Speakers with most audible details at around 70-80 dBs?

[Jazigo]

Hi all!

First of all, I am no expert in speakers and speakers systems, but I have done enough research to understand that one can buy transparent dac and amps, which is super cool! This basically leaves the source and the transducer/speaker as the main part which affects what you hear. My source is always 48 kHz - 16 bit. This means that I am left with finding a speaker that can play the source as perfectly as possible.

So, currently I own a pair of Edifiers - 1280dbs - and I happy about the bass. It is more than enough, I actually stuffed the ports to minimize the rumbling. What I am not happy about is the missing details. Personally, I love to listen to Tiny Desk Concerts, and I usually listen to one of those after work. But it isn't good on the Edifiers, since I miss a lot of details. If I listen to the same concert with my headphones - Beyerdynamics DT 770 - I hear a lot more details, which I love to catch.

Is there a speaker that can do the same for my living room? Would be nice to listen to Tiny Desk Concerts at my couch with the same details as my headphones.

 

[Matt_Holland]

Loads of options. What’s your budget?

 

[thewas]

The Beyer has a treble boost which is probably the reason you hear more details with it.
My recommendation would be generally a neutral well engineered loudspeaker with smooth directivity , deep bass response and low distortion which you can equalise to any taste and also equal loudness contour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

 

[DVDdoug]

"Detail" is not really defined. But you might try some EQ to boost the highs. When I think about detail, I think about the high frequencies.

Surprisingly (to me) Dan Clark (headphone manufacturer) says that sometimes more distortion is heard as more detail!

Of course when you listen at lower levels, some quiet details drop out of audibility or get buried in background room noise.

Beyerdynamics DT 770 - I hear a lot more details, which I love to catch.

That's not unusual. You are probably listening louder and the headphones tend to block background sounds. Mixing & mastering engineers often use headphones when they are trying to hear little defects or little details (but they normally use regular monitors for the main task of judging and adjusting the overall sound).

This basically leaves the source and the transducer/speaker as the main part which affects what you hear.

It's great that you recognize that!!! A lot of people focus on the wrong things, and spend money on the wrong things. Room acoustics also affect how the speaker sounds.

 

[EERecordist]

Hi all!

First of all, I am no expert in speakers and speakers systems, but I have done enough research to understand that one can buy transparent dac and amps, which is super cool! This basically leaves the source and the transducer/speaker as the main part which affects what you hear. My source is always 48 kHz - 16 bit. This means that I am left with finding a speaker that can play the source as perfectly as possible.

So, currently I own a pair of Edifiers - 1280dbs - and I happy about the bass. It is more than enough, I actually stuffed the ports to minimize the rumbling. What I am not happy about is the missing details. Personally, I love to listen to Tiny Desk Concerts, and I usually listen to one of those after work. But it isn't good on the Edifiers, since I miss a lot of details. If I listen to the same concert with my headphones - Beyerdynamics DT 770 - I hear a lot more details, which I love to catch.

Is there a speaker that can do the same for my living room? Would be nice to listen to Tiny Desk Concerts at my couch with the same details as my headphones.

Hello, Welcome to ASR.

As others have said, subjective detail for you may be above 6kHz. It depends on the source instruments. I have a lot of experience listening to live classical, jazz, and other music. So I listen in a recording or speaker to the texture of the violin section, reed instruments, the piano, vocals, and the cymbals in jazz, assuming they were properly recorded.

Several of our big tools on ASR are Room EQ Wizard, free software which works with an about 100 dollar/euro calibrated microphone, and parametric EQ - often found in mid-cost DACS or on your computer. I always suggest for iPhone users, the free NIOSH calibrated sound level meter app.

The other big tool is the Klippel Spinorama measurements. The Klippel is very expensive. But ASR reviews, Spinorama.org, Erin's Audio Corner publish calibrated speaker measurements. ASR has a review index to look up speaker measurements and suggested parametric EQ.

I would experiment with parametric EQ on a computer first.

The Klippel is capable of measuring harmonic distortion in the speaker across frequency. Then you can read up on the audibility of distortion across frequency. The distortion increases with listening volume.

 

[Matt_Holland]

"Detail" is not really defined. But you might try some EQ to boost the highs. When I think about detail, I think about the high frequencies.

