Stand-mounted vs. Floorstanding

[kach22i]

As you can see from my system (listed in my signature lines), I have an excellent little pair of bookshelf speakers that are very bass limited. And if you have read my recent posts, I have been considering a pair of small towers and eventually adding a subwoofer or two. However, the discussion in this thread has convinced me to seriously consider a stand-mount plus sub(s) option.

You are a smart man, when presented with conflicting information, go for the simplest solution.

I'm reposting below what I've posted elsewhere, so it's not aimed at you personally.

One thing perhaps not made clear enough in the opening post is that the fewer things located in between the speakers (excluding subwoofer) the better, as anything in the middle will interfere with sound-staging.

Something in between the speakers like mono-amps on platforms or a low slung sub are less of a problem.

Items do not have to be at ear level to be of nuisance, the reason being that driver radiation patterns are not 2D FLAT as seen in polar radiation charts, the lobes are 3D.

This means the AIR adjacent, below and above the driver are part of the sonic presentation, and if you nibble into it, it's like a half eaten pie.

You want the WHOLE pie, don't you?

This phenomena may be more present in dipole and panel speaker than conventional dynamic drivers, and even less present in typical horn speakers, however it should not be ignored in any of them, in my opinion.

Radiation pattern varies with frequency (usually).

RealTraps - Front Wall Absorption

Move your audio rack off to a sidewall if you can (it's in my plans), and not at a first reflection point if you can help it.

KEF Kube 10b

I looked it up, it's a sealed box design, and that is a good thing in my opinion.

Nice choice of other speakers too.

My room is roughly was small as yours and my Martin Logan "Aerius" speakers are doing better than ever before, although with your humidity could possibly be a problem, would have to do some research on that. One guy in Malaysia was using M/L's in a covered space outdoors with no issues that I know of.

 

[thewas]

time aligned

To make things even more funny let's also not forget that only coaxial drivers can be fully time aligned as non-coaxials can be only for one angle but not for the others (see reflected sound )

 

[A800]

Fullrange speakers are time aligned out of the box.

 

[kach22i]

There is a correct level, phase setting and crossover point for any given system. You may think of the crossover point as variable according to taste if you like but there is likely one point within a fairly limited range where a choice will be measurably optimal. Of course with LF energy, compromise is built into the puzzle.

There will still be an optimal combination of level and delay, phase angle, but it's worth experimenting with Xover frequencies within limits since any given situation will be unique to that combination. There may even be a preference for the slope of the crossover as well......12dB/octave, 24/dB p.o. etc. You can play with that.............

....... I like them to sound wall to wall and eight feet tall. Little speakers don't do that like the heavyweights.

I appreciate all of your, and others input on this topic and respect your steadfast loyalty to the science of measurements.

In the end, being happy with what you hear is the final metric, kind of like your 8-foot tall sounding speaker preference comment.

I'm sure there are people out there with fine measuring rooms/systems that were still dissatisfied with the results because their ears told them otherwise. I've read about their sagas in What's Best, oh their first world problems are just terrible I tell you.

Do your mic, software, plots and charts tell you when your are 360 degrees out of phase?

Is the software giving to 4D feedback?

4D is like 3D with TIME added in.

My ears could be wrong but I wouldn't know it, and ignorance is bliss I'm telling you.

 

[kach22i]

My point here was that you cannot shift things in time by moving the


When you are listening to one speaker which phases shifts continuously in LF area that is true, but in the XO area where you have 2mains and sub playing the same tones and sub is delayed by 5ms or more you will hear it. That is why all AVRs have delay settings for multiple speakers setup.

AVR's are set up for encoded 5.1, 7.1 and 9.1 systems, not 2-channel stereo, correct?

In order to turn 2.0 stereo into 2.1 time corrected subwoofer friendly sound, one must delay the mains.

AVR controls and controls on subwoofer only add additional time delay to the subwoofers as I understand it.

If you can post a link to a specific AVR that proves my understanding is flawed or antiquated, I will eagerly read about it and rejoice.

 

[kach22i]

Also don't forget that your main speakers also start exhibiting group delay at these frequencies.

Interesting phrase "Group Delay", I've read about it before but never really put it in context before.

Thanks.

https://www.linkwitzlab.com/frontiers.htm

Group delay increases dramatically at low frequencies, even for the full-range speaker. To equalize the 3-way speaker down to 50 Hz a great amount of delay would have to be added to the higher frequency portion of the spectrum. This is practically impossible to accomplish with analog means and not completely trivial with DSP either.

