Bg Neo 10 and Neo 8

[studiotech]

Lenta, I agree with you completely. That's why we use drivers that only have raw anechoic(hobby Hifi and manufacture's) or at least raw quasi-anechoic (Zaph) data used along with active as apposed to passive electronics. If you don't have control of those variables, you are, for all intents and purposes, ******* in the wind. In fact, if you don't have this type of raw data at your disposal, it doesn't matter what type of room you have. If you still think I'm wrong, go to Sigfried Linkwitz's website and look at his testing room...At least I'm in good company.

Yes, but Linkwitz seems to be biased towards reproduction of acoustic music recorded with minimal micing techniques. I too feel that these types of recording CAN sound good in a very live room, but much music that I listen to is studio produced and to my ears clearly sounds wrong played back in a setting that is too live and reverberant. I get to hear music in a well treated professional studio, a world class mastering studio and many other environments on a regular basis. I also get to hear quite a bit of live, unamplified music in both large and small venues. A live sounding listening room stamps a certain signature on a playback system regardless of a loudspeakers design. I personally do not like the sound or effect this provides.

No doubt, Linkwitz is a master at what he does and far smarter than most of us posting on here, but I certainly don't agree with everything he says.

Greg

 

[Remlab]

Well, to be fair many people have rooms that look like this, but yeah it must be a pretty "live" sound. Seth, you might want to experiment with some good absorption material like the Bonded Logic stuff placed directly behind the Neo10/3 combo. My house is all tile and when I first moved in and had no window treatment, area rugs or acoustical treatments on the walls, I almost cried the first night I had the system all set up. It was an echo, reverb nightmare.

Listen with some good quality open back headphones like AKG or Sennheisers and then compare the "room sound" you get from your system.

Greg

Greg & Lenta, I have used Etymotic Er4p's for years. These are what I use as a reference. I added a picture of my basic test setup (excluding the usual floor treatment) I also used these for critical listening sessions with my dunlavy's before going dipole.http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=album;id=8214
Seth

 

[Remlab]

Yes, but Linkwitz seems to be biased towards reproduction of acoustic music recorded with minimal micing techniques. I too feel that these types of recording CAN sound good in a very live room, but much music that I listen to is studio produced and to my ears clearly sounds wrong played back in a setting that is too live and reverberant. I get to hear music in a well treated professional studio, a world class mastering studio and many other environments on a regular basis. I also get to hear quite a bit of live, unamplified music in both large and small venues. A live sounding listening room stamps a certain signature on a playback system regardless of a loudspeakers design. I personally do not like the sound or effect this provides.

No doubt, Linkwitz is a master at what he does and far smarter than most of us posting on here, but I certainly don't agree with everything he says.

Greg

Greg
Once again, I have to completely agree with you. All I listen to is that type of music, so it is right up my alley. To give you an example, my favorite recording is Dunedin Consort's performance of Bach's St. Matthew passion (Linn records). Studio recordings, while sounding good on my system, don't sound as magical.

 

[Remlab]

Seth, now that I see how thick that aluminum is, have you measured any diffraction effects for either driver compared to a more flush approach to mounting?

Greg

To be perfectly frank, these dipole baffles are still in the prototype phase. Ultimately, they are going to be cnc'd with all rounded edges except the base, then painted with high gloss automotive to match my Yugo(Kidding! My Yugo is actually low gloss.) Unlike domes, or cones with phase plugs, planars do a pretty good job of canceling themselves out at extreme off axis angles. Maybe not as much as I would like at my tweeter's low crossover point, but enough to get the job done in the mean time. An example of a company that uses the neo 3 in this way(kind of);Burmester Audiosysteme GmbH ::: Produkte

 

[Remlab]

Yes, but Linkwitz seems to be biased towards reproduction of acoustic music recorded with minimal micing techniques. I too feel that these types of recording CAN sound good in a very live room, but much music that I listen to is studio produced and to my ears clearly sounds wrong played back in a setting that is too live and reverberant. I get to hear music in a well treated professional studio, a world class mastering studio and many other environments on a regular basis. I also get to hear quite a bit of live, unamplified music in both large and small venues. A live sounding listening room stamps a certain signature on a playback system regardless of a loudspeakers design. I personally do not like the sound or effect this provides.

