Horn Speakers - Is it me or.......

[Newman]

Why bother, sighted?

 

[tuga]

Why bother, sighted?

Perhaps blind, to remove any potential bias

 

[ctrl]

Are you advocating that anyone buying new speakers should listen to just one in mono?

If you have the possibility to hear a loudspeaker also monophonic, why not? We have studies that show that the classification (good/bad speaker) is easier this way.
(My passive hobby speaker tunings used to start monophonic, that was before VCAD and other software greatly improved speaker crossover design).

And we have studies that clearly show that the frequency response arriving at the ear between monophonic and stereophonic listening, differs significantly. This inevitably results in tonal and spatial differences (certainly also depending on the loudspeaker concept and listening room).

Don't know exactly how your question was meant, but IMO there is no either or.

 

[GXAlan]

Or one might say: "with its great ability to hide defects".

But this is also more realistic.

We all “believe” in good room correction because the performance anechoic, which is purely scientific, doesn’t reflect actual performance.

Everyone agrees that stereo sounds different than mono. There is generally an overall agreement that stereo masks defects better and it is rare that stereo sounds worse than mono (though exceptions exist). Most agree that extra bass sounds better (including the science).

So what if you had a mono speaker that is better than another but has less bass? In mono, you might say the smoothness advantage outweighs the bass advantage. In stereo, the defects of the dispersion may be masked but then the difference in bass is more obvious? In that case you would pick a different speaker.

The last wildcard is the sweet spot. Some speakers sound spectacular for a single listener while others sound good for an entire sofa even if the sweet spot is wider but not as sweet.

Last…. Imagine you have perfect hearing and perfect speakers at 40 years old and decreased hearing at 60. Would it make sense to keep your speakers identical? Or would you rather EQ the dips you have developed with aging so that when you are 60, it sounds as good as it does when you are 40? Likewise, imagine you have a speaker well balanced from 20Hz to 20kHz with a bit of weakness in the 1-3 kHz area but overall the sound works better than a speaker that is smoother in the 1-3 kHz but is not as good above 14 kHz. Now imagine that with aging, you no longer can hear above 14 kHz. Your preference would change despite the same objective numbers.

 

[tuga]

If you have the possibility to hear a loudspeaker also monophonic, why not? We have studies that show that the classification (good/bad speaker) is easier this way.
(My passive hobby speaker tunings used to start monophonic, that was before VCAD and other software greatly improved speaker crossover design).

And we have studies that clearly show that the frequency response arriving at the ear between monophonic and stereophonic listening, differs significantly. This inevitably results in tonal and spatial differences (certainly also depending on the loudspeaker concept and listening room).

Don't know exactly how your question was meant, but IMO there is no either or.

Like I said earlier I am not denying that listening in mono has its benefits but most audiophiles are not trained for critical listening so listening in mono is not really useful; their assessment is mainly for determining preference.

 

[q3cpma]

But this is also more realistic.

We all “believe” in good room correction because the performance anechoic, which is purely scientific, doesn’t reflect actual performance.

Everyone agrees that stereo sounds different than mono. There is generally an overall agreement that stereo masks defects better and it is rare that stereo sounds worse than mono (though exceptions exist). Most agree that extra bass sounds better (including the science).

So what if you had a mono speaker that is better than another but has less bass? In mono, you might say the smoothness advantage outweighs the bass advantage. In stereo, the defects of the dispersion may be masked but then the difference in bass is more obvious? In that case you would pick a different speaker.

The last wildcard is the sweet spot. Some speakers sound spectacular for a single listener while others sound good for an entire sofa even if the sweet spot is wider but not as sweet.

Last…. Imagine you have perfect hearing and perfect speakers at 40 years old and decreased hearing at 60. Would it make sense to keep your speakers identical? Or would you rather EQ the dips you have developed with aging so that when you are 60, it sounds as good as it does when you are 40? Likewise, imagine you have a speaker well balanced from 20Hz to 20kHz with a bit of weakness in the 1-3 kHz area but overall the sound works better than a speaker that is smoother in the 1-3 kHz but is not as good above 14 kHz. Now imagine that with aging, you no longer can hear above 14 kHz. Your preference would change despite the same objective numbers.

You seem to have misunderstood my position, which is that mono testing can't replace stereo. The reasoning is simple: if we consider stereo as the golden standard (which makes sense, for music), proponents of mono testing should try to show that it doesn't affect listening results much, not the opposite.

