The only person who dragged ina red herring is you.
Whether or not reflection hinder or enhance intelligibility (or low level musical information) depends on frequency, level, delay, etc., etc.
None of which you specify.
Try going back to Tom's post 60 and read every thing carefully from there. 😉
Did I provide detail? No.
But I did provide actual on-point legitimate resources to investigate.
Last time I checked this isn't a class-room.. a summary with some *good* cites is more than you get most of the time here. 😉
Hi Guys
I wasn’t going to post more but the tone has “toned down” so I will toss out a few thoughts.
AS Earl, Pano and others have suggested reflections do or can provide a sense of space so may not be entirely undesirable for stereo. My Co-worker Doug Jones (came up with the LEDR recordings in the old days) would point out scattering behind you is usually more pleasant than absorption
As another poster pointed out that when one wants to understand words against a noisy background or distortion as in the FBI or ham radio operator, the normal approach is to use headphones and eliminate ALL the reflected sound.
What I have been trying to say is that the “information” our ears / brain depend on is contained in the modulations of the audio signal and if one wants to maximize that or preserve that information, the reflections do not help. A choir in a large church can raise the hair on the back of your neck without having any or very little intelligibility too, my comments are limited to “information” not enjoyment.
Floyd Toole’s book is famous in the hifi area but it is not a “handbook” in commercial sound. Far more work has been done in that area because understanding words is one of the hard things to do.
Early attempts to define the conditions were things like the Hopkins Stryker equation, Rasti, RT-60, STI and other attempts to quantify what it depends on.
A quick search and by no means complete brought up these links.
From these you hopefully will get a better feel for intelligibility and what is involved. What you will not see is that reflections are desirable or help, in spite of what Floyd’s hifi book says.
Speech transmission index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
STI ALcons RASTI Articulation Loss of Consonants to Speech Transmission Index convert - sengpielaudio Sengpiel Berlin
The Speech Transmission Index
SII SITE: Speech Intelligibility Index
http://www.gold-line.com/pdf/articles/p_measure_TNO.pdf
Also, there is a difference between the theoretical and practical, the theoretical view says that to produce a square wave requires a bandwidth from DC to light, in the practical world, to produce a square wave that looks perfect on an oscilloscope, requires a bandwidth that extends from about 1/10 to 10X the repetition rate. So it is with reflections in a room , if the radiation from the speaker say 90 degrees or 180 degrees off axis is suppressed -20 or -30 dB, it doesn’t mean it’s gone, just reduced to 1/100 to 1/1000 the on axis level.
Also, I would add that very short reflections or sounds radiated by refraction at the source also do not help the stereo image, the conflict with the direct information in time and appear to be separate sources of sound.
If you have a speaker that radiates a simple pattern with few or no reflections / refractions, it tends not to radiate clues that tell you how far away it is.
That sounds trivial but not radiating those clues (that from one speaker arrive as differences to the r and l ears) allow one to produce a strong mono phantom image AND NOT produce an obvious right and left source (and makes the rest of the image a breeze).
Other things enter into it but because we hear from two points in space, we can localize those location clues to the source and when you can localize the source in depth, the sources don’t disappear into the stereo image and remain a right and left source along with the image one tries to reproduce.
Proper horns, small full range drivers on a large flat baffle in the near field , large coherent planar speakers are some of the types I have heard which do this. Small multi-way direct radiators tend not to because they project differences to the right and left ear with just one operating. With those playing a quiet voice you can usually tell how far away they are with your eyes closed quite easily.
Lastly, I don’t have time to write a book and I don’t work for a large company like Harmon where I have that kind of time.
I am an inventor, an experimenter that develops loudspeakers .
My hobby has always been home audio, even when I was working on space flight hardware and its entirely possible that a year from now, I would explain what I see differently.
Best,
Tom
Scott, I have tried ambiphonics in fact the “pick up” end is another area of interest.
Here are a few recordings using an invention of mine for “pick up” based on what I see / think how sound works.
Pop on some headphones (works better than most normal loudspeakers) and try some of these, some are older prototypes, the parade and fireworks are from this July and the latest version.
I hope to have this as a product eventually.
This was the front two channels of a 5 ch full circle pickup system, the next one has 8 channels and covers a full hemisphere.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hgzo98h2wqe3r9l/aqrDcSkPVl
I wasn’t going to post more but the tone has “toned down” so I will toss out a few thoughts.
