Hi,
I have built my first speaker about 20 years ago, but I always built a ready plan or used the trial and error methode to build/improve something.
The speakers are quite good what I have now, but I feel, I need to dive deeper if I want to step further. I have started to learn what Thiele/Small parameters are, but don't fully understand yet, how to use them.
For me the following qualities are important in a speaker's sound:
1. Frequency response
2. Dynamics
3. Clean sound
4. Detailed sound stage
5. Good resolution
1: The frequency response is the easiest part since it is possible to correct it by a DSP. Currently I use wideband speakers, thats why I need some DSP correction.
4: The good sound stage comes from good phase response under 2-3kHz, but don't know what is above.
What about the other qualities? Could you please give me some advices, or a good reading/watching material?
Someone mentioned in a thread, that the detailed soundstage and the good resolution is not possible in the same time. What is the reason behind this?
I have built my first speaker about 20 years ago, but I always built a ready plan or used the trial and error methode to build/improve something.
The speakers are quite good what I have now, but I feel, I need to dive deeper if I want to step further. I have started to learn what Thiele/Small parameters are, but don't fully understand yet, how to use them.
For me the following qualities are important in a speaker's sound:
1. Frequency response
2. Dynamics
3. Clean sound
4. Detailed sound stage
5. Good resolution
1: The frequency response is the easiest part since it is possible to correct it by a DSP. Currently I use wideband speakers, thats why I need some DSP correction.
4: The good sound stage comes from good phase response under 2-3kHz, but don't know what is above.
What about the other qualities? Could you please give me some advices, or a good reading/watching material?
Someone mentioned in a thread, that the detailed soundstage and the good resolution is not possible in the same time. What is the reason behind this?
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I don't agree with this in a general sense. Maybe they meant it in some specific case..
Hi,
yeah it sounds like they are the same thing, resolution and detail? Perhaps there is some misunderstanding. It's often said that clarity and soundstage (spaciousness) are mutually exclusive, which seems to be about true except doesn't tell the whole truth yet.
If you look at images of how people have setup their speakers, no toe-in, speakers opposite side of a untreated room, listening spot otherside of the room, then yeah, the soundstage is created by room early reflections, which also ruins the clarity of phantom center.
This is the sound many people seem to look for, but there is also alternative to it. The alternative is to get much smaller listening triangle going on so that direct / reflected sound ratio goes up so that effect of local room, the early reflections, reduce in the perceived stereo sound. This provides the clarity but could mean "headphone sound" to some. However, as local room doesn't "enhance" sound stage but all you hear is what is on the recording and soundstage now depends on how wide your speakers are set apart, what toe-in is, what spatial cues are in the recording, and so on. Now you have all clarity you need ( assuming fine enough speakers not to ruin it ).
So, it's only partially quality of speakers (how they radiate sound all around ) and mostly how your room affects the perceived sound and what you can do about it. It is not speakers you listen but pressure variation in the room which is then interpreted by your auditory system. The speakers are just one part of the stereo playback system while your room and your auditory system makes another two; it's your brain that needs to be satisfied and the room is there in between speakers and your ears.
So, if you want good sound with qualities you've listed, you must:
For good dynamics, plan big speaker system. For good frequency response prepare to have a separate bass system than the stereo main speakers to be able to take some control over what room does to bass (modes) if they are problematic to you. For some kind of reference I have three way mains with 15" bass, 8" mid and compression driver with a waveguide and dynamics is fine, much better than small systems I've had before and I would not downsize unless space is premium. But in addition to physical capability of speaker dynamics are impacted by group delay of your speaker system, poor frequency response and also by the room reflections*.
For the rest in your list; clean sound, good resolution and the likes should happen if you have fine speakers without obvious problems and nice frequency balance that is matched between left and right and nice uniform directivity without big issues. And most importantly everything positioned nicely in the room. If the qualities are not happening, shrink your listening triangle until room sound is reduced enough (compared to direct sound) to have it. Now, if your listening triangle ended up being too small to be practical, you then know what to do: invest in acoustic treatment to reduce room sound and/or invest in such speaker system that has smaller coverage for wide enough bandwidth.
Basically it's your ability to listen how the system works with the room and ability to use the information you hear to change the positioning. And if it gets impractical you must change the speakers / acoustic treatment. So, it's a process and if you are in hurry and feel it's too much you could hire a professional to help listen.