No doubt, Linkwitz is a master at what he does and far smarter than most of us posting on here, but I certainly don't agree with everything he says.

Greg

The way things are done in a studio are at the purely subjective whim of the technician. He can do anything he wants( and that's O.K.). But the end result is a reality that is purely subjective. I can play 100 different studio recordings that have electric bass parts and every recording of the bass parts will sound different. Why? Because each was created by a different technician in a different studio each dealing with an astonishing amount of variables. (I don't even want to use any more examples for fear of trivializing the infinite complexities involved). There is a reason we use minimally mic'd recordings of un-amplified acoustic music in real acoustic spaces. Because this is as close to reality as we can get for testing the accuracy of our systems. To say that Sigfried Linkwitz's system and room theory works only with purist recordings is, in a way, the ultimate complement.

 

[Remlab]

Not a big deal at all. I appreciate your nice remarks and really I was glad you were posting some new sets of data on the drivers. I just noticed the pictures you posted of the aluminum channel for the mid/tweet. That is a great use of a "found" object. I'm assuming it is some type of building construction material?

Greg

I found this material here .Online Metal Store | Small Quantity Metal Orders | Metal Cutting, Sales & Shipping | Buy Steel, Aluminum, Copper, Brass, Stainless | Metal Product Guides at OnlineMetals.com Some of their Aluminum channels are massive. The biggest channel they have is 12" x 5" and as long as you want. Would make an interesting pure open baffle design. When it comes to potential speaker design ideas that you could create using materials from this website, your pretty much limited only by your own imagination.
Seth

 

[lenta]

What is your room dimensions in meters?Is it rectangular with doors or open to some other rooms?
I guess you have huge lack of bass?Its becouse of large glass doors and windows, low frequencies goes trough if they were open.This fireplace doesnt help either, its hole!

 

[Remlab]

Lenta, My Room is 5 wide x 8 long x 3. The end of the room is open to the left and right. The bass situation is solved by having each octave from 20hz and up covered by seperate bass units, each optimized for their own octave. This gives a huge amount of flexibility for handling problems without putting undo stress on any one single unit. At the listening position, bass is +-2db from 20hz to 160hz while using a relatively small amount of dsp equalization.
As for the earlier comment about about all the hard surfaces? The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Treat those relevant surfaces while listening critically and everything is fine. Perfect? Never..
Seth

 

[studiotech]

The way things are done in a studio are at the purely subjective whim of the technician. He can do anything he wants( and that's O.K.). But the end result is a reality that is purely subjective. I can play 100 different studio recordings that have electric bass parts and every recording of the bass parts will sound different. Why? Because each was created by a different technician in a different studio each dealing with an astonishing amount of variables. (I don't even want to use any more examples for fear of trivializing the infinite complexities involved). There is a reason we use minimally mic'd recordings of un-amplified acoustic music in real acoustic spaces. Because this is as close to reality as we can get for testing the accuracy of our systems. To say that Sigfried Linkwitz's system and room theory works only with purist recordings is, in a way, the ultimate complement.

It is true that minimally mic'd recording are about as accurate as it gets for capturing an actual acoustic space, but even those tend to cheat sometimes. I work with Bob Katz of former Chesky records fame. If you only knew some of the tricks he used to make the recording sound MORE real. Sure, 80% of the sound of say the famous Rebecca Pidgeon disk is a single point Blumlein setup, but there are other spot mics and tricks to add more hall sound into the recording because no mics hear the same as our ears.