AS Earl, Pano and others have suggested reflections do or can provide a sense of space so may not be entirely undesirable for stereo. My Co-worker Doug Jones (came up with the LEDR recordings in the old days) would point out scattering behind you is usually more pleasant than absorption
As another poster pointed out that when one wants to understand words against a noisy background or distortion as in the FBI or ham radio operator, the normal approach is to use headphones and eliminate ALL the reflected sound.
What I have been trying to say is that the “information” our ears / brain depend on is contained in the modulations of the audio signal and if one wants to maximize that or preserve that information, the reflections do not help. A choir in a large church can raise the hair on the back of your neck without having any or very little intelligibility too, my comments are limited to “information” not enjoyment.
Floyd Toole’s book is famous in the hifi area but it is not a “handbook” in commercial sound. Far more work has been done in that area because understanding words is one of the hard things to do.
Early attempts to define the conditions were things like the Hopkins Stryker equation, Rasti, RT-60, STI and other attempts to quantify what it depends on.
A quick search and by no means complete brought up these links.
From these you hopefully will get a better feel for intelligibility and what is involved. What you will not see is that reflections are desirable or help, in spite of what Floyd’s hifi book says.
Speech transmission index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
STI ALcons RASTI Articulation Loss of Consonants to Speech Transmission Index convert - sengpielaudio Sengpiel Berlin
The Speech Transmission Index
SII SITE: Speech Intelligibility Index
http://www.gold-line.com/pdf/articles/p_measure_TNO.pdf
Also, there is a difference between the theoretical and practical, the theoretical view says that to produce a square wave requires a bandwidth from DC to light, in the practical world, to produce a square wave that looks perfect on an oscilloscope, requires a bandwidth that extends from about 1/10 to 10X the repetition rate. So it is with reflections in a room , if the radiation from the speaker say 90 degrees or 180 degrees off axis is suppressed -20 or -30 dB, it doesn’t mean it’s gone, just reduced to 1/100 to 1/1000 the on axis level.
Also, I would add that very short reflections or sounds radiated by refraction at the source also do not help the stereo image, the conflict with the direct information in time and appear to be separate sources of sound.
If you have a speaker that radiates a simple pattern with few or no reflections / refractions, it tends not to radiate clues that tell you how far away it is.
That sounds trivial but not radiating those clues (that from one speaker arrive as differences to the r and l ears) allow one to produce a strong mono phantom image AND NOT produce an obvious right and left source (and makes the rest of the image a breeze).
Other things enter into it but because we hear from two points in space, we can localize those location clues to the source and when you can localize the source in depth, the sources don’t disappear into the stereo image and remain a right and left source along with the image one tries to reproduce.
Proper horns, small full range drivers on a large flat baffle in the near field , large coherent planar speakers are some of the types I have heard which do this. Small multi-way direct radiators tend not to because they project differences to the right and left ear with just one operating. With those playing a quiet voice you can usually tell how far away they are with your eyes closed quite easily.
Lastly, I don’t have time to write a book and I don’t work for a large company like Harmon where I have that kind of time.
I am an inventor, an experimenter that develops loudspeakers .
My hobby has always been home audio, even when I was working on space flight hardware and its entirely possible that a year from now, I would explain what I see differently.
Best,
Tom
Scott, I have tried ambiphonics in fact the “pick up” end is another area of interest.
Here are a few recordings using an invention of mine for “pick up” based on what I see / think how sound works.
Pop on some headphones (works better than most normal loudspeakers) and try some of these, some are older prototypes, the parade and fireworks are from this July and the latest version.
I hope to have this as a product eventually.
This was the front two channels of a 5 ch full circle pickup system, the next one has 8 channels and covers a full hemisphere.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hgzo98h2wqe3r9l/aqrDcSkPVl
Tom
I hope that you meant "diffraction" and not "refraction" as I do not see how refraction could occur, but diffraction is quite common.
There clearly is a case that I know well where the addition of a "reflection" aids in intelligibility a great deal. If one wants to understand speech on a bad recording it is well known that delaying a mono signal from one ear and placing it in the other ear will aid in understanding the speech (using headphones in my example). Beyond that simple and trivial case, I to do not believe that reflections will increase intelligibility very much if at all and it is very clear that multiple reflections will only degrade it.
