The M2s are awesome! Got the chance to hear them some time ago. Way outside my financial league though... For the mancave, I saved up for almost a year, and finally splashed on the Dutch & Dutch 8Cs. Getting them delivered next week. A purely rational decision, never heard them, but their design solutions seemed optimally rational in every way. The measurements I've seen so far are beyond stellar (developed by a Diyaudio guy I think!). Will be using them near-field, to reduce the influence of my own listening room. If my ears don't agree with my brain, I can always send them back.
I'm schizofrenic when it comes to speaker dispersion though. For the salon, I have chosen omnis. I prefer that dispersion for classical and lots of acoustic music, while I prefer near-field and narrow dispersion for "studio music".
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Good point. There are two ideas about hi-fi. Fidelity to signal in a simple way - that's wire with gain. Or fidelity to the original acoustic event, in the case of classical, acoustic live recordings, etc. The first version of hi-fi ain't too tricky. The second version of hi-fi is very tricky. For fidelity in the second version (that the soundstage illusion my brain perceives gets a semblance to the possible event the recording captured), I have found that room reflections in the listening room need to be engaged.
Hear, hear! I still think there is something fundamentally not right about how we view loudspeakers, especially dynamic speakers. There is something about the so-called "V/I" conversion that just is not right, we have this simple and neat equation F=Bl*i and yet what it really means is rarely thought through. We need to see that it is the current of the amplifier that is actually what we hear, not the voltage - and guess what? For a voltage source to be a voltage source, it must have a low impedance - which is to say that it relinquishes all control over the current. Some wants us to use "current drive" and in the real world, that is just not practical. Something better needs to be thought out. Been reading papers by Hans van Marnen and feel that at least some people are on the right track: The current of the amplifier needs EQ and when you do that, you hear some nice things happening.
Hi Scott,
The long and short of it is that you can't second-guess the producer and mix engineer. With an accurate system you will eventually know the sound that each engineer and producer bring to the table. That means you will avoid some and look for the others.
Classical recordings are different in that they try to capture the sound of the space they are recording in. If you have an accurate system, it will sound sort of like that space does in real life. As close as the engineers can get it.
If you don't have an accurate system, you have no reference and no way to hear with the artists and engineers / producers intended. What you can't do is compensate for their preferences. There is no reference for that and at that point you are making a permanent effects generator that colours every sound coming out. Where is the enjoyment in that? Yes, my tone controls are normally out of circuit. Most times they aren't needed.
-Chris
If you create an accurate speaker and sound system, you will hear it somewhat as the recording engineer and producer intended it to sound. They try to equate what the sound is in the studio to their idea of an accurate system. So in the case of an NS-10M, they know how that compares to their system at home or in their "home studio". That means they can compensate for the differences in their head. The studio main monitors are a massive variable that I guess they use as a "club reference" sound.
The long and short of it is that you can't second-guess the producer and mix engineer. With an accurate system you will eventually know the sound that each engineer and producer bring to the table. That means you will avoid some and look for the others.
Classical recordings are different in that they try to capture the sound of the space they are recording in. If you have an accurate system, it will sound sort of like that space does in real life. As close as the engineers can get it.
If you don't have an accurate system, you have no reference and no way to hear with the artists and engineers / producers intended. What you can't do is compensate for their preferences. There is no reference for that and at that point you are making a permanent effects generator that colours every sound coming out. Where is the enjoyment in that? Yes, my tone controls are normally out of circuit. Most times they aren't needed.
-Chris
Hi Joe,
A multi-amp system, each driver range has it's own amplifier, tends to control the driver far better than current drive or voltage drive through a crossover. Once you go active, there is no looking back.
You can use DSP to correct for room acoustics, but if the driver(s) need that much correcting you should probably choose a different driver. Keep the messing around to a bare minimum.
-Chris
A multi-amp system, each driver range has it's own amplifier, tends to control the driver far better than current drive or voltage drive through a crossover. Once you go active, there is no looking back.
You can use DSP to correct for room acoustics, but if the driver(s) need that much correcting you should probably choose a different driver. Keep the messing around to a bare minimum.
-Chris
That is great to know that there are a few who are willing to have more accurate playback speakers and listen in near-field. I know the costs can get high, but you saved for them and got more accurate speakers.
I do not understand how a person can say that I (me) cannot hear this or that and they have such junk systems themselves. Sure, if there are higher priorities for their money..... but come-on, really.
The SOTA in speakers is way way beyond yester-years products. They are very accurate if heard in the near-mid field. And. Now we have HD downloads - some remastered - so we do not have to listen only to heavily EQ'ed and compressed source material produced for in-car listening.
There are labels as well that strive for accurate recordings. Just have to look a little harder.
