When I think of low volume listening wide range drivers to come to mind pretty quickly. Lots of ways to skin this cat though.
I've listened to a wide range 8" with 15" woofer and the results were fun.
bh69 if ideas dry up here maybe you should move this question in the full range forum?
I've listened to a wide range 8" with 15" woofer and the results were fun.
bh69 if ideas dry up here maybe you should move this question in the full range forum?
The Helios
Talk about a speaker that has flown under the radar.
A potential tour de force with very little builder/user feedback.
The lack of factory measurement data on the pricey tweeter seems to have created some skepticism.
I would certainly love to hear from some folks with first hand knowledge of this kit.
Daniel
Talk about a speaker that has flown under the radar.
A potential tour de force with very little builder/user feedback.
The lack of factory measurement data on the pricey tweeter seems to have created some skepticism.
I would certainly love to hear from some folks with first hand knowledge of this kit.
Daniel
a horn speaker with high directivity will focus its sound output at you in your listening position and the larger the horn the better as that will permit the horn to continue to do this to a lower frequency. this results in an apparent increase in sound at the listening location and with a great reduction in early room reflections.So in other words it helps to remove the room from the listening equation. Wide dispersion loudspeakers fill your room with sound and present you with a very high percentage of room reflections. Which do you think would be more beneficial for your situation?
This is a very timely thread for me. I brought home this week some new to me 2.5 way B&W speakers (CDM7-SE) to replace Fostex 2 way monitors that sounded pretty good at low\mid volume but not that good at Rock levels. The B&W speakers sound f@$&ing AWESOME at reasonable volume, a HUGE improvement over anything I have owned before. Amazing at both ends of the spectrum. But playing the TV or music at low volume they absolutely sound like a '60s transistor radio. Decent mid range source, Parasound\Adcom pre and amp. Something is not matched. Pre doesn't have Loudness control but sounds better with bass cranked up at low volumes, may try some equalization between pre and amp. Most of this thread assumes a good speaker will sound good at any volume. This is not the case for me. I have switched from a setup that sounds good at background level but not rocking out, to the opposite. Going to replace the Adcom with a Latino ST-120 this week to see what the difference is, if any. Maybe adding loudness compensation to the tube preamp I am building as well. Interesting experiments....
For better enjoyment at low volume the listener needs to have control over the box alignment and relative response of bass to mid/treble. Maybe that is the issue with CDM7-SE?
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As said before, our hearing isn’t linear. A loudspeaker is. When the loudness switch was introduced (must have been 40-50 years ago) the good implementations were level-dependent: the effect decreased with increasing level. Sometimes I feel we are running in circles...
Yes .. but bobgroger wrote that with another speakers this problem was not there (or was significantly less pronounced). So not every speaker sounds the same way at low volumes - and that's what is this thread about - to find optimal solution for this usage. To use anapropriate speakers and trying to correct problems is not the best way ...
The problem is right before our eyes (or ears). Speakers with a bathtub curve sound decent with background music but don't at music listening levels. Speakers with a reasonable flat curve display the opposite.
If you want a linear system both in frequency domain and in SPL domain, but can't stand the lack of lows and highs at background levels, a signal correction really is the only way to go. This is why our ancestors (1963!!!) (pun intended) invented the loudness contour function. There really is no point in trying to solve the equation otherwise.
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With the wide range of bass to treble levels within recordings maybe selecting appropriate recordings for low volume listening is the answer.
Yes, or alternatively, one may professionally master (himself) his favourite tracks for a lower reference SPL, say 60dB, with a little guidance from a professional recordist / mastering engineer.
sounds logical but is it really the only reason ? how do you know that those Fostex speakers have "bathtub" curve and BW are flat ? Can you show us some measurements to compare ?
It's got nothing to do with Fletcher Munson or the bathtub curve. It's only when you own speakers that sound great at low volume that you realise this. Even the mids sound full and alive at low volume.
How much power is the Adcom? If it's around 300 watt, can you expect it to still sound good at a fraction of a watt? You might be surprised at just how little power that you're using at low listening levels. I've been playing around with a pam 3 watt amp, and it's surprising how loud it goes before distortion is excessive. The pam amp is the cheapest, yet the biggest upgrade that I've made.
I don't. In the other answers to your first post I do not see any other scientifically backed explanation either. See for yourself, it's perfectly legal to search for solutions that suit you best. What do I know, maybe your vision is interfering with your hearing, some perceptional effect is causing your findings or you are just biased. Perfectly good that all.
I think you need to understand and define your problems first before guessing on the solution.
You want a system that is very good for low SPL listening. Technically, loudness is measured in decibel but the perception of loud is a different thing.
I guess that what you need is low frequency with low distortion. It's not really loudness issue I guess.
Distortion (not that technical THD) is caused by the (improper) combination of (lousy) amp and speaker...
Your speaker is good, especially the tweeter (Dynaudio produced top class fabric dome tweeters). But it is a small 2-way. Depending on the amp used to drive it, the bass might be insufficient.
We tend to increase volume just to feel/hear the bass but in doing so midrange will also get louder and mid-woofers will start to show its ugly resonances at midrange frequency. Most small bookshelf also have horrible bass resonance. And yes of course, when you lower the volume you can't hear the bass. But the point here is that you probably lower the volume just to avoid the distortion because when the distortion is low everyone would be okay with rather (technically) loud sound!
So you can opt to lower the distortion, or add extra bass drivers to get the low frequency.
First option, you change your amplifier. You may want to use class-A which tend to be fatigue-free (if you're okay with the energy). At minimum you can try the ACA amplifier.
Your amp is terrible. I have some Japanese amps with much bigger toroids that I don't use because my standard on amplification is high. Most commercial amps use below standard power supply to cut cost down. With such power supply, the bass quality is very fatiguing. Class-A amps tend to be serious on power supply and it is part of the reason why it is less fatiguing.
Now second option, you can provide extra bass driver. You can change your 2-way to become 3-way with separate box and active crossover. But that means you still need new amplifiers. This is expensive.
If you're serious with audio listening, you wont regret building some of the great amps published in this DIYAudio forum.