Now, lets take this perfectly captured acoustic space and try to reproduce it in your living room. Unless your speakers have a laser beam, cardioid type polar response, you are going to be superimposing the sound of your environment on top of all those delicately recorded location cues. Its the finest little details and reverb tails that really bring a space alive in a recording and adding extraneous ones into the mix is only going to blur or cloud the recorded space.

Now, as far as studio produced recordings goes, even though they are completely made up whims of the engineers imagination, the same rules apply IMHO. Every time I buy a new CD that sounds even remotely good, I take it to the studio for a listen to compare it to my room. Even though I prefer my speakers to those at the studio, I invariably hear more "into" the recording because I don't have a ton of strong, early reflections hitting me before or too close in time to the direct sound. The studio is a very evenly balanced environment. Ours is not too dead as to sound like an anechoic chamber, but has a proper balance of absorption and diffusion.

The other choice if room treatment is not a realistic option is to sit in the nearfield where direct to reflected energy is maximized. Kind of the opposite as to what Bose preaches. Bob's room is the perfect example. Some excellent treatments, but also the listening position is close to the speakers relative to their distance to nearby boundaries. In his mastering room, I consistently hear the most amazing sense of space and ambiance. I want his room set-up with my speakers.

Not trying to be a pest, but I just wonder if listen critically to your favs and then try absorbing SOME of the rear and side wall waves if you like the result better. You might not and to each his own, but it seems like less living room sound will equal better reproduced space from the recording. Remember though, as Linkwitz says, it cannot be that acoustic foam crap that just removes everything about 5KHZ, but something more broadband like 4" of rigid fiberglass or Bonded Logic. You want even absorption, not just highs.

Greg

 

[Remlab]

It is true that minimally mic'd recording are about as accurate as it gets for capturing an actual acoustic space, but even those tend to cheat sometimes. I work with Bob Katz of former Chesky records fame. If you only knew some of the tricks he used to make the recording sound MORE real. Sure, 80% of the sound of say the famous Rebecca Pidgeon disk is a single point Blumlein setup, but there are other spot mics and tricks to add more hall sound into the recording because no mics hear the same as our ears.

Now, lets take this perfectly captured acoustic space and try to reproduce it in your living room. Unless your speakers have a laser beam, cardioid type polar response, you are going to be superimposing the sound of your environment on top of all those delicately recorded location cues. Its the finest little details and reverb tails that really bring a space alive in a recording and adding extraneous ones into the mix is only going to blur or cloud the recorded space.

Now, as far as studio produced recordings goes, even though they are completely made up whims of the engineers imagination, the same rules apply IMHO. Every time I buy a new CD that sounds even remotely good, I take it to the studio for a listen to compare it to my room. Even though I prefer my speakers to those at the studio, I invariably hear more "into" the recording because I don't have a ton of strong, early reflections hitting me before or too close in time to the direct sound. The studio is a very evenly balanced environment. Ours is not too dead as to sound like an anechoic chamber, but has a proper balance of absorption and diffusion.

The other choice if room treatment is not a realistic option is to sit in the nearfield where direct to reflected energy is maximized. Kind of the opposite as to what Bose preaches. Bob's room is the perfect example. Some excellent treatments, but also the listening position is close to the speakers relative to their distance to nearby boundaries. In his mastering room, I consistently hear the most amazing sense of space and ambiance. I want his room set-up with my speakers.

Not trying to be a pest, but I just wonder if listen critically to your favs and then try absorbing SOME of the rear and side wall waves if you like the result better. You might not and to each his own, but it seems like less living room sound will equal better reproduced space from the recording. Remember though, as Linkwitz says, it cannot be that acoustic foam crap that just removes everything about 5KHZ, but something more broadband like 4" of rigid fiberglass or Bonded Logic. You want even absorption, not just highs.

