fredstuhl
Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2021
- Messages
- 86
- Likes
- 140
Hi,
First and foremost, thanks a lot for this place and your contributions! Music is my hobby, I enjoy listening and playing in bands. Just recently fell into this rabbit hole hifi gear, however, the conversations in the typical "audiophile" forums frustrate me a lot... I don't know much about acoustics, loudspeaker technology and electronics, but I have a background in natural sciences and the degree of pseudoscience that is being spread in the hifi community is making me sad. Guess you can tell how relieved I was finding audio science review and seeing actual measurements, discussion of data and critical thinking.
Now, in principle I have one of this -help me decide what I should buy- questions, but more than I need a specific suggestion for a product, I'd like to understand the physics behind it.
I am living together with my girlfriend (an architect with very strong opinions about everything that goes into our living space) we live in a two-room apartment with a combined living room/ dining room/ open kitchen (this combined room has about 40 m2). We have a Bauhaus-style interior with few furniture items, mostly hard surfaces, mostly bare walls and ceiling, so while our place usually subjectively looks cool, it has never been a good environment acoustically. I have a set of old, big speakers from a German manufacturer (T+A Criterion TB 140, 3way transmission line speakers) and we use them for casual listening/ movies sitting on a couch about 5 m away. When I actively listen to music, I do that from a different spot, moving a chair closer to the speakers, with me and the speakers in an equilateral triangle (2 m length per side). We have been moving places a lot, before this kind of setup was always okay, however, in our current apartment, acoustics are now so bad that I really don't enjoy listening with the big speakers anymore. Experience from large distance when watching movies is still... good enough I guess... at rather low standards. An improvement in eg speech intelligibility would be much appreciated.
My girlfriend's opinions about aesthetics of acoustic treatment are not likely to change, hence I want to find a solution for my actual actively listening to music experience that works better in this kind of untreated, very reflective living environment. I figured that in order to get a somewhat enjoyable listening experience, I should try a near-field setup, but it would also need to double for general use eg when watching movies from larger distances. I borrowed a set of small studio monitors (Eve Audio SC205) from a friend to test this -> and indeed, given that I'd add some low end extension, they made me really happy in near-field, even in this horrible acoustical environment, much more enjoyable than my big speakers from any listening distance in this room. However, -and I'm sure this will come to less suprise for more experienced forum members here- they were completely unusable at larger distance, much worse than the big ones. Again, I have not much experience in evaluating these things correctly or even expressing myself precisely and can't describe it better than that the sound of the small speakers was -although at similar perceived volume level (and I think the Eve Audio speakers were volume-wise still very much in their comfort zone. No clipping indicated, I don't listen to music very loudly)- very diffuse in comparison to the big speakers, with very very poor stereo imaging, and it appeared that also tonality changed a lot.
Integrating this experience with what I've learned from reading in this forum and what I've learned from reading some guides on the Genelec website -> it seems to me as I have experienced different levels of balance between direct and reverberant sound caused by listening distance and speaker directivity, with the most direct sound experience when listening to the Eve Audios in near-field and the most reverberant sound when listening with the Eve Audios from far away, which must then have a much wider dispersion than my big ones, does this sound correct?
In order to understand this better, I have a set of questions:
1. Did I get it right that SPL capabilities of a speaker don't really matter as long as it is used within its limits?
2. Why is there a maximum recommended room volume for a certain speaker size - again, coming from the Genelec website and their monitor selection guide (https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors). Let's say I am sitting right in the respective suggested listening distance of some Genelec 8330s and 8350s, so within the area where direct sound dominates the experience -> I guess room size will still make a difference for the probably still not insignificant amount of reflected sound that I hear, but why is it suggested to chose a bigger speaker in a bigger room in such a situation?
3. Following up that last question -> do the dispersion characteristics change significantly within the same speaker line with speaker (driver or cabinet) size? Is this the reason for the "critical distance" (referring to the Genelec Direct Sound Dominance graph) generally increasing with increasing speaker size (comparing speakers of the same line, the same construction style)?
4. Now, with that goal in mind of having a very good listening experience in a near-field(ish) situation, but still not completely terrible experience when listening to the same speakers from 5 m away (ideally without repositioning them), could larger near-field speakers such as the Genelec 8350 or 8351/ 8361 do the trick?
5. Are there other loudspeaker characteristics that I didn't mention, but that are important in this scenario and need to be considered?
Looking forward to your answers and thanks a lot for your help! In general, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experiences here, thanks a lot!
