vodkas taste different - it's not the percent proof that is completely responsible for this - watering down drink is seldom noticed in the tasting - it's only the end of night effect that is noticed.
Distortion is anything reproduced that wasn't in the intended soundfield.
I'm not sure we have the same definition of accuracy?
They sure do taste different, especially the 10$ stuff.
That definition of distortion seems correct. I'd say accuracy or fidelity isn't just errors of commission like distortion but also omission.
So then something like a horn that excels at detail retrieval might in some ways be more accurate but also have higher distortion.
The ideal would be full detail retrieval without distortion as far as we can perceive it. Some drivers and combinations of drivers can get really close to this, especially with digital processing and equalization. Small changes in fidelity don't make or break the illusion.
Good idea, also putting stuffing in a pillow or cheese cloth and stapling it in place.
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Is the omission of the room deliberate when cycling trough the different areas? There is much to gain in the room itself. Get the speaker and room to work together to move ahead. Look at what happens at that listening position and the area around it.
I thought the whole point of vodka is that it has almost no flavourThey sure do taste different, especially the 10$ stuff.
Not much I can do with a room unless I sacrifice other purposes. But I also listen at other locations. The main goal is to improve the playback system performance. But at least I am quite sure it is near impossible to have standing waves in my normal listening room.
Just tested a blue tooth music receiver from TP Link, it really provides some good value in my current design.
I have some intent to clean out a basement for dedicated listening and measurements, but it is in a different city, so no telling when it will be done. Some BBC concepts seemed very interesting.
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That used to be the point for centuries but something happened* in the last 10-20 years and now vodka is supposed to have flavour.
The traditional way to test vodka was to rub some on the back of your hand, let it evaporate and then sniff it.
There was supposed to be no perceivable smell.
*marketing and the need to find a 'reason' to pay extra for certain brands
Could someone correct me, or explain me. Is it correct that only a amplifier, and sound transducer could produce distortion, harmonics, and intermodulation. And the room and housing could produce only a reverb ( delayed signal ), and the external environment a sound noise - like me neighbors.
I will found some criterion for the speaker that could be measured, and tell me that the good enough to reproduce sound right.
I will found some criterion for the speaker that could be measured, and tell me that the good enough to reproduce sound right.
All 3 can have an effect on everything. However a typical solid state amp or home theater receiver won't have a big effect. The speakers and room will interact and produce different kinds of distortion and also different dispersion patterns. Room will affect imaging and frequency response. If it doesn't sound good its probably the room and speakers, not the electronics.
I might be the first person in the world to pass the cheap stuff through a brita filter, some 16 years ago.
Couldn't agree more.
There's no doubt that high Q resonances from about 2Khz upwards can cause harshness that becomes far more audible and objectionable as SPL goes up and often "sounds like" non-linear distortion when it isn't.
At low SPL's a high Q resonance at 4Khz might be perceived as "vivid" or "present", (and a lot of speakers, some very expensive have quite big peaks around this region when they really ought not to...) at moderate SPL's it starts to become fatiguing even though you can't necessarily pinpoint the cause and at high SPL's it just sounds downright unpleasant and sounds like what you would imagine non-linear distortion would sound like.
But the whole time it's just the same linear resonance that is perceived differently at different SPL's, and could conceivably be fixed in EQ depending on the nature of the resonance.
Along similar lines something else that irks me is that many people authoritatively say that "cone breakup" resonances especially in paper cones "get worse" at higher SPL's or that there is some SPL threshold for a driver where the cone breakup begins or suddenly gets much worse.
I don't buy that at all, because that would imply that the frequency response of the driver varies dramatically in the breakup region between low SPL and high SPL - and I haven't be able to measure this supposed effect.
I've done many measurements of a variety of full range drivers - which are designed to operate right through their breakup region and are often paper cones, so are prime candidates to experience this "phenomenon", but I see little if any change in the frequency response through the breakup region at different SPL's.
Offset the response curves to overlay a high and low SPL measurement on top of each other and the response through the breakup region lines up almost perfectly within measurement error - at least in the measurements I've done.
When you think about it it doesn't make sense that the frequency response in the breakup region would change so dramatically at different SPL levels - if it did, it would make it impossible to EQ out a breakup resonance in the crossover design as the correction would only be right at one SPL. Fortunately that's not the case.
I think it's far more likely that the driver with cone breakup resonances has the same linear response problem at both low and high SPL - but that we perceive it to be much more of a problem at high SPL where the defect becomes much more irritating to the ear.
I've certainly noticed that as I have tweaked drivers and crossovers to eliminate high frequency resonances that the speaker starts sounding easier on the ear at high SPL's, much more so than the change noticed at low SPL's, where the only apparent change may be just be a modest change in tonal balance. It becomes more "high SPL friendly".
This is one reason I do not agree with the "high Q resonances are less noticeable than low Q" mantra - they might not be as noticeable from a tonal balance perspective, (due to the smaller area under the curve) but I believe that at higher frequencies they are directly responsible for listening fatigue at moderate levels and harshness / "distortion" at high SPL and should be avoided at all costs, and here, low Q resonances are more benign and also much easier to EQ out.
The comment about diffraction is interesting - I think we discussed this years ago, and I wondered at the time whether high frequency diffraction could have a similar audible effect to resonances at high SPL in that the comb filtering that can result from diffraction on a given measurement axis can result in "steep" shifts in the frequency response, not unlike a high Q resonance.
