring are capable of going loud and low.
An example is the Sony MD7506, about -6 dB at 7 Hz.
Art
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No argument there Art.
What ear phones do you use?
You have been in this business longer than me.
Coming up on 41 (adult) years designing, building and mixing..
I use the Sony 7506 for studio use and GK Ultraphones for live use.
The GK Ultraphones use the same 7506 transducers mounted in a Peltor ear muff, so provide 30 dB of isolation.
Having spent over a million dollars on sound equipment, the GK Ultraphones definitely were the best investment I ever made. My only regret is having bought them long after already having noise induced hearing loss. That said, they were not available back in the 1970s before I knew that the noise of shop tools would ultimately result in a 50 dB hole in hearing response at 4 kHz, and ringing(tinnitus) at about the same frequency that sounds equivalent to about 55 dB SPL...
After getting the Ultraphones, realized they had about 10 dB more isolation than several different pairs of ear muffs I had been using in the shop, a much larger difference than I would have thought. Fortunately, the 3M Peltor H10A Optime 105 earmuffs are now available cheaply at the big box hardware stores and on line.
Art
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I did my first commercial design in 1989. So I guess that's 26 years.
Got me beat alright!
With you all the way on the ear muffs. And I'm going to look into the phones yo mentioned.
I too have tinnitus. Spent three days at a house build as a youngin where we were framing a house and yelling into each others ears to understand anything while a well was being sunk into rock. I have never worked around anything as loud before or since. My hearing poops at 15.3 khertz and my tinnitus can rear it's ugly head loud and proud if I don't wear hearing protection.
As for shop tools.
My Dad had a Hitachi combination planar that was a constant 105 db at the user position. We used it fairly often when I was growing up. And no ear protection back then. It was for sissies!
On framing work back when I had hair, a skill saw could crack 98db if you had a few walls to reflect the sound off of. I bought a RadioShack db meter back in the late 80's and learned what is what about loudness.
When I do reno work or cabinetmaking now ear protection is compulsory. And my helpers get a quick reminder if they "forget" to wear it.
You get one set of ears a lifetime. And they gotta last!
Mark,
Used to be I'd only notice tinnitus after loud unprotected noise, but over the last few years it has risen to the point where it is always present, considerably louder than low level noise like my computer fan.
The thing that probably was the worst for my hearing was cutting galvanized steel (for skirting trailer houses) with a circular saw with the blade in backwards. To get an idea of how loud it was, once had a friend yell directly in my ear while I was sawing. I did not hear him at all , which means the SPL was well above 125 dB, with most of the level concentrated in the 2-6 kHz range.
Ouch.
Ouch!
If only we had turned our brains on way earlier.
My kids are young men. 20 and 21. They have been out in the big bad world working for a few years now. And I used to slap them upside the head if they did anything like that when they were helping me. Gotta break the cycle of hearing damage somewhere. It's a cultural thing. You aren't man enough to take it or some stupid thing. I tell people where to go and how to get there if they try to make fun of my hearing protection.
I have cut steel roofing in the same manner. But I sure had on my ear muffs. I used to use PELTOR but now use Howard Leight. The HL's had a flatter attenuation curve than the PELTOR's.
Running stepped sine waves at one watt on some of the drivers I work with is also pretty exciting. Painful actually. 100 db plus at one watt on a few of the planars.
If only we had turned our brains on way earlier.
My kids are young men. 20 and 21. They have been out in the big bad world working for a few years now. And I used to slap them upside the head if they did anything like that when they were helping me. Gotta break the cycle of hearing damage somewhere. It's a cultural thing. You aren't man enough to take it or some stupid thing. I tell people where to go and how to get there if they try to make fun of my hearing protection.
I have cut steel roofing in the same manner. But I sure had on my ear muffs. I used to use PELTOR but now use Howard Leight. The HL's had a flatter attenuation curve than the PELTOR's.
Running stepped sine waves at one watt on some of the drivers I work with is also pretty exciting. Painful actually. 100 db plus at one watt on a few of the planars.
I can only agree with the cautions of the wise posts above.
But the "standards" of noise risk are not based on good research. And how they apply to home music reproduction is subtle.
For example, in another thread, folks were waxing lyrical about their 7-Hz loud loudspeakers. To "hear" anything (besides the easily audible harmonic distortion arising from whatever speaker-like device is shaking your room) at 7-Hz would require the wattage of a jet plane.
Ben
But the "standards" of noise risk are not based on good research. And how they apply to home music reproduction is subtle.
For example, in another thread, folks were waxing lyrical about their 7-Hz loud loudspeakers. To "hear" anything (besides the easily audible harmonic distortion arising from whatever speaker-like device is shaking your room) at 7-Hz would require the wattage of a jet plane.
Ben
So... you say you can reproduce 16 hz just fine in your room with antique speakers that have about 82 db sensitivity and max recommended power of 30 watts (although feeding them 30 watts at 16 hz would most likely destroy them).
But you say that to go one octave lower you need the wattage of a jet plane. (As far as I know jet planes are not measured in watts but I assume you mean a lot of watts).
As I said just a few posts ago, 4 nearfield high excursion 18's and a decent pro amp will get you in the game. Especially if the subs are nearfield and on a wood floor you should be able to feel 7 hz just fine, through the air and through the floor.
But you say that to go one octave lower you need the wattage of a jet plane. (As far as I know jet planes are not measured in watts but I assume you mean a lot of watts).
As I said just a few posts ago, 4 nearfield high excursion 18's and a decent pro amp will get you in the game. Especially if the subs are nearfield and on a wood floor you should be able to feel 7 hz just fine, through the air and through the floor.
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