Arrays and Ribbons are always the more interesting discussion…..it’s the one alignment using ribbons that DO NOT need floor to ceiling or long lines to be effective……it’s the damn cone drivers and their response range that screw the pooch.
This thread is a fishing expedition of sorts……i‘m pondering a vertical stack of three 6” ribbons along side a vertical line of 5 3.5” wide band drivers wired in a Bessel array. Effective response range in a medium sized listening space should be 250hz out to 20khz . Directivity match crossed at 3.5khz should be near perfect horizontally…..and vertically…..with a listening window of nearly 2ft….I just don’t care. The ribbons will take care of themselves so no sound bouncing off the ceiling and the Bessel configuration should do it’s thing for the cone drivers.
But this is all just a thought experiment anyways……my Bessel array horizontal center channel speaker isn’t done yet…..but the results to date are REALLY promising…..IMO almost the perfect purpose for the 3” class wideband drivers out there for folks with mere mortal hearing out to 13khz or so…..golden ears that have actually convinced themselves there’s spatial detail up around 20khz need not play in this sandbox…..it’s too dirty for their level of sophistication
Well, I wish my system did that. You're clearly more invested in the aspect than I am. I was commenting on the diagram, moreso. I have to wonder why such a thing would even be depicted using a "head" as focus of all the lines and angles? One would think a larger rectangular space would be a better "target", presumably being within it the system renders "soundstage" and "image" as well equally.
I guess it's be hard to render one of those "directivity heat maps" in 3D so both H and V could be shown.
Hello mayhem
No issues at all. Those are a pair of Beryllium Array 1400's in a stereo set-up. They use the same horns and drivers just different crossover as the Synthesis SAM 1's. Those are in a separate system from my HT. I use a different waveguide in the HT system that is very similar in dispersion characteristics so essential the "same" results WRT imaging. I actually use the 880 Array center channel in my HT.
Rob 🙂
Thanks for helping my Rob…..this thread started with a design quest…..and I’d forgotten about my one brief listening experience with the 1400 nearly 10 years ago……one of those iconic moments that brings audio nostalgia to the front of mind every day.
I‘m going to start a design study thread in a few days on the 1400 for a modern day DIY revival for smaller spaces that can both benefit from the high horizontal directivity thAt won’t need to play at such high volume……a little narrower bottom chassis too…..replacing the single 14” woofer with a pair of 8’s.
Since you own the system, I’ll be calling on you for some design info such as the overall size of the horn…….it ’looks‘ like around 45 degrees horizontal but at least 100 degrees vertical. Compression driver tech has advanced quite a bit since and I suspect the super tweeter won’t be needed with a 1.4” driver…….but I could of course be wrong
I‘m going to start a design study thread in a few days on the 1400 for a modern day DIY revival for smaller spaces that can both benefit from the high horizontal directivity thAt won’t need to play at such high volume……a little narrower bottom chassis too…..replacing the single 14” woofer with a pair of 8’s.
Since you own the system, I’ll be calling on you for some design info such as the overall size of the horn…….it ’looks‘ like around 45 degrees horizontal but at least 100 degrees vertical. Compression driver tech has advanced quite a bit since and I suspect the super tweeter won’t be needed with a 1.4” driver…….but I could of course be wrong
That's the way you should communicate, straight to the point without being overly polite like in the previous post going around in circles what's in your mind. My lady used to talk like that, suggest and hint about all kinds of stuff, and then shes mad as nothing happens because I did not read her mind. Not your fault, I'm just not able to understand that kind of communication.
Whats funny to me is that the minute I'm sloppy and forget to add "in my opinion" or "I think that" and "I'm just a hobbyist toying around in my livingroom" there is useful feedback!🙂 I think so too that everything depends, and should have included info in the post that it's about my situation in my room with my experience and setup. Perhaps you've read more of my posts and have accumulated your feedback and now it was time to post it, or perhaps it was just this one post you noticed that was missing the info about my experience? Anyway, doesn't matter as your post is useful, better sooner than later, I'm here to learn like others, and do not want to misguide, or be misguided.