First and foremost, thanks a lot for this place and your contributions! Music is my hobby, I enjoy listening and playing in bands. Just recently fell into this rabbit hole hifi gear, however, the conversations in the typical "audiophile" forums frustrate me a lot... I don't know much about acoustics, loudspeaker technology and electronics, but I have a background in natural sciences and the degree of pseudoscience that is being spread in the hifi community is making me sad. Guess you can tell how relieved I was finding audio science review and seeing actual measurements, discussion of data and critical thinking.
Now, in principle I have one of this -help me decide what I should buy- questions, but more than I need a specific suggestion for a product, I'd like to understand the physics behind it.
I am living together with my girlfriend (an architect with very strong opinions about everything that goes into our living space) we live in a two-room apartment with a combined living room/ dining room/ open kitchen (this combined room has about 40 m2). We have a Bauhaus-style interior with few furniture items, mostly hard surfaces, mostly bare walls and ceiling, so while our place usually subjectively looks cool, it has never been a good environment acoustically. I have a set of old, big speakers from a German manufacturer (T+A Criterion TB 140, 3way transmission line speakers) and we use them for casual listening/ movies sitting on a couch about 5 m away. When I actively listen to music, I do that from a different spot, moving a chair closer to the speakers, with me and the speakers in an equilateral triangle (2 m length per side). We have been moving places a lot, before this kind of setup was always okay, however, in our current apartment, acoustics are now so bad that I really don't enjoy listening with the big speakers anymore. Experience from large distance when watching movies is still... good enough I guess... at rather low standards. An improvement in eg speech intelligibility would be much appreciated.
My girlfriend's opinions about aesthetics of acoustic treatment are not likely to change, hence I want to find a solution for my actual actively listening to music experience that works better in this kind of untreated, very reflective living environment. I figured that in order to get a somewhat enjoyable listening experience, I should try a near-field setup, but it would also need to double for general use eg when watching movies from larger distances. I borrowed a set of small studio monitors (Eve Audio SC205) from a friend to test this -> and indeed, given that I'd add some low end extension, they made me really happy in near-field, even in this horrible acoustical environment, much more enjoyable than my big speakers from any listening distance in this room. However, -and I'm sure this will come to less suprise for more experienced forum members here- they were completely unusable at larger distance, much worse than the big ones. Again, I have not much experience in evaluating these things correctly or even expressing myself precisely and can't describe it better than that the sound of the small speakers was -although at similar perceived volume level (and I think the Eve Audio speakers were volume-wise still very much in their comfort zone. No clipping indicated, I don't listen to music very loudly)- very diffuse in comparison to the big speakers, with very very poor stereo imaging, and it appeared that also tonality changed a lot.
Integrating this experience with what I've learned from reading in this forum and what I've learned from reading some guides on the Genelec website -> it seems to me as I have experienced different levels of balance between direct and reverberant sound caused by listening distance and speaker directivity, with the most direct sound experience when listening to the Eve Audios in near-field and the most reverberant sound when listening with the Eve Audios from far away, which must then have a much wider dispersion than my big ones, does this sound correct?
In order to understand this better, I have a set of questions:
1. Did I get it right that SPL capabilities of a speaker don't really matter as long as it is used within its limits?
2. Why is there a maximum recommended room volume for a certain speaker size - again, coming from the Genelec website and their monitor selection guide (https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors). Let's say I am sitting right in the respective suggested listening distance of some Genelec 8330s and 8350s, so within the area where direct sound dominates the experience -> I guess room size will still make a difference for the probably still not insignificant amount of reflected sound that I hear, but why is it suggested to chose a bigger speaker in a bigger room in such a situation?
3. Following up that last question -> do the dispersion characteristics change significantly within the same speaker line with speaker (driver or cabinet) size? Is this the reason for the "critical distance" (referring to the Genelec Direct Sound Dominance graph) generally increasing with increasing speaker size (comparing speakers of the same line, the same construction style)?
4. Now, with that goal in mind of having a very good listening experience in a near-field(ish) situation, but still not completely terrible experience when listening to the same speakers from 5 m away (ideally without repositioning them), could larger near-field speakers such as the Genelec 8350 or 8351/ 8361 do the trick?
5. Are there other loudspeaker characteristics that I didn't mention, but that are important in this scenario and need to be considered?
Looking forward to your answers and thanks a lot for your help! In general, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experiences here, thanks a lot!