Speaker accuracy is overrated

[EERecordist]

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.

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+1 on the art collection. I have some African art from my travels, the rest is contemporary, in most cases I have met the artists.

 

[kyuu]

And there is the bass cabinet volume issue, too.

Average stud bays that are 16" on center, 2x4 studs, with 9 foot ceilings should result in an effective cabinet of roughly 80 liters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is in line with the volume of many floor standing speakers.

 

[Sokel]

Probably my taste is similar.
Maybe not in level,I mean I want the peaks of the 85dB (C) to be at their intended 110-115dB (Z) with some classical but that's about it.
A lot of big 3/4-ways do that with ease,no problem

BUT speakers is not the thing here.
At 99% is the room.So big place or make it a way that the speakers see it big but without deaden it.
I know,I've been there,I have listen to a gazillion of speakers,what always made the difference is room size/treatment,etc

As an extreme example I once listened to high-output Danleys in an about 20m² room.Nope.
They could sure play,they could sure have lots of impact,they could sure deliver until the room gave up.

So,as others above mentioned,either accept the given compromises ANY setup has or go headphones and stuff.

 

[kemmler3D]

Is there a high grade HI Fi PA system that would work in a domestic environment?

Not sure what your requirements for domesticity are, but you should check out Danley stuff, it blurs the line between home, PA and studio gear. Very high SPL capability.

 

[kemmler3D]

Average stud bays that are 16" on center, 2x4 studs, with 9 foot ceilings should result in an effective cabinet of roughly 80 liters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is in line with the volume of many floor standing speakers.

80L will get you more volume than most subwoofers, even. The question is whether the seal inside the wall is good enough to call it a speaker cabinet, but I think that's solvable without high tech.

 

[kemmler3D]

Unfortunately the 2 JBL model you mention are bass reflex, not good for my room, I had better experience with closed boxes.

Not sure if anyone has linked the thread yet, but @MAB redesigned the M2 and built their own with sealed boxes... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-m2-clone.45642/ - my guess is unless you live in a very, very large house these would make you happy.

 

[Sokel]

80L will get you more volume than most subwoofers, even. The question is whether the seal inside the wall is good enough to call it a speaker cabinet, but I think that's solvable without high tech.

Sweet spot in such installation is 120l with at least big voice coiled 12".I have asked my installers about it many times as I plan such a thing for a semi-invisible set up for the main house (not my listening space) .

 

[GXAlan]

I will meekly raise my hand here since I find that my Bose 901 Series VI do an exceptional job of wall of sound and dynamics.

My wife plays the violin recreationally. I have been to the San Francisco symphony many times including when John Williams conducted Anne Sophie-Mutter with her Stradivarius. To reproduce the sound of a violin in my home and hear the “rosin” on the bow, I need the ultra resolution of Magnepans with true ribbons or a premium tweeter. You need a standard audiophile setup that is transparent to the recording.

But the live symphony doesn’t sound that crisp. You cannot hear the rosin on the bow if you are seated on a balcony, Loge, or box, etc. What DOES bring the live symphony sound home is the Bose 901 when using Dirac to perform the mandatory equalization digitally instead of using the analog box which can overload with too high of a input signal.

I have used the Bose 901 with the JBL UT405 which is the slot tweeter from the Everest DD55000 with a 18 dB/octave crossover at 16 kHz to fill the last bit of the top end for a more “audiophile sound” but the stock Bose 901 alone (with digital EQ) more closely reflects what I experience at the concert.

I have owned ASR approved JBL 708P and Meyer Sound Amie’s and my actual home theater is a Trinnov Altitude 32 with all Meyer Sound speakers, so it’s not like I like the Bose 901 because I don’t know any better and haven’t experienced “real” audiophile gear. It’s that the net result of the Bose 901 delivers the closest experience to the symphony, again when backed with modern electronics and DSP.

 

[kemmler3D]

Sweet spot in such installation is 120l with at least big voice coiled 12".I have asked my installers about it many times as I plan such a thing for a semi-invisible set up for the main house (not my listening space) .

Fair, but by "most" subwoofers I mean including your garden variety 10" wimpy office subs.

I think it's quite possible to get credible bass from a 12" in a smaller volume, just add power as needed and EQ it a bit.

 

[Sokel]

Fair, but by "most" subwoofers I mean including your garden variety 10" wimpy office subs.

I think it's quite possible to get credible bass from a 12" in a smaller volume, just add power as needed and EQ it a bit.

Oh,I missed the sub part.
I was talking strictly bass some 30-200Hz range from such installation to keep impact on the live side (lower can ruble but cannot kick)

 

[DonH56]

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.

Speaker size matters for me because too often small speakers do not reproduce the lower midrange and bass well enough to create a realistic sound. A pair of small'ish speakers with sub(s) can do well, but I have always ended up with floorstanders because bass integration is tough when the crossover is set higher. If I roll off the bass, a set of smaller speakers on stands does about as well as larger speakers, as far as everything else. The visual impact is hard to ignore, but in tests blind and sighted I have convinced myself that the bass is the thing. Crossing over at 120 Hz means there is still significant energy at 240 Hz and above, making the lower midrange/upper bass image collapse unless using stereo subs (which I have also done but am not now). I think if you were to observe radiation patterns and such you'd find smaller speakers do as well as large, just not as deep. That is a deal-breaker for me, despite listening to and owning some pretty decent smaller speakers over the years.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

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

Multichannel brings the concert hall's acoustics to your room.

