that the room is the major factor, is one i keep "forgetting"
and mostly that this is so subjective.
the last comes home from reading that
a box sounds "like any magneplanar, electrostat or OB that I've ever heard before." because of dots,
or that "natural sounding" would be used do describe any magneplanar, electrostat or OB.
i've heard dozens of them, & find them very unnatural, & hard to listen to, but obviously some find them not only acceptable but good...
leads me to believe it might be better if i didn't post any of my opinions as to something sounding "better" or "worse" than anything else i've built, it may be the opposite for anyone else...
and mostly that this is so subjective.
the last comes home from reading that
a box sounds "like any magneplanar, electrostat or OB that I've ever heard before." because of dots,
or that "natural sounding" would be used do describe any magneplanar, electrostat or OB.
i've heard dozens of them, & find them very unnatural, & hard to listen to, but obviously some find them not only acceptable but good...
leads me to believe it might be better if i didn't post any of my opinions as to something sounding "better" or "worse" than anything else i've built, it may be the opposite for anyone else...
Hi Robert, I hope you would keep posting what sounds better vs. worse actually. Over time, I think different schools emerge.
I agree that electrostats aren't all that natural to my ears, though I love hearing them from time to time. The dots are truly a puzzle which I hope we can unravel a bit. Mssr. Phil Townsend is pondering this as well.
I agree that electrostats aren't all that natural to my ears, though I love hearing them from time to time. The dots are truly a puzzle which I hope we can unravel a bit. Mssr. Phil Townsend is pondering this as well.
different schools...
yeah...
and i like different components for different moods/types of musics...
i haven't heard any regular OBs, or omni's i'd live with/keep,
but i would kinda like to have an early pair of quads as a fourth (or somewhere down the list) system someday.
nothing i have now does much of anything really well...
that's whut's fun about diy tho-
build something better...
yeah...
and i like different components for different moods/types of musics...
i haven't heard any regular OBs, or omni's i'd live with/keep,
but i would kinda like to have an early pair of quads as a fourth (or somewhere down the list) system someday.
nothing i have now does much of anything really well...
that's whut's fun about diy tho-
build something better...
serenechaos said:
Of course, all speakers and rooms tend to add a little of their own signature to the overall sound you are hearing. At the same time, really good speakers and rooms add less than others, making the listening experience that much better... Getting you closer to the actual performance with the gear and room staying out of the way.
With that in mind, my cardboard speakers, and certainly my room, are both far from being optimum. However, with the two combined, the resulting sound is very damn good!
When referring to other "natural" sounding speakers, I am speaking of the flagships such as the Magnepan MG20.1, Martin Logan CLS-II, Quad ESL 63 and AV123 X-Statik, which is thus far the only commercial OB design I have heard. And keep in mind, all of those speakers other than the X-Statik had 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars behind them in equipment, in much larger rooms, some with room treatments, some without.
What all of those speakers are capable of is presenting you with an open, fast, large and natural performance. In all reality, the X-Statik doesn't even come close to the others, but they do pretty darn good. What I think hurts the X-Statik is the sealed bass section which tends to be a bit heavy and slow-ish at times.
What the FE126eN does is match the above mentioned loudspeakers in every way except overall output and bass extension (at least in my current enclosures). What they do much better than any of the others is get you in very close with the performers in an intimate kind of way. They get you deep into every little nook and cranny of every "digital groove" of the CD, extracting every possible bit of detail available in the recording.
What the FE126eN does even better than the big guns is micro-dynamics, downward dynamics (now that I know what that means and sounds like), and macro dynamics. The other speakers mentioned can not even begin to touch the FE126eN's in that regard. Whether played softly or loudly, the FE126eN's just jump way ahead in performance. The "big" speakers always seem constricted and held back, maybe due to their severe lack of efficiency inherent to their design, their crossover networks, or the large and complex power amplifiers required to drive them properly.
As far as tonality and sound signature is concerned, I have tried and tried to pick up on anything possible, and the FE126eN's just don't have any. They are NOT congested, slow, dull, shrilly, thin, honky, forward, laid back, hollow, harsh, dead, etc, etc... They are just a crystal clear window to allow the performance to come through wholesome and pure. They remind me of that ago-old question, "Is it live, or is it Memorex?"
I know all of this may sound like a bunch of rubbish and false praise, but it's not. I have plenty of hours under my belt with the said loudspeakers and equipment above as well as plenty others not mentioned (Focal, B&W, Egglestonworks, McIntosh, Thiel, Harbeth, Dynaudio, etc, etc, etc...). You name it, I've probably heard them at some point for a short while, some recently, some a while ago.
Anyway, that's my take on it. Enjoy!... I sure as hell am!
Thanks for that link. Had a quick peruse - some interesting audio-specific research info there. Cool.
At first blush, their trial designs appear somewhat flawed. It is probably okay for gathering preliminary info and gaining knowledge of the research process itself, but nothing more. What was obvious after a quick browse was that in their quest to achieve internal validity (which in reality they have not) they have compromised/ignored external validity. I'd not be putting too much faith in the relevance (to domestic use) of the findings I skimmed.
I will read the site in more detail some time in the near future. I may find my initial impressions off-base and I am sure there is much to stimulate my learning there.
