Speaker accuracy is overrated

[Chr1]

No worries. I use a pair of Tannoy V12 PA speakers at home. They are not designed for super high SPL but go loud cleanly, and with good FR with a bit of DSP.

 

[tmtomh]

I only mentioned little 2 way speakers because people a so intense about the accuracy of their 6 inch woofers and 1inch tweeter and the quality of the capacitors and other passive filters, it seems like a useless audiophile waist of time and effort, since the even the best of these wont even approximative a concert like ambiance.
Even the best 500K floor standing 3 or 4 ways towers I have heard at shows dont do it for me. Stereo imaging is not the equivalent of a wall of sound, it is always weak in the center. I wont even mention home theater systems for music, or dolby setups with 9 speakers all over the place, also rubbish.
Stanley Owsley, engineer for th Grateful Dead did some research in the field of hi fi PA systems but apparently no one followed thru in that direction.

RE small two-way stand-mounts, that's what I figured: just a strawman argument, which you've now added to with concern about capacitors and passive filters, which further highlights the strawman aspect. So we can get that out of the way.

If you're dismissing stereo, and you're dismissing multi-channel, and you're dismissing 500k multi-way towers. I would return to my prior comment and echo the comments of some others in this thread: you're up against two problems, one of which is very difficult to address and the other of which it seems to me is categorically impossible to address:

1. The difficult problem is that you are limited by room size and characteristics. What you are looking for would seem to require a very large listening space that can at least begin to approach the scale of a small or medium-sized orchestral performance venue, and with acoustic properties roughly approximating such a venue. You'd also have to think carefully about the distance and height of the listening position, since where we listen from at home is usually radically different than where we listen from in a venue, relative to the source of the sound.

2. The nearly impossible problem is that you seem to be running up against the fundamental problem that listening to recordings of orchestral performances requires you to listen to an electrically recorded, electrically amplified version of acoustically performed instrumental music, converted to acoustic energy by some number of fixed-position transducers whose positions, number, and dispersion characteristics do not match the number, position, and dispersion characteristics of the original performers and instruments in the venue.

So like I said, good luck chucking out "accuracy," because based on the criteria you've set up here, there isn't any other characteristic you can replace it with that will get you to where you seem to want to go.

The closest I could imagine you getting to your desired result would be if orchestral recordings were made by close-miking every single instrument, along with miking the venue from a certain listening position to capture the ambient information. Then the mix would have to mix that ambient mic information with each instrument's individual recording track, at carefully calculated varying levels to account for the varying distance of the listening position from each instrument. Then the recording would have to be released as an N-track recording, with N=the number of instruments in the performance. And you'd need to listen to it in a space that somehow approximates the venue, maybe smaller but generally proportionally similar, and your own playback system would have to have the same number of channels/speakers, and you'd need to move each speaker to the position where each instrument was, relative to all the others.

If that sounds ridiculous, then I'd recommend you take a step back to consider how dismissive you're being of every practical playback setup (stereo, multichannel, the most expensive and high-quality speakers imaginable, and so on), and rethink your goal here, or at least how you're communicating it to the rest of us.

Oh - and if you believe that stereo is always or inevitably weak-sounding in the center, I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong.

 

[Spkrdctr]

85db is fairly low. So many speakers can easily do that so your main issue is the "wall of sound". I have no idea how to produce a good wall of sound in a living room. If you at least had a mansion with some large rooms in it, you could do what you want. Good Luck on your quest!

 

[tmtomh]

Genelec 8381A

Sure - but @Theta feels that stereo is fatally inadequate, so he'd have to get a bunch of them for a multichannel setup. Except Theta also feels that multichannel setups are "rubbish," so it's not at all clear what number of speakers, in what arrangement Theta thinks would solve this issue for him.

It seems to me that Theta would have to build something like Ken Fritz's system - and again, a major part of that "system" is actually the enormous space he created to house it.

