I've tried to avoid launching into a personal thesis on speaker design because it would be way off topic, but since you persist in your (rude) badgering I'll touch on the subject and try and make it relevant to the Western Electric discussion.
My comments were on attributes in speakers and their comparison to wine adjectives. I have a cousin in the wine business and it is interesting to do a tasting with him. His descriptors are always along the lines of "black currant, acidic, or vanilla" rather than "majestic or pretensious". He graduated from the oenology course at UC Davis where they learned about how the characteristics of the particular grapes used and process of production determine the end result. Wine making is a tough business and it takes a serious approach to it to stay in business. Tasting wine may be a complex emotional experience but in the end there is a basis in chemistry behind it all. Believe what you will but, yes, its just chemicals.
Your descriptors of "touch, texture and phrasing" are very valid when discussing the character of music but they are not part of the speaker design process. At least not for me.
Actually I would make an exception in that I think texture is a good way to describe a lot of treble related harmonic proportioning. I know I have used the phrase myself.
90% of commercial speaker design is about the nitty gritty of line planning, Bill of Materials Costs, vendor qulification, power tests, driver tests, packaging drop tests, all far removed from the idealistic view that most outsiders would have. I would guarantee that the same was true for the Western Electric engineers.
The part closest to the perception is, for me, the crossover design phase. At that point I will be shaping the sound of the sytem by adjusting the crossover to achieve a balance that I believe is neutral and best serves the music. It really is primarily an issue of frequency response, at least, perceived frequency response. The systems will be designed to be fairly flat objectively, but more importantly to have a truly flat perceived balance. The difference between the two is slight but important. Our understanding of the role of axial response and power response is still not complete so most of us rely on perception rather than just measurements.
Getting human voice to sound right requires careful adjustment of sub Octave bands. Errors lead to vowel like colourations (ow, eh, aw, oh, etc) and all the other describable problems (dark, plumy, bloated, sharp, shrill, edgy, thick, woody, nasal, etc.) Your "touch and phrasing" may be in there somewhere, I do know that bass imbalance can manifest as changes in rhythmic presentation. They are just not factors that I would associate with the controllable variables of speaker design.
Speaker balance is the one thing that we can control through the process. Key components can adjust various Octaves of the sound and determine its character. We can shoot for, and hopefully achieve, a speaker that imparts minimal personality. I believe that is the goal, not to achieve a system with special revelatory qualities. As I implied previously, a speaker that stands out as revealing special qualities of the music that other speakers don't is, in my experience, not a neutral speaker.
Your comments imply a dislike of a scientific method.
I'd would correct you here in that my experience is that very few companies use a double blind approach in testing. I'm sure Harman does for a few of its products but I don't know of any others. Most designers have strong opinions on what sounds good and would not be subjected to "impartial juries" to judge their work. The principles pushed by Toole are actually followed by surprisingly few designers in the field (a stronger group up here in Canada, due to the NRC influence).
You are confusing the marketing of the product with the reality. Exotic cone materials are pushed by the marketing department because they make a great story. The public finds it easier to believe that a high tech material ("they make airplane wings outta this stuff") holds the answer, than the boring truth that good sound comes from a thousand little design choices along the way and that a competent designer can make a lot of cone materials sound good.
Much of this debate is about marketing. The flowery descriptions of the sound of the Western Electric systems pull it from the realm of science, where I'm sure the WE engineers existed, to the realm of special magic. We want to believe that the WE engineers were especially enlightened, that they certainly understood what "touch and phrasing" meant even if their modern day counterparts are ignorant of such matters.
Believe what you will but I have been in an engineering environment long enough to have, I think, a more realistic view.
Let me make a comment about the use of horn systems at home. I've been involved in the design of some well noted horn systems. I install large horn loaded cinema systems fairly frequently these days. I think I understand their pros and cons. When you need the output level and a coverage pattern to just cover an audience without stirring up the reverberant field, then they are the best solution. On the other hand I have no interest in having a large horn system at home. Horns are a complex load for the compression driver. They typically have a messy 3 dimensional response (the CD horns are much better in this regard). These factors alone give the typical horn an order of magnitude greater colouration than the better direct radiators. Very smooth dome and cone drivers exist and low diffraction cabinets can be designed with minimal cabinet resonances. As a basis for a system they will always be more neutral and personality free.
If you have a need for the high efficiency and sheer output then you may need a horn system at home. If you believe, as I do, that a system should be a neutral conduit for the musical performance then they will always be more challenging.
David S.
