Those are beautiful to look at.
Although I am not sure flat and smooth are the only standards. I mean K.U surface is anything but flat or smooth.
Someone mentioned the difficulty of making narrow and rounded cabinets .
Can this be aleviated by using sealed dome units for tweeter and mid? Then you can mount them in any solid shape, resin composite, whatever.
Can this be aleviated by using sealed dome units for tweeter and mid? Then you can mount them in any solid shape, resin composite, whatever.
The Kef 105 and 107 ranges were supposed to image very well, doing a disappearing act with great depth of sound stage. Isolated head enclosures for tweeter and mid. I've had a pair of B&W 801s in the past but can't remember how well they imaged..
Yes diffractions effects are directional ( basically appear mainly on axis ), but calling this "free gain" sounds a bit frightening to me...😱
And increasing directivity as a plus, just a fashionable gimmick, opportunist marketing argument for the times being...
We all know how those things sound: as booring as politically correct engineered and politically correct advertised pro stuff will sound!
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I was hoping to crack a joke about your explanation being "all double Dutch to me', but it makes a fair amount of sense. It sounds like you've really worked your way through the trial and error process, which is really the only way to do it with something as bordering on the arcane as mastering baffle edge diffraction.
Those are shockingly flat response plots. Maybe flat and smooth isn't the be-all, end-all of monitor design but if flat and smooth is what you want they seem to do the job.
Are you the excessively tall bloke from the Dutch & Dutch booth at Prolight+Sound? We had a brief chat about the extremely solid build quality of the boxes you were exhibiting.
Those are shockingly flat response plots. Maybe flat and smooth isn't the be-all, end-all of monitor design but if flat and smooth is what you want they seem to do the job.
Are you the excessively tall bloke from the Dutch & Dutch booth at Prolight+Sound? We had a brief chat about the extremely solid build quality of the boxes you were exhibiting.
Regardless, in-wall just doesn't sound like audiophile to me. But to each his own.
Mine sound pretty audiophile. May be do not look so. ;-)
But my ex wife back in 1990'Th forced me to throw away ball shaped speakers, she called them, "Dinosaur's eggs" 😀
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Excellent job designing those. I'm also intrigued by using a cardoid mid. How did you find the correct size holes for the side openings on cardoid? How about the flow resistor on the inside, just felt? I understand if you don't want to reveal all your secrets, but maybe point me in the general direction 🙂
This raises an interesting question: Do you want your speakers to be truthful to the input signal or not?
The way I look at it is that, IF your speakers are truthful to the input signal and you get a boring sound, your playing boring music. And thus the solution would be to play good music and start dancing.
It's ignorant of the processes used by the best music producers and mastering engineers to make the finished material sound good though.
A significant part of the process is tuning the final mix through a solid representative sample of 'typical' speakers (plastic monitors, hifi systems, laptop speakers, studio monitors, soundbars, indoors, outdoors, etc) and striking the optimum balance of sounding good across the range of most likely systems and environments.
The majority of which are massively coloured by room modes, have boosted 60Hz regions, boosted 120Hz regions, smiley face response, etc etc.
So a really well produced and mastered piece of music, played through a ruler flat studio monitor in a properly acoustically treated room, played flat, although it will sound technically brilliant, will frequently produce a sound described as 'boring', or 'flat' (in the sense of: 'lifeless').
So maybe the music could be technically better, but maybe it was more optimised for the real world. A good producer and/or mastering engineer would have to make a judgement call about that based on their knowledge of the genre, or of the fans of that specific artist, because the most likely playback system varies wildly by artist and genre and that should have an effect on the final mixdown.
I bet hiphop and rap music is typically more optimised for car stereos, mobile phone speakers, laptop speakers and portable stereos (all of which typically have boosted 60, 120, and even 240Hz regions, many have boosted treble response, and are expected to be used in poor listening environments as standard), than ruler-flat studio monitors, to make a simple example.
Classical music and other high brow genres probably fare a lot better through audiophile systems and treated listening environments though.
A significant part of the process is tuning the final mix through a solid representative sample of 'typical' speakers (plastic monitors, hifi systems, laptop speakers, studio monitors, soundbars, indoors, outdoors, etc) and striking the optimum balance of sounding good across the range of most likely systems and environments.