I hope that you meant "diffraction" and not "refraction" as I do not see how refraction could occur, but diffraction is quite common.
There clearly is a case that I know well where the addition of a "reflection" aids in intelligibility a great deal. If one wants to understand speech on a bad recording it is well known that delaying a mono signal from one ear and placing it in the other ear will aid in understanding the speech (using headphones in my example). Beyond that simple and trivial case, I to do not believe that reflections will increase intelligibility very much if at all and it is very clear that multiple reflections will only degrade it.
Hi Earl
Ah yes Diffraction, sorry. I have heard of something like what you mentioned from Ham radio days but that was using headphones and an identical signal to both ears with a time delay added to one side.
I have never heard or tried it though. Did you mean with headphones too? And do you recall what the delay period was ? ( like that which might be related to one’s head dimensions etc?) .
Hey are you going to AES this year?
Best,
Tom
Ah yes Diffraction, sorry. I have heard of something like what you mentioned from Ham radio days but that was using headphones and an identical signal to both ears with a time delay added to one side.
I have never heard or tried it though. Did you mean with headphones too? And do you recall what the delay period was ? ( like that which might be related to one’s head dimensions etc?) .
Hey are you going to AES this year?
Best,
Tom
Hi Tom
Yes, I meant with headphones, but that's very similar to the effect of a reflection. Ham radio was exactly the context that I heard it in, but also a technique used by spies during WWII. I believe that the delays were like 3 ms or so.
I have not been to an AES in years. With no one to pay the bills and very little benefit to me I just don't spend the money. I go to all the local ones, but travel to NY or SF on ones own pocket book gets expensive. I'd rather spend the money on a family vacation - lot's more fun.
You should do a local AES and come by my house for a visit. I could arrange that if you like. I'd love to hear about synergy horns and the like. If you brought one we could measure it on my setup and show really high resolution data plots. Now that would interest me!
Yes, I meant with headphones, but that's very similar to the effect of a reflection. Ham radio was exactly the context that I heard it in, but also a technique used by spies during WWII. I believe that the delays were like 3 ms or so.
I have not been to an AES in years. With no one to pay the bills and very little benefit to me I just don't spend the money. I go to all the local ones, but travel to NY or SF on ones own pocket book gets expensive. I'd rather spend the money on a family vacation - lot's more fun.
You should do a local AES and come by my house for a visit. I could arrange that if you like. I'd love to hear about synergy horns and the like. If you brought one we could measure it on my setup and show really high resolution data plots. Now that would interest me!
Having heard a few of the 'real' Unity horns, and having built a pile of my own, I generally find that these speakers fall into a spectrum. At the top end of the spectrum would be a full range Unity horn. It does everything you need a speaker to do. We're talking wide bandwidth, dynamics, and that detail that only a Unity can do.
Obviously, these things haunt me, and I've probably invested more time in these types of speakers than I've invested in anything else I've done in the last few years. (Well, outside of work at least.)
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Next rung down on the ladder would be a coaxial. I personally own some Kef coaxes, and I find that they deliver some of that Unity magic. Where they fall down is in the realm of dynamics; they just can't compare. Articulation isn't quite as good. (I don't own Kef Blades, I own the cheap stuff 🙂 )
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Next rung down is a plain ol' full range. As crazy as this sounds, I personally believe that a $30 Fostex gets you about 85% of that Unity magic. So a full range speaker *definitely* offers massive bang for the buck, and if I was on a limited budget, I probably wouldn't screw around with Unity horns at all. I would probably just build myself a Fostex full-range and be done with it.
Unfortunately, the Fostex is even further compressed than the Kef.
So, in my mind, it looks something like this:
Unity horn > Kef Coax > Fostex full range
I can't comment on Synergy horns - haven't heard one! Once Danley gets some of his gear into a nightclub in Georgia I'll definitely purchase a plane ticket to hear it. I'm all about 'putting my money where my mouth is.' I also love PK Sound, and I have tickets to hear the PK rig at a show this Sunday, and another show next month. If a band has PK, I'll go!
