Educate me!

[Rickysa]

Can you please explain what attributes/measurements make "Speaker B" sound so much different from "Speakers A & C" in this demonstration by Erin's Audio Corner?: "Audability Experiment"

Hoping not to bias anyone that might watch the video...but the demonstration was to examine "soundstage", and that might be the major takeaway, but I am wondering if there is anything more tangible. I ask because for months I have been trying to understand the attributes of the gear I bought a few years ago (without doing any research) and why I've been disappointed with it. I can't tell you how happy I was when I stumbled across Erin's video and could finally point at something and yell, "That's it!"...(Kinda like Charlie Brown ). I have now learned that I like the "sound" of Speaker B, when I bought stuff that sounds like Speaker C.

I have since, fallen (quite happily) into the rabbit-hole of audio science and begun building amps (and soon speakers) while compiling gear to test them. So much to learn!

 

[Mort]

Speaker B is the beloved Philharmonic Audio BMR monitor. Very wide and constant directivity. I own the bigger HT tier from the same company.

Did you see his follow up?

 

[Rickysa]

Did you see his follow up?

Oh yes! And I spent the weekend reading/watching everything about it I could find . In fact, I'm hoping to build a version of the towers.

 

[Mort]

Do you have a more specific question? If you liked speaker B, as do I, you'll want to look into wide and constant directivity speakers. There are some good discussions of directivity here at ASR. They can be dense.

Personally, I'm a big fan of both very wide directivity ribbon tweeters like the BMR monitor and alternatively, medium-narrow coaxials like Genelec, which he didn't include. (Speaker A was an Adrenal bookshelf I think, and speaker C a Klipsch horn.)

The wide directivity BMR is ideal for larger spaces, acoustic content, and HT because the soundstage is big and pleasantly diffuse.

By contrast I prefer the coaxial at midfield, for subbass heavy rock and pop. It lacks almost any of the ethereal reverberance (unless it's in the source itself) that one hears in a wide directivity ribbon like the BMR but is crystal clear with a stunningly focused center image.

If you can sort through the nonsense, Philharmonic Audio has a thread over at AVS Forum. The designer of the BMR monitor is still active there despite some health issues.

 

[ZolaIII]

Erin is a bad boy! He didn't say which listening position he is referring to. I had to do listening and leaved a comment. Listening whose still better than rant. Surprisingly I indicated C deficiency very accurate. Good for me and my aging ears. Rest whosent to hard to conclude.
Educate you on what? It depends on room and listening distance. For close to mid range you want cardioid alike from low mids as far up as it goes. Bass will go wide to standing unified perfectly summed wave anyway but you want to have it dynamic and low THD as you can. Especially taking in consideration ELC. A & C simply didn't even qualify in that regard (A did main bass deacent). You want to push and build it up to far field and beyond so wide dispersion it is, tho B is a bit extreme thanks to 90° ribon tweter. You don't really want that either, maybe a mid point of 45° (Berilium, multiple silk dome, super tweater to widen regular guided one and even that for very wide sweat spot). For long distance long horns. You diffuse highs behind you and improve absorbtion in back to the speakers along with proper placement guidelines and do matching (SPL), positioning (impulse matching) and DSP-ing.

 

[Rickysa]

I guess the main question would be: what would cause the sound difference that I heard on headphones?...since the attribute of constant directivity (and the premise of the video) would seem to be positional with relation to the speaker itself?

 

[ZolaIII]

I guess the main question would be: what would cause the sound difference that I heard on headphones?...since the attribute of constant directivity (and the premise of the video) would seem to be positional with relation to the speaker itself?

And which headphones would that be? They are contributed other than that to psy how we hear and state of your hearing. Of course video is with compressed audio with all do rolled down highs which still stand out on broken C. It's bin aural recording as he explained.
Physics while lows sum better highs lose less energy with distance and still pick up from wall behind listening spot. Many comments where how B whose bright or V shaped. Which would explain wide and depth of the field but to me it whosent tho did try to dig deeper then what's good for the cone and not very fast (slam decay). To be fair I used costume EQ-ed Denon (still toward Harman) AH-D5200 with LDAC BT CS43131 DAC. Which are a bit like speaker B out of the box (tonally tho much lower distortion).

 

[Mort]

guess the main question would be: what would cause the sound difference that I heard on headphones?...since the attribute of constant directivity (and the premise of the video) would seem to be positional with relation to the speaker itself?

Your question makes it hard to answer because I don't know exactly what you 'heard in your headphones'.

Directivity is indeed positional. It's about the sound of sound reflections. Erin was demonstrating how different three speakers with similar on axis frequency response can sound because of differences in directivity.

The one you like employs a ribbon tweeter and some excellent crossover work to create a wide and constant directivity, which features a different sound stage than the A or C. That difference in soundstage is what Erin is trying to show but it doesn't fully come through. That's what I hear though.

I may not have answered your question, which you are encouraged to try again. It took me a while to even begin to understand this.

 

[JeremyFife]

I'm sure that you've thought about this, but you heard different speakers in #Erin's# room ...that doesn't necessarily translate to the sound you'd get in your room.
Flat FR and even directivity lend themselves to adjustment (dsp/eq) and tuning to your room.
It's never simple

Enjoy your learning journey

 

[Rickysa]

I don't know exactly what you 'heard in your headphones'.

and herein lies my past frustrations in trying to understand "what I like", as well as the EUREKA moment when I came across Erin's video. Reading through the comments of that first video shows how difficult it seems to describe sound. My best explanation is a visual analogy...the difference between Speaker B and the others is like the difference in looking through a dirty window and one that's just been cleaned...

 

[Rickysa]

My current system sounds "veiled", almost like Dolby Noise Reduction has been turned on, whereas Speaker B sounds so much "clearer"...again, words make it hard.

 

[Mort]

and herein lies my past frustrations in trying to understand "what I like", as well as the EUREKA moment when I came across Erin's video. Reading through the comments of that first video shows how difficult it seems to describe sound. My best explanation is a visual analogy...the difference between Speaker B and the others is like the difference in looking through a dirty window and one that's just been cleaned...

If you like speaker B, you like a speaker with wide and constant directivity. That's the more technical jargon. Slightly less technically, It's got a wider and more diffuse soundstage than the more narrow alternatives Erin presented.

 

[Mort]

Are those that have not watched the videos, Erin was able to get the on axis frequency response to within a half DB with eq. They are all bookshelf speakers and bass was not a differentiating factor.

The whole point of both videos was to demonstrate how different a wide directivity speaker sounds. It is something Erin has repeated many times in many videos.

I did not think the video sound was very reflective (pardon the pun) of how pleasant wide dispersion is, especially with acoustic content. But it did the job.

 

[bagwell359]

The wide directivity BMR is ideal for larger spaces, acoustic content, and HT because the soundstage is big and pleasantly diffuse.

By contrast I prefer the coaxial at midfield, for subbass heavy rock and pop. It lacks almost any of the ethereal reverberance (unless it's in the source itself) that one hears in a wide directivity ribbon like the BMR but is crystal clear with a stunningly focused center image.

If you can sort through the nonsense, Philharmonic Audio has a thread over at AVS Forum. The designer of the BMR monitor is still active there despite some health issues.

Big? Yes Diffuse? Not IMO, very accurate placement of instruments and instrument space between them in the stage IMO. Agree with the rest of the post.