I used to think this, but now strongly believe that detail is only enhanced by the flatness of the frequency response. Any deviation from flat results in masking of detail.

 

[thewas]

I used to think this, but now strongly believe that detail is only enhanced by the flatness of the frequency response. Any deviation from flat results in masking of detail.

In total yes but using an EQ is like using a magnifying lens, so you might hear details in the region you boost you didn't hear before but at the expense of details in other regions.

 

[Matt_Holland]

In total yes but using an EQ is like using a magnifying lens, so you might hear details in the region you boost you didn't hear before but at the expense of details in other regions.

We’re back to the definition of detail aren’t we.
My definition of detail is essentially interchangeable with accuracy and transparency.
What you describe is what I would call emphasis. Not wrong, just one way of describing sound.
However, bass emphasis is never described as enhanced detail. Treble emphasis can change our perception of lower frequencies by altering the prominence harmonics, so i understand how this can be thought of as more detail in many circumstances.

 

[uwotm8]

I miss a lot of details

Adam T5/T7/A7V easily - depening on budget. My T5 require a bit of EQ tho to tame down tweeter a bit and make sound "balanced".
AMT is hard to beat when it comes to details/clarity. And no, EQ does not change its nature, it changes overall sound signature/balance slightly which is a different aspect of sound.

 

[fredoamigo]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../edifier-r1280t-powered-speaker-review.16112/
With EQ they are correct speakers if the listening is not very loud because there is a lot of distortion in the mid frequencies .

 

[Jazigo]

Wow! At lot of feedback! Saw some discussion about details and I have a very specific case that I can point to. This concert:

(at 16:06), she gets a crack in her voice, and I can't hear that in my living room no matter the volume. I can only catch it with my headphones.

EDIT: I should be more precis in my statement.

When sitting in my couch - 2 m from the speaker - the crack in her voice is not audible even if I push the volume above comfortable levels. If I however press my ear up against the speaker, then I can hear it.

I was thinking, do I need a bigger speaker? I guess a bigger speaker can move air more easily, so maybe details get "pushed out" better?

 

[fredoamigo]

it seems like this is in the range where you have a lot of distortion

 

[MarcT]

Wow! At lot of feedback! Saw some discussion about details and I have a very specific case that I can point to. This concert:

(at 16:06), she gets a crack in her voice, and I can't hear that in my living room no matter the volume. I can only catch it with my headphones.

EDIT: I should be more precis in my statement.

When sitting in my couch - 2 m from the speaker - the crack in her voice is not audible even if I push the volume above comfortable levels. If I however press my ear up against the speaker, then I can hear it.

I was thinking, do I need a bigger speaker? I guess a bigger speaker can move air more easily, so maybe details get "pushed out" better?

Interesting, I seem to have the same situation. I don't think simply having a "bigger speaker" would help the details at all. It seems to me that clarity would be mediated by the tweeter and to some extent the mid-woofer.

Seated on my sofa, my ears are about 10 feet from my Sonus Faber Lumina V towers and if I sit up and lean forward such that my head is about 8 feet from the speakers, the clarity and details seem about twice as clear. My assumption is that the clarity and details are just being "lost" in my mid-sized, well-damped family room at 10 feet away. It also has me wondering if, for those of us with age-related hearing loss, certain tweeter types are better.

This has me wondering if a given speaker model is generally engineered to work best at a certain listening distance. I know that Focal lists the optimal room size and listening distance for some of their models, but I'm not sure if any other speaker manufacturers do that.

 

[fredoamigo]

This has me wondering if a given speaker model is generally engineered to work best at a certain listening distance. I know that Focal lists the optimal room size and listening distance for some of their models, but I'm not sure if any other speaker manufacturers do that

Genelec does it

 

[MarkS]

Room reflections reduce perception of detail. Narrow directivity speakers can help.

 

[psykano]

Here's a good article about the effects of distortion:

Low frequency harmonic distortion is almost inaudible. So what’s the point of low distortion drivers?

Putzeys, Dec. 2019

purifi-audio.com

I think if room treatment and position are great then distortion is the number one spec you should be looking for in a speaker. But especially in far-field listening if you can't get great treatment or positioning then DSP and directivity will do much much more for clarity from your speakers than just buying new low distortion speakers

 

[AnalogSteph]

Agree with a bunch of the above. It's probably a case of not-exactly-great speaker in not-exactly great environment, and the DT770s' detail-magnifying bathtub response isn't helping matters.