 

[Digby]

OP is there some, as yet unspecified, problem you are looking to solve? I agree that 6" woofers are not the greatest for low frequencies at any SPL, but is there some more specific problem you are trying to fix.

 

[Spkrdctr]

it seems to me is categorically impossible to address:

1. The difficult problem is that you are limited by room size and characteristics. What you are looking for would seem to require a very large listening space that can at least begin to approach the scale of a small or medium-sized orchestral performance venue, and with acoustic properties roughly approximating such a venue.

2. The nearly impossible problem is that you seem to be running up against the fundamental problem that listening to recordings of orchestral performances requires you to listen to an electrically recorded, electrically amplified version of acoustically performed instrumental music, converted to acoustic energy by some number of fixed-position transducers whose positions, number, and dispersion characteristics do not match the number, position, and dispersion characteristics of the original performers and instruments in the venue.

This is a very nice explanation of the issue. I did the quick, two second post whereas tomtomh took the much more detailed response. I can't agree with him more. You are on a quest for an extreme niche sound and could take an amazing amount of work and cycling through a lot of equipment and dollars. But, good luck and if you ever find what you want, please come on here and let us know. It would be very intersting to see what you find that works

 

[Mr. Widget]

1. The difficult problem is that you are limited by room size and characteristics. What you are looking for would seem to require a very large listening space that can at least begin to approach the scale of a small or medium-sized orchestral performance venue, and with acoustic properties roughly approximating such a venue. You'd also have to think carefully about the distance and height of the listening position, since where we listen from at home is usually radically different than where we listen from in a venue, relative to the source of the sound.

I'm not sure about that. Here is a photo of the living room in my last house... a fairly modest room with a pair of large JBLs. It absolutely created the massive sound of a full orchestra or a Who concert. Coming home to my system after an evening at the symphony, I never felt disappointed.

These speakers are absolutely not the last word in objective measured performance, but they were amazing in their ability to reproduce music that sounded like a live performance in both sound and scale.

 

[Digby]

These speakers are absolutely not the last word in objective measured performance, but they were amazing in their ability to reproduce music that sounded like a live performance in both sound and scale.

They look great, what speakers are they (JBL I presume) and are they corner loaded?

 

[Mr. Widget]

They look great, what speakers are they (JBL I presume) and are they corner loaded?

JBL DD67000 Everest IIs. They are not designed to be corner loaded.

 

[DonH56]

I am only concerned with the reproduction of concerts or concert like recordings without all the gimmicks and all the so called artistic additives of the recording engineers which dictate the accuracy so many audiophile crave and demand from their little 2 way speakers however good or expensive..

Accurate reproduction is a reasonable goal and is independent of the source material. Whether a live concert feed, minimalistic recording, mixed and mastered recording with added equalization and such, or electronic music created on a computer, the listener has no control of the source he receives. If you want to hear the source accurately, concert recording or whatever, your playback chain up to and including the speakers must be accurate. And by extension the room; many eschew room correction of any kind, whether electronic or physical absorbers and such, but that just means their room is modifying the frequency and time response of the source.

Size of speaker is also somewhat irrelevant, though smaller speakers cannot reproduce the bass larger drivers can provide, so full-range response may require larger speakers and/or subwoofers to augment the bass. Many folk cannot afford or do not have space for large speakers. Many monitors for live sound feeds as well as in recording and mixing studios are small and provide very high accuracy. Bass is heavily influenced by the listener's speakers and rooms, of course.

I demand from speakers to primarily deliver the lowest IM distortion at an average of 85db in a small room.

Note that achieving low IMD requires low THD as well. Note a "small room" to you might not be small to others, and again I would decouple speaker accuracy from room size. I prefer my speakers accurately reproduce the source material; the room is something for me to tackle as it is outside the speaker's control. I prefer larger listening rooms but cannot afford a new house so live with my small'ish room.

Perhaps some one can create a wall of sound like the sound man of the Greatful Dead provided for concerts only for the home.
Does anyone else on this forum aspire to this type of fidelity?
Is this the impossible dream? Can we come close? How?

