Pearljam5000
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How close can the Linkwitz LX521.4 speakers for example can get to the MBL sound and soundstage ?
This is it. You get a solo singer in a room, they are usually singing at you with perhaps reflections from walls. The way these speakers are set up, a singer would have to have a 360 degree mouth which would sound quite peculiar in practice, especially if there was more than one.Perhaps we are defining imaging differently. Great imaging is normally described as something you get with a low level of especially early arriving reflections (later ones also matter, but to a less degree). Ths implies an accurate sound stage with great clarity, intelligbility and localization. Or sharp pin pointing is another way to describe it. And with an omni dispersion, that's basically the worse recipe for good imaging due to all the specular energy.
With MBLs or other omnis the sound seems to be becoming from everywhere and nowhere. Which is of course the opposite of great localization and pin pointinng. The center vocal/image is considerable smaller compared to other speakers. I've never understood the facination.
Perhaps we are defining imaging differently. Great imaging is normally described as something you get with a low level of especially early arriving reflections (later ones also matter, but to a less degree). Ths implies an accurate sound stage with great clarity, intelligbility and localization.
Or sharp pin pointing is another way to describe it.
With MBLs or other omnis the sound seems to be becoming from everywhere and nowhere.
Perhaps they were just the best speakers suited to that room and the equipment, that’s all. I’ve heard it before, Shahinian owners say those speakers are the closest thing to live music ever, yet others listen to them and say they are rubbish. It’s just a different approach to sound reproduction, it’s done in technically the same way, they are not an evolution in the way sound is recreated. They come in a very posh package sure, and I’m sure they are very good speakers, just nothing revolutionary.
There are probably speakers at a fraction of the cost that could do similar in a controlled, unbiased experiment.
In a concert situation the sound comes from "every where". 20% direct 80% reflection.
I have to think the room and placement get super critical with any of these omni-esque speakers. So, if you spent a bunch of effort, you might get them to sound as good.How close can the Linkwitz LX521.4 speakers for example can get to the MBL sound and soundstage ?
I agree, you'll probably get different results than the recording engineer intended. If you just like the spatial effects of omni, maybe you won't care though.I would add one more point from the mixing perspective: the imaging effects are unpredictable and room-dependent. For this reason alone I would avoid them.
I'd need a great amp to drive them...by that I mean able to feed them plenty of power, not meaning that snob-like.
The smoking parlour would ruin themI’d probably put a pair in the orangery if I had one.
Yes, exactly. I would find it hard to trust mixing decisions too if I used them as monitors.I agree, you'll probably get different results than the recording engineer intended. If you just like the spatial effects of omni, maybe you won't care though.
You can set them up to have good image specificity. Perhaps not as laser tight as the most narrow dispersion speakers depending on what you are going for. But very good. I found them quite comparable to my regular box speakers for imaging. I remember a guest was truly shocked by the impression that a vocalist had simply "appeared" in the room, focused between the MBLs....
My Von Schweikerts have a rear ambiance tweeter that provide some airiness. They do throw a nice ball of sound but it is centered between the speakers. I'd love to hear MBLs setup to provide good imaging. Like I said, at all the shows where I have heard them the rooms just seem to be full of sound coming from everywhere. They do seem to have a nice smooth full range frequency response.
Martin
Interesting reading. Quite right as well to say, not convincing someone of something because it’s how you see it. I’m similar to you and like the ‘realistic’ sound production as well, I play music myself and have played live so I kind of have some experience of live production. The thing is, many times when I’ve played live with others, most of the time the equipment used has been way less than anything like class leading audiophile gear. And as for making instruments sound real from a hi-fi I don’t really think it takes a lot. Even a relatively modest hi-fi with decent but not expensive speakers can do it well if it's covering most of the frequency range of that instrument, is amplified sufficiently and balanced with the other equipment (or eq’d right). Guitars, drums, bass, horns, woodwind whatever can sound convincingly real, plus with what the ears and brain are often making up as we listen it’s often achievable. What I find struggles more than anything is human voice, there’s something about it which even though easily captured by the frequency range of most speakers never quite has the organic feel of the real deal. Probably one of the better ones to do it for me though is still a 50-year-old design, the LS3/5A.Sure, I get it. We aren't all impressed with the same thing.
I've heard a number of the ASR favourites and sometimes was left shrugging my shoulders somewhat. Competent, but nothing different or advanced sounding.
So I'm not going to convince you of anything just because it's how I see things.
Could be!
But there is a lack good live vs reproduced experiments, so we are left mostly speculating, and also if it's our interest, in investigating ourselves.
A lot of people don't really care about the live vs reproduced question. I do. I've been fascinated by live vs reproduced sound for as long as I can remember. When I hear live unamplified music I almost always take a moment to close my eyes and interrogate the characteristics it seems to have, why does it sound "real?" I'm doing this all the time even just with every day sounds, pots or pans being moved by my wife or son in the kitchen, I close my eyes and listen to people's voices. At audio shows I close my eyes and compare the sound of real people talking to a vocal coming through the speakers. I used to record instruments I own, and my family's voices, to do live vs reproduced comparisons with speakers I'd have in my home, and also I'd sometimes use those recordings as part of my reference tracks when auditioning loudspeakers at stores.
It was always interesting to me that some systems could sound to me highly detailed, yet not for a moment remind me of the real thing. Yet others somehow did remind me more of the real thing. So to check this out, for instance, I had a recording of my acoustic guitar being played in my home, and when I had different speakers in, I'd have my friend play my guitar behind and between the speakers and compare that to the recording. (Eyes closed for each). This was not a scientific experiment. I couldn't manage that. It was simply to see to what degree a loudspeaker captured the general character of real instruments played in real space.
The MBLs did this better than any speaker I've heard. They had the clarity of reproduction to match the real thing very closely, they had the timbral character down super close, and their spatial presentation was more like "what the real guitar sounded like being played in the room" than any other speaker. So...I have my own conclusions from my own little investigations, as provisional as they are.
(FWIW, probably the next best speaker for reproducing the sense of live instruments were my Thiel 3.7 speakers, which I no longer own as they were too large aesthetically for my room).