The example of the audio show or the "all sounds the same" is clearly an indicator that the listening distance is too great. I have experience this myself multiple times at shows. It all sounds the same because the room dominates clearly. That is what you hear, a room with a speaker placed in it. Not a speaker in a room.
Hi
Actually a friend was a salesman for BKP and then Ohm loudspeakers and so I actually spent quite a few hours listening to a number of different “omni” speakers.
What isn’t captured in the quote you used was that directivity is nearly irrelevant if one is outdoors as to a very large degree only direct sound reaches your ears.
It is true that omni speakers have the greatest room involvement but there are ways to work around that other than room treatments.
For example the nearfield monitors (which have very little directivity) used in many recording studios are mounted only a few feet from the mix engineer and the walls which produce the first hard refection are far away.
In one of the omni setups I heard the Ohm speakers were close to the couch well inside of the side walls and they produced a great stereo image.
In each case, the listening position relative to the room reflections allowed the direct sound to be well above the reflected sound and significantly delayed because of distance.
In the cases where one did not have that arrangement, the room was noticeable as a constant as one changed the recordings as one might expect, the time of the various reflections doesn’t change by changing the recording..
To be clear one can hear the room too, there are people who having lost sight can click their mouth and "hear" the shape of the room. They did not grow new senses, only learned how to read what they had deliberately.
Omni speakers also have the nice feature that they are constant directivity and as a result if you get up and walk around, the spectral balance doesn’t change, it sounds “the same” spectrally everywhere.
Keep in mind that the loudspeakers interaction with the room is only one of the things about loudspeakers which can reduce the realism of the recorded stereo image assuming it has one.
Best,
Tom
Hi
Actually a friend was a salesman for BKP and then Ohm loudspeakers and so I actually spent quite a few hours listening to a number of different “omni” speakers.
What isn’t captured in the quote you used was that directivity is nearly irrelevant if one is outdoors as to a very large degree only direct sound reaches your ears.
It is true that omni speakers have the greatest room involvement but there are ways to work around that other than room treatments.
For example the nearfield monitors (which have very little directivity) used in many recording studios are mounted only a few feet from the mix engineer and the walls which produce the first hard refection are far away.
In one of the omni setups I heard the Ohm speakers were close to the couch well inside of the side walls and they produced a great stereo image.
In each case, the listening position relative to the room reflections allowed the direct sound to be well above the reflected sound and significantly delayed because of distance.
In the cases where one did not have that arrangement, the room was noticeable as a constant as one changed the recordings as one might expect, the time of the various reflections doesn’t change by changing the recording..
To be clear one can hear the room too, there are people who having lost sight can click their mouth and "hear" the shape of the room. They did not grow new senses, only learned how to read what they had deliberately.
Omni speakers also have the nice feature that they are constant directivity and as a result if you get up and walk around, the spectral balance doesn’t change, it sounds “the same” spectrally everywhere.
Keep in mind that the loudspeakers interaction with the room is only one of the things about loudspeakers which can reduce the realism of the recorded stereo image assuming it has one.
Best,
Tom
Tom,
I understand you saying that as you move around an Omni speaker that the sound doesn't change, that should be a given with an Omni. But what of the vertical dispersion. doesn't that change as you go from sitting down to standing up? Not one who has much experience with Omni's I am curious.
Steven
I understand you saying that as you move around an Omni speaker that the sound doesn't change, that should be a given with an Omni. But what of the vertical dispersion. doesn't that change as you go from sitting down to standing up? Not one who has much experience with Omni's I am curious.
Steven
No. If you point someone to a feature then this is "only" suggestive. If that person becomes a "victim" of suggestion then he becomes biased.
It is like with diseases. If someone coughes at you then you don't become ill necessarily if you can withstand the "thread".
Commercials are a constant stream of suggestion. It is up to you if you buy the advertised stuff or use your brian to make decisions.
Two different radiation patterns, two different applications because the room/speaker/listener inteface changes dramatically. Both are CD or very close to.
I am not Tom but I have my share of experience with this.
