Which is the opposite of what I’m looking for and is clearly a design preference, that should stay out in the open. I do not want a speaker that lies to me. If the recording is bad, if the mix and mastering is bad, I want it to be exposed to greatest ability that a loudspeaker can make such things known. As said before, the talent of engineer is of great importance but a smart engineer is also one who seeks the best tool for the job.
Allen B made a point, tight phase and smooth as possible freq response, those things are always on the list, and 0 degrees takes priority. I diffusion is, in a certain light, the opposite of clarity, if you were to view room energy as a form of distortion, which I do.
So let’s say having directivity is a big part of what I’m looking for....how does the lothers/oris horn setup compare to a compression driver? Why wouldn’t I just find the best coaxial I can and put it in a large horn as opposed to using a axi2050?
Just a few thoughts on what makes a speaker sound good across a wide range of recordings...
First, from a frequency reponse point of view, a tonal balance point of view, I think the closer we are to a flat downward sloping magnitude trace, the more likely we are in the mean of the distribution of the mastering environments.
There are mastering variances all over the place for sure, but the distance between our particular system and the variances gets minimized.
Next, I agree the ratio of direct to reflected sound matters....hugely really.
The wider the speaker's dispersion, the greater the percentage of recordings that will sound passable. The more omni the speaker, the better the odds of a recording sounding OK.
Not optimal by any means, ... but OK, passable..
And last, something I've been learning from comparing my CD+12" boxes to recent builds such as the 15" coax, and CBT/straight line arrays, is the number of points the direct sound comes from effects the % of recordings that will sound good.
The line arrays definitely produce multiple direct arrivals of the same signal. They make for a nice pleasing direct sounds good across alot of material.
The 15" coax makes multiple arrivals in its cone region, that I don't measure on straight cones in the same passband. I think that's why it sounds a little more diffuse than a coax CD+12".
The 15" coax is a little more tolerant of source material than the coax CD+12". (with close to same radiation pattern)
Bottom line ime, whether it's multiple arrivals from wider dispersion and reflection, or multiple arrivals from multiple direct points coming straight from the speaker......we get time smear.
And time smear is forgiving of recordings ... and strangely can often help make decent sound.
But when there's no time smear, and the recording is good...well....to me that's what hifi is....that's when phase response becomes all important too.
Only problem is that it becomes like walking on a tightrope. Bad recordings, even slight spectral imbalances, become more apparent.
Oh, and hi-fi has to have the headroom Krivium was talking about..
Gotta love this hobby, huh?
First, from a frequency reponse point of view, a tonal balance point of view, I think the closer we are to a flat downward sloping magnitude trace, the more likely we are in the mean of the distribution of the mastering environments.
There are mastering variances all over the place for sure, but the distance between our particular system and the variances gets minimized.
Next, I agree the ratio of direct to reflected sound matters....hugely really.
The wider the speaker's dispersion, the greater the percentage of recordings that will sound passable. The more omni the speaker, the better the odds of a recording sounding OK.
Not optimal by any means, ... but OK, passable..
And last, something I've been learning from comparing my CD+12" boxes to recent builds such as the 15" coax, and CBT/straight line arrays, is the number of points the direct sound comes from effects the % of recordings that will sound good.
The line arrays definitely produce multiple direct arrivals of the same signal. They make for a nice pleasing direct sounds good across alot of material.
The 15" coax makes multiple arrivals in its cone region, that I don't measure on straight cones in the same passband. I think that's why it sounds a little more diffuse than a coax CD+12".
The 15" coax is a little more tolerant of source material than the coax CD+12". (with close to same radiation pattern)
Bottom line ime, whether it's multiple arrivals from wider dispersion and reflection, or multiple arrivals from multiple direct points coming straight from the speaker......we get time smear.
And time smear is forgiving of recordings ... and strangely can often help make decent sound.
But when there's no time smear, and the recording is good...well....to me that's what hifi is....that's when phase response becomes all important too.
Only problem is that it becomes like walking on a tightrope. Bad recordings, even slight spectral imbalances, become more apparent.
Oh, and hi-fi has to have the headroom Krivium was talking about..
Gotta love this hobby, huh?
From previous discussion with Pano i think what he is talking about is not the opposite of what you are looking for: this is just that even if there is flaws in the recording with a 'transparent' loudspeaker you end up earing them but it doesn't make the music unlistenable as with some flawed design, it just put the flaws 'in light'.
If there is something interesting in the message (from an artistic perspective) this isn't hidden by the technical flaws as it might be with a 'bad' loudspeaker.