Aha!

If delay equalization is restricted to higher frequencies, where digital processing becomes easier because of shorter time record lengths, then large portions of the spectrum remain distorted (g). Such solution may improve the first few milliseconds of the step response, but it remains to be shown unambiguously that if this is audibly noticeable. It will enable fairly accurate reproduction of square-waves with frequencies above 1 kHz though.

 

[QMuse]

Fullrange speakers are time aligned out of the box.

Yes, but unfortunately they have a deficiency of not so linear frequency response over the audible range which is more important than time-alignement.

 

[A800]

Yes, but unfortunately they have a deficiency of not so linear frequency response over the audible range which is more important than time-alignement.

That's debatable.

 

[tuga]

That's debatable.

Single driver speakers produce significant amounts of intermodulation distortion (some call them "girl with banjo speakers" for a reason), increased directivity with frequency (which can only be slightly compensated with toe-in), a tonal balance that is tilting the wrong way (upwards from bass to treble), terrible high frequency performance (unless they're very small and produce no sub-bass), the cone break-up resonances are not filtered out, and they usually have limited SPL capabilities (or a very significat portion of the treble rolled-off).

This is the Rethm Maarga, a back-loaded whizzer'd single driver:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/rethm-maarga-loudspeaker-measurements

 

[A800]

Fullranges have their drawbacks also but some do so many things right that it doesn't matter (for me at least).
I use a custom enclosure and a phaseplug kind of thing on my triple cones.
Nice natural sound.
After listening to fullranges for a while the sound of multiways seems to be torn/disunited to me.

 

[tuga]

Fullranges have their drawbacks also but some do so many things right that it doesn't matter (for me at least).
I use a custom enclosure and a phaseplug kind of thing on my triple cones.
Nice natural sound.
After listening to fullranges for a while the sound of multiways seems to be torn/disunited to me.

I don't know why people call them full-ranges when there's no such thing. The designation wide-band is a lot more accurate.

 

[A800]

I don't know why people call them full-ranges when there's no such thing. The designation wide-band is a lot more accurate.

Yes, but...

vs

 

[Kal Rubinson]

AVR controls and controls on subwoofer only add additional time delay to the subwoofers as I understand it.

You can delay any of the output channels independently on any decent AVR.

 

[Sancus]

Any decent room EQ setup will automatically delay every output channel appropriately to perform basic time alignment so I'm really not sure why it seems like such a big matter of concern. Ofc you can do it manually with REW and a minidsp(might as well use MSO too if you have multiple subs and are already doing manual measurements), but you don't have to.

And everybody who wants good sound is using room EQ, right? Riiight....?

 

[QMuse]

Any decent room EQ setup will automatically delay every output channel appropriately to perform basic time alignment so I'm really not sure why it seems like such a big matter of concern. Ofc you can do it manually with REW and a minidsp(might as well use MSO too if you have multiple subs and are already doing manual measurements), but you don't have to.

Indeed it will.

And everybody who wants good sound is using room EQ, right? Riiight....?

From what I have seen on this forum allow me to be sceptical on this.

 

[FrantzM]

Fullranges have their drawbacks also but some do so many things right that it doesn't matter (for me at least).
I use a custom enclosure and a phaseplug kind of thing on my triple cones.
Nice natural sound.
After listening to fullranges for a while the sound of multiways seems to be torn/disunited to me.

Please can you let us know what do they do right, while you are it, can you please provide us with any measurements outlining their superiority in said areas ?

 

[Jon AA]

From what I have seen on this forum allow me to be sceptical on this.

Well, your idea of room EQ is different than everybody else's, so your skepticism should be put in context. Most everybody agrees EQing the room/speaker combination's steady state response is needed in the bass region.

 

[QMuse]

Well, your idea of room EQ is different than everybody else's, so your skepticism should be put in context. Most everybody agrees EQing the room/speaker combination's steady state response is needed in the bass region.

Well sure, if you believe that room magically stops influencing speaker's response at transition frequency like it hit the invisible wall, well whatever rocks your boat I'm fine with it.

You may, however, want to check again this in-room measurement of R3 vs the Klippels PIR (both doen by Amir) and see for yourself if you're right.

 

[BDWoody]

Most everybody agrees EQing the room/speaker combination's steady state response is needed in the bass region.

 

[QMuse]

View attachment 55187

Well sure, bass does matter, but you pretty much never see hard limits in the nature.