IME, FR bump somewhere that leads to things coming out of the mix in different ways.
I have no problems with opamps. My crossovers contain dozens of those things and the parametric eq I use also utilises them.
No idea how many opamps might be hiding in the bowels of my power amps or the exact make of output transistors since I never had reason to open one of them.
The Tannoys left the factory using a passive 12dB 'over-damped (?) Butterworth' crossover which I replaced with aforementioned active 24dB L-R and an equalizer.
IME really good and non-fatiguing speakers tend to be rather unimpressive at first listening ie nothing really sticks out.
Another test I always do with speakers is to turn them up a bit and listen to them from another room.
Both true- but the MUSIC can jump out at you, just not the "sound", if that makes sense. If you are saying "wow that's detailed" there's probably something wrong. Dynamics are an exception to some extent- there's such a shortcoming here that the first time someone hears a system without any compression, the dynamics certainly "pop" and can stand out as a sonic aspect. Of course, there are systems that sound "dynamic" at first blush that aren't, and we're back into the topic- fatigue
😎
I just love how so many twist what is fundamental to the argument of what causes fatigue in an effort to prove their point. Put it back in context and their supposition falls apart. 🙄
Yes i do the same thing. Regarding opamp well active xover has its own benefit that can compensate the use of opamp. Only outstanding passive design that cannot be matched by active ime.
Fatigue, boredom, call it what you will. People will lose interest in listening quickly if the system doesn't have decent lf response.
I am really late coming to this thread, but as a pilot, I use to nod out while flying cross country. Then the David Clark noise canceling headphones came out. I don't nod out anymore. The theory is that loudness and distortion causes fatigue.
This has probably been brought up already but I thought I post anyway. By the way, it is a single seat airplane with only a thin piece of aluminum between me and the engine/prop.
This has probably been brought up already but I thought I post anyway. By the way, it is a single seat airplane with only a thin piece of aluminum between me and the engine/prop.
I don't see how this follows, but it is well known that high noise levels will cause fatigue. The reasons behind this are not well understand as far as I know, but I believe that the noise masks other sounds that one is trying to listen for and the increased attention causes fatigue. I get fatigued in a restaurant quicker when there is conversation that I am trying to follow than when I am alone and not listening to anything in particular.
Of course sleeping is more fatigue free than sitting in a restaurant. Imo noise contribution to fatigue is very small. Btw i think the concept of your speaker design will lead to fatigue free speaker given that the driver is low distortion in the first place (low distortion big speaker is expensive tho)
I don't know the theory behind it, but all my flying days behind horizontally opposed 4 cylinders, I do know I get fatigued if not for the NC headphones. It is very common for small plane pilots to talk about this....but always in laymans terms. I am not going to Oshkosh this year or I would get more data from the engineers at the NC headphone displays.
Ontoaba, dont blame the glass window. Well big glass window is usually associated with air tight cabin. I think its about room presure condition when the cabin is closed.
Reading again what djn wrote, actually he complained about noise cancelling headphone. This is not about noise nor loudness but added thd and reduced dynamic due to signal superimposed with additional signal generated by opamp and mic trying to reverse the cabin noise. It may be suitable for communication not music.
Yes, high noise levels are very fatiguing. Vibration is also a big factor as well. My point was "why" are high noise levels fatiguing? I believe that whenever one has to strain their attention to get a clear signal about what is going on it is fatiguing. This could be noise, distortion, poor frequency response, anything that makes the signal less "clear" will cause us to have to concentrate more. In a sense what I am saying is that listening fatigue is not just one thing, its everything that is wrong with a design.
Yes many has been mentioned regarding what can be wrong but it is usually not too useful if severity is not understood for each cause. I started with a retorical question: have you seen a fatiguing speaker - not driver related fatigue - that has good imaging? Outstanding imaging comes from multi driver that behave like a single driver. Perfect phase or timing like this prevents the terrible fatigue most speakers have.
Regarding driver related fatigue aka cone breakup, common opinion is that tweeter is to blame. Imo no. There is a trick how to make tweeter less fatiguing without increasing cutoff freq but main point is that woofer breakup which is much less audible than tweeter breakup is usualy more fatiguing.
Because that type of high noise is not covering other listenable low level sound, it may less fatiguing if it dominated by natural audible sound (like rain and wterfall, wind, loud real insect at trees, automatic rifle or machine guns, etc)
Yes that may true. Missing or wrong information that makes the hearing system working hard in low level sound will be as fatiguing as high level niose.
The ears work very hard to dig the information in unnatural low level sond as hard as digging some information surrounded by high level noise (mostly ultrasonic and infrasonic noise).
I suspect that loudspeaked creating some wave energy that less hearable (or imperfect sound waves creation), because high efficiency loudspeaker (like PA cone horn) has less fatiguing.
I am intrigued by this concept of speaker driver breakup - I don't think I've ever heard this mysterious disease: poorly performing systems always stink of amplifier deficiencies, that to me is always the obvious area of "badness" ....
Hehe Gedde is here and i think he said that the quality of a system is 99% determined by speaker. 99 is offending number but the idea is correct especially in hi end league.
I always use mediocre amp when building a speaker. When it is good with such amp, better amp will only surprise me even more.
Well, I completely disagree with that number - though, having heard the standard of sound reproduction that's considered acceptable by a high percentage of audio "professional" people, I'm not surprised ... 😉, 😀
Using a lousy amp to test drive a speaker for me would be so offputting that I would have no chance of using that as a gauge - I might as well consider choosing a new brand of tyres for a Ferrari by ripping off several spark plug leads before taking a test drive, so that engine performance is not a factor ... 🙂
Using a lousy amp to test drive a speaker for me would be so offputting that I would have no chance of using that as a gauge - I might as well consider choosing a new brand of tyres for a Ferrari by ripping off several spark plug leads before taking a test drive, so that engine performance is not a factor ... 🙂