* Check out David Griesinger studies, about preserving original harmonics and how room (venue) sound affects those and how it affects perception.
yeah it sounds like they are the same thing, resolution and detail? Perhaps there is some misunderstanding. It's often said that clarity and soundstage (spaciousness) are mutually exclusive, which seems to be about true except doesn't tell the whole truth yet.
If you look at images of how people have setup their speakers, no toe-in, speakers opposite side of a untreated room, listening spot otherside of the room, then yeah, the soundstage is created by room early reflections, which also ruins the clarity of phantom center.
This is the sound many people seem to look for, but there is also alternative to it. The alternative is to get much smaller listening triangle going on so that direct / reflected sound ratio goes up so that effect of local room, the early reflections, reduce in the perceived stereo sound. This provides the clarity but could mean "headphone sound" to some. However, as local room doesn't "enhance" sound stage but all you hear is what is on the recording and soundstage now depends on how wide your speakers are set apart, what toe-in is, what spatial cues are in the recording, and so on. Now you have all clarity you need ( assuming fine enough speakers not to ruin it ).
So, it's only partially quality of speakers (how they radiate sound all around ) and mostly how your room affects the perceived sound and what you can do about it. It is not speakers you listen but pressure variation in the room which is then interpreted by your auditory system. The speakers are just one part of the stereo playback system while your room and your auditory system makes another two; it's your brain that needs to be satisfied and the room is there in between speakers and your ears.
So, if you want good sound with qualities you've listed, you must:
- know how your room affects those
- figure out what kind of speakers would provide sound in room with practical positioning so that the perceived qualities happen where you plan your listening spot
For good dynamics, plan big speaker system. For good frequency response prepare to have a separate bass system than the stereo main speakers to be able to take some control over what room does to bass (modes) if they are problematic to you. For some kind of reference I have three way mains with 15" bass, 8" mid and compression driver with a waveguide and dynamics is fine, much better than small systems I've had before and I would not downsize unless space is premium. But in addition to physical capability of speaker dynamics are impacted by group delay of your speaker system, poor frequency response and also by the room reflections*.
For the rest in your list; clean sound, good resolution and the likes should happen if you have fine speakers without obvious problems and nice frequency balance that is matched between left and right and nice uniform directivity without big issues. And most importantly everything positioned nicely in the room. If the qualities are not happening, shrink your listening triangle until room sound is reduced enough (compared to direct sound) to have it. Now, if your listening triangle ended up being too small to be practical, you then know what to do: invest in acoustic treatment to reduce room sound and/or invest in such speaker system that has smaller coverage for wide enough bandwidth.
Basically it's your ability to listen how the system works with the room and ability to use the information you hear to change the positioning. And if it gets impractical you must change the speakers / acoustic treatment. So, it's a process and if you are in hurry and feel it's too much you could hire a professional to help listen.
* Check out David Griesinger studies, about preserving original harmonics and how room (venue) sound affects those and how it affects perception.
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See, that's where the confusion must be. Imaging is not the same thing as spaciousness. Spaciousness is not easy to do well. It may be worthwhile trying to reduce spaciousness and instead focus on good imaging.
I think, the room is ok. Once I measured the reflections... It was between 300-400ms.
The speakers are about 1,8m far from each other. The listening distance is 2,5m.
The back wall is about 1m far from the speakers. Almost symmetrical placement is possible.
The speakers are about 1,8m far from each other. The listening distance is 2,5m.
The back wall is about 1m far from the speakers. Almost symmetrical placement is possible.
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Try drop your listening distance to 1.5m or so, hear difference in clarity / other aspects of sound?🙂
As per Griesinger, brain either gets focus to a important sounds, or doesn't. According to his papers brain is able to pick out important (close) sounds from noise (all sounds around us) when original harmonics of sound are intact enough so that the sound maintains it's dynamics and gets huge signal to noise ratio, harmonics align to make huge peaks in SPL and the sound pokes above the noise, and brain can kind of focus to the sound, pick it out from the noise and form separate neural stream for the "important" sound and suppress the "noise" and provide full attention to the sound.
His studies are mostly on concert hall sound, but our hearing system is same so if not same at least similar effect happens at home stereo systems. Simplified, when early reflections are too loud the brain does not get full attention but thinks its just noise coming from somewhere speaker direction. Get close enough so that direct sound proportionally increases so much so that suddenly brain gets the attention and there is quite clear shift in perception.
