omnidirectional loudspeakers = best design available

[david moran]

I tried mageplaners. I don't want a head vice sweetspot. I don't want a 100 lb power amp with a 30 amp circuit to drive them. I don't want to hopelessly integrate a subwoofer with a speaker that cannot produce meaningful base below 200 hz. I am not a basehead.

planars can be magical but it is an acquired taste for presentation of some program, and heavily dependent on reflectivity of the front wall (duh), and some head vise, yeah

minority view --- subs work wonderfully (fuller sound) taken up as high as possible, and if you test it blind you will see no issues w localization

 

[david moran]

I prefer the less wrong version.

Defining "radiation" as "what is received" is a fundamental faux pas.

But I fear you are somewhat over-invested in it, 40-odd years now, so....

har, 'fundamental', also 'wrong'

40-odd is good, and also good to see that you have to resort to snot and impugning to close your case, major member

I will try and scrape up a few philo texts on perception for you, falling trees and sound and all that

while awaiting possible further snot

(if you translate this site into other languages, does 'major member' become something about being a dick?)

 

[david moran]

Googlygook

is this like not knowing how to spell vise?

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

slur aside, you need to pay more attention, to think such a thing, Alice

I have one f/s cheap, lmk

OMNI OR PLANER? Curious. No slur intended.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

is this like not knowing how to spell vise?

Vice or vase. I forget.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

har, 'fundamental', also 'wrong'

40-odd is good, and also good to see that you have to resort to snot and impugning to close your case, major member

I will try and scrape up a few philo texts on perception for you, falling trees and sound and all that

while awaiting possible further snot

(if you translate this site into other languages, does 'major member' become something about being a dick?)

Therapy?

 

[david moran]

Sorry not to be clearer: I have a dbx Soundfield 2500, near mint, for sale cheap, outside Boston (needs sub if program is under, you know, 50Hz)

hor radpat is shown as polar in fig 15 of the AESJ pdf already posted previously, and also as l-r fr graphs in figs 9a-d here:

https://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/pdf/bass/BASS-17-06-9005.pdf

 

[david moran]

Vice or vase. I forget.

head in a vase is another, different audiophile condition

 

[david moran]

it is a condition where you answer the wrong person! among other things

my apologies to you, Alice

 

[Newman]

har, 'fundamental', also 'wrong'

40-odd is good, and also good to see that you have to resort to snot and impugning to close your case, major member

I will try and scrape up a few philo texts on perception for you, falling trees and sound and all that

while awaiting possible further snot

(if you translate this site into other languages, does 'major member' become something about being a dick?)

What is the matter with you? Reported.

 

[david moran]

>> you are somewhat over-invested in it, 40-odd years now, so....

The matter with me ?? It is not I who cannot have a civil and technical discussion, dude. I came with information. What did I get from you? I mean, read upward, k?

 

[fpitas]

I tried mageplaners. I don't want a head vice sweetspot. I don't want a 100 lb power amp with a 30 amp circuit to drive them. I don't want to hopelessly integrate a subwoofer with a speaker that cannot produce meaningful base below 200 hz. I am not a basehead.

I listened at length to the old KLH model 9 electrostatics, professionally set up in a big room, using a state of the art tube amp (at that time). It was ok. I had trouble seeing what the excitement was about. No bass to speak off, either. Like a lot of specialty speakers, I think you get it, or you don't.

 

[BenB]

Not even close (your description), dude.

I won't post the unrelievedly rave reviews and tests from the 1980s, including tweak mags, but I do attach Dr Mark Davis's AESJ paper on the design and implementation, with the Allison One perhaps the only AESJ paper on a commercial consumer loudspeaker launch. Note detailed horizontal radiation pattern measurements. A true phased array.

I should also mention the spectacular BeoLab90 and BL5, if they have not been cited already.

Those are the same measurements I've alreay seen and already addressed. Just because you engineer a desired phase and magnitude response into your elements, doesn't mean you can achieve any true level of consistency when the elements are simply too far apart. They happen to be much too far apart horizontally as well as vertically, meaning you will also get a series of lobes vertically near the mid-tweeter crossover frequency. Please review the paper and my explanation, and take note where averaging has been applied, and where axis labels have been omitted.

 

[Everett T]

Boy, this thread seems to have gone off the rails, smh.

 

[fpitas]

Boy, this thread seems to have gone off the rails, smh.

Every omni thread I've seen has that tendency

 

[Gorgonzola]

I owned Ohm F speakers for a number of years and came to regret selling them soon after.

... But then that was a long, long time ago, over 40 years. I would not buy omnis today.

 

[AdamG]

Dial it back Gentlemen. Take a break and remember it’s just a conversation on the Internet! Please and thank you for your support.

 

[david moran]

Those are the same measurements I've alreay seen and already addressed. Just because you engineer a desired phase and magnitude response into your elements, doesn't mean you can achieve any true level of consistency when the elements are simply too far apart. They happen to be much too far apart horizontally as well as vertically, meaning you will also get a series of lobes vertically near the mid-tweeter crossover frequency. Please review the paper and my explanation, and take note where averaging has been applied, and where axis labels have been omitted.

Will look back but don't recall your addressing. Can you point? (Sorry.) The measurements in the paper are actual, meaning achieved, measured on a turntable, and no labels are omitted in the AESJ paper. Can you explain what you're talking about here? There is bundling, sure. See fig 8 and 11a-h for more details.

There is oddly little vertical lobing too (note that this is based on listening, not measurement), although that was not part of the design.

I sense you may be unfamiliar with the engineers' quip, 'Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory?'

 

[david moran]

I listened at length to the old KLH model 9 electrostatics, professionally set up in a big room, using a state of the art tube amp (at that time). It was ok. I had trouble seeing what the excitement was about. No bass to speak off, either. Like a lot of specialty speakers, I think you get it, or you don't.

I think the thing for many planar listeners is the float, typically in the space behind the speakers, depending on front wall hardness. I find it a little disorienting w planars, but many do not.

I was first exposed to KLH 9s in 1970, a double-pair in a stereo store where I was working. Yeah, you need a sub, though more with some than others. I would not favor a float or radpat like that, myself.

I more recently auditioned a nice big pair of Acoustats, and sometime after big Mags, both in bespoke rooms, and found the presentation similarly odd unless I sat right in front.

The thing that I and many other owners intensely favor w Allisons and dbxes and a few other designs, and what I thought this thread might be about, is 'getting the music up in the air', as Roy Allison once put it. I have known serious listeners (never working musicians, however) who found the scale of my dbx SF1A system simply too much, though.

 

[david moran]

I owned Ohm F speakers for a number of years and came to regret selling them soon after.

... But then that was a long, long time ago, over 40 years. I would not buy omnis today.

Many do not enjoy equi-omni radpat (I among them) for a range of reasons, imprecision and similar, but the thing w Fs was that no two were close to the same. I did a crude room measurement of a pair 40y ago, not from far away, and was very surprised at how rough the FR was and even more at how different it was, L and R.