That said Cspeaker previous remark about contrast between excellent and mediocre recording may leave you unsatisfied.
That call for the use of headphone as once was mentioned before. Anyway you should have this to your palette of tools.
Headphones are wideband/fullrange drivers by nature, most of them doesn't have xover and the required SPL for them to be usable is way less than what a Lowther or other fragile driver will have to endure ( if you plan to listen to Trap or Bassmusic with such fragile drivers i hope you are wealthy as you may have to change them regularly). And the use of good headphone to check for eq is something that is usually done in pro context when someone doesn't trust the monitors.
About sound quality and suitability for studio of full range use i can't tell, heard few very briefly and my opinion was biased about them ( owner refused to play some of my reference track: to high a risk to damage them from his point).
Maybe Mitchba could tell as he heard some Kleinhorn ( there is binaural recording availlable on his site/blog) and he has great experience.
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In fact no that is a lie... i can tell i encountered one fullranger in studio:
Google Image Result for https://www.picclickimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/-ggAAOSw3r5dWdaA/$/VINTAGE-AURATONE-5C-SUPER-SOUND-CUBE-From-_1.jpg
As horrible as NS10 but a very usefull tool for MIXING. Forget for the rest...
Oh, and hi-fi has to have the headroom Krivium was talking about..
Gotta love this hobby, huh?
Lol! From someone using at home speaker with 110db efficiency driven by 10kw amp...i'm sure you understand my point!
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I have headphones and I use wave nx for its ability to provide corrective eq and room simulation. It actually works and you can get a mix to 85% pretty confidently. A simulation of loudspeakers in a room, that is...The tactile stimulation of bass and mid bass, is missing but all in all, I don’t think headphones don’t have much to offer me, the hd600 are about the flattest voiced headphones you can buy, leaving waves nx with light load to clean up.
Once again, why not take the best coaxial I can find and put it in a horn? Beyma has a nice line of coaxials. Has anyone experienced coaxial dynamic drivers in a front loaded horn? I wonder how it compares to compression drivers. Could be 4” might be 10” or 15”...I’m just wondering how they compare...I guess off the bat, the rigid and extremely thin diaphragm of the compression driver is going to create advantages.
Once again, why not take the best coaxial I can find and put it in a horn? Beyma has a nice line of coaxials. Has anyone experienced coaxial dynamic drivers in a front loaded horn? I wonder how it compares to compression drivers. Could be 4” might be 10” or 15”...I’m just wondering how they compare...I guess off the bat, the rigid and extremely thin diaphragm of the compression driver is going to create advantages.
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In order to get a better understanding of camplo's objectives, it's useful to zoom out, even put (loudspeaker) technology aside for a moment and focus on the sound of music.
An easy to comprehend, basic explanation can be found in "The Live Sound Manual"
A quote:
"How music confounds science
You could say music operates in more dimensions than science can accurately measure, More than being simply soundwaves moving in physical space and time, there's the harder-to-quantify effects that pitch and rhythm changes can have on an individual listener - and the even more complex and unpredictable effects it can have on several individuals in different parts of the same venue, with different physiological and psychological backgrounds and make-ups.
Tables, charts and waves on an oscilloscope are helpful tools for certain audio engineering tasks, but when it comes to the whole picture, the sound of music can only really be gauged by an experienced and sensitive pair of ears - and almost by definition there will be no optimum means of music reproduction that's perfectly suited to everyone, despite all the technological 'advances' made to date."
Also included in the document is a list of general terms used to describe the sonic or dynamic properties of music, among which:
Dynamic contrast(s) - subtle changes in level or pitch embedded among much larger changes.
An easy to comprehend, basic explanation can be found in "The Live Sound Manual"
A quote:
"How music confounds science
You could say music operates in more dimensions than science can accurately measure, More than being simply soundwaves moving in physical space and time, there's the harder-to-quantify effects that pitch and rhythm changes can have on an individual listener - and the even more complex and unpredictable effects it can have on several individuals in different parts of the same venue, with different physiological and psychological backgrounds and make-ups.
Tables, charts and waves on an oscilloscope are helpful tools for certain audio engineering tasks, but when it comes to the whole picture, the sound of music can only really be gauged by an experienced and sensitive pair of ears - and almost by definition there will be no optimum means of music reproduction that's perfectly suited to everyone, despite all the technological 'advances' made to date."
Also included in the document is a list of general terms used to describe the sonic or dynamic properties of music, among which:
Dynamic contrast(s) - subtle changes in level or pitch embedded among much larger changes.
