Electrostatic speakers?

[SIY]

@BDWoody what's the policy re: non-review threads staying on topic? I kind of like how these threads meander since I think it leads to discussions that may not necessarily evolve otherwise. But perhaps it's strictly against forum policy?

I think the forum software allows splitting threads. Which if BDW thinks is appropriate, instead of deletion, it's an alternative.

 

[Thomas savage]

I wish this thread would stick to the topic and attempts to wander off into the philosophy of science should be met with 'start a new thread'

In case anyone is wondering what the actual topic of this thread was - it's "Electrostatic speakers"

Agreed , but only because valuable tangents get lost in threads like this .

Great discussions get absorbed and can never be found or contributed to in the future because they are without a label and destination .

That's the main problem, its a loss going forward for the forum. On the other hand you have threads that have done their subject matter to death already so the actual damage in that sense is minimal.

You want your words read and to be of the most value, put them in a appropriate thread . Its a lot of work to make those new thread titles posthumously and hand paste everything over from the drifting discussions.

We are humans, folks get absorbed in discussion and thats a fine and good thing, there's no perfect solution.

 

[BDWoody]

@BDWoody what's the policy re: non-review threads staying on topic? I kind of like how these threads meander since I think it leads to discussions that may not necessarily evolve otherwise. But perhaps it's strictly against forum policy?

Policy-wise, there really isn't a policy.

Thread drift is certainly a part of the forum, and I agree that it is where many very interesting discussions get started.

That said, it isn't always the best way to pursue a new subject, for all kinds of reasons.

First thing would be for more members to actually start new threads when it's clear it should happen.

I can take a post or posts and start a new thread (or merge with another) with them. It can be a monstrous pain to try to parse pages of threads to figure out what goes where if it's too far after the fact, but it's not a big deal if there are a handful that could be the start of something better placed elsewhere.

If someone reports a post they'd like to move and tell me which posts should follow, I am usually able to oblige.

The more we get new people, the more I'm going to ask from the more senior members to keep that kind of stuff on track.

We are a much more self-moderated forum than most. Yes, that's messy.

I just try to keep things from getting bloody. Messy doesn't bother me.

 

[AdamG]

If the OP is OK with the thread drift and there is no real policy to follow. Then I vote to let is run its course. Thread drift policy can be stifling and squash great constructive conversation. IMHO, really up to the OP. Unless they object let it run.

‘Refreshing to me.....

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

oh this is getting very self-referential, a thread drifting into a discussion about thread drift

 

[mhardy6647]

@BDWoody what's the policy re: non-review threads staying on topic? I kind of like how these threads meander since I think it leads to discussions that may not necessarily evolve otherwise. But perhaps it's strictly against forum policy?

It's in the spirit of improvisational jazz or the Grateful Dead.
(for better or worse)

FWIW: I think that beauty, discovery, enlightment, insight, and innovation lie in the meanderings.

 

[T.J. McKenna]

Questions can be awkward or they can be foolish. If one is so lacking expertise, then one can't know the difference in the two. What such a person believes is awkward quite often is foolish. Foolish enough it doesn't bear looking into further or it is understood only in terms the claimant doesn't understand or accept. Then you have an impasse where the only way forward is for the claimant to provide evidence or drop the claim. Even if the claim should turn out to be true as in the crazy man was right, it makes no sense to use time and resources investigating every far fetched claim.

So as I see it, you've failed to even point to one example or even something remotely close to an example of general closed mindedness.

Well, yes, investigating claims takes up scarce resources, and so must be economized. However, the decision on which claims should be investigated and which ignored depends on what William James in "The Will To Believe" classifies as the difference between "live" and "dead" hypotheses, and this is a matter of will and imagination rather than a purely rational one. And the whole notion of a scientific paradigm is based on the preconceived separation of live and dead hypotheses, only broken when what had previously been perceived as "dead" is resurrected. As I see it, a lot of the "science" on this Forum is far too ready to cast hypotheses as "dead". When I first started reading ASR, I was looking forward to a demolition of much of the idiocy of the audiophile world and to rational analysis of audio performance. Instead, I kept on reading summary dismissals of audio gear based almost entirely on a handful of measurements and refusal to consider anything outside what appeared to me an extremely limited conception of musical sound. It reminded me of a club in which you had to agree with the prevailing mores or risk being ridiculed. And the mean-spiritedness about audiophiles: there seems to be this idea that they're all complete fools, and that because they're wrong much of the time that they're necessarily wrong ALL of the time. I ask, per Oliver Cromwell, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken?