BTW, I also bought based on specifications only. You can do that if you know what specs are important - such as my list - and the requirement that the listener not be way back in a room somewhere. Then, it is Not a $20K crap-shoot (gamble).
THx-RNMarsh
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Most speakers on the market today are LR4 with asymmetrical crossovers slopes. Typical lazy engineering, SPL looks flat, it all sounds the same. Right? But what are some time aligned/coherent speakers (non DSP)?
Dynaudio Confidence C2/4 and above. Not many speakers in their line still sound good, after selling out to the Chinese, but the Confidence range still uses first order acoustic slopes and lattice networks on the tweeters to time delay them (flat baffle).
Vandersteen uses first order acoustic slopes and time delays the drivers with a physical offset. Either a slanted or a stepped baffle. Their more expensive speakers also use a battery capacitor bias. Very cool!
Dynaudio Confidence C2/4 and above. Not many speakers in their line still sound good, after selling out to the Chinese, but the Confidence range still uses first order acoustic slopes and lattice networks on the tweeters to time delay them (flat baffle).
Vandersteen uses first order acoustic slopes and time delays the drivers with a physical offset. Either a slanted or a stepped baffle. Their more expensive speakers also use a battery capacitor bias. Very cool!
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Chris,
I would like to bi/tri amp and DSP correct the 4 way JBLs used at the diy meet, but it isn’t a critical listening system and can’t see the investment happening. The mid horn needs to be shorter or moved to get time aligned, maybe a narrower dispersion pattern than the 140 x 40 pattern of the short throw mid horn, but I settled for a passive network with Richard’s film and foil caps for the crossover and am building a bigger class A to run them, but if I get bored who knows. Not a domestic listening enviornment, way too reflective. Hope to have a new 24/192 dac at the next meet, maybe also a MAc mini with Ammara installed, the version with Dirac dsp measurement and correction so maybe I’ll get some improvements happening.
I would like to bi/tri amp and DSP correct the 4 way JBLs used at the diy meet, but it isn’t a critical listening system and can’t see the investment happening. The mid horn needs to be shorter or moved to get time aligned, maybe a narrower dispersion pattern than the 140 x 40 pattern of the short throw mid horn, but I settled for a passive network with Richard’s film and foil caps for the crossover and am building a bigger class A to run them, but if I get bored who knows. Not a domestic listening enviornment, way too reflective. Hope to have a new 24/192 dac at the next meet, maybe also a MAc mini with Ammara installed, the version with Dirac dsp measurement and correction so maybe I’ll get some improvements happening.
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Well said, Chris! This is exactly the case. Regardless of what a consumer would wish a studio recording to sound like, what it sounded like in the control room of the mastering suite is what it is supposed to sound like. Period.
Classical on-site recordings are a different matter due to the way human brains process ambient and direct sound differently. Anyone who has done on-site recording of an orchestra in a highly reverberant space has discovered that there is not yet a microphone which can afford the psychoacoustic advantage the brain gives to ignoring ambient sound while concentrating on the desired subject sound (i.e. the cocktail party effect). IEPZ microphones and dummy head binaural techniques can come closer due to the directivity pinnae recording affords, but the result still sounds very different from the live experience. Likewise with variable-pattern stereo pickup arrays. Nevertheless IMHO many beautiful classical on-site recordings have been made by tailoring the near and far field mix skillfully, and sometimes in the final mastering. In this manner, one could say that the resulting recording is supposed to sound as the mastering engineer heard it.
It is for these reasons I have had trouble with the discussion here (and elsewhere) regarding what recordings are supposed to sound like as a determinant of reproduction system performance. Unless you are the recording/mastering engineer you don't know what it is supposed to sound like. It doesn't matter if you were at the event being recorded, that is not what the recording sounds like. It sounds like what the producer, recording, mastering engineering team decided it was going to sound like.
To this point I have only addressed what the recording sounds like. If it is played back at the mastering location and assuming their recording technology is accurate it will sound exactly like the final mix because, well you get the reason. What that recording sounds like after being passed through a set of speakers & room acoustics, or headphones / IEMs at your place is a different matter.
Cheers,
Howie
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"Not the end of the world" ?
A lot of pain and hard life, for a lot of pationnated sound engineers since a lot of time, because of this stupid decadence.
While technical progress has made studio gears a lot more powerful, more affordable, and, when we know how to plug them in existing professional systems and how to use them, better sounding most of the time, the result was most of Big studios all over the world had disappeared, in favor of shabby home studios, and the average quality of records were dramatically reduced. It's sad to cry.
And, yet, at the same time as bemoaning all these "amateur hacks", we're actually getting music from smaller producers that would otherwise be blocked out of the major recording labels.
