Most beautiful speakers in the world ?

[Bjorn]

I don’t think you’re necessarily talking about the high frequencies here (?).

But in any case, my listening room has a wall-to-wall deep shag rug, and some huge furniture, such as a giant sectional sofa and Ottomans. Among other acoustically relevant features.

In terms of whatever the rug might be contributing along with the furniture, I certainly find the sound to be wonderful, and still lively and life like, not dull. My speakers are pulled out into the room to be about 7 feet from my listening distance.

But I had something of a surprise when I started experimenting with adding another sheet of velvet curtain over my centre channel and also pulled out over the shag rug floor, which is between the speakers.

This seemed to further affect the upper frequencies, absorbing them some more.
Which was a surprise, cause I wouldn’t have guessed that adding that material on top of an already thick shag rug would have a distinct audible effect (even if somewhat subtle). I actually sort of like the effect.

But that’s just informal listening. I didn’t do a blind test so I am not overly confident in my conclusions there.

No, it's the cancellation in the approximately 120-400 Hz area.

A carpet is a very bandlimited treatment, working effectively mainly above 2000 Hz.

 

[JiiPee]

At least there's a carpet. That's more than many do. Of course the loudspeaker cables are thick to give the impression that it's high-end, and cable lifters. Heh.

Example of echo room
View attachment 442250

Just wondering - What might be the effect of ten or so fat people sitting in the room (strictly from from acoustics perspective, of course) ?

 

[OldHvyMec]

Example of echo room

There is no reason to even listen in that room. A thick throw rug and at least heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains on 2/3 to 3/4 on the front, and two side walls. People will chime in and say it won't make a difference, OH YES IT WILL. Night and day from that ricochet biscuit room. An unfinished garage with exposed studs would sound like Carnegie Hall compared to that room. Even your thoughts would echo.

Regards

 

[MattHooper]

No, it's the cancellation in the approximately 120-400 Hz area.

A carpet is a very bandlimited treatment, working effectively mainly above 2000 Hz.

Right I figured you were talking about the lower floor bounce issues.

 

[Bjorn]

Wonder how @Bjorn thinks of this. Because you seem to have designed you speaker to have no floor bounce at all.

I would encourage you in the future to start something like this in a thread related to it. While there's a lot more that could said and discussed, it's off topic here. But to me there's no doubt that if a cancellation is wide and deep enough, it's going to be audible and effect the tonality.

To bring the topic back on again, I'm showing a picture of our CBT proto speaker. Another speaker that deals with the floor bounce.

 

[Lekha]

Any room without furniture is an echo chamber. If the walls and the floor aren't solid, it's even worse. People live in normal homes with furniture, photos hanging on the walls, windows in them, some even have curtains over them and over the walls too, and rugs, etc. Almost all speaker manufacturers aren't engineers, just craftspeople trying to make them enticing to impress buyers. If an engineer had made those speakers, they'd likely be somewhat plain-looking. Even if a company employs engineers to design the speakers, the marketing manager and accountant make the real decisions. So, we don't have truly great speakers, perhaps good-looking ones for some, but maybe only for men.

 

[Lekha]

To bring the topic back on again, I'm showing a picture of our CBT proto speaker. Another speaker that deals with the floor bounce.

View attachment 442318

That's interesting, the top, somewhat upward-firing speakers in that speaker-column are supposed to deflect sound off the ceiling, are they? Usually, most ceilings are hollow as well.

 

[somebodyelse]

That's interesting, the top, somewhat upward-firing speakers in that speaker-column are supposed to deflect sound off the ceiling, are they? Usually, most ceilings are hollow as well.

No. See Keele's CBT papers: https://www.keele-omholt-technologies.com/papers.php

 

[Lekha]

No.

So, sound (waves) from those speakers at the top won't bump off the ceiling, you say?
The sound (waves) from those upward-firing speakers at the top might not exactly "bump off" in a clean reflection, would they?