The majority of which are massively coloured by room modes, have boosted 60Hz regions, boosted 120Hz regions, smiley face response, etc etc.
So a really well produced and mastered piece of music, played through a ruler flat studio monitor in a properly acoustically treated room, played flat, although it will sound technically brilliant, will frequently produce a sound described as 'boring', or 'flat' (in the sense of: 'lifeless').
So maybe the music could be technically better, but maybe it was more optimised for the real world. A good producer and/or mastering engineer would have to make a judgement call about that based on their knowledge of the genre, or of the fans of that specific artist, because the most likely playback system varies wildly by artist and genre and that should have an effect on the final mixdown.
I bet hiphop and rap music is typically more optimised for car stereos, mobile phone speakers, laptop speakers and portable stereos (all of which typically have boosted 60, 120, and even 240Hz regions, many have boosted treble response, and are expected to be used in poor listening environments as standard), than ruler-flat studio monitors, to make a simple example.
Classical music and other high brow genres probably fare a lot better through audiophile systems and treated listening environments though.
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The question is that trying to avoid speaker interaction with the room by concentrating its radiation towards the listenning position is not enjoyable to me and only gives the typical controlled narrow directivity sound signature that have been made so fashionable by fashionable audio papers and book writers.
BTW truthful applied to audio reproduction makes no sense to me, or maybe the old "his master's voice" claim is still valid. For me it's just for kids!
Real world musical events are full of small ( and not so small...) acoustic disorders that make them sound interesting ( though sometimes also irritating...) compared to this "sanitizated" technical studio perfection, though this later might also be praised in some "audiophile" circles.
I also need that kind of disorders to be introduced ( in a controled way...) at home, through room/speaker interaction, especially with sanitized classical music recordings, exceedlingly brillantly produced, using speakers that widely illuminate the room, avoiding any "zoom" effect to the recording, aiming for that definitely diffuse sensation that reminds a live event.
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I don't really think this happens too much. I'm sure it does for some things, those whose motivation and expertese is in making hits for mass markets for example- yep they will be the ones paid the big bucks and one may call them "the best" if that is the criteria. But is this the music YOU are listening to? If so... then why bother with this hobby?
People here who are the ones talking about their tastes and desires for the sound of their speakers will be listening to albums properly mastered on high end systems in essentially audiophile listening rooms (called mastering suites). Check out people's mastering suites over on Gearslutz, the people who are doing most of the leg work in the audio industry - they are normally just as geeky and audiophile-y as anyone on here, snake oil people as well as down to earth engineer types in equal measure.
I agree with that.The question is that trying to avoid speaker interaction with the room by concentrating its radiation towards the listenning position is not enjoyable to me and only gives the typical controlled narrow directivity sound signature that have been made so fashionable by fashionable audio papers and book writers.
The thing is: You have to have a reference that can be used by everyone. If you don't have that, we'll be running around like headless chickens.BTW truthful applied to audio reproduction makes no sense to me, or maybe the old "his master's voice" claim is still valid. For me it's just for kids!
So once you have a reference (for instance, output indistinguishable from the input), you can deviate from it by applying linear and/or non linear distortion to your taste. That's what I do anyway.
I also noticed that every track needs different amounts of linear and non linear distortions in order to sound good to me (and I'm certain that this goes for a lot of people).
If you design your audio chain to have certain amounts of audible linear and non linear distortions, then that will be applied to all your music. This is a very big compromise where basically nothing sounds right (or you can only enjoy a limited amount of music) and you'll be trying to "upgrade" all the time. Not my cup of tea, I like lots of music and want to listen to that instead of the equipment.
Mastering suites...lovely!😀
Btw, i much prefer those MTV acoustic concerts available at Youtube, than any of these pretentious recordings sold at HD tracks or Chesky records. Don't care a damn about this stuff: Music first, even on a ghettoblaster!😎
Btw, i much prefer those MTV acoustic concerts available at Youtube, than any of these pretentious recordings sold at HD tracks or Chesky records. Don't care a damn about this stuff: Music first, even on a ghettoblaster!😎
Agree too, but what systems play anything well?🙄
Absolute neutrality do not exist nor needs to be aimed for: any sound reproduction system will have a sound of its own, for the good and for the evil.
As with beers and wines, always take the same brew is dead boring...🙂