It depends on the implementation and the resulting vertical response. In one of my two versions (the reflector version) the vertical response is pretty narrow. Yet, the sound does not change too much if you stand up and walk passed the speakers. When you sit on the couch and jump up and down a bit on your bottom
then the change is virtually not noticeable.Oh, come on. You are splitting hairs. Show me anyone who is not biased by commercials. And please, don't point to yourself.
Ah? Really? I didn't notice that!
Even Linkwitz backs my point of using higher directivity speakers under certain conditions. And most people have to listen under those conditions. An omni simply wouldn't work as good as a directing speaker! See this quote from http://www.linkwitzlab.com/Pluto/intro.htm:
Baseballbat
anyway, these are not prohibitive requirements, especially that You can move such diminutive speakers into their optimal position just for critical listening and that the setup of the triangle is less critical - the sweet spot is wide
for example compare it to Joachim Gerhard's method of positioning conventional speakers which Gerhard himself calls "micro placement"
an omni is actually easier to place optimally in a room - "under those conditions" - than a conventional forward radiating box speaker
actually it's quite the opposite
now - why Linkwitz still recommends Orion? first of all - Orion is not a conventional speaker*, also it is a highly successful design - why should he discontinue it? besides, well, I would say it is also a psychological question - Orion is Linkwitz's first-born beloved (brain)child
*ps. and let's not forget that Orion has now a rear tweeter
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what do You mean precisely by "acoustically small"?
I am not sure but I think that we can safely rely on a source like "Acoustics and Psychoacoustics" by Howard and Angus, 4th ed., Focal Press 2009, Chapter 6: "Hearing Music in Different Environments", relevant fragment is posted below
0.2 is a typical average absorption coefficient of a listening room (again according to Howard and Angus)
it looks very much like what You describe must be caused by something else than crossing beyond the critical distance in sensu stricto
Attachments
If you think this is hairsplitting then you are saying that you belive every commercial. I am sure you're not, right ?
I wasn't questioning that and here is my take on it: Why
according to Klippel? it's a surprise for me because though I know that there is no ideal reverberant field in a domestic listening room yet isn't it that generally SPL doesn't vary much outside the critical distance even under such conditions?
Graaf,
SL says that you should listen to the PLUTO at a closer distance than the ORION. That is exactly what I am saying. It is simply a matter of directivity: higher directivity allows greater listening distance, while lower directivity has its advantages in closer distances (wider sweet spot).
He also states that the PLUTO must have a distance from nearby walls of at least 1 m. This is very difficult if you don't have such a big room as SL has, and many people don't have it. Even if they have a dedicated listening room, it is often to small to achieve this. OK, you can put the PLUTO in the extreme nearfield, then.
If placed like SL recommends, both ORION and PLUTO sound nearly identical. But this is only possible when using different listening conditions!
Think of a very high directivity speaker, say -30 dB at 30° compared to 0° (it is actually possible to build such a speaker with room-friendly sizes). Will it be more difficult to place such a speaker in a room than an omni? No, it wouldn't, because the room simply doesn't matter any more! The reflections are so low in level, that they are far below the hearing threshold. The D/R ratio is so high, that you virtually always sit in the nearfield.
The only drawback is the small sweet spot, so you have to make sure that the speakers show perfectly to your listening place. But that is not very difficult.
No, it's not.
This form of discussion is like sketches from the Pythons. Let's stop it.
I can't find the the explanation of SL for this rear tweeter at the moment, but IIRC it was for maintaining dipole behaviour even in the highs? This would be perfectly consistent in the ORION design.
Baseballbat
SL says that you should listen to the PLUTO at a closer distance than the ORION. That is exactly what I am saying. It is simply a matter of directivity: higher directivity allows greater listening distance, while lower directivity has its advantages in closer distances (wider sweet spot).
He also states that the PLUTO must have a distance from nearby walls of at least 1 m. This is very difficult if you don't have such a big room as SL has, and many people don't have it. Even if they have a dedicated listening room, it is often to small to achieve this. OK, you can put the PLUTO in the extreme nearfield, then.
If placed like SL recommends, both ORION and PLUTO sound nearly identical. But this is only possible when using different listening conditions!