 

[tuga]

You seem to have misunderstood my position, which is that mono testing can't replace stereo. The reasoning is simple: if we consider stereo as the golden standard (which makes sense, for music), proponents of mono testing should try to show that it doesn't affect listening results much, not the opposite.

I did too.

 

[LTig]

Last…. Imagine you have perfect hearing and perfect speakers at 40 years old and decreased hearing at 60. Would it make sense to keep your speakers identical? Or would you rather EQ the dips you have developed with aging so that when you are 60, it sounds as good as it does when you are 40? Likewise, imagine you have a speaker well balanced from 20Hz to 20kHz with a bit of weakness in the 1-3 kHz area but overall the sound works better than a speaker that is smoother in the 1-3 kHz but is not as good above 14 kHz. Now imagine that with aging, you no longer can hear above 14 kHz. Your preference would change despite the same objective numbers.

Nope, this is not how it works. Age related loss of hearing goes unnoticed with time. The brain somehow compensates the loss so you do not feel a loss - even a heavy loss. It starts with intelligibility of speech but listening to music is not harmed.

Therefore it makes no sense to look for bright sounding speakers because they still sound bright to you compared to life music. This holds as long as you do not use hearing aids when listening to life music.

 

[LTig]

I don't understand the problem with mono vs stereo auditioning. Based on the known scientific research I would do the first audition of possible new speakers strictly in mono to select the good from the bad, and afterwards audition the remaining preselected speakers in stereo for the final decision.

Spoiler

I have to admit though that in reality I would just buy the Neumann speaker which matches my current O300D if those fail beyond repair ...

 

[Newman]

I'm not surprised. There are clearly measurable differences between monophonic and stereophonic listening. A mono recording optimized for playing on a single speaker, can't sound right on a stereophonic system. This is not to say that such a recording can't sound good when listened to stereophonically, but not as intended.
View attachment 150032

These differences are huge and should therefore be clearly audible. At the risk of sounding like senile grandpa, here's my experience again: Anyone who develops loudspeakers learns very quickly what it means to optimally tune a monophonic speaker, only to experience how this speaker sounds one or two classes worse when listening stereophonic.

More details and source can be found here.

Correct, they are clearly audible. And the same issue exists for stereo music, for all the centre-panned content -- which is a lot of critical content! Toole goes into this in his book, and makes the case for multichannel with centre channel being much superior for music.

if we consider stereo as the golden standard (which makes sense, for music),

More like the golden feces, compared to either single-speaker mono or multi-speaker multi channel, when you consider the above problem that cannot be corrected without making other, even bigger problems.

The only thing golden about stereo is its undeserved halo.

 

[Newman]

Nope, this is not how it works. Age related loss of hearing goes unnoticed with time. The brain somehow compensates the loss so you do not feel a loss - even a heavy loss. It starts with intelligibility of speech but listening to music is not harmed.

Therefore it makes no sense to look for bright sounding speakers because they still sound bright to you compared to life music. This holds as long as you do not use hearing aids when listening to life music.

Correct. Because we still hear live voices and real instruments as aged people, the brain calibrates that as reality and we prefer our reproduced sound to match it.

 

[restorer-john]

The only thing golden about stereo is its undeserved halo.

Yeah ok.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

The only thing golden about stereo is its undeserved halo.

Two channel stereo has always been capable of projecting an enveloping sound field not only beyond the outer boundaries of the speakers and back from the plane of the speakers, but enveloping forward and around the listener as well. The key to this is program material which has these spatial cues. This Chesky recording pulls it off; if you can't hear performers beyond the boundaries of your speakers, the fault is in your system (speakers, placement, room acoustics) rather than the recording. There are many recordings, usually done with minimal microphone techniques, which are capable of this type of imaging, unfortunately most of them are of music most people don't listen to. The vast, vast majority of commercially released music doesn't even try to go achieve this.

True, multi-channel provides this type of envelopment too, but personally I prefer the more 'of a whole' sound field of two speaker stereo done well.

 

[Newman]

Debatable though your claim may be (I would anticipate the Chesky test tracks failing to deliver in a DBT what they can sometimes deliver when they tell you what to experience before turning on the music and (shock!) hearing what you were told to hear), it doesn't change the point about stereo's critical tonal error for centre-panned material.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Debatable though your claim may be (I would anticipate the Chesky test tracks failing to deliver in a DBT what they can sometimes deliver when they tell you what to experience before turning on the music and (shock!) hearing what you were told to hear), it doesn't change the point about stereo's critical tonal error for centre-panned material.