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Lately I have been building clones of the Beolab lenses. Although it's not immediately obvious, the Beolabs behave a lot like a horn; the platters in the Beolab constrain directivity the same way that the walls of a horn do. The directivity of the Beolab5 is in many ways superior to a lot of constant directivity horns.
My 'hunch' is that someone might be able to take the design of the Beolab and combine it with some of the Synergy horn technology, and make a mutant that offers the dynamics, directivity and articulation of a Synergy horn, but in a package that won't look out of place in a living room. (hint: you don't need multiple platters. If you get the delays right, you can put the mids, highs, and the lows on one platter. Same idea as a Unity horn, but with radial radiation.)
Stay tuned 😉
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The Synergy series and Geddes' speakers of course have different vertical behavior, different strengths outside of directivity, etc., but it seems like many people here are curious how they differ in response where they are comparable in a straightforward way - horizontal polars. I don't think comparing these two available gets very far in that respect.
If anyone in SoCal has synergy horns, I have the Gedlee Summas, might be fun to meet up. Compare / contrast, etc.
Ok I see someone needs to address the elephant in the room here. I'm game:
Hi Horton how have ya been?
Haven't talked to you since I was a kid, Sorry about your dad passing.
Did You Say Horton That You Heard a Who?
A Who That Is Different, A Who That is New?
Horn Loaded Speakers Superperfectly True?
Well I'll do me best to explain it to you.
Recently there have been a pretty strong interest/improvement in horn loaded speakers. Some fairly mild and some very significant. One of these improvements has been a re-adoption of the compression driver tweeter for hifi use. Yeah Horton, it's true that those of us in the pro audio and performing world have always know high efficiency horn loaded speakers are the way to go. We always knew that whatever their faults, they paled next to direct radiating flat baffle mounted speakers that inevitably suffer from dynamic compression distortion. True horn loaded designs can be expensive, most haven't really addressed, and some have just plain side stepped the issues of lobe-ing and point source cohesion. There recently been some pretty nice advances of the traditional "cone horn" loaded compression driver, crossover and the throat shape. These have all led to much better directivity and less coloration. This improved design has made the "point source thing" at least appear to get down into the crossover and up to where the room and baffle step become the real issue, but these are still, at best simple two way speakers with better horn/crossover design. Forgive me for my''specism" Horton, but the real elephant in the room is the fact that these simple 2-way speakers with a traditional direct radiating woofer are not a New Who. Tom Danleys Synergy horn appears to have solved all of these issues, added no new ones and extended the "point source thing" across the entire bandwidth of the speaker, in fact they appear to have solved almost all of the real issues that plague hifi speakers save for size, which really cant be solved anyway. I'll go through them independently but the truth is if you solve any one of them, some others are pre-solved as dictated by the laws of physics!
Efficiency: Check (and double check)
Point Source Cohesion/Driver Unification/Phase: Check and double check.
Full bandwidth for entire "point source thing" Check.
Very low distortion: check
Good flat FR especially in the mids: Check
Well Horton, that about sums it up, but maybe we should translate it to your native language before I close, nice talking to you again. Here ya go:
Everyone want the sound to be real.
Doctors and proctors all respin the wheel.
Horton's heard about Who's since the day he was born.
But the only *new* Who?
... The Synergy Horn.
Hi Horton how have ya been?
Haven't talked to you since I was a kid, Sorry about your dad passing.
Did You Say Horton That You Heard a Who?
A Who That Is Different, A Who That is New?
Horn Loaded Speakers Superperfectly True?
Well I'll do me best to explain it to you.
Recently there have been a pretty strong interest/improvement in horn loaded speakers. Some fairly mild and some very significant. One of these improvements has been a re-adoption of the compression driver tweeter for hifi use. Yeah Horton, it's true that those of us in the pro audio and performing world have always know high efficiency horn loaded speakers are the way to go. We always knew that whatever their faults, they paled next to direct radiating flat baffle mounted speakers that inevitably suffer from dynamic compression distortion. True horn loaded designs can be expensive, most haven't really addressed, and some have just plain side stepped the issues of lobe-ing and point source cohesion. There recently been some pretty nice advances of the traditional "cone horn" loaded compression driver, crossover and the throat shape. These have all led to much better directivity and less coloration. This improved design has made the "point source thing" at least appear to get down into the crossover and up to where the room and baffle step become the real issue, but these are still, at best simple two way speakers with better horn/crossover design. Forgive me for my''specism" Horton, but the real elephant in the room is the fact that these simple 2-way speakers with a traditional direct radiating woofer are not a New Who. Tom Danleys Synergy horn appears to have solved all of these issues, added no new ones and extended the "point source thing" across the entire bandwidth of the speaker, in fact they appear to have solved almost all of the real issues that plague hifi speakers save for size, which really cant be solved anyway. I'll go through them independently but the truth is if you solve any one of them, some others are pre-solved as dictated by the laws of physics!