But surely multichannel is ultimately tweakable,

Sure and, significantly, with DSP to minimize domestic room acoustics.

Just attend live concerts is the obvious answer.

Yup. Always informative.

 

[DonH56]

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.

The problem I have had with omnis, and some similar speakers like Bose 901s, is that they convey a huge sound stage and sense of "space" at the cost of imaging and realistic portrayal of the musicians. They sound really impressive to me at first, but I get annoyed (probably too strong a word) by the solo instruments and vocalists that are smeared all over the room instead of where I know them to be, the proverbial 9' wide violin and such. In the long run I have replaced the omni/reflective designs for more conventional designs, though for decades Magnepans were my main speakers (with damp wave well-damped for better imaging).

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

What? Concert halls have all sorts of reflections, that is what helps give them that ambient sound field I thought you were after? Since you can't capture that with stereo, and most of us do not have concert halls for listening rooms, a way to reproduce the sound of a good hall is by using multichannel recording and playback to capture and reproduce the ambient field otherwise lost in two-channel recording and playback.

 

[Theta]

Three-channel audio - left, right and center - was a hi-fi thing in the early days of stereo, late 1950s and early 1960s. It was a niché thing, but widespread enough that (at least according to what my father who was in broadcasting at the time told me) you could find one or more demos at most hi-fi shows for a while. And there are some well-known jazz albums like Miles Davis' Kind of Blue where the original recording is a three-track.

Personally I prefer stereo because I like that the phantom center is phantom - I never feel like I can localize the sound of the center, where most vocals are, to a single speaker driver because of course in a stereo setup there is no center speaker.

But if you want a center speaker, I'm sure you could create a three-channel setup, and I am guessing there is configurable audio-processing software out there that could do a competent job of upmixing stereo to three-channel, albeit probably with varying results.

Alternatively, if you want a giant mono speaker or perhaps three front speakers all playing the same mono content, then I guess you could do that easily enough: set up your system so that any stereo recordings are downmixed to mono, ideally with an intelligent computer algorithm so you don't run into too many phase problems, and then feed that mono signal to three monoblock amps each feeding a giant speaker with, I don't know, horn-loaded tweeters and huge woofers. Have at it if you like. I just don't know that it's going to give you what you say you're looking for unless you put it in a giant room with concert hall-like acoustics.

Might be worth a try, the physical is the easy part, the Algorithm, would be a chalrnge.

The problem I have had with omnis, and some similar speakers like Bose 901s, is that they convey a huge sound stage and sense of "space" at the cost of imaging and realistic portrayal of the musicians. They sound really impressive to me at first, but I get annoyed (probably too strong a word) by the solo instruments and vocalists that are smeared all over the room instead of where I know them to be, the proverbial 9' wide violin and such. In the long run I have replaced the omni/reflective designs for more conventional designs, though for decades Magnepans were my main speakers (with damp wave well-damped for better imaging).


What? Concert halls have all sorts of reflections, that is what helps give them that ambient sound field I thought you were after? Since you can't capture that with stereo, and most of us do not have concert halls for listening rooms, a way to reproduce the sound of a good hall is by using multichannel recording and playback to capture and reproduce the ambient field otherwise lost in two-channel recording and playback.

Concert halls have all kinds of reflections, yes but early reflections are not prevalent if you are in the first 10 rows.

 

[NTK]

Might be worth a try, the physical is the easy part, the Algorithm, would be a chalrnge.

Concert halls have all kinds of reflections, yes but early reflections are not prevalent if you are in the first 10 rows.

Have your ever studied concert hall acoustics?

 

[Doodski]

Might be worth a try, the physical is the easy part, the Algorithm, would be a chalrnge.

Concert halls have all kinds of reflections, yes but early reflections are not prevalent if you are in the first 10 rows.

When I was @ Phantom of the Opera I sat in the dress circle and there was lots of ambiance so reflections where present.

 

[Theta]

Have your ever studied concert hall acoustics?

Not formally. Concert hall acoustics are a collaboration with architects and acoustic experts at the building stage, that is for classical music. I had season tickets to the London Royal Albert Hall, they did not have the technical means and measuring instruments available now when they built that hall. Kind of useless when they had a symphonic orchestra one night and the Who with reinforced PA system the next.

 

[Ze Frog]

That is the essential of my query. Is there a high grade HI Fi PA system that would work in a domestic environment?

Apparently the only company going for this type of reproduction is Zu Audio, I tried one of their base models, very disappointing to say the least, review are also terrible.

You could try eltax MTR or eltax PWR. Cheap but massive and probably decent enough for a wall of sound type deal.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I think it's quite possible to get credible bass from a 12" in a smaller volume, just add power as needed and EQ it a bit.

Or more of them.

 

[DonH56]

Concert halls have all kinds of reflections, yes but early reflections are not prevalent if you are in the first 10 rows.

That does not match my experience. Since our positions have not changed, and my contributions are seemingly irrelevant to you, I'll agree to disagree.