It's a mix of plus and minus, but a lot of talented people are finding their way to our respective ears.
It's a mix of plus and minus, but a lot of talented people are finding their way to our respective ears.
Cool! Some years ago, I would never have dared or been able to buy speakers without auditioning them, based only on objective factors. But after having listened to a fair amount of systems/speakers, having read about acoustics and the theory of sound reproduction, and understood more about why things sounded the way they did to me, it seemed less daunting. The starting point, I think, is to know where and how they will be placed, and how far away one intends to listen.
And then there's all the other things as well. But dispersion pattern, frequency response (linear distortion), nonlinear distortion and dynamic capabilities pretty much define a speaker, as I see it. If one knows a bit about how a speaker scores on those parameters, it's possible to have an approximate idea about how it will sound.
And yeah, the SOTA speakers today are in a completely different league from the speakers of old.
May I ask you what labels you have in mind which strive for accurate recordings? I find that most recordings these days are suboptimal.
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I was thinking primarily of the way the speakers and room supply the sound we hear, this to me is the most varied and tricky step. It seems to be the case that to hear what the engineer intended (I still don't think that's necessary, perhaps even not desirable on occasions) we need a similar set up to the studio, I prefer music in my living room
Thanks for your reply, I get what you are saying and largely agree, I see the above as an example of one of the drawbacks of slavishly trying to reproduce the engineers vision. Some EQ is useful when they've made a mess of it or imagined incorrectly the sound mix I want even though I like the music.
It's what they wanted it to sound like in that room at that moment in time, maybe to my ears and preference I may want to change it, so what?
I’m likely going to have my nearly 40 year old Magnepans, with the upgraded series crossovers, as they give the best near field listening that I have heard, much less that I would be able to afford.
Best of all, they were free, so $50 in crossover parts are going a long ways.
They will hopefully keep going until a true breakthrough comes around anyways.
Best of all, they were free, so $50 in crossover parts are going a long ways.
They will hopefully keep going until a true breakthrough comes around anyways.
I agree, and you are exactly right! You endeavor to make the sound in your room the way you want it, what sounds best inside your own brain, not what sounds best inside of someone else's brain...which you can NEVER know. And anyway, unless one was at the mastering session, one does not know how the recording actually sounded at the time of deliverable master cutting.
I was trying to make the point that what people are trying to achieve is not necessarily "the way it was supposed to sound" which seems to be the direction the discussion was heading but which has little meaning in a home listening environment.
I would hope all of us by our mere presence here have at least somewhat trained listening abilities and our systems most likely sound better than average. However, to attempt to ascribe an absolute accuracy to them by listening to the sound in the room is problematic as anyone who has designed mastering suites can tell you. The best mastering suites have well defined frequency response and RT60 curves, yet none sound exactly the same. This means that even if one was somehow able to make a specific recording sound exactly like it did in the suite it was mastered in, that reproduction system may reproduce a different recording differently.
My point in posting in this thread is to encourage people try and relate their experiences in terms of what they like about sound, and not to claim some arbitrary "accuracy" term to it. In my 30+ years of studio experience the vast majority (not all) of the differences in sound quality can be attributed to transducers and acoustics. It is less difficult to quantify the performance and sound quality of the electronics part of the equation because our tools to quantify this are more precise and advanced than they are for acoustic issues, although acoustic analysis tools have come a long way since I first had a TEF in the 1980s.
Yikes, it is hard to not digress while discussing this subject!
Cheers!
Howie
Yes, this is why I posed, in reply to Richard, that the accuracy could probably only really be tested by recording sounds outside and playing them back indoors. Otherwise, as you say accuracy doesn't really mean much unless we are exceedingly familiar with live sound, that's why I always find it interesting when those who are and musicians post about their perception of reproduced sound. Unfortunately most musicians aren't as bothered about it as audiophiles, they seem to focus better on the music than getting hung up on the other.
WOW! If we get back into the I like this and you like that .... then there is no need to have high accuracy RIAA, either. We test for the RIAA accuracy to be better than .1dB variation from ideal. No need to do that any more. And, who cares about freq response variation? Or distortion or anything. Its all what you like as in taste. OMG.
The high-end is dead then.
Long live the high end.
THx for the memories.
-Richard
The high-end is dead then.
Long live the high end.
THx for the memories.
-Richard
Picture you posted is on its side but it looks like old JBL acoustic lenses on top of the stack. I never could stand the sound of those things, kind of like multi-cellular horns. With the lenses the louvers seemed to create some kind of distortion. My memory is a bit sketchy but I sort of remember some 60-degree horns that I thought sounded best with those JBL drivers.
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