Here is how you try to find where perception changes:
Play mono white or pink noise to both speakers to make maximally strong phantom center. Then, go back of your room and start walking slowly towards speakers, staying exactly equidistant from both speakers all the time. Listen the phantom center: when you are far away, other side of the room, the phantom center appears quite hazy big blob of sound coming somewhere around the speakers but as you get closer and closer to your speakers there ought to be a point where the phantom center gets into focus, it appears to shrink in size, get focus and have more clarity and so on. If this happens with your setup, it's quite noticeable and can be rather sudden.
If you can't notice it, try toe speakers in more, put them even closer together and try again, listen eyes closed to really concentrate on how the phantom center sounds. As this is somewhat less known stuff I'm not sure if this always happens with all speakers and rooms. I assume it happens almost with any setups, just shrink the triangle as much as needed. For reference, I have the transition between the two perceptions of phantom center happen within about one step, I've got rather high DI speakers in normal living room and the distance is about 2.2m where this happens.
Now, if you get to hear the transition mark this distance down where it happened and put your listening chair about there. Now if you lean in you get nice clarity to sound, and if you lean back you get the room influenced laid back bloated sound. Or, just listen on either side which ever you like more as it seems some records simply sound better with either one.
As per Griesinger, brain either gets focus to a important sounds, or doesn't. According to his papers brain is able to pick out important (close) sounds from noise (all sounds around us) when original harmonics of sound are intact enough so that the sound maintains it's dynamics and gets huge signal to noise ratio, harmonics align to make huge peaks in SPL and the sound pokes above the noise, and brain can kind of focus to the sound, pick it out from the noise and form separate neural stream for the "important" sound and suppress the "noise" and provide full attention to the sound.
His studies are mostly on concert hall sound, but our hearing system is same so if not same at least similar effect happens at home stereo systems. Simplified, when early reflections are too loud the brain does not get full attention but thinks its just noise coming from somewhere speaker direction. Get close enough so that direct sound proportionally increases so much so that suddenly brain gets the attention and there is quite clear shift in perception.
Here is how you try to find where perception changes:
Play mono white or pink noise to both speakers to make maximally strong phantom center. Then, go back of your room and start walking slowly towards speakers, staying exactly equidistant from both speakers all the time. Listen the phantom center: when you are far away, other side of the room, the phantom center appears quite hazy big blob of sound coming somewhere around the speakers but as you get closer and closer to your speakers there ought to be a point where the phantom center gets into focus, it appears to shrink in size, get focus and have more clarity and so on. If this happens with your setup, it's quite noticeable and can be rather sudden.
If you can't notice it, try toe speakers in more, put them even closer together and try again, listen eyes closed to really concentrate on how the phantom center sounds. As this is somewhat less known stuff I'm not sure if this always happens with all speakers and rooms. I assume it happens almost with any setups, just shrink the triangle as much as needed. For reference, I have the transition between the two perceptions of phantom center happen within about one step, I've got rather high DI speakers in normal living room and the distance is about 2.2m where this happens.
Now, if you get to hear the transition mark this distance down where it happened and put your listening chair about there. Now if you lean in you get nice clarity to sound, and if you lean back you get the room influenced laid back bloated sound. Or, just listen on either side which ever you like more as it seems some records simply sound better with either one.
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And why would this be important?
If you find the transition you are then able to identify both of the sounds that are available to you and learn to listen how room affects the sound, one kind of sound either side of the transition. On the other side of the transition the brain got focus to phantom center and suppresses the noise (room sound), while on the other it's just big combined hazy blob of sound. Now that you have identified the transition and can change perception at will you can actually listen in both context at will to determine which one you grave more, and when you know which one it is then you are able to improve on it if you wish because now you know what to listen for.
For example, if you want "big soundstage" then how to get it depends on which side of the transition your are. If you want the sound that is beyond the transition (heavily influenced by local room), just splay the sound around the walls to have it, big hazy sound stage and you'd know there is no chance to get clarity, because it went away with the reflections as per definition, it's mutually exclusive.
But, if you want the clarity then stay closer than the transition and again utilize positioning and toe-in to get size of the stage as big as you prefer and try to enhance "envelopment" which you can now also listen for. Just know that now the sound stage is what is on the recording as your local room is not "enchansing" it like you've used to. Then there is the transition zone, where there is kind of blend between the two perceptions.
Knowing and perceived this gives you tools to understand other people comments on the stuff, how written words relate to perceived sound. Some ideas or advice could be right or wrong depending on which side of the transition you and the one giving the advice refer to. If neither of you know about this stuff and communicate about it, the advice/words are just noise and it's just confusion.