Greg

Greg
I can tell that you teach as a profession. You must have a very good re pore with your students!
Due not only to national and international pressures but a wife that wants a new fireplace(That's also not blocked by speakers) I have moved my rig to the only other place in the living room that I can. Glass coffee table removal is a negotiable. The room treatments have to be mobile because Laura( My wife) would never allow permanent placement. I'll show her the ones you have. Maybe she'll change her mind. Anyway, tell me what you think..http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=album;id=8333

 

[lenta]

At first I was starting to prepare some serious information about how you could improve your room acoustics, but seeing these new pictures I can truly say that you can do nothing to this open livingroom.
Do you have some other rooms?Maby basement?

And nothing wrong with glass table, it just shouldnt be between speakers and listening position. But that wardrobe between speakers is much, much worse!

 

[Remlab]

Lenta, I am going to move it back after I redo the fireplace. It did sound way better where it was before.
I have all way's known the importance of acoustics. I have heard $500,000 systems sound terrible, and $1,000 systems sound amazing based on the room that they're in. I heard a system back in 96 by Michael Green(Roomtunes)set up in a "walk in" closet that sounded amazing! But sometimes, we're stuck with the situations that we're stuck with( I have two sons in college(and both living at home). when one of them leaves, my listening room options will change. I have a feeling that 90% of people don't post pictures of their setups for fear of being criticized by others who happen to be more fortunate. Have you ever seen John Atkinson's listening room?MBL 111s -- 2002 | Stereophile.com Notice the open hall to the right? Or how about John Iversons? Main Listening Room | Stereophile.com Go through these images and look at the systems! Nobody is acting incredulous about their situations(And they are top reviewers of equipment!) Consider yourself lucky and be done with it.

 

[Remlab]

Lenta
And if you really wan't to feel superior, purchase Floyd Toole's book on loudspeaker's and rooms. He has a picture of his listening room that I'm sure you would hate. Maybe you could send him an e-mail about how you could help him too.
Seth

 

[Remlab]

At first I was starting to prepare some serious information about how you could improve your room acoustics, but seeing these new pictures I can truly say that you can do nothing to this open livingroom.
Do you have some other rooms?Maby basement?


And nothing wrong with glass table, it just shouldnt be between speakers and listening position. But that wardrobe between speakers is much, much worse!

Lenta
The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.. If you can't see the loudspeaker's reflection on the top of a glass or any other kind of coffee table from your listening seat, you can't hear an auditory reflection either. The rules for coffee tables are no different than they are for walls.
Seth

 

[InclinedPlane]

I guess I feel lucky that room anomalies have never bothered me, nor inherent response issues like the big hump at the top of the 10's and 8's response. I like a strong treble anyway. I just want accurate, low distortion mids at 100db and every cone driver I've tried has let me down. Now I'm looking into horn loading the neo 8 with the jbl 2206 or the AE td10s. I have found a few diy topics on this.

 

[Remlab]

Read this book!

Greg and Lenta
This is the book you want to read if you are concerned with what is relevant (and irrelevant) in dealing with the latest research on the psycho-acoustics of the loudspeaker, room, listener interface. F. Alton Everest's book(Which I have owned for 20 years and have read from cover to cover) Is meant for the studio and is extremely outdated (No psycho-acoustics research) in comparison. For fun, look who wrote the first Amazon review...
http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Acoustics-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers/dp/0240520092
I consider my audio system as part of the family. There is nothing more depressing than imagining a loner locked away in his dark basement, centered perfectly between his speakers, with his head perfectly still, passing his life away, while neurotically obsessing on every little detail (Lenta, is this you?). Creepy! If that's your goal, you should have saved your time and money and bought Sennheiser HD 800's with a good headphone amp. At least it's socially exceptable behavior..

 

[lenta]

Your family room is more creepy than acousticaly and visualy comfortable listening room.

With soft, natural wood floor, big great sofa, beautiful curtains, soft lightnig, white big candles on the floor, smaller on the table and your great sounding system....Believe me, your wife would not believe it and would appreciete so much that it would be your new romantic corner. Add to that home cinema projector, some good movie and even more joy and pleasure you would get from that room.

