... Which is why we start from there and "voice to taste." But you can't do that if someone has already voiced it to their taste in a different setting.Originally Posted by Mr. Widget
... Which is why we start from there and "voice to taste." But you can't do that if someone has already voiced it to their taste in a different setting.
Agreed. If a speaker doesn’t suit your space or taste, it probably can’t be fixed, but I think you missed my point.
Widget
...The point being???
I think we all know that nobody can get a speaker to play "flat" in any kind of a real world setting without the use of eq. And even then, you won't get there.
But if you design the speakers in the room where you can play with their placement as they will ultimately sit and can "tame" the peaks and valleys you are much better off than leaving these variences in place. This can often be done through crossover design/frequency overlap.
Also, while a flat frequency response may not account for "voicing," and may sound "flat," the major players are all aware that a flat response below ~300-500 Hz is the goal and voicing is handled in the upper registers above this.
Hey!
( now from the idiot in the room)
I like to just cram in some big stuff and let it idle. Playing smaller drivers too loud crushes my senses.
So my ideal, is towards having more and using it less.
Then, cranking it up when the spirit moves me!
To those people that have the JBL 2" drivers with 4" diaphragms in their living room.....
I salute you!!
Many of us, and I assumed you had also experienced this, have experienced that when you measure the response of a speaker and you dial in too many filters to achieve a curve that looks beautiful the sound starts to lose its “life”. Leaving a few “imperfections” in there with fewer and less extreme filters will sound better.
On a parallel topic, it is extremely difficult to make meaningful measurements that replicate what our ears perceive in a given room. Omnidirectional laboratory microphones simply do not record sound the way we hear sound. Taking multiple measurements in numerous locations and summing them will get much closer to what we hear, but this too is an approximation.
Widget
In theory yes, but you still need to be able to get good measurements. See my previous post. Also passive filters while very useful are generally pretty broad strokes adjustments.
Widget
Hello Widget
Yes they sure are compared to what is possible with DSP. It's all low Q stuff in comparison just look at what the M2 DSP does and imagine trying to do that with a passive network!
I agree on your previous point in some cases leaving the warts ends up sounding better.
Rob
"I could be arguing in my spare time"
It’s a mishmash of art and science.
The art is making it sound acceptable in the desired consumer living room. The science is in designing and manufacturing the loudspeaker to be an acceptable size and shape at a price point.
In today’s world most respected consumer floor standing loudspeaker manufacturers end up empirically voicing the loudspeaker in a range of domestic living spaces and ask the user to follow recommendations for placement.
Long gone is the notion of a QB3 tuning to 32 hertz like the legacy jbl monitors for consumers. The consumers just don’t need they kind of power out at 32 hertz. They use a sub for that if needed.
These slim consumer tower loudspeakers are tuned with one or more 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 inch woofers to deliver a relatively smooth response when placed one or two feet from the rear wall which falls off quickly below 35 hertz.
In comparison the JBL legacy monitors have a significant 10db lift in the bass response below 100 hertz when modelled with Jeff Bagley’s Room modelling Excel spread sheet.
As to the response above 1000 hertz some manufacturers account for domestic living rooms with large flat reflective surfaces by putting a broad dip here and a broad bump somewhere else in the frequency response. This gives the impression the loudspeaker has a certain character which the target market like.
The target market buy that loudspeaker and they are happy.
Think of the west coast sound versus east coast sound of the 70’s.
JBL were regarded as a more forward and bass heavy sound than AR’s more reserved sound. It’s hardly surprising because apartments in NY had much smaller living rooms than the mansions in Palm Springs that were home to the Texas bookshelf (JBL 4350 and large Bozak systems).
A ruler flat loudspeaker can sound hard in the above settings where it’s has a constant power response because the reverberation time in the mid and high frequencies is insufficient to absorb the total sound power or power response. It comes down to the constant directivity arc angle. The consumer Bi radial systems had limited arc angles between 60-80 degrees. Not 100 degrees or more like the M2 which is used in control rooms with pre determined reverberation time and absorption of wall surfaces.
Non CD Loudspeaker are not as prone to this issue because the power response arc angle tends to narrow with increasing frequency. So less sound power is being sprayed around the room. It’s not surprising that consumer loudspeakers which are non CD by design are subjectively more acceptable than wide arc angle CD designs in a consumer living room as described above.
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