A stack of speakers can sound impressive but done improperly will not be accurate. Comb filtering from interaction among the drivers in a large array can be a problem if not carefully designed. If you want floor-to-ceiling "wall of sound" in the home then large panel speakers come to mind, such as various ESLs or Magnepan speakers. These are often less accurate due to room interaction, panel modes, and so forth but if the goal is a "wall of sound" then those will achieve it without (or fewer) problems with driver interaction. Line source arrays are another solution, though again the room becomes a significant contributor.

I only mentioned little 2 way speakers because people a so intense about the accuracy of their 6 inch woofers and 1inch tweeter and the quality of the capacitors and other passive filters, it seems like a useless audiophile waist of time and effort, since the even the best of these wont even approximative a concert like ambiance.

A small two-way speaker in an untreated (or minimally-treated) room can (re)produce a large sound field. But "concert ambiance" is not well defined; sitting in the lower front third of a concert hall (the "sweet spot") is very different than sitting very near the stage or farther back. And different concert halls have very different reverberant/ambient fields; there is always a trade between a hall filled with reflective surfaces that creates a "big" feeling of space versus one that is less reverberant but allows listeners to more clearly hear the musicians. Too much reflected energy masks details, smears the imaging, and makes it harder to follow individual singers or instruments, but provides the feeling of music all around you. A "dryer" venue will not have the same ambience with sound coming from everywhere, but allows sounds from the stage to come through clearly and are readily localized (you can tell exactly whre they are coming from).

Even the best 500K floor standing 3 or 4 ways towers I have heard at shows dont do it for me. Stereo imaging is not the equivalent of a wall of sound, it is always weak in the center. I wont even mention home theater systems for music, or dolby setups with 9 speakers all over the place, also rubbish.
Stanley Owsley, engineer for th Grateful Dead did some research in the field of hi fi PA systems but apparently no one followed thru in that direction.

Stereo has always been a limitation of the source no matter the size of speakers (or anything else). It should not be "weak in the center", however, if the speakers and listening position have been properly set up. That said, adding a center channel has long been espoused as a solution, and in fact many years ago Paul Klipsch was a strong proponent of three-channel systems of fought for that as the recording and playback standard instead of two-channel stereo.

Where stereo loses ambiance is the ability to add sound from the sides and rear to recreate a concert hall; that must be added artificially by room reflections, or by multichannel systems with sources such as SACDs or multichannel music video discs (DVDs, Bluray discs).

---

Ultimately, if your goal is to recreate the ambiance of a (particular) concert hall, or just a feeling of sound coming from a wall in front or all around, then there are a few things that come to mind (by no means an exhaustive list):

• Use large panel speakers such as ESL, planer-dynamic (Magnepan and others), or just large multiway speakers such as larger Focal, Revel, Wilson, etc.;
• Use omnidirectional speakers such as MBL, Ohm F, or similar;
• Keep the room "live" with minimal absorption and maximum reflective surfaces;
• Sit in the near field of the speakers, perhaps in front a third or less the distance between them;
• Use a multichannel system with additional speakers to provide ambient sounds from all around, with suitable source material and/or sound field decoding systems (this is my approach); and/or,
• Give up and just attend live events.

FWIWFM/HTH/IME/IMO/my 0.000001 cent (microcent)/YMMV/etc. - Don

 

[Chr1]

I agree. Personally I reckon a large SOTA multichannel rig would be best.
Thinking ala Sphere, Las Vegas.
But smaller.
Optimum tweak-ability.

MSG Sphere

(Apologies, afternoon wine.)

 

[tmtomh]

I'm not sure about that. Here is a photo of the living room in my last house... a fairly modest room with a pair of large JBLs. It absolutely created the massive sound of a full orchestra or a Who concert. Coming home to my system after an evening at the symphony, I never felt disappointed.

These speakers are absolutely not the last word in objective measured performance, but they were amazing in their ability to reproduce music that sounded like a live performance in both sound and scale.