Blumlein believes I haven't come up with a single example of closed-mindedness.........Look around you.......

 

[T.J. McKenna]

A speaker should reproduce the tonality and timbre of the recorded signal.




"Tonality" is not frequency response in my dictionary.

"Rich timbre", again, should be an aspect primarily of the performance and captured by the recording, I don't think I would want to add to it myself.

But this is not about "adding" timbre. It's about maintaining the original. My contention is that most speakers are lamentably deficient in this area.

 

[T.J. McKenna]

Haha, no I don't think you're talking crap here (although I think you may be stretching Popper a little in the parallel discussion ).

It'll be interesting to see what your answers are to @Duke's questions about room and setup etc. Without knowing your answers to that, I'm going to have to include some assumptions and speculation in my list of possibilities here:

1. To oversimplify the science just a little, our perception of a speaker's tonality tends to be based primarily on a speaker's direct sound in the midrange and treble (with some additional influence from early reflections), and primarily on the steady-state in-room response at low frequencies (this is basically a function of wavelength relative to dimensions of the room). It may be that the KRK's dip in the upper-bass/low-midrange partially compensates for an in-room excess of energy in the same region, which restores an overall more accurate tonal balance in a region where it's the in-room response that is perceptually dominant in terms of tonality/timbre.
2. As mentioned, the science tells us that the KRK's much wider directivity in the treble is likely (all else equal) to result in its having a more spacious/enveloping sound. This may be perceived as its having a more realistic tonality or imparting on instruments a more realistic timbre (putting the science to one side, my personal experience is that excellent spatial reproduction is possible from controlled/narrower directivity designs like that JBL, but that quite specific setup conditions need to be met; speakers like the KRK's trends to have more impressive spatial properties when set up conventionally out of the box).
3. Recordings are not reliable: mic setup, recording environment, mixing and mastering processes, etc etc (not to mention the inherent limitations of stereophonic recording and reproduction) all combine to - let's put this in the mildest possible form - prevent us from knowing that the timbre of a recording of an instrument is an accurate facsimile of the original. The most tonally accurate reproduction of a recording may not be the most tonally accurate reproduction of the thing recorded.

I could probably offer one or two other ideas, but I think those are the most likely without knowing more...

My problem with equating timbre with directivity is that I haven't found any correlation between the two. For example, the Apogee Stage is fairly beamy yet I've found it one of the best I've heard in reproducing timbre. Conversely, the Lipinski l-707, with wide-dispersion ring-radiator, is poor in this aspect.

And yes, we can never know what the original instrument sounded like as the microphone captured it. But we can infer that the speaker that consistently sounds more like a real trumpet is probably reproducing timbre better than a speaker that doesn't.

As for Popper, he doesn't go as far as Hume in relegating induction "to the flames" but he does say that (and here I'm paraphrasing) every scientific "law" is just a hypothesis waiting to be refuted.

 

[T.J. McKenna]

No, no, no...

Sweet is the antonym of sour, and synonymous (but to a lesser degree) with syrupy.

So sweet and dry are not antonyms in wine-tasting?

 

[T.J. McKenna]

That could be a 45 x 80 foot room.

What would a large room be down there?

Err sorry, that should be 3600 cubic feet!

 

[T.J. McKenna]

The last time I checked, "wet" was the opposite of "dry"---or, moist if it is "less wet". (Checked with my wife, she agrees)

I'm lazy, I just call it "accurate" or "excessive/lean highs/mids/bass etc. My EQ does not have a slider for "boomy", "dry", "shiny", "airy" etc. I do live sound mixing on occasion--no "suck" knob either... can't turn down the suck--it is out of my hands.