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Had the same idea a while back but i've read a thread here where the idea was expressed by another member and the outcome from the discussion was it wasn't a good idea, but i don't remember why, neither the thread title...
That said since i've seen that in the Danley's 'molded serie' there is a number of models which seems to be just that a coax into a kind of waveguide: Sm100, Sm80,...
So who knows.
Maybe other members with more experience could give insight about that, i can't.
Martin Audio CDD Coaxials:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
I wasn't clear, was I. With lesser speakers, good and great recordings sound the same because the speakers max out at "good", so to speak. You never hear "great". Once you hear "great" on better speakers, that's what you want to hear from then on, and the idea of listening to the so-so recordings just doesn't appeal to you as much.
Hi ScottJoplin,
Well there is many way to screw up things.
The list is long. And i have a lot of example i've done i could send ( but i won't as i don't want to definitely loose credibility in public! ).
I thought i sent you one such example some year ago. In that particular case the kind of couple wasn't adapted to the instrument ( but had not really other choice regarding the acoustic), the kind of mic used wasn't here again the best choice for this piano regarding its tone.
There was too much ambient noise and overall the whole rendering wasn't really natural which for this kind of music isn't great ( It was an extract from ballad No1 in g minor Op23).
Overall not very good. The pianist was great and the performance worth to keep but for the rest?
Just an example.
Well there is many way to screw up things.
The list is long. And i have a lot of example i've done i could send ( but i won't as i don't want to definitely loose credibility in public!
).I thought i sent you one such example some year ago. In that particular case the kind of couple wasn't adapted to the instrument ( but had not really other choice regarding the acoustic), the kind of mic used wasn't here again the best choice for this piano regarding its tone.
There was too much ambient noise and overall the whole rendering wasn't really natural which for this kind of music isn't great ( It was an extract from ballad No1 in g minor Op23).
Overall not very good. The pianist was great and the performance worth to keep but for the rest?
Just an example.
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Just a few thoughts on what makes a speaker sound good across a wide range of recordings...
First, from a frequency reponse point of view, a tonal balance point of view, I think the closer we are to a flat downward sloping magnitude trace, the more likely we are in the mean of the distribution of the mastering environments.
There are mastering variances all over the place for sure, but the distance between our particular system and the variances gets minimized.
Next, I agree the ratio of direct to reflected sound matters....hugely really.
The wider the speaker's dispersion, the greater the percentage of recordings that will sound passable. The more omni the speaker, the better the odds of a recording sounding OK.
Not optimal by any means, ... but OK, passable..
And last, something I've been learning from comparing my CD+12" boxes to recent builds such as the 15" coax, and CBT/straight line arrays, is the number of points the direct sound comes from effects the % of recordings that will sound good.
The line arrays definitely produce multiple direct arrivals of the same signal. They make for a nice pleasing direct sounds good across alot of material.
The 15" coax makes multiple arrivals in its cone region, that I don't measure on straight cones in the same passband. I think that's why it sounds a little more diffuse than a coax CD+12".
The 15" coax is a little more tolerant of source material than the coax CD+12". (with close to same radiation pattern)
Bottom line ime, whether it's multiple arrivals from wider dispersion and reflection, or multiple arrivals from multiple direct points coming straight from the speaker......we get time smear.
And time smear is forgiving of recordings ... and strangely can often help make decent sound.
But when there's no time smear, and the recording is good...well....to me that's what hifi is....that's when phase response becomes all important too.
Only problem is that it becomes like walking on a tightrope. Bad recordings, even slight spectral imbalances, become more apparent.
Oh, and hi-fi has to have the headroom Krivium was talking about..
Gotta love this hobby, huh?
Thanks for sharing Mark, your experience is very telling. At first glance its like yeah thats predictable because time smear should equal cancellations and anomalies in the freq response that are dynamic in nature, dynamic as in "characterized by constant change, activity, or progress" . Multiways should be affected by this within the crossover region. I am confused why a compression coaxial plus 12" woofer would have less arrivals than a 15" coaxial. Makes no sense at first glance. If the coaxial compression driver had a lesser amount of arrivals, it would make sense that directivity of the horn it was on reduced reflections....but the reason you gave evades me. There will be some percentage of time smear within crossover frequencies, the coaxial 15" has 1 xover, the coaxial compression driver + 12 has 3....So please elaborate on this please.
I think we are starting to get a sense of what dynamic contrast is. 3.
