I have not heard the orion either, but with my past experience and I think there is enough data out there to refute the 8 inch hypothesis. What are you going to do cross the tweeter to 1100 Hz?
As far as the orion goes. What do you expect the guy to say about a product he is selling, that is sounds like ****. Maybe we should phone Wilson and ask him if the Watt/Puppy sounds good and is worth the money.
As far as the orion goes. What do you expect the guy to say about a product he is selling, that is sounds like ****. Maybe we should phone Wilson and ask him if the Watt/Puppy sounds good and is worth the money.
B4 said:
I've certainly had my mind changed by exposure to Fostex, Lowther, and similar full-range drivers. An old German field-coil single driver I listened to a couple weeks ago had some of the most natural string tone I've ever heard. Agreed, there's a lot of unsuitable 8 inchers out there, and even more bad design (especially evident in the off-axis response of most 8"-1" combinations), but diameter alone does not tell the story.
B4 said:
You lost me there completely.
Who sells Orion ? Peter Aczel ? Glenn Strauss ? Me ?
I don't even own one (I wish I did - and I will sooner or later).
The only thing Sigfried says about Orion sound is that is the best he could make. After seeing his efforts with AudioArtistry that's a very high praise indeed. Perhaps you can show us some of your designs ?
Everything else on his site is solid and sound engineering discussion (as solid and as sound as it gets. Show me a better speaker engineering site).
Comparing Linkwitz to Wilson is an insult if you ask me. 😡
No wonder he's not contributing to public forums anymore. 🙁
Good night.
It comes down to what the goal of the business is.
Wilson, it seems, is predominantly interested in making money, and giving customers what they want, just like Bose.
I'm sure they are aware of the frequency response abberations, and may have deliberately designed in a kind of loudness contour. I would say they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
Some people are more interested in what sounds good and what sells, rather than absolute accuracy. First impressions at the hifi store is probably what gets the sale.
Stereophile and others, though, should really be more objective and honest, rather than minimising the negative test results. I've learned to read between the lines, and consider what they don't say, rather than what is said.
Wilson, it seems, is predominantly interested in making money, and giving customers what they want, just like Bose.
I'm sure they are aware of the frequency response abberations, and may have deliberately designed in a kind of loudness contour. I would say they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
Some people are more interested in what sounds good and what sells, rather than absolute accuracy. First impressions at the hifi store is probably what gets the sale.
Stereophile and others, though, should really be more objective and honest, rather than minimising the negative test results. I've learned to read between the lines, and consider what they don't say, rather than what is said.
Bratislav said:Yup, tall slim, and expensive (125K A$). 😎
But no, they are not open baffle. They use CNC machined solid block of 2" thick aluminium to hold mids and tweeters
http://www.dynaudiousa.com/products/evidence/evidence/artofevid/bigphoto/pair.jpg
and
http://www.dynaudiousa.com/products/evidence/evidence/artofevid/bigphoto/midmodulefront.jpg
Good luck in copying that one !
Bratislav
Ahem:
http://www.emachineshop.com
They do 2" thick aluminum, too, although CADing the exact curve on the Dynaudios might be a bit of work. I'm not entirely sure the current iteration of their tool supports it, but they update it quite often.
Francois.
Of course you would ignore the reviews because all reviews are useless. But perhaps you might also look at the driving theory behind the Orion?B4 said:
454Casull said:
Unlike Wilson, Linkwitz doesn't pay one cent for advertising (no "hidden incentives"), and gives the design away practically for free. Anyone can make it for the cost of components.
For a true high end design, this is unheard of.
DSP_Geek said:
Give it up. Amount of know-how in Evidences is absolutely staggering. The crossover enclosure alone is bigger than some speakers
http://www.dynaudiousa.com/products/evidence/evidence/artofevid/bigphoto/crossover.jpg
And of course you can't buy the drivers, themselves state of the art. At over 2m tall (almost 7ft), not many homes will accomodate them either.
Bratislav
They also have a smaller brother - the "Evidence Temptation" which is about half the price and slightly smaller.
If one reads the specs he would think that those boxes are humunguous. Quite the contrary is the case:There are not many speakers that tall that are as elegant and unobtrusive as the Evidences.
One design goal was to make them usable in a wide range of room sizes. That's why they are that tall. They are designed to reduce floor- and ceiling- bounce.
Regards
Charles
All this tells me that it doe not take an accurately made speaker to be successful. As is shown in the Wilson Watt/Puppy anechoic tests and the success that Wilson has had.
I know that many people say that the Dynaudio is a very bright sounding speaker. After looking at the tests on the first page I think I see why this is the case. Maybe they say this because the manufacturers who give people a very flat response, also give people the good and bad sounds that they may not want to hear or are not used to hearing it all. I give full praise to any speaker maker who has the knowledge to build an almost ruler flat response, with a close to zero phase response to 20 kHz etc... Wilson obviously does not fall in this category. It has gained such success, while obviously proven to be an inferior speaker.
My question is, is the success of the Watt/Puppy due to marketing and unscrupulous magazines or is it that people just focus on a small region of the frequency response that they like and ignore the rest?