Efficiency: Check (and double check)
Point Source Cohesion/Driver Unification/Phase: Check and double check.
Full bandwidth for entire "point source thing" Check.
Very low distortion: check
Good flat FR especially in the mids: Check
Well Horton, that about sums it up, but maybe we should translate it to your native language before I close, nice talking to you again. Here ya go:
Everyone want the sound to be real.
Doctors and proctors all respin the wheel.
Horton's heard about Who's since the day he was born.
But the only *new* Who?
... The Synergy Horn.
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Per above, I'm certain that there have to be some real tradeoffs in the design between Synergy type horns and the more traditional albeit highly improved traditional compression/direct radiator combos, but I can't find any that are important to my needs. I'm sure there are others who do not share the opinion I related to "Horton" That is why I started the thread. I want to hear all of the issues right here from the best people in the universe, you guys,
I think that the issues have been clearly stated. The synergy approach will not be as smooth in frequency and directivity as a single well done waveguide, but will have much greater output capability. In a small room this added output is not really much of an advantage. In a large room it is essential.
Aaargh I don't want to get into a technical argument with Earl Geddes, because you're going to run circles around me, but you and I both know it's not as simple as "Synergy horns are louder."
That's silly; they're the closest thing you can get to a point source without using a single driver. We really need to get you an audition 😛
If I understand correctly the part these speakers we are speakers we are calling wave guides is that horn looking conical thing on top that the compression driver is attached to. Then there is that other part that looks to me like a woofer in a box, which is not a wave guide. This is where I get to feel stupid about these things. Seems to me that you can't call a whole speaker a wave guide unless all of the speaker, or at least all of the most important parts down to around 200 hz or say about where the "average" room Schroeder thing takes over is all going through that conical horn looking thing right?
I get it. I understand this is a less colored horn and highly benificial to everything going through it. However if you are splitting the audio band up dead in the middle say about 1k or so and all below that is *not* emanating from the cone shaped thing then clearly the whole speaker isn't benefiting from the waveguide thing right? So I'm guessing what would be needed then to get the greatest use from this new waveguide design would be making the it much much much larger and putting all of the midrange including the 150hz and above stuff in it? If the midrange however, is cleft right dead in the middle say 1k, then an essential part of those waves aren't guided at all except by whatever the room is doing??
So since we are left with that huge compromise I am wondering how it could be generally preferable to a speaker that has somehow found a way to combine all of the drivers and make them all emanate from the same "guide"
Further, if this is the case and a conical OS horn with the mouth of the compression driver blended properly to the horn at the throat is the best thing to do then what is stopping a Synergy type horn from done exactly same way? This is in no way anything but a real question, I admit I am not on top of this yet, may never get all of this down perfectly pat.
When you boil it all down, it seems to me that if you made a "waveguide" horn very very large and somehow could get one driver to do full range plus be capable of extreme SPL without significant ripple it would probably sound a lot like a Synergy, maybe even better, but how would you do this and how big would it have to be ? (-:
I get it. I understand this is a less colored horn and highly benificial to everything going through it. However if you are splitting the audio band up dead in the middle say about 1k or so and all below that is *not* emanating from the cone shaped thing then clearly the whole speaker isn't benefiting from the waveguide thing right? So I'm guessing what would be needed then to get the greatest use from this new waveguide design would be making the it much much much larger and putting all of the midrange including the 150hz and above stuff in it? If the midrange however, is cleft right dead in the middle say 1k, then an essential part of those waves aren't guided at all except by whatever the room is doing??
So since we are left with that huge compromise I am wondering how it could be generally preferable to a speaker that has somehow found a way to combine all of the drivers and make them all emanate from the same "guide"
Further, if this is the case and a conical OS horn with the mouth of the compression driver blended properly to the horn at the throat is the best thing to do then what is stopping a Synergy type horn from done exactly same way? This is in no way anything but a real question, I admit I am not on top of this yet, may never get all of this down perfectly pat.