You are right, everything depends, change toe-in, tweak wrong button in DSP, read about an interesting idea, what ever, and sound changes. Point is to develop listening skill to notice a change, recognize perceived effects and then attribute them to something, and that can be done by consciously experimenting with various phenomena like you cover on the quote. I've got different view on the method though, thinking and especially making assumptions is key method that leads to understanding. Assumptions also lead to mistakes, but doing mistakes is good way to learn, which motivates to better experiments and so on. Sharing mistakes, hopefully results useful feedback and progress and not a backlash.
There is important thing that is not emphasized in your post; there is two common things between all rooms and sounds we have ever heard and those are sound wavelength and the hearing system. While hearing system is prone to bias and some individual variation, experience or shape of pinna, it's still the only common thing we always carry with us. It's common between all of us with evolutionary perspective. Leveraging hearing system as basis, doing assumptions and using logic on top can help to make a jump start tuning a speaker system, also enables somewhat reliable communication over perceived phenomena if the communication is based on hearing system and not to context specifics like room or driver make and model. Not leaving it vague I'm talking things like the Griesinger proximity / transition, or utilizing ILD. More on these later.
Long term listening you mention is important perspective to reducing effects of bias, like zone in on nice spectral balance for example, but I think it is terrible way to tune a system because it's slow and always includes all effects of sound (hearing, room acoustics, speaker, positioning) making it impossible to be a tool for tuning, just a verification method. What I mean is that I've found loudspeaker system, especially the spatial effects due to positioning in room, are much much effective done in real time. Anything that can be inspected in real time is fast but also more effective because one can test assumptions, leverage logic, flip back and forth, and here utilizing the hearing system plays important role. Besides actually hearing stuff in the experiments, one has to put together a model how the observations relate to listening to music and "sound" one wants to hear, the target.
I currently think that once one is equipped with some kind of a target sound, knows few listening tests and use hearing system calibration, it's possible to set the setup in few different states one thinks could work nicely in the particular room with the particular speakers and in relation to the particular sound one is looking for, and then long term listen between.
I'm not saying I know it all, or can do all systems in all rooms, or even know what the heck I'm doing, I'm just sharing what I've found so far with my setup with my room with my hearing system and what I think about it all and I'm grateful of any feedback.
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Here is a interesting story about my hearing.
During younger days I did a hearing test with the a headphone I had then. During sweeping up I realised my hearing stopped at 14.5Khz. I was obviously disappointed esp after confirming with others who could hear better.
Then years later I wanted to try again because I could not believe as I thought I heard or felt the energy in the upper band. This time again it was same behaviour stopped at 14.5khz. This time I thought my hearing atleast did not degrade further. Then actually continued the sweep further up only to realize my hearing pick up again after 15.5KHz then gradually fade off completely again at 21KHz. I could not believe my ears. Happy and sad at the same time for having better overall extention and also a notch filter in my hearing. Probably the original headphones also did not well in the upper band years ago to wrongly assume hearing ability.
Another thing to note, my hearing in treated room is much better or clearer compared to non treated room above 16Khz.
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The thing is, there’s actually no musical content up there and if I were to play you a song with a brick wall high pass at 12khz, you could not identify the song, artist, genre, or even the instrument from the harmonics. When looking at an RTA display of a mix buss, one can see that the actual content above 10hz is down on average 30db from the fundamental tones and we almost always add a 6db shelf above 10k to add presence and air for the dead space…….the actual performance recorded by the Mics tells the story. While I’m personally happy for you that you can hear to 20khz, there’s little to no practical value for it in listening to recorded music……8-10khz is the region the brain uses for distance and height cues allowing us to localize sounds.
Well I never reply out of the blur. I had these habit of loading tracks in foobar and watching the spectrum as I listen to some of the tracks. Well these were more like chillout/lounge or ambient kind of tracks. For some these may not be music at all. But my interest in music widespread without any bias towards any. If it sounds and feels great I listen. I guess its more of a "feel" than hear in a mix in the upper band.
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Well, first you have to define what musicality is then you might choose more proper terms.
To say that >10kHz is -30 dB down don't mean nothing.
a7 on a violin at it's 4th harmonic considering the player who could actually induce it close in amplitude to the fundamental and 2nd harmonic would be 14khz. This is why us engineers boost 10k on up with a shelf.....for all intents and purposes e7 4th harmonic at 10.5khz can be resolved at amplitude......everything else is odd order harmonic noise with no real musicality....its just random noise that allows our brain to map a 3d space.