My LAST post on this subject............Objectivity was in quotes since I don't believe you possess any. Any one can post online about "facts" when in FACT they just make up stuff🙄 If you want to be taken seriously then post some PROOF as in links and measurements. Just because the words that end up on here came from YOUR brain doesn't make it so "Conjecture and bluster on your part" describes what you wrote every word of it.😉 The WE horn was prob a nice unit.....for it's time. I'm betting it's not anywhere close to being a neutral driver and isn't that what we want when reproducing what the recording engineer wants us to hear?Any frequency response or distortion plots available or is this all subjective "I know what I heard" posturing? Why do people want the "best" of the old days when if they really took the time to measure using real science, it wouldn't hold a candle to modern drivers? Go figure. Have fun living in the past.Seriously not responding to anymore of your "objectivity"😛
Whether DSP is "transparent" is a discussion for ears more golden than mine, but suffice it to say that good modern DSP is more "transparent" (higher resolution) than the CD recordings we listen to, and orders of magnitude better than MP3 recordings.
Though the Community M4 is a beast, I found a cone driver with a HF driver could outperform it over much a wider range, with less weight and cost. Fortunately paid little to find that out, having purchased ten M4 with huge horns that had been removed (and replaced) from a convention center where they had been deployed in an idiotic fashion.
Renkus-Heinz CoEntrant horns based on Ralph Heinz 1993 U.S. Pat. 5,526,456 “Multiple-driver single horn loud speaker” references Tom Danley’s July 4, 1989 U.S. Pat. 4,845,759 of a “Sound source having a plurality of drivers operating from a virtual point”.
Both are different approaches to the same problem- a single driver at high SPL is not capable of more than about a decade of operation without serious sound quality issues, and using the same point source for multiple drivers eliminates (or reduces by a large amount) the comb-fliltering common in multiple driver systems.
In 1992 I developed the Maltese speaker system, a nested horn within a horn approach later adopted by JBL, had I been aware of Danley’s approach that system would have ended up as a SH 15. As it was, the system was intractably large and the 67” deep by 45” elongated pyramid shaped square outer straight bass horns (which could not keep up with the mid/high) were scrapped, some mid/high units were sold, and most of the HF horns eventually became patio furniture.
Some manufacturer representatives have sent me drivers for evaluation, I will be comparing all the drivers on Maltese HF horns, measuring frequency, phase and two tone distortion response. Since the horns will be the same (other than throat adapters) the driver’s response differences will be obvious.
Also will be recording the output of the two- tone distortion tests and a musical passage at various volume levels ranging from “home listening” to “full tilt boogie”.
The test site will be outdoors, horn pointed up at a B&K 4004 microphone in the air.
As Tom Danley described in post #389, this type of test will reveal alterations the driver produces from the original signal, which will be both sine wave tones and music.
Sound files will be available so the original signal and the driver’s outputs at various levels will be able to be compared listening back at a comfortable level, the louder test levels will be around 140 dB at one meter.
Although the B&K 4004 microphone uses a 130 volt supply and is rated for 148 dB with less than 1% THD, it will be placed two meters away to insure it is not significantly adding to the distortion.
If time permits, I may do generation loss tests also, though I think the multiple level and various LF crossover points will reveal driver differences on the first go round.
Drivers currently available for test are the BMS 4550 & 4552, the B&C DE82TN, Eminence PSD2002, Electro Voice DH1A, and a very old PA driver similar to an Atlas Sound PD5VH1.
The EV DH1 is actually a 1.4" exit with a built in adapter to a nominal 2" exit to fit common 2" horns, it has a 3" voice coil diaphragm rather than the 4" common to many 2" exit drivers, so it goes higher, cleaner.
I may test a few small cone drivers also.
If any one would like to hear how their different driver compares, and is willing to pay freight both ways, I will include them in the test, results will be posted in a separate thread.
Art Welter
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Guys can we get this discussion back on topic? I have made a clear explanation on how to handle both sides of the "touchy feely" way of describing a speakers performance and the measurement side. If you don't want to handle the situation logically then please make a new post somewhere else so you can continue your nonsense there.
I don't want to defend Pano, he may be quite crazed for all I know...
But, you are "betting"?
Talk about conjecture.
Suggest that you might want to do more research on the 555 and the horn, and maybe try to find one to listen to before deciding a priori that those people who have heard the horn to good advantage have no idea what they are hearing?
As I said earlier, perhaps the WE engineers did the best they could back in the day and happened upon a combination of elements that turn out to be extremely good. Is there something wrong with that? Be happy that there is something good.
_-_-bear
OT, so let's discuss this in another thread?
<snip>
Art, I think the idea is good. But I think you may also see something about which drivers happen to have the best transition to the horn you are using. Perhaps if you wanted to compare drivers, you want a plane wave tube?
Also running at that high of an SPL level will tell us little or nothing about which are "best" for home use.
Which brings me around to the WE horn + 555 driver. Running it at a very modest SPL in the home (albeit a very large home) environment is very different than in a theater or outdoors.