When you boil it all down, it seems to me that if you made a "waveguide" horn very very large and somehow could get one driver to do full range plus be capable of extreme SPL without significant ripple it would probably sound a lot like a Synergy, maybe even better, but how would you do this and how big would it have to be ? (-:
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Despite being very very far from an expert on horns and waveguides, I think I can actually answer a lot of this.
Nobody is calling direct radiators waveguides.
The dispersion pattern of the woofer is matched to the waveguide at the "split" you refer to. The size of the diaphragm controls directivity too. A later statement in your post implies that you think direct radiators are omni or half-sphere patterns, and they are not. Conventional direct radiator speakers can have pretty tidy directivity through their crossover ranges too. Consistency into the HF is the more tricky part, really. Neatly summing all the drivers into a single horn is the main trick of the Synergy, which you don't seem to be inclined to focus on. I'm guessing you've never tried to design a multiple-horn speaker. 😉
OS ≠ conical, but I think you mean OS. That would be a real **** of an engineering and manufacturing task, for one.
Yeah, but magic, high-output, truly full-range drivers continue to not exist.
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Another point of view for what is missing in the Synergy/Unity horn as a system; a range of high quality midrange drivers available. A traditional design can choose from any number of midrange drivers that have massive amounts of engineering applied to just that driver design. While synergy/unity designs all seem to pick from one of a few closed back midranges available at the time, none of which tend to be exactly "high end". There is something to be said for the use of multiple drivers keeping cone movement down for any one driver, thereby keeping some forms of distortion down. Still, not the same in all respects as a super high quality driver. Or is it? The benefits of a line array without losing the point source?
In a gedlee style design also, there exists a wide range of quality pro style midwoofers to select from.
This isn't a deficiency in the synergy design, but because market conditions don't create demand for huge numbers of the type of drivers that work in the synergy, we don't get a lot to choose from.
Thoughts?
In a gedlee style design also, there exists a wide range of quality pro style midwoofers to select from.
This isn't a deficiency in the synergy design, but because market conditions don't create demand for huge numbers of the type of drivers that work in the synergy, we don't get a lot to choose from.
Thoughts?
I'm guessing that in a small room, a properly designed horn that could effectively do the point source thing down to around say 200 (this frequency determining the actual width of the speaker?) then crossed over to a traditional woofer at taround this very low frequency would potentially solve every conceivable issue in a small room, and give enormous SPLs without being prohibitively large at all. By that logic, the ONLY thing that could stop such a speaker from quickly becoming *the* standard would, as I indicated earlier, be whether or not the ripple in the midrange was competitive with or (obliviously) superior to other monitor designs. Such a unit/tool would, if it could be produced, in my personal estimation, be indispensable.
Thank you for that, I do understand that large direct radiators are not like compression drivers on horns at all and that a good crossover is a minor miracle. Actually neatly summing all of those drivers into one is, in my estimation the whole ball of wax, the only part that got my attention! this is where I am amazed and the reason I think these may be the end game product for speakers with parts you can touch (-: in fact, what I am wondering is if every expensive and lauded speaker I own is now completely obsolete except for being references for other crappy speakers we all own so I can do my job correctly.
My thoughts really? It's why I started this thread. I am thinking that if Danley so chose, they would probably own this market by simply as you say choosing flatter drivers for the Synergy design as opposed to more efficient ones and still wind up with a better unit than any conventional speaker. ( hell Eminence will make any driver you spec if you order 50 or so) I'm thinking that the super nice guys at Danley already know this, but they have a whole different set of values then most other companies do, and therefore feel no need. I completely understand this. I'm hoping that at least some day they may be interested in doing reference monitors because we sorely need them in our studios. I'm thinking that most, no ALL of what we use now is far too room dependent. I'm thinking that my own various and myriad reference speakers are now, if I want to be honest with myself, obsolete as state of the art units, useful only as reference speakers for other peoples like minded speakers, but probably have no chance of competing with a bespoke Danley product aimed at in this direction.. None at all.How's that for putting it on the line?
