omnidirectional loudspeakers = best design available

[Barrelhouse Solly]

This is a silly thread.

Like everything in engineering there are many ways to skin a cat, and many different use cases, and one size does not fit all.

I heard the Beveridges ages ago and they sounded excellent to me at the time. But I have to admit at the time I did have an expectation bias in favor of electrostats.

I never thought much of Ohm speakers when and where I heard them (often because I knew some folks that drank the Ohm F kool-aid). But at Axpona the German Physics did sound very good. But so did a lot of different speakers.

I was underwhelmed by the LX Minis that Madisound had. In spite of having been a great fan of SL.

Music does not emanate from point sources. We also, in spite of language referring to imaging, coherence, and sounds stage, are not really reconstructing anything remotely resembling an image in the sense that the word is used in optics.

The best thing I learned about programming other than "Computers do exactly what we tell them to do," is that there are almost always several different good solutions to the same problem. It's a law of design in any field.

 

[MattHooper]

Or to be more precise, his experience is of no importance, and has no truth, just like the others. At least, as far as communicating it to readers on a forum is concerned.

^^ Behold, the snake of hyper-skepticism eating its own tail.

 

[Chris Brunhaver]

The Duevel waveguide (and overall frequency repsonse) looks very far from optimal with lots of reflections/cancellations in the output.

However, the concept is interesting.

Duevel Venus Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report One of the core problems of designing a 'horizontal omni' like the Venus, which attempts to achieve 360o radiation in the horizontal plane using drivers facing upwards and downwards, is that you listen off-axis to the drivers. Compensating for that inevitably results in low...

www.hifinews.com

Have any analytical waveguide guys using various BEM sim programs (like the ATH horn stuff) tried anything close to an omni?

 

[MattHooper]

Or were you talking about other types of speakers - your Theils perhaps?

Correct.

I was trying to get across why I had no problem with the Omni imaging. I generally like my speakers not angled in because I like to (presumably ) engage a little bit of room reflections so the sound becomes a little less constricted and a bit more “ spacious and happening in relaxed real space.”

The omnis, as you say, do this naturally - they are naturally “ toed out” as it were.

 

[MattHooper]

Sure - but that was a heavily treated room... It might have been more awkward without the treatment?

Well…MBL themselves talk about not needing room treatment - to the point of it being one of the virtues of the design in their view. You can put their speakers in a normal room and just let ‘er rip. So they are supposed to engage some reflections.

I can believe it because for one thing they’ve been many satisfied MBL owners who don’t have overly treated rooms. MBL usually doesn’t employ much room treatment in their demos (usually if anything some potted plants). And I’ve also experienced terrific MBL sound at some dealers without room treatment.

In my case, I found that my MBL speakers responded to the room similarly to most of my other speakers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s my Thiels or my Joseph speakers etc, if I open up more room reflections, I get some similar interaction with the room, and a more lively sound, and when I cut down on rum reflections I get a more nuanced reading of the recording and the acoustics within the recording.

I could like both, with either the MBL or my other speakers.

 

[MattHooper]

Those of you who have experience with omnis and home theater. What is the difference between two-channel stereo with two Omni speakers vs. let's say a five or more channel setup. I mean if you run the music through a setup like this:
View attachment 461943
What's the difference from omnis? With that home theater system, there should be omni dispersion sound,.... or not? Or am I thinking wrong now? Am I missing something?

As I’ve mentioned before, I have my two channel speakers in the same room as my home theatre surround system. so I’ve been able to directly compare the presentation of my two channel stereo speakers with my surround system. And I’ve also experimented with incorporating my two channel speakers into my surround system. That’s been the case with a number of two channel speakers that I’ve owned . And that includes having tried my MBL Omnis in my surround/home theatre system.

As to how a single pair of stereo Omni’s compares to the surround system, for me, it was similar to how any of my two channel speakers compared, but “more.”

It’s not a complete APPLE’s to APPLE’s comparison, because for a number of reasons, I prefer my home theatre speakers to flank the wall around my projection screen, whereas I prefer my two channel speakers pulled out into the room for more immersion.

With the MBL’s placed in my normal two channel listening spot, they produced a level of three-dimensional imaging - and a coherence and realism of space within their sound stage, and often a sheer sense of sonic realism - my surround system can only dream of. Very different experience.