However, I did find a video from B&C Speakers--the crew down Italia way that make professional drivers. They don't make "audiophile" drivers and generally avoid any consumer audio gear although some people use their stuff in their speakers (I do!) Anyhoo, here is a tongue-in-cheek video as they explain their pro drivers in "audiophile speak"... yep, some people DO like "wet" midrange--who knew? Enjoy! (Yes, they are making fun of audiophiles...no skin off their butt, NOT their market)

Well, of course it depends on the context. Your belief that sound can be entirely described in terms of tonal balance is one of the points at issue. For example, a speaker IMOARO (in my outrageous and ridiculous opinion) can be simultaneously bright in balance and "dry" in timbre or it can be "sweet" in timbre. And I'm not stretching terminology here: I hear sweet as directly as I taste it; it's not something I have to mull over. It's clear and obvious. But I can't "prove" it and I can only grovel in supplication at my unworthiness.....

 

[Blumlein 88]

Well, yes, investigating claims takes up scarce resources, and so must be economized. However, the decision on which claims should be investigated and which ignored depends on what William James in "The Will To Believe" classifies as the difference between "live" and "dead" hypotheses, and this is a matter of will and imagination rather than a purely rational one. And the whole notion of a scientific paradigm is based on the preconceived separation of live and dead hypotheses, only broken when what had previously been perceived as "dead" is resurrected. As I see it, a lot of the "science" on this Forum is far too ready to cast hypotheses as "dead". When I first started reading ASR, I was looking forward to a demolition of much of the idiocy of the audiophile world and to rational analysis of audio performance. Instead, I kept on reading summary dismissals of audio gear based almost entirely on a handful of measurements and refusal to consider anything outside what appeared to me an extremely limited conception of musical sound. It reminded me of a club in which you had to agree with the prevailing mores or risk being ridiculed. And the mean-spiritedness about audiophiles: there seems to be this idea that they're all complete fools, and that because they're wrong much of the time that they're necessarily wrong ALL of the time. I ask, per Oliver Cromwell, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken?

Blumlein believes I haven't come up with a single example of closed-mindedness.........Look around you.......

More overly verbose flowery fluff. I was waiting to see you pick one topic and examine it as an example.

 

[SIY]

More overly verbose flowery fluff. I was waiting to see you pick one topic and examine it as an example.

Finding actual examples is hard. Mainly because...

 

[T.J. McKenna]

Thank you T.J. for your in-depth and educational reply. You paint with words. Are you a writer?



Was that supposed to be 3600 cubic feet?

I assume neither have obvious flaws which stand out to you, each is better in some ways, and the KRK's superiority on timbre-dependent music is imo quite interesting.

The most obvious (to me) difference in the measurements is that the KRK is putting out more off-axis energy especially in the 2-8 kHz region where there's a lot of overtones, which convey timbre. Also from the curves it looks to me like the KRK's low-end has a "kicker" between 40 and 50 Hz, which may help to balance the spectrum so that it doesn't sound tipped-up. Imo whoever did the crossover on the KRK did a great job, considering that this relatively inexpensive speaker competes with the JBL.

You are not the first (nor second nor third) musician I've recently encountered who prefers a different "voicing" than what Harman's research suggests. Hmmmm.



I can see that. "Sweet" makes sense to me.