I know that many people say that the Dynaudio is a very bright sounding speaker. After looking at the tests on the first page I think I see why this is the case. Maybe they say this because the manufacturers who give people a very flat response, also give people the good and bad sounds that they may not want to hear or are not used to hearing it all. I give full praise to any speaker maker who has the knowledge to build an almost ruler flat response, with a close to zero phase response to 20 kHz etc... Wilson obviously does not fall in this category. It has gained such success, while obviously proven to be an inferior speaker.
My question is, is the success of the Watt/Puppy due to marketing and unscrupulous magazines or is it that people just focus on a small region of the frequency response that they like and ignore the rest?
It depends on how you define inferior. Are you looking for a precise instrument or something that is just fun to listen to ?
The highly praised "lumen white" (one of the most beautiful speakers BTW) is another example that is far from neutral. Not even the most expensive B&W speakers (that are used for monitoring) are actually ruler-flat.
Regards
Charles
It comes down to whether you want to enjoy listening to music, or obsess over specs. Some of the speaker systems I enjoyed most would measure rather poor by todays standards, and some systems I worked on forever to get them to measure properly didn’t do as much as far as enjoyment was concerned. I am not condoning or admonishing magazine reviewers, or other loudspeaker manufacturers, but there is most certainly more to a successful loudspeaker than how it measures. About 25 years ago I built a system using Altec 515’s in a 6th order BR alignment, with 802D drivers on damped 511B horns, topped off with an EV T35 tweeter. The system was bi-amped, and really rocked. Playing Sheffield Labs recording of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet sounded just like the Berkeley Symphony, and I enjoyed that system immensely. I then made a big mistake: I started reading TAS and Stereophile. I then became convinced that what I had was inferior, and sold everything, and started on a very expensive journey into ‘High end’ equipment. The problem was, I never found a speaker system that sounded as convincing as the old Altec stuff I used. I have come back to horns, and have never been happier. Most horn systems will measure poorly as far as time alignment and phase are concerned, but they make up for it. I no longer obsess over the specs. I just enjoy the music.
Bratislav said:
My, that was encouraging.
In any event, taking the arguments one by one:
1) The contour on the Dynaudios is very nice, but emulating it isn't imperative if one has a handle on diffraction and wave behaviour. Designing and building horns is a useful exercise in learning the above, so even though I work with direct radiators these days it turns out the time I did horns in pro audio was good for the soul.
2) That's also a very nice looking crossover, but a lot of that can be done at line level with active crossovers. As for some of the other frequency shaping networks, for example the two tweeter arrangement is easily sorted out: I suspect from other evidence that Dynaudio bypasses the upper tweeter starting at about 3 or 4 kHz so only the bottom one runs at full range. The reasons why they might do this are left as an exercise to the reader.
3) Dynaudio isn't the only decent speaker manufacturer out there, and indeed some of their best drivers were designed by Ejvind Skaaning, who does offer his units to the open market. As for tweeters, I happen to favour Morel Supremes over the Dynaudios I've heard, but there are a number of truly excellent suppliers selling to individuals.
I'm not claiming I could draw something up on a sheet of paper, put it together, and trounce the Evidences. That would be staggeringly arrogant. On the other hand, I've gone through a serious number - a few dozen at last count - of prototype configurations (alligator leads and a box of assorted parts are Your Friends) before casting the design in stone, and so far preliminary results are not displeasing.
Cheers,
Francois.
I define inferior as anyone who does what Wilson does, I'm sure he is not the only one doing this. If the recording company and the musician go through the trouble to set levels of each instrument at different frequencies to get musicality, I expect to listen to a speaker that will reproduce this. Any speaker like the Wilsons that charges $20k plus and can't give you that is a joke. Maybe his cabinets or his baffle techniques are not as good as we have been led to believe. It is curious that I saw so many flat response speakers using just wood. Is Wilson just using inferior components (as it appears) or are they doing it intentionally.
I am fascinated to find out why anyone claiming to be a designer and be so successful could produce such a piece of junk. Or do we have it wrong. Maybe I should just start slapping speakers together, put a nice sheen finish, tell them that I am using an exotic mineral filled space age enclosure that is proprietary ( and only a few select individuals can boast about it), guarantee some of the so called high end speaker magazines that I will buy monthly advertising from them for the next two years if they say good things about my inferior product, buy the reviewer a 1 week holiday in the Caribbean all expenses paid and as many hookers as they want.
Hell did I just not describe how the world of business operates? Sorry, I can't do that. I will just keep on going on and building the most accurate speaker that I can (3 watts in 3 watts out). We are very cynical here because we know better. There is a whole world of bank accounts that don't understand what we do. The manufacturers know they will not sell to us and they don't care because there are not enough of us out there to dent their profits.
Have you ever listened to Wilsons? When I listened to them, I did not notice a midrange bloom. Regardless of what the spec sheet says, I've always liked Wilsons because of the sound (though I like my VMPS RM40s more and they're cheaper, too).
DSP_Geek said:
"a lot of that can be done at line level with active crossovers".