The more I've experimented and looked into it, the more I believe that the narrow band "slope" of frequency response variations directly correlates with how bad they sound - especially at higher frequencies, with steep slopes, as you might find around a high Q resonance sounding the worst.
Kind of obvious perhaps that a smoother flatter response sounds better, but it depends on how you define flat vs smooth.
You could have a speaker where the 1/3rd octave averaged response is nearly perfectly flat and balanced, (perhaps someone had at it with a 1/3rd octave graphic equaliser and RTA) but within that there could be many "hidden" high Q resonances which would show up in a narrow band measurement that make the speaker sound harsh and unpleasant at high SPL's, despite the speaker having a nominally flat and neutral tonal response based on our critical bands.
On the other hand you could have a speaker with no high Q resonances and only smooth, gradual, low slope changes to the frequency response, even when measured narrow band, but with significant errors in overall tonal balance from the bottom to the top.
This speaker might have issues with tonal imbalance but will probably sound very smooth and free from harshness at high SPL despite it's tonal imbalance. Additionally, this speaker's shortcoming can be much, much more easily fixed with EQ than one with lots of narrow band irregularities, which may not be fixable at all if they are diffraction related.
So while a flat frequency response is important I would actually rate a "smooth" frequency response with no steep/sudden changes to be far more important, as long as the flatness is "in the ball park", and this kind of speaker will almost certainly sound better at higher SPL than one with a lot of narrow band irregularities in the response.
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One thing about cone resonance is, that it has wider directivity than the regions below and above it. This emphasizes the audibility quite a lot, by making an even bigger hump in power response! "Rings like a bell"
SEAS L22RNX/P
A tweeter's resonance is usually so high in F that the effect is not so audible (at least to us senior listeners) Actually sometimes it seems to give that fancy sparkle to the sound, if I read reviews correctly.
SEAS L22RNX/P
A tweeter's resonance is usually so high in F that the effect is not so audible (at least to us senior listeners) Actually sometimes it seems to give that fancy sparkle to the sound, if I read reviews correctly.
By what mechanism would a cone breakup resonance have a wider directivity than other frequencies in the same region ?One thing about cone resonance is, that it has wider directivity than the regions below and above it. This emphasizes the audibility quite a lot, by making an even bigger hump in power response! "Rings like a bell"
SEAS L22RNX/P
Radial modes that produce most of the upper midrange breakup resonances of a midrange driver have their standing wave peaks predominantly near the outside of the cone, so primarily radiate from the outer perimeter of the cone - and thus have a large effective radiating diameter.
If anything a cone breakup resonance would be more directional not less directional.
I'm not sure that the response graph you have posted backs up your claim of the resonances having wider dispersion - the resonances look bad at all angles to me, to know for sure you'd need to look at a high resolution, normalised directivity sonogram.
That's obviously going to depend highly on the type of tweeter. On any soft dome no matter how well damped it will have breakup resonances well within the audible range.
I think it would have to do with the "bending wave" mode that occurs at breakup. Bending wave transducers like Manger and Göbeln has very wide dispersion due to the way the sound is generated in this mode. It will be specifically obvious in a bigger drive, where the dispersion is getting narrower at a few k due to size but all of a sudden, the dispersion pattern gets very wide (> 160 deg) at a certain frequency, due to breakup (i.e going into bending).
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From Klippel Papers
There are many modes of loudspeaker vibration/resonance, the complex modes tend to radiate widely
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/kl...ement_and_Visualization_Cone_vibration_06.pdf
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/kl..._and_Analysis_of_Loudspeaker_Vibration_07.pdf
From Loudsoft FINECone - Speaker Design software - Professional Products - loudsoft
There are many modes of loudspeaker vibration/resonance, the complex modes tend to radiate widely
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/kl...ement_and_Visualization_Cone_vibration_06.pdf
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/kl..._and_Analysis_of_Loudspeaker_Vibration_07.pdf
From Loudsoft FINECone - Speaker Design software - Professional Products - loudsoft
I'm still with the "down the hall" way to look at "distortion": does it sound like "the real thing" in your house but from down the hallway.
Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish distortions that resemble the sounds of music versus those that don't.
For example, we have the old debate about amp distortion versus speaker distortion. Generally speaking, I suspect speaker distortions to more closely resemble the sounds of music more than the intra-electronic distortions of an amp. And that may be why we give more slack to speakers, at least in looking at the types of distortion that have historically been assessed for amps and are, except for Earl, casually assessed for speakers*.
Which brings me to Juhazi's/Klippel's data. It may that the damage from those kinds of breakup distortions need to be assessed in relation to how they mimic sound of music distortions?
B.
*which also suggests that HD and IMD are barely applicable to speakers while impulse responses (which defy quantification) are applicable
Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish distortions that resemble the sounds of music versus those that don't.
For example, we have the old debate about amp distortion versus speaker distortion. Generally speaking, I suspect speaker distortions to more closely resemble the sounds of music more than the intra-electronic distortions of an amp. And that may be why we give more slack to speakers, at least in looking at the types of distortion that have historically been assessed for amps and are, except for Earl, casually assessed for speakers*.
Which brings me to Juhazi's/Klippel's data. It may that the damage from those kinds of breakup distortions need to be assessed in relation to how they mimic sound of music distortions?
B.
*which also suggests that HD and IMD are barely applicable to speakers while impulse responses (which defy quantification) are applicable
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