Think of a very high directivity speaker, say -30 dB at 30° compared to 0° (it is actually possible to build such a speaker with room-friendly sizes). Will it be more difficult to place such a speaker in a room than an omni? No, it wouldn't, because the room simply doesn't matter any more! The reflections are so low in level, that they are far below the hearing threshold. The D/R ratio is so high, that you virtually always sit in the nearfield.
The only drawback is the small sweet spot, so you have to make sure that the speakers show perfectly to your listening place. But that is not very difficult.
No, it's not.
This form of discussion is like sketches from the Pythons. Let's stop it.
I can't find the the explanation of SL for this rear tweeter at the moment, but IIRC it was for maintaining dipole behaviour even in the highs? This would be perfectly consistent in the ORION design.
Baseballbat
This is not what I was saying. But you get biased by a commercial, if you believe the advertisement or not. You get biased in some way, either towards the product, or the opposite. The bias is not a constant, every one is different.
and this is impractical for You?
as I said before You can move such small speakers as Plutos into their optimal positions just for critical listening, no problem at all
besides SL also states that:
so - which loudspeaker is less demanding with regard to room placement - Pluto or Orion? or Pluto or conventional speaker in Gerhard's "microplacement"? aren't these rethorical questions?
c'mon! who is really talking Pythons?
easy to think, of course, not that easy to design though - ask Earl Geddes or Tom Danley
explanation? what matters is what those rear tweeters create - a whole lotta front wall reflections >1.4 kHz, that's what
so according to You there is no difference between being explicitly instructed to focus on sth and being unconsciously biased towards sth?
Yes, and to many other people, too. Because the listening distance is often to large for an omni to work better than a normal speaker.
This is even more impractical. "No problem at all". Ha!
With regards to the sidewalls: Orion. With regards to the rear walls: Pluto. Both because of the dipole pattern of the Orion. A conventional speaker is much less critical for rear wall distance, and somewhere between these two for sidewall distance.
You came up with it.
easy to think, of course, not that easy to design though - ask Earl Geddes or Tom Danley
Perhaps you should ask someone other who tried it: me. I did some tests with a tweeter to create a very high directivity, and it worked fine. Applying that design to a midrange is just a matter of size, but it won't be too large.
And no, I will not give any construction details yet.
explanation? what matters is what those rear tweeters create - a whole lotta front wall reflections >1.4 kHz, that's what
And dipole behaviour...
I don't think that this discussion leads anywhere. You are so strongly biased to omnis, you'll never accept my point. Which is not against omnis at all, but for higher directing speakers under certain (most) listening conditions. I'm out.
Baseballbat
What was again the angle of the second image corresponding these levels ?
For some reason 1952 and 1958 results differ considerably especially below 20 ms ?
what's the practical problem? they are 7 kg each and they don't require carefull toeing in or out etc.
they can be left near side wall or front wall for easy listening and then moved into a position one finds optimal in one's room for a critical listening session
so again what's the problem?
it changes nothing with regard to front wall reflections, they are there as loud as if it was a bipole
I am not biased, I am not "against higher directivity" - I accept that many listeners may prefer their type of sound in a domestic listening room, that's ok
I am against incorrect and prejudiced arguments against omnis, that's all
for example I don't agree that omnis won't work "under certain (most) listening conditions"
such statement is contrary to my experience, and not only mine, and objectively unsupported by anything else than pehaps someone's limited unfortunate experience with omnis or just someone's preference for a dry high IACC sound
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Meyer/Schodder's critera was "echo barely below audibility" wheras Lochner/Burger's criteria was "echo clearly audible". Both experiments are based on speech with a stereo base angle of 80°.
Blauert explains that test subjects in the Meyer/Schodder test probably confused echo with image shift. That's why the curve differs at smaller delays.
By the way, the labeling in Toole's book is reversed.
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in that case are You sure it wasn't quite the other way round?
because I find a requirement for a reflection to be 10 dB louder than the direct sound for an "image shift" to be experienced quite surprising, and that with speech!
Omni speakers are fairly untypical in the overall market. I'd guess the most typical midrange d.i. is 5 or 6 dB, rising to 10 at high frequencies, so the critical distance is a liitle farther out than quoted.
Whats really wrong with this quote is that they state that the reverberent field is stronger (likely true) and that it therefore dominates perception (not true!).
David
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