Do you time align your drivers ?
Hello to Everyone :)
First of all thank you very much for this extremely interesting source of audio informations.
Second, I am very beginner but eager to learn as well.:bouncy:
I understand that when the centers of emission of drivers are not equally distant from the listening point they must be time aligned. :blink:
1) Is there a tolerance on this distance difference ? an acceptable gap ?
2) How do you perform this alignment ? actively with an active crossover or passively ?
3) Is this issue overrated for home applications ?
Thank you sincerely and kind regards,:D
Gino
Re: Do you time align your drivers ?
This is an interesting question and one that I hope to someday do some serious studying of.
First of all, audio is full of pseudo scientific BS and worse. Bearing that in mind, if a speaker is advertised as being time aligned, I wouldn't assume it necessarily to be true.
So what is time alignment? As far as I know there are three types.
A full frequency driver such as a single full range cone or an electrostatic panel. These will inherently be time aligned.
A properly designed coaxial driver can be time aligned.
Lastly we have the vast majority of speakers claiming to be time aligned. These typically have a sloped baffle or a series of baffles that are stepped back. This design can only be really time aligned on axis and at one specific listening height. I am not so sure these designs are truly ever time and phase coherent in absolute terms in the real world.
So how important is time alignment?
That is a huge question. as Mr. BMW said, his 4345 clones are far from time aligned, a horn based speaker with a baffle mounted 2405 will have a step (impulse) response that shows a distinct separate arrival time from the tweeter and horn by several milliseconds. Does this make them unlistenable? No. Can everyone hear this? No. Can anyone hear this? I don't know. I'd like to find out.
That said, when you take a system like the 4345 and correct it's time alignment, it will sound different... better? I am not sure. This is an area that I find most interesting.
Widget