_-_-
I notice that (to generalize a bit) everyone who have heard WE speakers say they sound exceptionally good, and that everyone who have not hot heard them, dismiss them.
It would be interesting to know if this is is common for large, hyped speakers/amps/systems/etc? The WE speakers can't be the only speakers (or audio components) in the world that are 1) impressive looking, 2) hyped for sound quality 3) super expensive 4) rejected for technical/philosophical reasons by people who have not heard them.
If there are other speakers (or audio components) that share these factors, do they result in the same reactions?
My experience so far, has been that hyped speakers, vintage or modern, usually are big disappointments, especially if my expectations are high. Not all are disappointing, but many. Very very few are pleasant surprises.
Regards,
Bjørn
It would be interesting to know if this is is common for large, hyped speakers/amps/systems/etc? The WE speakers can't be the only speakers (or audio components) in the world that are 1) impressive looking, 2) hyped for sound quality 3) super expensive 4) rejected for technical/philosophical reasons by people who have not heard them.
If there are other speakers (or audio components) that share these factors, do they result in the same reactions?
My experience so far, has been that hyped speakers, vintage or modern, usually are big disappointments, especially if my expectations are high. Not all are disappointing, but many. Very very few are pleasant surprises.
Regards,
Bjørn
My Boss was at the Munich show and listened to the WE, his comment was : "Given the low expectation I had of the speaker, being that old and looking that ugly, and given that it's a horn, it sounded rather good though."
I think that says it all. It sounds remarkable in the context of it's circumstances, especially being that old a design.
In absolute terms I'd think if you'd put, say, a bigger Danley next to it, the WE's performance could quickly shrink to an "just OK" level.
I think that says it all. It sounds remarkable in the context of it's circumstances, especially being that old a design.
In absolute terms I'd think if you'd put, say, a bigger Danley next to it, the WE's performance could quickly shrink to an "just OK" level.
I would like to hear them myself. That said was there anything in the room to compare them too?? Do they get set-up by themselves and can you bring in your own music to hear on them??
Rob🙂
@ Tom & Art
There is a shortcut to the gen-loss test : Record the pulse reponse and fold that (convolve it) with itself any number of times instead of actually re-recording it (or other signals). Then use it as real-time convolution kernel.
Discards the nonlinear and dynamic distortion stuff of course, but you then you could listen to the accumulated effect with any test or music signal, not just the recorded ones.
There is a shortcut to the gen-loss test : Record the pulse reponse and fold that (convolve it) with itself any number of times instead of actually re-recording it (or other signals). Then use it as real-time convolution kernel.
Discards the nonlinear and dynamic distortion stuff of course, but you then you could listen to the accumulated effect with any test or music signal, not just the recorded ones.
This may be (objectively) quite true.
Phooey... I would not worry much about DavidL, he's just here to tell us how wrong we are and make strange wagers, nothing else. Nothing worth worrying or arguing about, really.
I've heard the W.E. and Vitaphone gear - I liked it. Much to my surprise I found it as good as, or better than, modern gear. Nothing objective in that at all - it's my subjective impression and opinion. It hasn't changed in years. I like a lot of modern gear, too FWIW.
Tempest in a teapot.
This may be (objectively) quite true.
Phooey... I would not worry much about DavidL, he's just here to tell us how wrong we are and make strange wagers, nothing else. Nothing worth worrying or arguing about, really.
I've heard the W.E. and Vitaphone gear - I liked it. Much to my surprise I found it as good as, or better than, modern gear. Nothing objective in that at all - it's my subjective impression and opinion. It hasn't changed in years. I like a lot of modern gear, too FWIW.
Tempest in a teapot.
references .... ?
Reference to what? Justification of personal subjective preference or the actual gear Pano was talking about? Or something else?
Do you mean the "as good as" part? If so, it's just my opinion on the sound I heard compared to other speakers I've heard and live music I've listened to or worked with. Most people form opinions about the speakers they hear.
But you know what they say - "Opinions are like speakers, everyone has at least two." 😉
Western Elitists
I accept that the WE stuff was Stradivarian. I also can tell you that I know when the radio is playing Heifitz no matter how lowly the source. Did I say radio? What matters to a prole like me is that Speakerdave and his peers have brought something wonderful into the small volume living spaces of the rest of us. Not good enough for Joe R? That's a shame.
I accept that the WE stuff was Stradivarian. I also can tell you that I know when the radio is playing Heifitz no matter how lowly the source. Did I say radio? What matters to a prole like me is that Speakerdave and his peers have brought something wonderful into the small volume living spaces of the rest of us. Not good enough for Joe R? That's a shame.
Give us your previous reference for comparison , What speakers do you consider to be good to your ears, (stereo) domestic setting ......
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