Not to be disrespectful or trite, those who think small think efficiency, and those who think big think waste. But waste sounds better. Big things (speakers) that are barely working sound better.
I'm not sure there is any end to this debate, personal taste being what it is being argued, also no speaker suits every music genre. What I always find hard to understand is how most audio reviewers are over forty and seem to have bionic hearing! They hear things ordinary humans cannot, are they part dog? Reviews written about cables for example are insane to me.
The only thing I for sure is if it sounds good to you it is good, right?
Some people are happy with a table top radio, others a micro system(BOSE), and others want something more substantial. Then there are the obscenely wealthy who can spend $200,000 on a pair of speakers!
I am somewhere in between, though closer to the table top radio than the $200k end, but sometimes I wonder if the table top radio crowd are the lucky ones who just enjoy the tune regardless of the sound quality.
The debate between FR and Multiway might be fun, but there is no winning or convincing the other side.
Have fun, I'm turning up the music and closing my eyes.
The only thing I for sure is if it sounds good to you it is good, right?
Some people are happy with a table top radio, others a micro system(BOSE), and others want something more substantial. Then there are the obscenely wealthy who can spend $200,000 on a pair of speakers!
I am somewhere in between, though closer to the table top radio than the $200k end, but sometimes I wonder if the table top radio crowd are the lucky ones who just enjoy the tune regardless of the sound quality.
The debate between FR and Multiway might be fun, but there is no winning or convincing the other side.
Have fun, I'm turning up the music and closing my eyes.
+1
And with all the compromises required in any speaker design, one can take 2 equally good speakers and they can be quite different.
First there are 2 hearing systems, one that degrades with age (the more commonly spoken of based on Frequency Response) and another that degrades much less (based on time response). Second, one cannot discount the importance of hearing training. As is commonly bandied about, it takes ~10,000 hrs of serious training to become good at anything. One therefore has to ask how many hrs of serious listening training has te reviewer had, how many have you had?
dave
I recently was impressed by 4-way speakers. You can hear their consistency off-axis, I moved my cellphone around them.
Wavebourn Gubernator - 71 amplifier with Legacy Focus SE speakers - YouTube
The same amp, with 2-way line arrays:
Wavebourn high end Public Address line arrays (2004 year prototypes) - YouTube
Wavebourn Gubernator - 71 amplifier with Legacy Focus SE speakers - YouTube
The same amp, with 2-way line arrays:
Wavebourn high end Public Address line arrays (2004 year prototypes) - YouTube
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says who, your biased ears? science concluded decades ago that a speaker with one driver cant ever be good. if you want loads of beaming and high distortion its the way to go. otherwize multiway will always performe better (when done correctly ofcourse)
even small 1inch tweeters have lots of issues in their operating range, asking a large cone to reproduce both tiny and large wavelengths is ridiculous.
At home, I use coax, 2 way horn, OB, vintage, desktop sound bar, B&W and headphones. They are all fine speakers. Each speaker has its own character and use. It's like a guitar to me. It's hard to choose the best one. Some of them are less versatile than the other. I'll get vintage FR soon.
Fullrangers aren't "satisfying" in the visceral sense unless you're talking about the truly large ones with laserbeam (and generally rising) treble.
I have enjoyed a number of fullrange systems, but when the big dog multiways come into the picture, they all fall badly short, regardless of subwoofer assistance.
Given the time, money, and effort I've put into audio, having a system that can't come near reference playback levels, and has significant bandwidth/dispersion/distortion concerns, is a non-starter long-term. The exception, for me, is nearfield listening. Many of the same concerns apply to the vast majority of standmounts. I usually listen in the 75dB (average) range but sometimes I like to crank it a bit more and have peaks in the low 100s. If those aren't clean across the bandwidth, the experience is a lot less compelling.
I have enjoyed a number of fullrange systems, but when the big dog multiways come into the picture, they all fall badly short, regardless of subwoofer assistance.
Given the time, money, and effort I've put into audio, having a system that can't come near reference playback levels, and has significant bandwidth/dispersion/distortion concerns, is a non-starter long-term. The exception, for me, is nearfield listening. Many of the same concerns apply to the vast majority of standmounts. I usually listen in the 75dB (average) range but sometimes I like to crank it a bit more and have peaks in the low 100s. If those aren't clean across the bandwidth, the experience is a lot less compelling.
Full range drivers are a good route to get into speaker building and diy. They require no knowledge of crossovers. Put them in a box and you have sound. That's the attraction. But once you start looking for better performance, especially at the ends of the spectrum, you start getting into sub and tweeter assistance, and from there, it becomes obvious that even better performance can be achieved by designing proper crossovers and integrating all the drivers and the system, not just building around one driver.
I've been involved in the audio hobby for over 50yrs, and have owned quite a few pairs of speakers, and built some as well. As there are very few commercial single driver / "full range" systems -other than slightly exotics such as certain ESLs , obviously most of my several dozen pairs of store bought speakers would have been multi-ways. Some of them were "big" to me - Celestion Ditton 66, Dahlquist DQ10 & sub, Acoustat 1, Tangent RS8 - but possibly none would qualify as "big dogs" in badman or Cal Weldon's lexicon.
