Recent content by Duke

The apparent preference for wide-and-uniform pattern speakers in controlled blind listening indicates that a fairly well-energized and spectrally-correct reflection field is generally desirable from a sound quality standpoint. Very often "kill the room" involves aggressive use of absorption...

I think we're pretty much on the same page here. "Kill the room to hear less of the room" makes intuitive sense, but arguably can have downsides. Imo an alternative approach is "work with the room". I'll go out on a limb here and speculate that you'd prefer to hear the spatial signature on...

Ime it is desirable to minimize the spectral discrepancy between the direct sound and the reflection field. I think that a significant discrepancy between the two can result in listening fatigue over time. Many years ago I made a speaker with a side-mounted tweeter that fired at the near-side...

Makes sense to me. Lack of "air" is arguably one way of describing a shortage of high frequency energy in the reflection field.

My understanding is that one of the roles the side-firing tweeter plays, and maybe even the primary role it plays, is correcting the spectral balance of the in-room reflection field. (I'm sure it has some effect on spatial quality as well.) The flat electrostatic panels will beam, resulting in...

5 to 6 feet is the distance-from-the-wall recommendation I arrived at experimentally many years ago, and later I met Earl Geddes and began reading David Griesinger, and they both recommend 10 milliseconds reflection-free interval after the arrival of the direct sound, which corresponds to the...

Hence my speculation of the rear-firing drivers possibly being "voiced" to zig where the front array's off-axis energy zags.

Without knowing the details I'm not sure we can reliably dismiss the rear-firing array's contribution as a "special effect". For instance, suppose the power response of the rear-firing array is tailored to "zig" where the off-axis response of the front-firing array "zags". In this scenario, the...

Several of Sonus Faber's upper-end speakers have had user-adjustable rear-firing arrays, typically consisting of a tweeter and cone mid or midwoofer, and this model is one of them. This approach allows some adjustment of the in-room reflection field independent of the direct sound. Imo it...

I miss my friend Coco Robicheaux, master of swamp blues.

Kudos to you for heeding those words instead of second-guessing their source or reliability.

Maybe not as much of a mess as it appears at first glance: The on-axis response tends to "zig" where the off-axis response "zags", which imo is the correct design choice where the off-axis response does not track the on-axis response. The perceived tonal balance will be a weighted average of...

Very interested to hear your impressions! Here is what I'd suggest: 1. Connect them in the SAME polarity ("bipolar" rather than "dipolar") 2. Place them side-by-side with one facing forwards and the other backwards, rather than one behind the other; and 3. Try plugging the ports on the...

Excellent point - I hadn't thought of that!

Excellent question! First let me say that imo we do not have enough data to generalize that "electrostats do poorly in blind testing." I don't think that's quite what I said, and if I did, I mis-spoke. Imo they do have set-up requirements that tend to not be met in the testing set-ups I've...