I also tried occasionally using the MBLs as the L/R speakers in my surrounding system.
I tried them, both pulled out into the room, and also placed closer to the room corners where my normal L/R home theatre speakers sit.

I found the MBLs significantly increased the sense of “ reality” to the sound in many instances. I’ve described earlier how environments such as the forests in Jurassic Park came alive in a way they didn’t with my regular set up - there was such a coherent sense of space and layering, and even the air tones of the forest just seem to become more real and be believable like I was in that space. (I also found the Omni’s quite revealing when I played movies in which I did the sound design). (in the end I decided against using the omnis in my surround system permanently for several reasons, one of which included that my centre channel did not cohere as well with the omnis - I think an MBL center channel speaker would have done that if I wanted to go that route).

And this was only with two Omnis in the mix!

You will find very few reports of surround systems made entirely of Omni speakers.
That’s why I think it’s quite interesting to read Michael Fremer’s listening report when he was given an entire MBL surround set up, which he tried for a music and movies.

I gave a link with excerpts in this earlier post:

Post in thread 'omnidirectional loudspeakers = best design available'

Mar 6, 2025

It seems few if any here have heard a surround system with high-quality omnis. A few people have though:

Michael Fremer reviewed an MBL surround system for Sound And Vision:

mbl Radialstrahler 116/121/111RC 5 Channel Surround Sound System Page 2

www.soundandvision.com

Since I have found Michael Fremer’s descriptions of loudspeakers I’m familiar with to be quite accurate, and having owned MBL speakers myself (he describes their character very well), I don’t have much doubt about the experience he reports here:


Some quotes:

Before we get to tonal balance, dynamics...

• MattHooper

• 

(I suggest don’t listen to the few dogmatists who insist Fremer could never convey anything of worth. That’s their loss; don’t let it be yours )

 

[kyuu]

(I suggest don’t listen to the few dogmatists who insist Fremer could never convey anything of worth. That’s their loss; don’t let it be yours )

After glancing through Mr. Fremer's articles, I don't think it's "dogmatic" to question the ears/integrity of someone who consistently finds differences in the "sonics" between various bits of electronics which we know don't actually sound different.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

That depends on the type of tweeters you have and, primarily, on your own hearing.

No, and, primarily, no.

 

[Arindal]

I know this technique, but from my experience, it does not translate well in the recordings.

Which recordings specifically? There are several 100,000 classical albums available being recorded and mixed like that. They are all pretty different, though, as every recording engineer is setting a different priority per recording session, every room is different, every microphone, and everyone is using different methods of mixing/integrating.

It will either too little to my taste or too too much (in case of LSO Live).

Too little/too much of what?

Recordings available under the LSO Live label are produced by a variety of teams, under the supervision of different conductors, in different venues and with a different purpose in mind (some broadcasts, some for CD, some SACD, some for Atmos). They seemingly do not follow a uniform philosophy of mixing, so I would not consider those a good example to discuss recording techniques without naming examples. Many of them are excellent, though, I particularly enjoy everything that Simon Rattle, Eliot Gardiner and Bernard Haitink have been producing.

stereo in general can not fully captured the density of 3D space, but omni/dipole is the closest method to achieve this goal with stereo/mono source.

As mentioned, due to insufficient spatial information on a 2-channel recording, I would not call this reproduction but trying to create an illusion which had not been recorded this way. That is a legitimate thing to try, and with dipoles it can work well in many cases, but particularly with omnis it comes at a cost I would not be willing to accept. Other people might come to a different conclusion, but we should discuss the downsides.

My music collection ranges from 1930 until now, and I rather listen to those mono/stereo recordings than the immersive recordings with inferior music quality, according to my taste of course

I agree, although I personally ignore everything that was recorded before the first proper stereo recordings in 1954. But particularly when it comes to classical, there are so many excellent recordings available in either 5.1 or immersive, that I in most of cases find a fully satisfying version. If not, of course I go for stereo, preferably from the digital era.

But for me, they put too much effort on the former, it make the result unnatural for me.

My guess would be they do not put effort on the localization in its own right, but on the clarity and detail resolution aspect. Excellent localization naturally comes with that, if executed properly.