View attachment 386291

I don't disagree with you, and I'm sure what you say about your system is true - I just have my doubts that @Theta would agree, since he's totally dismissed stereo as an option (and appears to have dismissed pretty much every other kind of feasible home setup as well).

Just curious - do you have these same speakers in your current home?

 

[Mr. Widget]

Size of speaker is also somewhat irrelevant, though smaller speakers cannot reproduce the bass larger drivers can provide, so full-range response may require larger speakers and/or subwoofers to augment the bass. Many folk cannot afford or do not have space for large speakers. Many monitors for live sound feeds as well as in recording and mixing studios are small and provide very high accuracy. Bass is heavily influenced by the listener's speakers and rooms, of course.

I carefully read your entire post and agree with you on all points, but have an issue with speaker size being irrelevant. The OP's goal has been my holy grail for decades and I have chased it with mini monitors, line arrays, ESLs, studio monitors, audiophile approved floor standers from Revel and others, large vintage horn systems, and countless speakers long forgotten.

Perhaps it is sighted bias, but closing my eyes and listening for the magic of a full scale orchestra, from my experience only the larger speakers have come close and the JBLs I posted up above came the closest. The image is far less precise than a speaker with a higher DI, but then so is the image in an actual live musical event. I think the larger baffle and diffraction which "ruins" much of what we have come to seek in the "perfect" loudspeaker and lessens the holographic image tends to convey scale. Or maybe it is something else, but the smaller speakers I have tried have never created the live musical experience in my room as well as the better larger speakers.

The SPL could be higher and deep bass could be more extended and yet the smaller speakers didn't give me the "you are there" experience as well as the better larger speakers.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Just curious - do you have these same speakers in your current home?

My resident design critic nixed them from the menu... luckily she allowed me to keep a different pair of almost as large speakers that also convey the musical experience I am after.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

A large family room in the USA is not normally equivalent to a large family room in Europe.

 

[Theta]

Accurate reproduction is a reasonable goal and is independent of the source material. Whether a live concert feed, minimalistic recording, mixed and mastered recording with added equalization and such, or electronic music created on a computer, the listener has no control of the source he receives. If you want to hear the source accurately, concert recording or whatever, your playback chain up to and including the speakers must be accurate. And by extension the room; many eschew room correction of any kind, whether electronic or physical absorbers and such, but that just means their room is modifying the frequency and time response of the source.

Size of speaker is also somewhat irrelevant, though smaller speakers cannot reproduce the bass larger drivers can provide, so full-range response may require larger speakers and/or subwoofers to augment the bass. Many folk cannot afford or do not have space for large speakers. Many monitors for live sound feeds as well as in recording and mixing studios are small and provide very high accuracy. Bass is heavily influenced by the listener's speakers and rooms, of course.


Note that achieving low IMD requires low THD as well. Note a "small room" to you might not be small to others, and again I would decouple speaker accuracy from room size. I prefer my speakers accurately reproduce the source material; the room is something for me to tackle as it is outside the speaker's control. I prefer larger listening rooms but cannot afford a new house so live with my small'ish room.


A stack of speakers can sound impressive but done improperly will not be accurate. Comb filtering from interaction among the drivers in a large array can be a problem if not carefully designed. If you want floor-to-ceiling "wall of sound" in the home then large panel speakers come to mind, such as various ESLs or Magnepan speakers. These are often less accurate due to room interaction, panel modes, and so forth but if the goal is a "wall of sound" then those will achieve it without (or fewer) problems with driver interaction. Line source arrays are another solution, though again the room becomes a significant contributor.