Yup the question is : a lot of what exactly ? There's a lot more in that crossover than merely big air coils and rows of expensive capacitors (yes, they even resorted to some snake oil stuff like Rel and Multicap). There is some really groundbreaking stuff in there, as Evidences simply refuse to interact with the room like other speakers do. I have never heard speaker this large to throw the soundstage so palpably real; it has humongous sweet spot (Orion does similar thing on slightly smaller scale). It doesn't compress or limit in ANY way (you have to laugh when you see in the spec sheet "Minimum amplifier requirements: 70W (at 10m) to 280W (at 20m), no maximum."). Look at some of measurements on the web. Take a closer look at its set of lateral and vertical dispersion graphs. I know many people don't trust the figures, but I'm yet to see speaker measure anywhere near what Evidences do. Most of that comes from crossover design, and short of copying it directly I know of no other means of reproducing it (actively or passively).
True. But if you don't have drivers used in Evidences (and you can't buy them) and you don't know what makes them what they are (and I'm not talking about sculptured aluminium baffle here, but the know-how in crossover and overal design) you cannot copy them.
Close, yes, but no cigar.
Bratislav
Measurements of the Dynaudio Evidence Master:
http://www.stereophile.com//features/286/index5.html
Active crossovers can compensate for driver delay. Note the tweeters are mounted on the same plane as the mids, unlike the Dunlavys for example, so they need a bit of delay to get them in phase with the mids at the crossover point. The Stereophile measurements make it clear that this isn't a phase linear design despite using 6 dB/octave crossovers, which in theory should provide good phase linearity, and that's due in part to the aforementioned tweeter delay. Whether phase is audible is an argument for another day; I'm merely pointing out one of the things you'll find in this speaker.
The crossover also seems to feature baffle step compensation by crossing out two of the woofers at the nominal xover point, and the other two where the baffle step kicks in. That way they get to keep good sensitivity for the mid array because the mids aren't strained through a BSC circuit. An added benefit is a lack of an impedance peak at the crossover point, which tends to keep amplifiers slightly happier than driving a large phase angle.
I've already discussed the tweeters. One side effect of the configuration I mentioned is that vertical dispersion above crossover will be asymmetrical about the center axis, and we see that dispersion upwards has an upper midrange dip while dispersion downwards is relatively flat.
In terms of the room interaction, low-order networks will tend to have smoother off-axis response around the crossover point because the gentler rolloff will bring in the wider dispersion of the tweeters right when the mids are starting to beam, so the two effects compensate for each other. Note the contour reduces the effective cabinet width for the tweeters so the lower end radiation has a chance to disperse around the sides.
In other words, they did good work, very good work indeed, but it's not magic, and much of it can be reverse engineered with a bit of thought. Add a set of 6 dB/octave crossovers with driver EQ to the above features, and it wouldn't be hard to get a network with about the same number of components as shown in the picture.
In any event, I never said I wanted to copy the Dynaudios. Other people's speakers are a learning experience for me, rather than a model to follow completely, and it seems as if Dynaudio and I made the same choices in a few places. Most gratifying. On the other hand, I have some different ideas about other things, which so far seem to work for me.
Cheers,
Francois.
http://www.stereophile.com//features/286/index5.html
Active crossovers can compensate for driver delay. Note the tweeters are mounted on the same plane as the mids, unlike the Dunlavys for example, so they need a bit of delay to get them in phase with the mids at the crossover point. The Stereophile measurements make it clear that this isn't a phase linear design despite using 6 dB/octave crossovers, which in theory should provide good phase linearity, and that's due in part to the aforementioned tweeter delay. Whether phase is audible is an argument for another day; I'm merely pointing out one of the things you'll find in this speaker.
The crossover also seems to feature baffle step compensation by crossing out two of the woofers at the nominal xover point, and the other two where the baffle step kicks in. That way they get to keep good sensitivity for the mid array because the mids aren't strained through a BSC circuit. An added benefit is a lack of an impedance peak at the crossover point, which tends to keep amplifiers slightly happier than driving a large phase angle.
I've already discussed the tweeters. One side effect of the configuration I mentioned is that vertical dispersion above crossover will be asymmetrical about the center axis, and we see that dispersion upwards has an upper midrange dip while dispersion downwards is relatively flat.
In terms of the room interaction, low-order networks will tend to have smoother off-axis response around the crossover point because the gentler rolloff will bring in the wider dispersion of the tweeters right when the mids are starting to beam, so the two effects compensate for each other. Note the contour reduces the effective cabinet width for the tweeters so the lower end radiation has a chance to disperse around the sides.
In other words, they did good work, very good work indeed, but it's not magic, and much of it can be reverse engineered with a bit of thought. Add a set of 6 dB/octave crossovers with driver EQ to the above features, and it wouldn't be hard to get a network with about the same number of components as shown in the picture.
In any event, I never said I wanted to copy the Dynaudios. Other people's speakers are a learning experience for me, rather than a model to follow completely, and it seems as if Dynaudio and I made the same choices in a few places. Most gratifying. On the other hand, I have some different ideas about other things, which so far seem to work for me.
Cheers,
Francois.
Only if the drivers are flat to several octaves past their crossover points. They rarely are, hence speakers with first order electrical crossover rarely show an acoustic first order crossover.
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