Could you give a recent example of such an ´unnatural´ recording putting too much stress on directness/localization? My observation would be that this philosophy was very popular in the 1970s and partly in the 1980s but has given way to a much more balanced, ambient way of mixing, as with digital consoles and delays in the chain it is much easier to blend spot microphone signals and the main mic picture well.

And coax speakers are not constant directivity, they are omni until 150Hz, then the transient region between 150Hz-500Hz and only constant directivity again at 500Hz up, and narrow down gain past 10kHz.

Constant directivity between 500 Hz and 10K is most important in my understanding, as there is a pretty good chance of correcting the outcome of directivity with the help of DSP outside this band. But if you insist on a wider band of constant directivity, there are coaxial speakers on the market as well. My experience with the top-of-the-line models by TAD labs and MEG, to a lesser degree some Genelecs like 8341A and 8260, were pretty satisfying when it comes to delivering both excellent localization and some ´deep, natural ambience´ (which naturally is limited in width when fed with 2-channel, compared to omnis).

I tried the one side fit all approach with my old Revel and Audio Physic Virgo for quite sometimes but never feel satisfied.

Looking at their directivity and midrange/tweeter arrangement, I would say this was to be expected.

 

[MattHooper]

After glancing through Mr. Fremer's articles, I don't think it's "dogmatic" to question the ears/integrity of someone who consistently finds differences in the "sonics" between various bits of electronics which we know don't actually sound different.

Unfortunately, some take that approach to adopting the all or nothing “ throwing the baby out with the bathwater” attitude that I reject.

As I have pointed out many times: the fact that anybody can imagine Sonic differences does not rule out that they hear real Sonic differences. Just like the fact everybody is susceptible to optical illusions doesn’t mean everybody’s vision is unreliable in every case.

Literally everybody in the world can fall for sighted bias - Amir, Erin you name it - that doesn’t mean that they can’t accurately perceive real differences in sound.

I take the same approach with Fremer. The fact that he can imagine differences between cables does not mean he cannot be perceptive about real and obvious sonic differences, such as when it comes to loudspeakers.

So the leap from “ there are times when Fremer has fallen for bias effects” to
“ therefore Fremer cannot hear and report the character of an omnidirectional speaker surround sound system” is rather a big leap.
It starts to take on the character of handwaving and cynicism, rather than rational appraisal.

I have found Fremer’s reviews of loudspeakers I’m familiar with to be often quite insightful and accurate to what I and others hear. And often enough, with loudspeakers, he hears things that have some consistency with the measurements.
I also pointed out in my link to his review of the MBL surround system that Fremer’s sonic descriptions did not seem at odds with the measurements (and in fact Fremer identified the warmer frequency balance - identified in the measurements).

Instead of having vague suspicions, You could look at his review, which is accompanied by the measurements and tell us how the measurements suggest Fremer’s sonic impressions of the MBL system are implausible.

Cheers.

 

[Lekha]

What you hear is determined by what the recording studio decides you should hear, regardless of the type of speaker boxes you have. However, the recording studio cannot dictate the characteristics of your room. Your "listening" room influences which speakers you should buy, as well as the hearing ability of your ears. What your wife hears is not the same as what you hear, so be prepared for disagreements.

 

[90sNintendoKid]

Those of you who have experience with omnis and home theater. What is the difference between two-channel stereo with two Omni speakers vs. let's say a five or more channel setup. I mean if you run the music through a setup like this:
View attachment 461943
What's the difference from omnis? With that home theater system, there should be omni dispersion sound,.... or not? Or am I thinking wrong now? Am I missing something?

I have Larsen 4.3 speakers which I would call semi omni directional and I will be setting them up as the left and right (no center) in a Wiim 5.1 setup with rear surrounds (conventional speakers). I'll let you know how I get on.

I may buy some Deuvel Planets to try in the next year.....

 

[MarkS]

Literally everybody in the world can fall for sighted bias - Amir, Erin you name it - that doesn’t mean that they can’t accurately perceive real differences in sound.

The difference is that Amir & Erin understand the pitfall of sighted bias and take steps to mitigate it. Fremer (like most others in the audiophool world) flatly disbelieves in even the possibility of sighted bias. IMO, this makes his reactions to what he hears (or imagines he hears) to be far less reliable.

I do value subjective reviews, but only from people who know and understand the truth about how easily fooled they are. Fremer is not in that class.