A small two-way speaker in an untreated (or minimally-treated) room can (re)produce a large sound field. But "concert ambiance" is not well defined; sitting in the lower front third of a concert hall (the "sweet spot") is very different than sitting very near the stage or farther back. And different concert halls have very different reverberant/ambient fields; there is always a trade between a hall filled with reflective surfaces that creates a "big" feeling of space versus one that is less reverberant but allows listeners to more clearly hear the musicians. Too much reflected energy masks details, smears the imaging, and makes it harder to follow individual singers or instruments, but provides the feeling of music all around you. A "dryer" venue will not have the same ambience with sound coming from everywhere, but allows sounds from the stage to come through clearly and are readily localized (you can tell exactly whre they are coming from).


Stereo has always been a limitation of the source no matter the size of speakers (or anything else). It should not be "weak in the center", however, if the speakers and listening position have been properly set up. That said, adding a center channel has long been espoused as a solution, and in fact many years ago Paul Klipsch was a strong proponent of three-channel systems of fought for that as the recording and playback standard instead of two-channel stereo.

Where stereo loses ambiance is the ability to add sound from the sides and rear to recreate a concert hall; that must be added artificially by room reflections, or by multichannel systems with sources such as SACDs or multichannel music video discs (DVDs, Bluray discs).

---

Ultimately, if your goal is to recreate the ambiance of a (particular) concert hall, or just a feeling of sound coming from a wall in front or all around, then there are a few things that come to mind (by no means an exhaustive list):

• Use large panel speakers such as ESL, planer-dynamic (Magnepan and others), or just large multiway speakers such as larger Focal, Revel, Wilson, etc.;
• Use omnidirectional speakers such as MBL, Ohm F, or similar;
• Keep the room "live" with minimal absorption and maximum reflective surfaces;
• Sit in the near field of the speakers, perhaps in front a third or less the distance between them;
• Use a multichannel system with additional speakers to provide ambient sounds from all around, with suitable source material and/or sound field decoding systems (this is my approach); and/or,
• Give up and just attend live events.

FWIWFM/HTH/IME/IMO/my 0.000001 cent (microcent)/YMMV/etc. - Don

Good advice, but I have actually tried all the above. I have owned ESLs, lots of quality, but no dynamic, very low SPL. Planars Fairly good, not great.
Larger Focals and Wilsons heard at dealers and shows, OK but not great for the money, old tech at a stupid price.

MBL, yes definitely, the best I have experienced, not because they are omnis, but because they are good in most every way. Problem is price for the mid size and large ones. The stand mounts are useless.

Multi channel, not appealing to me concert hall don't have this type of reflections.

 

[Chr1]

But surely multichannel is ultimately tweakable, such that it could be tailored to taste?
ie Even mono or stereo... if that's your thing.

 

[Purité Audio]

Just attend live concerts is the obvious answer.
Keith

 

[Chr1]

Indeed. Probably cheaper too.

Plus, easier maintenance. Hate to try and track down a loose driver connection in a Wall of Sound. WTF.

 

[Digby]

Perhaps it is sighted bias, but closing my eyes and listening for the magic of a full scale orchestra, from my experience only the larger speakers have come close and the JBLs I posted up above came the closest. The image is far less precise than a speaker with a higher DI, but then so is the image in an actual live musical event. I think the larger baffle and diffraction which "ruins" much of what we have come to seek in the "perfect" loudspeaker and lessens the holographic image tends to convey scale. Or maybe it is something else, but the smaller speakers I have tried have never created the live musical experience in my room as well as the better larger speakers.

I have experienced this too, but on a smaller scale. I bought some Genelec 8030cs (5.25" woofer) and preferred the Behringer B2031As (8" woofer) I already had. The Behringers go deeper (lower f3) but beyond that, even at levels where the Genelecs shouldn't sound like they were struggling, they sounded to me as if they were. The Behringers, on the other hand, seemed to sound more in control and more to scale of actual music (They are about 3 times larger). I want to stress SPL levels were not at the limits of either speaker. I wrote a thread on this if OP wants to look it up 'a tale of two speakers'.

I, too, feel there is something that might not be able to replaced with anything but cabinet/driver size. I don't know what it is exactly or how to quantify it, but I do feel smaller speakers sound smaller, and this is likely not just due to higher bass roll off.