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I heard SH50 in a good hifi system. I liked the dynamics, low phase distortion, good bass extension, very natural presentation, easy to listen to music. What keeps me from buying Synergys for my own system is the unnatural tone when playing acoustic instruments with complex overtones. Like oboe, tenor sax, harmon-muted trumpet, violin. These instruments have an edge, they cut through the band, they easily catch the ear. When the tone is right they are exquisitely pleasurable to listen to, but when they are wrong it's downright irritating. I find that most budget hifi speakers can't play these difficult instruments well. But most direct radiator speakers priced like the Synergys can do a good job on tone, even though they leave a lot of the other Synergy benefits on the table. I really enjoyed listening to Gerry Mulligan on SH50, the bari digs very deep without GD or reflex smearing, great punch and lifelike dynamics in his boisterous phrasing. But the natural squawkyness of his bari sax didn't come across as sounding realistic, like a real bari sax in the wild. The quality of the bari that is supposed to be edgy sounds unnatural while the rest of it is excellent, better than any other speaker I've heard. But of course we can't think straight when a baby is crying nearby, we are wired to be sensitive to this bandwidth 1-4kHz, so maybe that's why we like electric guitars, violins, sax, because they touch the aural erogenous zones. But it better be a good touch or it will annoy more than the other freq. bands. The other benefits were almost good enough to overcome that tonality deficit, but I know that in the long run it would drive me nuts.
I really wanted them to be awesome, because of the technical aspects that intrigued me. They SHOULD sound awesome, and I wanted them to sound awesome so I could buy them. So I thought a lot about what might be the problem, maybe I could fix them with some mods... 😎 I wondered about the square-corner, flat-walled horn interior causing reflections that affect FR. I wondered about the crossover parts quality, designed for price, power handling and reliability instead of tonal refinement. Maybe some nice film caps in place of the electrolytic caps, etc. I'll probably have to buy a pair before I get to see what's inside, so who knows. I have heard such tonality problems improve with crossover upgrades.
I look forward to hearing some SM60Fs sometime. Someone who has used both models has mentioned on another forum that they are better for hifi than SH50. Maybe the molded smooth corner horn and coax driver will sound significantly more refined. Maybe the crossover design is very different. Maybe the crossover can be upgraded with audiophile parts for more refinement. It is an expensive proposition to buy a pair of SM60Fs, then replace the crossovers with high end parts. Is it worth it? Is it even possible for DIY hacker like me to retain Tom's low phase error results with substitute audiophile parts? Maybe there are already good parts in there and the design is already optimized to the max and SM60 is good enough for hifi as it is.
I really wanted them to be awesome, because of the technical aspects that intrigued me. They SHOULD sound awesome, and I wanted them to sound awesome so I could buy them. So I thought a lot about what might be the problem, maybe I could fix them with some mods... 😎 I wondered about the square-corner, flat-walled horn interior causing reflections that affect FR. I wondered about the crossover parts quality, designed for price, power handling and reliability instead of tonal refinement. Maybe some nice film caps in place of the electrolytic caps, etc. I'll probably have to buy a pair before I get to see what's inside, so who knows. I have heard such tonality problems improve with crossover upgrades.
I look forward to hearing some SM60Fs sometime. Someone who has used both models has mentioned on another forum that they are better for hifi than SH50. Maybe the molded smooth corner horn and coax driver will sound significantly more refined. Maybe the crossover design is very different. Maybe the crossover can be upgraded with audiophile parts for more refinement. It is an expensive proposition to buy a pair of SM60Fs, then replace the crossovers with high end parts. Is it worth it? Is it even possible for DIY hacker like me to retain Tom's low phase error results with substitute audiophile parts? Maybe there are already good parts in there and the design is already optimized to the max and SM60 is good enough for hifi as it is.
Pete, audiophiles don't want flat response like engineers need. They want B&K curve. A little bump in the bass, flat to 1k, then roll down -3 or -6 at 20k.
I don't see how anyone could use Danleys for mixing or mastering, but I have heard pros on Danley love-fest forum threads say they'd like to use Jerichos for mastering. 😱 The hip hop customers would love it!
I don't see how anyone could use Danleys for mixing or mastering, but I have heard pros on Danley love-fest forum threads say they'd like to use Jerichos for mastering. 😱 The hip hop customers would love it!
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