Dynamics -
MUSIC
the varying levels of volume of sound in different parts of a musical performance.
Contrast
the state of being strikingly different from something else
In this case the "strikingly different" variable is SPL. The more Dynamic Contrast a loudspeaker has, the greater the distance between the highest high and lowest low in comparison to other loudspeakers. As I've said before, judging eq accurately is drastically impacted by how a loudspeaker performs in this area.
Time smear, or better yet, Time based distortion, will cause cancellation and accumulation of spl , uniquely or chaotically, within the frequency response. These changes remain in a dynamic state, that is, ever changing, fueled by the source material itself. If I am not mistaken, it was in a Geddes paper (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1572/ec97177f6949e0ebcc879a38478ca68385b6.pdf) that I was made aware of the possibility of spl manipulating group delay. It is this ever changing state of micro transactions between time smear and spectral spl, due to input level differences across the spectrum of the evolving source material, that is at core. So to come full circle, we end up with a spectral spl contrast level that is not perfectly static, because there is no perfect loudspeaker...which is a fancy way of saying that the frequency response curve is not static at a transfer function level nor an input level scenario.....
So my goal is to minimize amount of "arrivals" and the contrast of latency of the arrivals, the best I can. High directivity, lowest amount of drivers, and in the case of multiple drivers, time alignment.....low excursion increases linearity which increases consistency....
Most people who focus on data driven quality assessments (Gedds etc) say it's because I.M.D. does is not very audible and doesn't degrade quality much.
Makes sense given that when Genelec brought out the One series, they were focused on the reduction in diffraction that their approach with the dual surround gave. (their solution wouldn't change the I.M.D.) I assume that configuration is patented though.... :/
If IMD isn't a serious condition what is midrange warble that happens when the woofer of a two way is caused to extend too much due to loud and or deep bass, called?
The Genelec one series....lets say the 8361A.....thats a 3 way, since when did 3 ways have major IMD issues generally speaking? How well do you think it handles sub bass? It probably needs a sub, because of IMD issues associated with high excursion of sub bass....
Woofers are known to increase in transient response with the introduction of properly placed high pass filtering....that removes high excursion.....cause IMD.
The Genelec one series....lets say the 8361A.....thats a 3 way, since when did 3 ways have major IMD issues generally speaking? How well do you think it handles sub bass? It probably needs a sub, because of IMD issues associated with high excursion of sub bass....
Woofers are known to increase in transient response with the introduction of properly placed high pass filtering....that removes high excursion.....cause IMD.
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High directivity comes to a price: listening position will be small and move a bit and everything change. Typical head in a wise. I really dislike that hence my love for Coax.
Pick your poison.
Mark i agree your comment is very interesting. Even more as you have direct access to this different kinds of behavior and can perform comparative test. I'm jealous!
However my experience with ATC was a bit different to wider directivity being 'more tolerant'* with medoicre signal. That said it was in a pro control room with all the acoustic treatment needed( and designed to suit the speakers/ the room was designed around the loudspeakers) so it may be unfair.
Ro808, thank you bringing those Martin's coaxials to my knowledge.
I can see one of them nested between two Volts woofers in MTM: badass looking loudspeaker! I could forget about sound for something this intimidating: Tie jet fighter or Batmobil look ( as in C.Nolan's incarnation).
More seriously, the polar maps comparison reminds me of an interview of Dave Smith ( past Snell/Jbl/Mc Intosh designer, member here as SpeakerDave) where he talked about directivity ( amongst other). Worth a read:
[Interview] David Smith [English]
* this is how i interpret your statement. Atc design philosophy is to have wide dispertion and restrict the drivers bandpass to limit distortion iirc.
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The midrange warble (IMD?) is definitely noticeable with many direct radiating 2-ways. I have a pair with 1" alu dome and a proprietary 5.5 Scanspeak woofer. The replacement cost of one of those Scanspeaks will buy you a pair of BMS 15" coaxes.
These are specified to <32 Hz – 21 kHz ± 3 dB and guess what?
Quick in-room measurements left no doubts about this claim.
In itself it's quite impressive to physically experience the bass coming from these tiny air-pumps. But here's the catch:
Although these play small scale (acoustic) music very convincingly, the midrange tends to muddy up/get blurred on more densely recorded material.
There's a noticable lack of transparency/details compared to my big 2-ways.
krivium, your experiences are consistent with my own.
The listening position will be small with high directivity and narrow coverage.
I expect these Martin Coaxials won't leave much to be desired in this respect.
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