Indeed some of my most underwhelming / confounding - in the sense of "what am I not getting here?"- listening sessions where of large high efficiency mult-ways venerated by others; JBL Paragon, ElectroVoice Patricians, Klipsch K-horns and La Scallas, Altec A7 VOTT. Sure they motored effortlessly to past my threshold of pain, but even at sane moderate levels, never really connected me more closely with the music - in some cases the only compelling emotion was to get out of the room as soon as politically expedient.
OTOH, modest commercial 2-ways such as Dynaco A25, Large Advents, AR2ax, EPI 150, Linn Index, Boston A100, even 50+yr old KLH17 can be simply enjoyable. I can also get sufficient satisfaction from modern wideband drivers such as certain Fostex and Alpairs. If that metric is insufficient for some folks, so be it . Listen, enjoy what you like - it could change over time - and let others do the same, proselytizing for more is a waste of time, I think.
Indeed some of my most underwhelming / confounding - in the sense of "what am I not getting here?"- listening sessions where of large high efficiency mult-ways venerated by others; JBL Paragon, ElectroVoice Patricians, Klipsch K-horns and La Scallas, Altec A7 VOTT. Sure they motored effortlessly to past my threshold of pain, but even at sane moderate levels, never really connected me more closely with the music - in some cases the only compelling emotion was to get out of the room as soon as politically expedient.
OTOH, modest commercial 2-ways such as Dynaco A25, Large Advents, AR2ax, EPI 150, Linn Index, Boston A100, even 50+yr old KLH17 can be simply enjoyable. I can also get sufficient satisfaction from modern wideband drivers such as certain Fostex and Alpairs. If that metric is insufficient for some folks, so be it . Listen, enjoy what you like - it could change over time - and let others do the same, proselytizing for more is a waste of time, I think.
Exactly right. And this was my personal journey into DIY speaker building too.
However, in all fairness one can get pretty good results using a "full" / wide-range driver + supertweeter too, if one is willing to go to the trouble of building a fairly elaborate enclosure, like e.g. these.
Having said that, a large and properly designed multiway is always going to be better ultimately.
Instead, small stand-mount 2-ways (i.e., BBC LS3/5a style) may or may not be more satisfying than a really nice small full-ranger like this.
IME high efficiency speakers like the ones you mention tend to sound bad at low domestic levels.
I think K-horns are good speakers at 1W (104dB) but to me sound like poo at 1/100W (84dB). Personally I extend that to all speakers: They sound bad when fed tiny fractions of a Watt.
My experience is different from yours. 😕 High efficiency speakers with a large woofer (15") generally sound better (more enjoyable) than low eff speakers with small woofer at lower level IME.
This is most likely due to the equal loudness curve. Our ears are much more sensitive to low midrange/bass and especially high frequencies as the volume increases. The big speakers are very likely to be voiced for high SPL playback. This means a rolled off treble and low midrange and bass response. This will not sound good at low volumes, where we actually hear the rolled off treble and low midrange/bass, but at high volumes, our ear's sensitivity of low midrange/bass and treble increases, and this type of a frequency response will sound subjectively flat, and it will sound really good.
On the converse, a speaker that sounds good at moderate volumes will likely not sound very good at very high volumes. Most would describe the sound as "harsh". One component of that is definitely the speaker is distorting at that volume. However, this will happen with very low distortion speakers too. This is simply because the speaker likely has a fairly flat frequency response, which sounds subjectively flat to our ears at moderate volumes, so it sounds good. However, at high volumes, the ear subjectively hears a V shaped sound due to the increase in sensitivity of low midrange/bass and treble, and therefore the ear thinks it sound "harsh".
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My experience is quite opposite, the higher sensitivity speakers with a large midwoofer sound okay but not as good as smaller diameter diaphragm or cone speakers of lower sensitivity. The best midrange tones I have achieved was with 2" and 3" domes, paper and metal. There is also the question of implemented XO filter, which with a Tannoy T12 product is such that the resulting sound output is muddy and muffled by factory, for the purpose of home hifi listening. Otherwise I am quite fond of Tannoy co-axial units like T3142.
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while the thread was long since closed, I think a definite oxymoron would be "audiophile* consensus"
* some of my family not involved in this subset of human activity don't understand my almost visceral objection to that word
* some of my family not involved in this subset of human activity don't understand my almost visceral objection to that word
Our ears are LESS sensitive to the lower end.
Most people would be able to stand 120db anywhere from 20hz to 50hz or so, but anything between 500hz and 5khz would be painful/hurtful.
We didnt even wear earing protection in 140-145db SPL drag competition vehicles, while mid/high frequencies at this level would make you instantly deaf
That being said, the physical feeling of 140-145db @ 20-25hz wouldnt be pleasing, i'm pretty sure. I'd rather choose the then-usual 45-60hz...
I remember a guy who was doing SPL competition (before we knew how to reach very high levels) and he made 4th bandpass boxes with something like two dozens of 12's... Maximum he was able to get was something like 148db. Which seems a lot but it wasn't.
But the thing is: 33hz. That was the peak from his kit, which is very low. The feeling inside that truck was unbelievable. Pression was filling your lungs, ready to explode, your eyes were crying, you couldnt breath, everything was blurry... Ears? Not so much of a problem, but the whole body was screaming: get me out of here!!
But the thing is: 33hz. That was the peak from his kit, which is very low. The feeling inside that truck was unbelievable. Pression was filling your lungs, ready to explode, your eyes were crying, you couldnt breath, everything was blurry... Ears? Not so much of a problem, but the whole body was screaming: get me out of here!!
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