Why not try a DBT on some recordings like the Chesky? Sounds like you're pre-biasing the unrealized results of a fictional DBT, a sin as bad as sighted tests of any other component. Personally, I hear enveloping imaging on many recordings I would absolutely not expect to have it. In this case, by bias would be that there would be no expectation of this type of imaging. but there it is, plain as day. In some cases, some tracks have it, some don't on the same album. In these cases, the presence of the imaging probably is due to slightly different setups for the different songs and not something intentional by the original engineer.

 

[Sal1950]

True, multi-channel provides this type of envelopment too, but personally I prefer the more 'of a whole' sound field of two speaker stereo done well.

Then you've never listened to a excellent multich rig playing well done recordings, there's no competition.

 

[tuga]

Correct, they are clearly audible. And the same issue exists for stereo music, for all the centre-panned content -- which is a lot of critical content! Toole goes into this in his book, and makes the case for multichannel with centre channel being much superior for music.



More like the golden feces, compared to either single-speaker mono or multi-speaker multi channel, when you consider the above problem that cannot be corrected without making other, even bigger problems.

The only thing golden about stereo is its undeserved halo.

I think that you have perhaps misunderstood our point which is that narrow directivity speakers which rate poorly in terms of “spatiality” when listened to in mono rate just as good as other speakers when listened to in stereo.
Speakers are bought in pairs and listened to in stereo.
To make matters worse because in stereo each speaker is closer to the nearest wall this generates distortion unless the early reflection is either treated or deflected. I understand that Toole and others may find this distortion pleasing but that’s their subjective opinion and preference.

I won’t get in to that now but there also some confusion in regard to the use of live-voice vs speaker intelligibility in the book to validate Toole stance on this matter which is I repeat a question of preference.

It almost looks as if Harman’s research was set out to validate this opinion that wide directivity was the right thing instead of trying to test it...

 

[Ro808]

Except that Toole’s opinion was formed in controlled listening test conditions. Toole is not talking about personal preference in casual listening: that is not what you want to take from his statement.

So you feel it necessary to emphasize that Toole's statements are based on controlled listening test conditions?
The suggestion here is that I and other forum members are not aware of this.
Which makes me wonder if you have a deeper understanding of the implications of Toole's post.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Then you've never listened to a excellent multich rig playing well done recordings, there's no competition.

My room has multi-channel capability (7.2) as well as regular stereo, and I do listen that way. While the experience is different between multi-channel and stereo with good spatial information, the surround speakers in multi-channel usually don't completely disappear as point sources and there is not a completely smooth and convincing side and rear soundstage, no matter how good the original recording or how it gets mixed - its not as smooth as good spatial stereo. And I certainly don't lack good program material.

Straight stereo (again provided there is good spatial information) can present a seamless hemisphere of sound which reaches up to and beyond the boundaries of the front, sides, and to some degree the rear wall. Since there aren't physical speakers on these surfaces, there is no 'speaker' to stick out and ruin the illusion of immersion. The instrument placement and ambience is just as strong as in a physical multi-channel mix. It can literally be as if the room was replaced by the original recording location (real or synthesized), and my listening position is a chair in that virtual room.

Getting this degree of immersion from stereo is not easy, and as I mentioned before, most speakers cannot pull it off. Very directional speakers have better success than wide dispersion speakers and they need to be placed well away from walls, as does the listening position. And of course the room has to be good acoustically.

 

[Inner Space]

Straight stereo (again provided there is good spatial information) can present a seamless hemisphere of sound which reaches up to and beyond the boundaries of the front, sides, and to some degree the rear wall. Since there aren't physical speakers on these surfaces, there is no 'speaker' to stick out and ruin the illusion of immersion. The instrument placement and ambience is just as strong as in a physical multi-channel mix. It can literally be as if the room was replaced by the original recording location (real or synthesized), and my listening position is a chair in that virtual room.

Getting this degree of immersion from stereo is not easy, and as I mentioned before, most speakers cannot pull it off. Very directional speakers have better success than wide dispersion speakers and they need to be placed well away from walls, as does the listening position. And of course the room has to be good acoustically.

I completely agree with this. I would add a re-think of the conventional equilateral triangle - currently I use a very squashed isosceles arrangement, with the speakers 14' apart, and the altitude only 6'. The result is far more naturally immersive and enveloping than any multichannel replay I have heard.