No, bit I have done designs and the business plans for taking smaller volume audio gear to market so I have a pretty good idea of what it involves beyond the simple concept and design.
But it's what you wrote. You walked right into that one, you know. 😉
The reason that OB don't play a bigger part in the market is most accurately stated by @Michael C in post #63
I will hardily disagree with that. The best I've ever heard have all been passive. It may be be easier/faster to go active, but it's neither necessary nor better.
But the Magnepan IS a shining example of OB success, even tho most people prefer boom boxes.
My wife loved the sound of the Maggies, she still talks about them. She even liked the way they looked. But they didn't stay in the living room for more the six months. She was much more happy with the Clairtone console because it looked like furniture, and because it was right up against the wall out of the way.
Bookshelf speakers have been popular for decades for the same reasons. Now tiny satellite cubes are taking over. Even if people love good sound, most won't put up with the space it needs to sound great.
My wife loved the sound of the Maggies, she still talks about them. She even liked the way they looked. But they didn't stay in the living room for more the six months. She was much more happy with the Clairtone console because it looked like furniture, and because it was right up against the wall out of the way.
Bookshelf speakers have been popular for decades for the same reasons. Now tiny satellite cubes are taking over. Even if people love good sound, most won't put up with the space it needs to sound great.
It's fairly easy to see why OB isn't favoured by major manufacturers, but maybe some of them should be considering expanding on Linwitz's work concerning cardioid speakers (LXmini being SL's example). Or perhaps they are?
Proac made a line of semi- OB designs called Future . Their loyal customers base rejected them, and it was expensive failure for a small manufacturer.
The market is small, and everybody is watching the trends and the trends are not in favor to big flat speakers. Women usually hate Magnepans and Quads and they have decisive voice in room decor. My friend was selling Magnepans from the day they stared to make them and was their oldest dealer.
The market is small, and everybody is watching the trends and the trends are not in favor to big flat speakers. Women usually hate Magnepans and Quads and they have decisive voice in room decor. My friend was selling Magnepans from the day they stared to make them and was their oldest dealer.
Not always. Not if your OB is bigger than everyone's else OB (which is easy cuz nobody has them) and it sounds so big and overwhelming that it shocks the usual BOSE crowd of her friends (the satellite plus little fart box crowd ) I witnessed it personally.
I have voiced a similar speaker many times via DSP and never found the result persuasive. It is not trivial. The Summas where attenuated in the HF by a fair bit, but I find this does muffle the sound, despite the saying that constant directivity needs the on-axis falling in the HF, to emulate a natural sound power.
A recent discovery was to leave the HF flat and increase the LF <160 Hz (where the BSC filter is located) a bit (1 - 1.5 dB). This helps tremendously, as opposed to keeping the room gain bass shelf, that had only made the sound muddy. With room correction and some extra low bass, the bright presentation in the HF is once again balanced, but this time, without compromising on detail and clarity. I only tried this after I had seen the bass bump of the Genelec S360 anechoic response. Bass from room gain and bass in anechoic responses seem to have a different quality to it.
Answer to topic is NO,
Because
1 they don't know how to make good ones
2 they guess how difficult they are to sell
3 they don't want to ruin their reputation
And that's fine. We diyers feel better!
Because
1 they don't know how to make good ones
2 they guess how difficult they are to sell
3 they don't want to ruin their reputation
And that's fine. We diyers feel better!
Because you usually "buy" designs you never heard based on internet rumor and most importantly because it is cheap to try? So you try and try and try....and the costs add up quickly soon exceeding the value of a good factory designs you avoided because they were too expensive?
How it is any different than check book audiophiles from the past ?
Because speaker building is a hobby. That's the point - there is joy in doing that isn't the same as the joy of buying. And yes, I can build for far less than high end commercial products, it would be sad if I couldn't.
A fair point but if the motivation is entirely based on saving the money to get the same performance as the factory made designs than its not the best strategy IMHO
OB is a nice object of DIy attention because it does have some unique qualities and there is almost no factory made equivalents.
Celestion dipped a toe into the OB pool in the 80s, with their System 6000, which added a clamshell near-baffle-less subwoofer to their flagship SL 600 sealed-box speakers:
https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/892/index.html
A similar arrangement was discussed at some length in the fairly recent "Circles of Doom" thread.
https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/892/index.html
A similar arrangement was discussed at some length in the fairly recent "Circles of Doom" thread.
There's joy in getting to have what you actually cannot afford - or even think / believe you cannot afford.
In other words, the market for OB is not large enough to attract segment entry, except possibly by the smallest specialty vendors.
Constant directivity waveguides sound different than conventional tweeters. I think that many people walked into the showroom at RMAF and did one of two things:
1) Immediately noped out because the Summas look like horns. This was in 2005, before the audiophile magazines came around on horns. In the 90s, Stereophile was routinely trashing horns at audio shows, I recall writer Corey Greenberg basically turning it into a sport, and looking for new and inventive ways to make fun of them
2) If people stuck around for a minute or two, I believe some were put off by how CD waveguides sound different. It's particularly noticeable if the waveguide is large, and the Summa waveguide is very large. It's way less noticeable on something like a Revel or Infinity speaker, because their waveguide is tiny and it's driven by a conventional tweeter.