Also, Fremer is 78 years old. His hearing is abso!utely not what it used to be.

 

[MattHooper]

The difference is that Amir & Erin understand the pitfall of sighted bias and take steps to mitigate it.

When it comes to speaker reviews, neither Erin nor Amir use blind testing in order to render their subjective impressions.

They also provide measurements. But Fremer’s Stereophile speaker reviews were accompanied by measurements as well.

Fremer (like most others in the audiophool world) flatly disbelieves in even the possibility of sighted bias. IMO, this makes his reactions to what he hears (or imagines he hears) to be far less reliable.

Since this is in the context of the problem of sighted bias, I’m still not sure why you think that Amir or Erin would necessarily have an advantage. They’re just susceptible to sighted bias us as anybody aren’t they?
As Amir has pointed out a number of times in his cable takedowns, even when he knows a cable is technically not making any difference he still “ perceives” a difference in sighted listening.

And this is my point: bias effects don’t go away because you know about the problem of bias effects. That’s why even Dr Floyd Toole would use blind testing for speakers when he’s looking for the most reliable results.

So again the point I’m making is that the appeal to “ but Fremer has been susceptible to bias effects” is to me neither here nor there, because that’s true of everybody.

And just like it’s true of everybody that we will be susceptible to optical illusions, that doesn’t mean that we are always an error in what we are perceiving.

And so what matters to me is whether somebody’s sighted descriptions can be EVER informative and useful. And I have found plenty of informal listening, impressions and descriptions to be informative and useful. Including some of Fremer’s. I have found some of his impressions to be absolutely bang on to what I hear in the same gear. And I’ve also found that he’s often picking up on things that show up and or our consonant with the speaker measurements (certainly not always… Nobody’s going to bat a 1000, but very often if he’s picked up on something it shows up in the measurements).

I’m certainly not trying to convince you or anybody here to put any stock in Fremer.
Totally understandable if you don’t give any credence to what he writes. It’s never going to be as reliable as measurements.

I just push back when people seem to suggest that what framer writes is always useless fiction, as if he’s never at all perceptive or relaying anything true about the character of a loudspeaker. For me that starts to get to handwaving.

And that’s why I was saying fine if somebody wants to voice their general cynicism about Fremer’s reviews.

But if you’re going to use this to just dismiss, absolutely everything he writes as nonsense, then you should be able to apply that to the particular example we have in this thread:

Take a look at his review of the MBL surround system, look at the measurements supplied in the review, and explain exactly why Fremer’s impressions are clearly inaccurate or implausible.

Otherwise, it looks to me like he’s probably described the sound quite well. The guy has listened to a hell of a lot of different speaker systems as well as home theatre surround systems at the time of the review.
Of course that doesn’t make him infallible. But at least from my perspective, his description of the MBL character matches mine pretty much exactly since I owned them too (and I also tried them in my home theatre system, and Fremer describes very much the type of effects I heard).

 

[MarkS]

When it comes to speaker reviews, neither Erin nor Amir use blind testing in order to render their subjective impressions.

They also provide measurements. But Fremer’s Stereophile speaker reviews were accompanied by measurements as well.

C'mon Matt, you know better. Fremer never looks at the measurements which he does not do himself. Amir listens after measurements and Erin listens both before and after, and both try to correlate what they hear with what they measure.

Since this is in the context of the problem of sighted bias, I’m still not sure why you think that Amir or Erin would necessarily have an advantage. They’re just susceptible to sighted bias us as anybody aren’t they?

Yes, but knowing you are makes a big difference IMO. You can attempt to mentally correct for it. But if you are too benighted to know that you are susceptible to it, then you can't. Obviously.

As Amir has pointed out a number of times in his cable takedowns, even when he knows a cable is technically not making any difference he still “perceives” a difference in sighted listening.

Really? Can give a link to such a review? I don't recall ever seeing such a statement by Amir.

And this is my point: bias effects don’t go away because you know about the problem of bias effects. That’s why even Dr Floyd Toole would use blind testing for speakers when he’s looking for the most reliable results.

Yes, the most reliable results are blind. The second most reliable are by trained listeners who know what to listen for. The least reliable are by people too clueless to know that they are susceptible to sighted bias.