And the sound (waves) from the bottom speakers, practically touching the floor, won't exactly "bump off" the floor either, will they?

 

[Bjorn]

So, sound (waves) from those speakers at the top won't bump off the ceiling, you say?
The sound (waves) from those upward-firing speakers at the top might not exactly "bump off" in a clean reflection, would they?
View attachment 442353
And the sound (waves) from the bottom speakers, practically touching the floor, won't exactly "bump off" the floor either, will they?

The vertical upward directivity is very narrow and level of top drivers is low, so ceiling reflections will be below -20 dB with no ceiling treatment. And the speaker uses the floor as mirror, and avoids floor reflections. See more in this thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...tant-beamwidth-transducer-cbt-speakers.12060/

 

[Lekha]

The vertical upward directivity is very narrow and level of top drivers is low, so ceiling reflections will be below -20 dB with no ceiling treatment. .

Narrow or not, they'd still reflect. Most ceilings are hollow, so they'd vibrate as well.

And the speaker uses the floor as mirror, and avoids floor reflections.

What does a mirror do? It reflects.

 

[Arindal]

Most beautiful speaker in my opinion? Beolab 8:

What does a mirror do? It reflects.

A floor does surely reflect sound, but maybe the meaning here was different. The risk of interference and combfilter effects as well as having distinguishable discrete reflections hence disturbed tonality/imaging, is dramatically reduced by some drivers positioned very close to the groundplane surface while forming an even wavefront with others further away. That is the idea of a curved line array.

So both statements are correct: The floor does reflect, but reflected waves seamlessly blend with direct sound, so discrete floor reflections are suppressed or at least attenuated.

 

[somebodyelse]

Narrow or not, they'd still reflect. Most ceilings are hollow, so they'd vibrate as well.

What does a mirror do? It reflects.

You are thinking of the individual drivers not their combined output. This is off topic though - go to the CBT thread if you want to know more.

 

[Lekha]

The floor does reflect, but reflected waves seamlessly blend with direct sound, so discrete floor reflections are suppressed or at least attenuated.

This "blending" hasn't been proven, it's just an assumption. It all depends on what sort of floor one has; if it's heavily carpeted, we can forget about floor reflections and "blending". If the floor is hollow, well, who knows?

 

[Arindal]

This "blending" hasn't been proven, it's just an assumption.

My guess would be that all those institutions running an anechoic half-chamber with a groundplane floor, might see this a bit differently. As companies like AP are calibrating such facilities, I would not overly worry about the underlying laws of physics being treated as assumptions by you.

It all depends on what sort of floor one has; if it's heavily carpeted, we can forget about floor reflections and "blending".

It does not depend on the floor at all (if it is not a heavy resonator by itself which we can rule out for midrange and treble bands). The cylindrical wavefront of a line source (a curved floorstanding linesource like in this case even more) attenuates such discrete reflections significantly and reduces the initial first reflection delay time of the remaining ones to almost the period of highest frequencies hence blending.

The difference between having a carpet or not affects mainly higher frequency bands, while typical interferences and combfilter effects of floor bounces are found in the 200-600Hz band.

 

[Lekha]

You are thinking of the individual drivers not their combined output. This is off topic though - go to the CBT thread if you want to know more.

A rather odd place to take measurements.

EDIT: Right, finished listening to his videos. Quite interesting thoughts. The mirror on the floor suggests that it could be made half the size and held above the floor, without the bottom half at all. I'll be reading his original papers later on today. Thank you for the links, all of you.

EDIT 2: Here's someone's desktop CBT array with Don Keele provided information.

 

[Multicore]

They look great in many colors View attachment 440975View attachment 440976View attachment 440977View attachment 440978View attachment 440979

I do think The Ones are a superb platform for visual decoration but I do not hold with the solid colors. The big ones in particular offer surfaces that I would like to see in, for example, a William Morris design.

 

[Pearljam5000]

 

[Lekha]

Old stuff. Not bad, really!

 

[Audionaut]