Axpona 2025

[MattHooper]

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I don’t think there’s any definitive measured test as of yet.

But that said, the experience of people listening to those demos, and the experience of people who have tried or own the Isoacoustic footers - which is a very large number of people by now as they are very popular - is amazingly consistent. Practically everybody reports bass tighter and a sort of clearing up of the midrange, the speakers
“ disappearing” a bit more as sound sources.
That type of thing. Which is what I hear too.

There’s also been some YouTube demos of music played back on loud speakers, with and without the footers, where the speakers have been kept the same height. And you can hear the difference there too, in the recordings.

 

[Purité Audio]

People ‘report’ all sorts of stuff, there is no actual mechanism to make any difference unless the speakers are heroically poorly designed.
Keith

 

[goat76]

Are you just talking about for bass frequencies? What about having a good sounding room or some treatment for higher frequencies? Or do you feel that in a properly designed speaker, higher frequency response with sound close to optimal in an average untreated room?

Thanks to room treatment, the largest improvement I have had in my room is a more even decay time over a large range from the upper bass region and all the way up to the treble region. This calms down everything in a very good way, which will be a good thing no matter what loudspeakers are used, cardioid design or not. It's of course hard to treat the lower bass region in a normal room, but that is fairly easily solved using EQ.

Even speaker manufacturers who you initially would think are in the non-room-treatment camp, like Revel, are suggesting room treatments in their loudspeaker manuals. I don't know where some people got the idea from that no room treatment should ever be done, and they usually seem to prefer talking about highly overly done room treatment when these discussions come up, where the treatment has ended up being very unbalanced towards the upper range of the frequency spectrum.

This is not addressed to you, Matt, as I'm sure you have also come to the same conclusion as I have, that a balanced and fairly even decay time over as large a part as possible of the frequency range will make the perceived overall sound sound better, with an added "calmness" that is especially heard in the midrange and upper frequency range. People who don't find this to be true have either never heard it, or they may have just experienced an overly treated room that may have caused an imbalance to the overall sound.

Here are Revel's suggestions on room treatments from their manual for the Be Series of speakers. This will, of course, also make the overall sound better for loudspeakers with a cardioid design as well.

https://www.excelia-hifi.cz/revel/manual/revel-performa-f228be-m126be.pdf

 

[MattHooper]

This is not addressed to you, Matt, as I'm sure you have also come to the same conclusion as I have, that a balanced and fairly even decay time over as large a part as possible of the frequency range will make the perceived overall sound sound better, with an added "calmness" that is especially heard in the midrange and upper frequency range. People who don't find this to be true have either never heard it, or they may have just experienced an overly treated room that may have caused an imbalance to the overall sound.

I would say that aligns with my own experience. Yes, you can end up with an over retreated room that sounds too dead and weird.

As I’ve mentioned, my room renovation employed an acoustician and I’ve ended up with a nice balance. The room feels very
“ calm” acoustically, to the point where to my surprise people would very often mention it not long after we begin talking in the room “ it sounds so nice in here.”

There’s a really nice sense of calm and smoothness to the sound of the system in the room - there’s all the air and high end “life” I could want, but it is just smooth of any “hash.” As an audio buddy said “ It’s clean and vivid but I could just listen to this for days at any volume.”

Works well for me too because I have sensitive ears.

 

[Gary_G]

I would say that aligns with my own experience. Yes, you can end up with an over retreated room that sounds too dead and weird.

As I’ve mentioned, my room renovation employed an acoustician and I’ve ended up with a nice balance. The room feels very
“ calm” acoustically, to the point where to my surprise people would very often mention it not long after we begin talking in the room “ it sounds so nice in here.”

There’s a really nice sense of calm and smoothness to the sound of the system in the room - there’s all the air and high end “life” I could want, but it is just smooth of any “hash.” As an audio buddy said “ It’s clean and vivid but I could just listen to this for days at any volume.”

Works well for me too because I have sensitive ears.

One day!

 

[Patrick Bateman]

From the manufacturer:
"Acoustic Grove System - an indispensable acoustic tools to manage unwanted reflections/diffractions in the room without absorbing the liveliness of music energy. The science behind it stems from the science of forest acoustics.

:: groan ::

 

[Patrick Bateman]

We've only done a handful of shows so far, but this kind of feedback motivates us to do more in the future.

Apologies in advance for the unsolicited advice, but this can be a real slippery slope. I owned a mail order company back in the day, and the thing that killed it was mostly becoming dependent on shows and ads to move my product.

Basically, I took out ads to move product. That worked... at first. Eventually you end up selling to all of the people who are interested, and then sales start to fall off. Then you find a new place to advertise, or you run ads in both publications. That works, at first. You get another 'bump' in sales, from exposing the product to a new audience.

Rinse and repeat for a while, and soon you end up with a marketing budget that basically requires you to keep blowing money on ads. On any given Tuesday, I had a mental tally of "how much I had to sell that day" vs "what my ads cost." It was maddening; if I didn't move enough product by about 2pm, I knew that I'd inched closer to the company collapsing.

This turns into a catch-22:

• If you keep running ads, you get sales, but the company doesn't turn a profit.
• If you stop running ads, you stop losing money, but you don't have any sales.

Naturally, I took "the path of least resistance:" I kept running ads, but I lowered the quality of the product. That DID work, but then I was competing with other companies in a lower end of the market, and the competition ate me alive.

 

[Richard G]

Andrew Jones did a great demo of the Sourcepoint 10V master edition. So-called because it has five 10” cones in the box. 2 bass drivers, 1 mid, and 2 passive radiators on the back. They sounded awesome. When asked the msrp, Jones said “how much is anything right now?”, elucidating the uncertainty tariffs are causing

They’re not on MoFi’s website but they are here, for a reasonable $8000

MOFI SourcePoint V10 Master Edition - MoFi Dealer in Timonium, Maryland

Monumental Sound, Reimagined Built to defy expectations, the SourcePoint V10 Master Edition is a statement speaker that marries brute force with intricate finesse.

alleliteaudio.com

 

[MarcT]

They’re not on MoFi’s website but they are here, for a reasonable $8000

MOFI SourcePoint V10 Master Edition - MoFi Dealer in Timonium, Maryland

Monumental Sound, Reimagined Built to defy expectations, the SourcePoint V10 Master Edition is a statement speaker that marries brute force with intricate finesse.

alleliteaudio.com

Hmm, 160 pound per pair, according to that site. Doesn't 80 pounds seem on the light side for a speaker of that size and which has multiple 10 inch woofers?

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Hmm, 160 pound per pair, according to that site. Doesn't 80 pounds seem on the light side for a speaker of that size and which has multiple 10 inch woofers?

Neodymium.

 

[Salt]

View attachment 461420

Neodymium.

That's the coax for mid-high, not one of the woofers.

 

[jhaider]

That's the coax for mid-high, not one of the woofers.

IIRC the woofers have underhung neo magnets too.

 

[slaweks]

Actually, there are speakers on the market offering cardioid dispersion down to 25Hz, and they are definitely good for exciting the room modes much less than omnidirectional concepts. Admittingly, such models are rather chunky.



I would also attribute that to the rather neutral indirect soundfield in the room compared to the midrange-heavy one many people are used to. Cardioid in one method to do this, but there are other ways to create a constant directivity from lower mids on. I have some sympathy for the technical sophistication of many cardioid active speakers, but that usually comes at a price of either limited SPL in certain frequency bands or problematic transition in dispersion from a cardioid band to the neighboring bands which in my understanding is not really achieving the goals of a constant directivity speaker.

Which speakers do offer cardioid dispersion down to 25Hz?