Do You know why it happens?
Have You tried to listen to them put directly on the floor?
and that is? what is the crucial difference between a 5-incher (that can be placed on the floor) and an 8-incher (that should be lifted up) from this perspective?
Th 5"er behaves different. It obviously makes the brain believe that the direct sound is "lost" and has to be "reconstructed" from the reflections.
And this is why I like Carlssons and flooders. Because they add a sensation of height. A second reason is that sources in the middle have as much "substance" as sources near the speakers
yes, I understand, OTOH this is quite counterintuitive, because one expects less of the direct sound from an 8-incher than from a 5-incher due to higher directivity of the former
Center phantom sources, especially voices sound distant and a little bit colored to me. The latter depends on the recording and is probably an artifact from typical equalization in and for acoustically drier environments.
The biggest problem with wide disperion speakers is all that psychoacoustically noneffective energy getting radiated into the room. It masks low level details if the room isn't acoustically treated.
voices are colored, and they should be 😉
as for the rest, its mostly related to crossover
nothing works without proper xo, right ?
I'm thinking that many who have actually tried to design omni speakers may not have got the xo part right, if any
In English voices shouldn't sound colored.
The effects I was talking about have nothing to do with crossover but with polar pattern. Of course crossovers can have a significant effect but this is "just" a implementation issue.
I can sign up for your summary - it 'reflects' my impressions, at least.
And I should emphasize that I'm definitely not saying that introducing more room reflections into many recordings is necessarily a bad thing if at least one of the following is true: the room ambience is not wildly different from that of the recording, if the recording is excessively dry or having significant soundstage inconsistencies, and/or the room provides an ambient environment that 'serves' the music being reproduced. And some speakers that are deficient in developing their own soundstage may actually need an assist from room reflections.
not in the case of a flooder
a flooder opens a window into the performance making you feel like you can step into it. The image is sharp and the wall and the speakers in front of you disappear exactly
and the image is at the same time holographic
I don't see the logical connection in saying that room reflections can have no possible negative effects in the case of a 'flooder' when they clearly do for most other dispersion characteristics. Even if the reflections are pleasant, it would not be plausible to assert that they create the most true representation of the original recording.
No, I'm saying the room disappears with more dispersion. The more evenly power response I got with every change in loudspeaker the better I was placed at the venue.
With direct radiation I get the performers, with more complete polar response I also get the environment.
And it doesn't matter if it's a concert hall or a studio, the effect stays the same.
Are you talking about a speaker very close to the floor? The same rules apply. If there are no strong reflections then the sound is coming from the floor due to the precedence effect.
I tried it with this speaker (without the reflector). Tilting the speakers towards the walls did help but most sounds were still localized from an unnatural low position. Furthermore the sound stage was devided into two halfs with a "hole" in the middle. It's obviously crucial to get the right amount and angle of reflections in relation to the direct sound. I don't believe that omnis are less position dependend despite their advocate's claims.
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A few clarifications:
Everyone keeps talking about reflections altering imaging characteristics, but unless the reflection is far enough away (with the appropriate phase rotation and time delay), then it really has little effect. I think the minimum threshold for a relatively high sp-level reflection when compared to a lower sp-level direct sound is about 13 feet (and more like 14+ feet away - at the *minimum*). The exception to this when the brain can't resolve differences from each ear (which concerns the wall behind the loudspeakers, aka the "front" wall of the listening room).
Alterations in directivity (of direct sound) however DO alter imaging characteristics. We are particularly sensitive laterally (though become increasingly less so to +/- 90 degrees), and vertically (less so) - but again, with the same sort of loss as you approach +/- 90 degrees (though more significantly).
-IF you are listening to an 8" driver, then the driver is directive and "beaming" at its 0 degree and looses pressure as you move further away from 0 degrees. Assuming you are listening at 90 degrees from this driver with the 0 degree axis pointing up, THEN most of that pressure difference from the degree axis to 90 degrees is "lost" with respect to image alteration.
-IF instead you *lower* (vertically) the same 8" driver (relative to your listening level), then you are starting to listen to angles closer to the driver's 0 degree axis. Perhaps you start listening at 70 degrees. When you do this you not only hear more treble on that 70 degree axis, but you also hear a greater difference between 70 degrees and 30 degrees. At 30 degrees off-axis the treble response is higher in level (than 70 degrees), and THAT shifts imaging (which in this case is a vertical change because the difference is vertical).
ah, I see, Germans have always been known to prefer the sound a bit more 'sterile'
nothing wrong with that, if thats the way you like it
different preferences, thats all
but wrong to claim to be right 😀