 

[Remlab]

Lenta
I have to admit, all kidding aside, if I lived in Norway or any place where it gets that cold, I would have your warm decore. I grew up in ski towns so I Know what it's like. But Southern California(Likewise for Florida)is different. The warm Climate demands cooler decore and it looks creepy if you don't do it that way. It's all relative. We have two leather recliners and curtains ordered, so all is not lost.
Can I see a picture of your room? Maybe I could use some inspiration.
Seth

 

[Remlab]

Lenta? Picture? Yes? No?

 

[Remlab]

It is true that minimally mic'd recording are about as accurate as it gets for capturing an actual acoustic space, but even those tend to cheat sometimes. I work with Bob Katz of former Chesky records fame. If you only knew some of the tricks he used to make the recording sound MORE real. Sure, 80% of the sound of say the famous Rebecca Pidgeon disk is a single point Blumlein setup, but there are other spot mics and tricks to add more hall sound into the recording because no mics hear the same as our ears.

Now, lets take this perfectly captured acoustic space and try to reproduce it in your living room. Unless your speakers have a laser beam, cardioid type polar response, you are going to be superimposing the sound of your environment on top of all those delicately recorded location cues. Its the finest little details and reverb tails that really bring a space alive in a recording and adding extraneous ones into the mix is only going to blur or cloud the recorded space.

Now, as far as studio produced recordings goes, even though they are completely made up whims of the engineers imagination, the same rules apply IMHO. Every time I buy a new CD that sounds even remotely good, I take it to the studio for a listen to compare it to my room. Even though I prefer my speakers to those at the studio, I invariably hear more "into" the recording because I don't have a ton of strong, early reflections hitting me before or too close in time to the direct sound. The studio is a very evenly balanced environment. Ours is not too dead as to sound like an anechoic chamber, but has a proper balance of absorption and diffusion.

The other choice if room treatment is not a realistic option is to sit in the nearfield where direct to reflected energy is maximized. Kind of the opposite as to what Bose preaches. Bob's room is the perfect example. Some excellent treatments, but also the listening position is close to the speakers relative to their distance to nearby boundaries. In his mastering room, I consistently hear the most amazing sense of space and ambiance. I want his room set-up with my speakers.

Not trying to be a pest, but I just wonder if listen critically to your favs and then try absorbing SOME of the rear and side wall waves if you like the result better. You might not and to each his own, but it seems like less living room sound will equal better reproduced space from the recording. Remember though, as Linkwitz says, it cannot be that acoustic foam crap that just removes everything about 5KHZ, but something more broadband like 4" of rigid fiberglass or Bonded Logic. You want even absorption, not just highs.

Greg

Greg
Bob Katz is a legend in his field. If someone asked me if I could name a mastering engineer, he's the only one who's name I know from heart. Out of curiosity, what kind of studio monitors does he use...
I agree with everything your saying regarding the preservation of delicate spacial cues. I have tried several different back wave mitigation schemes with ab-fusion types being the most successful. As far as sidewall waves are concerned, I am amazed at how much of a null is created with dipoles. The U frame shape of my dipole panels creates a cardoid like null Slightly behind, rather than directly to the sides. So basically, All I have to do is aim the null at the offending object(In this case, the armoire). While treating the backwave is easily discernible to my ears, treating the side waves is not. And
as far as the frequency range of spacial cues go, 1khz(according to Linkwitz) is the absolute lowest limit. So acoustic treatment below this point for the preservation of spacial cues is, at best, moot. A good test of the audibility room's reverberant decay is to play a track rather loud while in the primary listening location, and have someone mute the volume. In my system, slap echo audibility is bad. With the my (ugly but easily removable)1" acoustic panels http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/soundproofing_tips/html/Wall_Panels.htm, the slap echo is virtually eliminated at the listening seat.
Seth