So again the point I’m making is that the appeal to “ but Fremer has been susceptible to bias effects” is to me neither here nor there, because that’s true of everybody.

I don't care whether Fremer can, when the wind is blowing from the East and the stars are properly aligned, hear something that is actually there. He hears plenty of things that we know for an abso!ute fact are not there. I don't need to know anything more about him than that to discount everything he says.

 

[Arindal]

I do value subjective reviews, but only from people who know and understand the truth about how easily fooled they are.

I have been involved in listening tests and aural judgements for most of my professional life, including controlled listening tests with trained listeners like recording engineers and studio acousticians. Can tell you from vast experience with blind and sighted listening tests, that the No. 1 bias to reverse the result of any blind speaker test, is the frequency response graph being known to participants, or not. If you show them a graph, they believe that they are hearing what they are seeing, regardless the actual reproduction in the room. Even some well-trained listeners fall for this.

This delusion works particularly well with automated room-correction routines like Audissey, Dirac, YPAO or alike. People tend to overhear the most ridiculous flaws like booming bass, which they easily detect as such in a blind A/B comparison, from the moment on they happen to see the flat result graph.

Don´t mean to say that subjectivistic, sighted tests without confirmation or measurements are more reliable, they are certainly not. But from my experience they have a rather random component when it comes to errors, like stating that there are differences when actually there are none.

The difference is that Amir & Erin understand the pitfall of sighted bias and take steps to mitigate it.

Erin sounds reasonable when talking about differences between subjective end objective test result, but I do not recall anyone openly speaking about bias caused by measurements, which is making it a sighted and biased test by definition.

The only reasonable variant to avoid such bias would be to execute subjective listening test and measurements separately, by different individuals, with the results of the other one being unknown prior to publication. Particularly the results of the subjective test could be pretty interesting if the listener is asked to predict frequency response or provide an EQ correction curve according to his or her subjective impression.

I would always recommend to never look at measurements prior to doing listening tests, and at least coming up with a preliminary verdict in terms of tonal balance and overall EQ correction solely based on listening impressions. Can be pretty interesting to compare.

 

[thewas]

Erin sounds reasonable when talking about differences between subjective end objective test result, but I do not recall anyone openly speaking about bias caused by measurements, which is making it a sighted and biased test by definition.

Because he does first his listening tests and then measurements.

I would always recommend to never look at measurements prior to doing listening tests, and at least coming up with a preliminary verdict in terms of tonal balance and overall EQ correction solely based on listening impressions. Can be pretty interesting to compare.

That is what he does (I also agree with you there and do the same myself).

 

[Audionaut]

Says MBL has hit something of a financial rough patch. I wonder what the cause is - internal business moves or changing realities in the audio world/economy/tariffs?

The reason is probably once again that technically great German products have been designed and developed completely without the market in mind.

As is very often the case in Germany, unfortunately from my perspective.

Every graduate in the USA wants to sell and shake up the market. Most German developers are completely satisfied if something works as Desired.

No matter what it looks like or how expensive it is - or whether the customer likes it.

Exaggerated, but true to the core.

 

[Newman]

Those of you who have experience with omnis and home theater. What is the difference between two-channel stereo with two Omni speakers vs. let's say a five or more channel setup. I mean if you run the music through a setup like this:
View attachment 461943
What's the difference from omnis? With that home theater system, there should be omni dispersion sound,.... or not? Or am I thinking wrong now? Am I missing something?

Basically, the omnis create the wrong reflections from the wrong directions with the wrong delays. Multichannel can fix that.

cheers

 

[dlaloum]

The reason is probably once again that technically great German products have been designed and developed completely without the market in mind.

As is very often the case in Germany, unfortunately from my perspective.

Every graduate in the USA wants to sell and shake up the market. Most German developers are completely satisfied if something works as Desired.

No matter what it looks like or how expensive it is - or whether the customer likes it.

Exaggerated, but true to the core.

And that is why many of us have a deep respect for "German culture" Engineering (ie: including places like Switzerland)

The legendary Rockerfeller, who asked his barrel maker to reduce the number of welds used, until the barrel leaked, then go back one weld....

"good enough" and cheaper.

As a buyer, I generally prefer something engineered to last, rather than engineered to be cheap.... (and I am perfectly happy purchasing the engineered to last product used...)