Once again, only an enthusiastic dabbler as far as writing goes, although I have been paid money a few times for my dabbling. I don't know if the KRK competes with the JBL as it sounds so different. I believe the typical ASR adherent would prefer the JBL as it's a far more accurate speaker overall. The KRK timbre is also slightly artificial, a little Percy Faith?/Mantovani-like, if you know what I mean, as though the "timbre" knob has been turned up to 11. What's odd is that the audiophiles I know have always preferred the KRK to the JBL; it sounds dreamier and more ethereal, like a Monet, whereas the JBL is like a Durer woodcut, stark and forbidding. Oh heck, these terms must be anathema to ASR readers! Some time ago, a fellow on HeadFi asked me for speaker recommendations. He was a retired scientist living in Florida who owned the Sennheiser Orpheus Electrostatic headphone so why he wanted my feedback on speakers is unclear. At the time, I was chiefly using the JBLs and so suggested he try them. He bought them without audition (oh ye of too much faith!) and was utterly enamoured of the sound. A little while later I got the KRKs and he was very interested so he once again bought a pair unheard. And he loved them even more than the JBLs. What's more, he took them around to the home of a retired recording engineer who owned Magneplanars and the pro was equally enthusiastic. So for value I think they're quite remarkable. I just find they're not convincing on voice and this relegates them to also-rans from my perspective.

 

[T.J. McKenna]

More overly verbose flowery fluff. I was waiting to see you pick one topic and examine it as an example.

Too many "big" words, eh? Actually, I'm an adherent of the "creator paring his nails" school of writing: hard and precise, the outcome of the dictum that there is no such thing as a synonym. The attempt to find the only word that precisely captures both denotation and connotation. But my apologies, more "big" words.....

 

[Blumlein 88]

Too many "big" words, eh? Actually, I'm an adherent of the "creator paring his nails" school of writing: hard and precise, the outcome of the dictum that there is no such thing as a synonym. The attempt to find the only word that precisely captures both denotation and connotation. But my apologies, more "big" words.....

No, not the size of the words. Rather the sheer volume. The style is flowery. For such precision you claim I find your long paragraphs connote a paucity of information.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I wish this thread would stick to the topic and attempts to wander off into the philosophy of science should be met with 'start a new thread'

In case anyone is wondering what the actual topic of this thread was - it's "Electrostatic speakers"

For myself I resolved the exasperation by adding another hard of understanding member to my ignore list.
I know it is lazy, but if somebody is determinedly obtuse, and/or clearly does not have the aptitude of understanding scientific subjects, however simple the explanation, it is eventually the most relaxing solution for me personally.

 

[BDWoody]

Too many "big" words, eh? Actually, I'm an adherent of the "creator paring his nails" school of writing: hard and precise, the outcome of the dictum that there is no such thing as a synonym. The attempt to find the only word that precisely captures both denotation and connotation. But my apologies, more "big" words.....

Honestly, just waaaaay too many of them. You do seem to enjoy the sound of your own prose... Maybe cut back on...all of it. You're basically trolling at this point.

 

[andreasmaaan]

My problem with equating timbre with directivity is that I haven't found any correlation between the two. For example, the Apogee Stage is fairly beamy yet I've found it one of the best I've heard in reproducing timbre. Conversely, the Lipinski l-707, with wide-dispersion ring-radiator, is poor in this aspect.

Well, directivity is a plausible aspect of the explanation, but as I already mentioned, the direct sound of each loudspeaker is very different here in the first place.

As is often the case in discussions of this nature, we have someone conducting an uncontrolled "experiment" in which every variable is cast to the flames, then in the course of the discussion someone else offers speculation as to which variables may correlate with perceived differences in sound, then the experimenter replies with (sorry to paraphrase): "Oh I don't it could be that. If it were, that wouldn't explain these other listening experiments I've done (in which, again, literally every variable was similarly uncontrolled)."

And on it goes...

Also, FYI, a ring radiator has narrower radiation than a dome of equivalent diameter.

And yes, we can never know what the original instrument sounded like as the microphone captured it. But we can infer that the speaker that consistently sounds more like a real trumpet is probably reproducing timbre better than a speaker that doesn't.

Or that it's more like the speakers that the genres of music you listen to tend to be mixed on, or that it coincidentally compensates for irregularities in your listening room better, or that the speaker/room's spatial qualities better match your conception of the spatial qualities of live music, or...

As for Popper, he doesn't go as far as Hume in relegating induction "to the flames" but he does say that (and here I'm paraphrasing) every scientific "law" is just a hypothesis waiting to be refuted.

Completely agree with you there at least