Okay, back on topic - sorry guys.
Cheers
I've been listening to old Mingus stuff, A/B-ing a bit, and it seems to me that the EnABL has an effect similar to something we used in the 1980's in the studio.
It was called BBE Sonic Maximizer (there was a competitor called Aphex Aural Exciter which I never used), which was just a simple rack-mount device that claimed to introduce phase shift in order to "restore" harmonics in tracks that lacked sparkle. It had a knob and you could adjust it -- definitely not EQ, it was some kind of distortion box that many found pleasing. (It was the 80's.)
So A/B'ing with the old Mingus, the EnABL reminds me of that effect. Don't take this too seriously as I haven't used that BBE device in 20 years.
I suspect some people use it in mastering though -- every once in a while, I get an old jazz CD that sounds "wrong" due to what I suspect is some type of process, not noise reduction (which is bad enough) but rather something adding signal back in. Sad but true.
EDIT: I just realized that this Mingus recording might itself be processed, and the EnABL is simply letting me hear. In that case, there would be no analogue between BBE and EnABL -- it would simply be a coincidence of what recording I chose. Should have thought of that earlier. (This is Jazz 6: Charles Mingus, Columbia / Sony 1996).
It was called BBE Sonic Maximizer (there was a competitor called Aphex Aural Exciter which I never used), which was just a simple rack-mount device that claimed to introduce phase shift in order to "restore" harmonics in tracks that lacked sparkle. It had a knob and you could adjust it -- definitely not EQ, it was some kind of distortion box that many found pleasing. (It was the 80's.)
So A/B'ing with the old Mingus, the EnABL reminds me of that effect. Don't take this too seriously as I haven't used that BBE device in 20 years.
I suspect some people use it in mastering though -- every once in a while, I get an old jazz CD that sounds "wrong" due to what I suspect is some type of process, not noise reduction (which is bad enough) but rather something adding signal back in. Sad but true.
EDIT: I just realized that this Mingus recording might itself be processed, and the EnABL is simply letting me hear. In that case, there would be no analogue between BBE and EnABL -- it would simply be a coincidence of what recording I chose. Should have thought of that earlier.
(This is Jazz 6: Charles Mingus, Columbia / Sony 1996).funny you bring up bbe sonic maximizers...
i still have one in my keyboard rack w/ amp.
used it for live stuff in some places, where top end sounded "dead" due to acoustics, whatever.
hadn't used it in years, but was playing with it last weekend...
i thought the high stuff was phase & the low was eq?
anyway, hope you bring some enabled drivers to a/b this weekend...
i still have one in my keyboard rack w/ amp.
used it for live stuff in some places, where top end sounded "dead" due to acoustics, whatever.
hadn't used it in years, but was playing with it last weekend...
i thought the high stuff was phase & the low was eq?
anyway, hope you bring some enabled drivers to a/b this weekend...
yeah, divide & conquer or something...
http://www.bbesound.com/technologies/BBE_HDS/BBE_HDS.pdf
too bad i didn't bring that thing up here, we could have played w/ it too. later... it's the 882 model (xlr)
http://www.bbesound.com/technologies/BBE_HDS/BBE_HDS.pdf
too bad i didn't bring that thing up here, we could have played w/ it too. later... it's the 882 model (xlr)
serenechaos said:
that was to rjbond3rd, and meant as something to be thrown in with all the stuff to compare when he and Phil bring whatever by this weekend.
can't find any links.
not full range at all, so others opinion may well be different than mine.
chrisb said he "didn't get it" when he heard them.
they're some compression drivers i'm making adaptors for to fit horns -- don't use cabinets, no enableing.
goto sg550tt; sg370.
some general goto picts:
http://www.aca.gr/pop_goto_ale.htm
pict of the system they're out of:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-123936.html
hearing this changed everything for me.
nothing else has been close since...
http://www.aca.gr/pop_goto_ale.htm
pict of the system they're out of:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-123936.html
hearing this changed everything for me.
nothing else has been close since...
Robert, did I say "didn't get it", or "didn't work for me"?
whatever it was - it's probably fair to say that a monster system such as this won't be right for everybody. I know some folks with pretty big rooms, but none what could accommodate the space required for a system of these dimensions to fully integrate.
for scale:
I'll have to grant you, it was more dynamic than any other system I got a chance to hear at the show, and Jimi Hendrix possibly never sounded this good at many of his concerts - the lightning storm didn't hurt either!
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it would have been really interesting to hear this system with source material from Doc's Tape Project. Frankly I was underwhelmed by the sound of the Bottlehead multi-amped line-arrays.
whatever it was - it's probably fair to say that a monster system such as this won't be right for everybody. I know some folks with pretty big rooms, but none what could accommodate the space required for a system of these dimensions to fully integrate.
for scale:
I'll have to grant you, it was more dynamic than any other system I got a chance to hear at the show, and Jimi Hendrix possibly never sounded this good at many of his concerts - the lightning storm didn't hurt either!
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it would have been really interesting to hear this system with source material from Doc's Tape Project. Frankly I was underwhelmed by the sound of the Bottlehead multi-amped line-arrays.
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