Let's face it, most rooms are too lively, and a lot of the time you end up with the listening position just in front of the opposite wall to the speakers, which actually is quite terrible unless that wall is treated heavily.

Also, AFAICT the R1280DB is pretty much the R1280T (which Amir has measured) with BT added. It is a fairly wide dispersion affair and not ideal for listening across the room to begin with (you'd want something looking a lot more Klipsch-y). Also, given the issues with unsuppressed woofer breakup modes (since the crossover is a single capacitor affair) and resulting wonky dispersion, you can EQ these all day long and you'll never get the treble quite right, even if it would still improve.
If you have access to a measurement mic and PEQ facilities, you can experiment with cotton wool stuffing between the grille and woofer (an acoustic lowpass filter beats no lowpass filter, but you have to get it right lest you be left with a gaping hole in the midrange response). Alternatively or in addition, a hard small irregularly-shaped disc placed over the woofer center at exactly the right distance could be used to implement a 5 kHz notch filter (it would have to be about 1.7 cm or 43/64" or ~11/16" away, which may well still be behind the grille - experimentation with measurements will be required to determine the correct location). If the speakers have to accommodate multiple different sources (some of which don't have PEQ), you're probably SOL though.

 

[JIW]

Wow! At lot of feedback! Saw some discussion about details and I have a very specific case that I can point to. This concert:

(at 16:06), she gets a crack in her voice, and I can't hear that in my living room no matter the volume. I can only catch it with my headphones.

EDIT: I should be more precis in my statement.

When sitting in my couch - 2 m from the speaker - the crack in her voice is not audible even if I push the volume above comfortable levels. If I however press my ear up against the speaker, then I can hear it.

I was thinking, do I need a bigger speaker? I guess a bigger speaker can move air more easily, so maybe details get "pushed out" better?

I can hear it clearly on my HD600 at a moderate level - volume set such that 0 dBFS RMS sine produces -13.5 dBV leading to 91.5 dB SPL. Full volume on YouTube. According to YouTube, the level is 2.4 dB below its normalisation threshold which is between -13 and -15 LUFS. So its level is between -15.4 and -17.4 LUFS. Average SPL should be around 75 dB SPL at the above volume setting.

Tonally accurate speakers will reveal it just fine. No need to boost treble.

If you cannot hear it on speakers, it is probably masked by distortion and/or resonance. Judging by the predicted in room response, it should have emphasised treble.

 

[pablolie]

70-to-80dB is a tricky area. Around 70 you probably still want kid of a bathtub response profile. At 80dB and above that low-hi overload will overwhelm the presence region and you'll hear something that is distorted in presentation. It also all depends on other preferences you may have. Luckily exchange policies are great these days - go listen at a dealer or order a few carefully chosen pieces - and treat them well. And pick a fav!

PS: Youtube audio quality is OK but not a reference. But if that is how you listen more power to you and make a choice based on that.

 

[Jazigo]

Interesting, I seem to have the same situation. I don't think simply having a "bigger speaker" would help the details at all. It seems to me that clarity would be mediated by the tweeter and to some extent the mid-woofer.

Seated on my sofa, my ears are about 10 feet from my Sonus Faber Lumina V towers and if I sit up and lean forward such that my head is about 8 feet from the speakers, the clarity and details seem about twice as clear. My assumption is that the clarity and details are just being "lost" in my mid-sized, well-damped family room at 10 feet away. It also has me wondering if, for those of us with age-related hearing loss, certain tweeter types are better.

This has me wondering if a given speaker model is generally engineered to work best at a certain listening distance. I know that Focal lists the optimal room size and listening distance for some of their models, but I'm not sure if any other speaker manufacturers do that.

That is interesting that you can experience the same with your setup. In regards to "bigger speaker", I thought that a bigger baffle - 12-15inch - playing at the same volume could produce more details. I don't know - just a thought.

In my case of room treatment and position; they are not ideal by any measurement. Is it really that important? I mean, do I need to turn my living room into a studio for more details? I would like to avoid that if possible, but I am also willing to make changes for more details if it turns out to be essential.