So, try to find the transition, pick your poison, and optimize for that 😉
If you find the transition you are then able to identify both of the sounds that are available to you and learn to listen how room affects the sound, one kind of sound either side of the transition. On the other side of the transition the brain got focus to phantom center and suppresses the noise (room sound), while on the other it's just big combined hazy blob of sound. Now that you have identified the transition and can change perception at will you can actually listen in both context at will to determine which one you grave more, and when you know which one it is then you are able to improve on it if you wish because now you know what to listen for.
For example, if you want "big soundstage" then how to get it depends on which side of the transition your are. If you want the sound that is beyond the transition (heavily influenced by local room), just splay the sound around the walls to have it, big hazy sound stage and you'd know there is no chance to get clarity, because it went away with the reflections as per definition, it's mutually exclusive.
But, if you want the clarity then stay closer than the transition and again utilize positioning and toe-in to get size of the stage as big as you prefer and try to enhance "envelopment" which you can now also listen for. Just know that now the sound stage is what is on the recording as your local room is not "enchansing" it like you've used to. Then there is the transition zone, where there is kind of blend between the two perceptions.
Knowing and perceived this gives you tools to understand other people comments on the stuff, how written words relate to perceived sound. Some ideas or advice could be right or wrong depending on which side of the transition you and the one giving the advice refer to. If neither of you know about this stuff and communicate about it, the advice/words are just noise and it's just confusion.
So, try to find the transition, pick your poison, and optimize for that 😉
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Yes, exactly! now that you have kind of knowledge on it you can utilize this information to your benefit.
If you like the relaxed sound then that's it! now you know it comes with less clarity due to processing in your brain and you don't have to chase dragons anymore, just relax 😉 Of course, if the speakers have some issues then there could be some benefit to have them better, to get some more clarity, but absolute clarity cannot be achieved without optimizing effect of room sound.
But it doesn't have to be strictly either or. Just find the transition and now you can listen either side as you like, at will. Sometimes it's fun to listen closer and really zoom into the sound, while sometimes it's fun to have the more relaxed sound further away. Preference depends heavily on recording as well, some stuff has been clearly mixed / targeted for the far listening and relying on room mellowing it all out, these are hard to listen too closely and likely reason why people gravitate toward the more relaxed sound that's available away. Also, issues with speakers like edge diffraction could push one further away where the room helps to average things out.
In any case, the knowledge is the power here and helps you to gravitate towards best sound at any given moment and also help you to improve on what is it that you are after, at least confusion should be reduced when you get confident about what you are hearing.
Have fun!🙂
ps. if you find this stuff useful, or have anything to add / correct, please do as I'm preaching from quite limited basis, I'm also a hobbyist discovering the stuff and enthusiastic about it all. I've found this stuff fundamental for my hobby, it's the answer how to connect written concepts to perception and vice versa. I have been trying to spread the word as this is something that is missing on the forums, something that I see would help to reduce confusion, facilitate mutual understanding through common perception.
If you like the relaxed sound then that's it! now you know it comes with less clarity due to processing in your brain and you don't have to chase dragons anymore, just relax 😉 Of course, if the speakers have some issues then there could be some benefit to have them better, to get some more clarity, but absolute clarity cannot be achieved without optimizing effect of room sound.
But it doesn't have to be strictly either or. Just find the transition and now you can listen either side as you like, at will. Sometimes it's fun to listen closer and really zoom into the sound, while sometimes it's fun to have the more relaxed sound further away. Preference depends heavily on recording as well, some stuff has been clearly mixed / targeted for the far listening and relying on room mellowing it all out, these are hard to listen too closely and likely reason why people gravitate toward the more relaxed sound that's available away. Also, issues with speakers like edge diffraction could push one further away where the room helps to average things out.
In any case, the knowledge is the power here and helps you to gravitate towards best sound at any given moment and also help you to improve on what is it that you are after, at least confusion should be reduced when you get confident about what you are hearing.
Have fun!🙂
ps. if you find this stuff useful, or have anything to add / correct, please do as I'm preaching from quite limited basis, I'm also a hobbyist discovering the stuff and enthusiastic about it all. I've found this stuff fundamental for my hobby, it's the answer how to connect written concepts to perception and vice versa. I have been trying to spread the word as this is something that is missing on the forums, something that I see would help to reduce confusion, facilitate mutual understanding through common perception.
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