What makes big speakers sound "big"and smaller ones sound "small"?

[GXAlan]

In my opinion, I think speakers sound "big" when:

1. They can play full range (whether aided by subs or not)
2. The sound can't be obviously pinpointed because the directivity is broad and even without holes and the radiation patterns of all the drivers ends at the same angles
3. The sound quality is reasonably life-like, including use of EQ when necessary (especially to tackle the modal activity)
4. They can play loud with low distortion

When any of these are deficient, the illusion is broken and we detect the speaker.

One of the “biggest” speakers I have heard is the Meyer Sound MM4XP which is a 4” single driver (!). But it hits upon most of what you wrote.

1) Full range.
These aren’t full range for even James Earl Jones, but for other human voices, it does hit full range. Guitars like Rodrigo y Gabriela are incredibly realistic, again, because the range covered by the MM4XP is complete.

2) Wide directivity.
I would like to send these to Amir at some point. They are advertised as 100 x 100 degrees, but I am not sure how it does this across the entire spectrum.

3) reasonably life like
The MM4XP is pretty flat within its bandwidth

4) Loud with low distortion.
^^ This is probably the secret.

In my opinion, maybe big speakers are more efficient and there are benefits from that.

 

[Purité Audio]

The Danley HRE’s didn’t exactly sound large, imaging was incredibly precise, and I imagine their directivity was pretty narrow and I was sitting reasonably close.
I would like to try the Danley ILE3 paraline, that has a 140 degree horizontal dispersion perhaps more suitable for domestic reproduction?

ILE3 | Danley Sound Labs

Danley produces its first-ever loudspeakers for home & home theater use. Experience sound as it was intended.

www.danleysoundlabs.com

 

[Shiva]

Maybe cinema’s have “big” sound because they have a few dozen high spl transducers around the room?
View attachment 348564

 

[MattHooper]

This subject came to mind as I was able to listen some more to big Dali EpiKore 11 speakers compared to the same tracks on my much smaller Joseph Audio speakers.

The size difference is pretty enormous: the Dali Epicore are huge speakers with tweeter, super tweeter, 4 X 8" woofers, and a 6.5 inch mid driver. Grabbed this pic from the web:

Vs...my puny little Joseph Audio Perspective 2 speakers, at 36" tall, 8.5" wide, with two widdle 5.5" SEAS drivers and a tweeter:

Basically I listened to a bunch of familiar tracks on the Dali speakers, came home and listened to the same tracks on my Joseph speakers.

The Josephs have a reputation for sounding much bigger than they look, and that they do. Surprisingly rich sounding for a small, skinny floor stander, with massive soundstaging and imaging capabilities.

Interestingly, the two speakers are not far off in frequency specs - the Josephs are spec'd down to 35Hz, and the Dali speakers despite their massive size and woofer compliment advantage, just go down to a bit lower, 29Hz.

The differences I heard were:

First, the soundstaging in my system was significantly "bigger." My speakers are more spread out and closer to the listening position relative to how the Dalis were set up. So in this case the scale of the soundstage - size, width, depth - was actually bigger on the smaller speaker system. And it was surprising how well the Joseph speakers kept up in terms of the "size of the bass" - many of the centralized bass synths or bass guitars/drums sounded vary large and substantial on the Josephs even having just heard them on the Dalis.

But the real difference was the overall sense of scale, of image heft and size, on the Dali speakers compared to the Josephs. I've mentioned the "pear shape" sensation to imaging and image substantitiveness on most systems. That applies to mine too. The Dalis "hit harder" and more solid in the bass, with a bit more bass depth and so a bit more size, but not a really big difference in "bass image size" so a stand up bass sounded similar sized on the Josephs. HOWEVER as we go up the frequency range, like most speakers I hear, the Joseph sonic images loose a sense of size and acoustic power, so things get smaller and smaller until drum cymbals and high end synth bleeps and blips sound more teeny.

But on the Dali speakers, while still "pear shaped," there was more size and heft maintained from bottom to top, so drum snares sounded bigger, higher woodwinds sounded more life sized, acoustic guitar strings sounded bigger, fatter, and even in electronic music, some bleepy blippy stuff I love, even the high register notes, sounded thicker, bigger, more solid and dense. So the speakers maintained an overall sense of scale and acoustic presence and power from top to bottom that just made everything sound bigger and more substantial, not just the bass parts.

And this survived the "close my eyes test" very well. I've had a number of very large speakers "shrink" in sound when I close my eyes and just concentrate on the sound. But these didn't, it was Big Sound.

Why? I don't know. I leave that to the speculation of others more competent in this thread. Just thought I'd share that comparison....FWIW....

 

[DeepCuttaBeats]

This subject came to mind as I was able to listen some more to big Dali EpiKore 11 speakers compared to the same tracks on my much smaller Joseph Audio speakers.

The size difference is pretty enormous: the Dali Epicore are huge speakers with tweeter, super tweeter, 4 X 8" woofers, and a 6.5 inch mid driver. Grabbed this pic from the web:

Vs...my puny little Joseph Audio Perspective 2 speakers, at 36" tall, 8.5" wide, with two widdle 5.5" SEAS drivers and a tweeter:

Basically I listened to a bunch of familiar tracks on the Dali speakers, came home and listened to the same tracks on my Joseph speakers.

The Josephs have a reputation for sounding much bigger than they look, and that they do. Surprisingly rich sounding for a small, skinny floor stander, with massive soundstaging and imaging capabilities.

Interestingly, the two speakers are not far off in frequency specs - the Josephs are spec'd down to 35Hz, and the Dali speakers despite their massive size and woofer compliment advantage, just go down to a bit lower, 29Hz.

The differences I heard were:

First, the soundstaging in my system was significantly "bigger." My speakers are more spread out and closer to the listening position relative to how the Dalis were set up. So in this case the scale of the soundstage - size, width, depth - was actually bigger on the smaller speaker system. And it was surprising how well the Joseph speakers kept up in terms of the "size of the bass" - many of the centralized bass synths or bass guitars/drums sounded vary large and substantial on the Josephs even having just heard them on the Dalis.

But the real difference was the overall sense of scale, of image heft and size, on the Dali speakers compared to the Josephs. I've mentioned the "pear shape" sensation to imaging and image substantitiveness on most systems. That applies to mine too. The Dalis "hit harder" and more solid in the bass, with a bit more bass depth and so a bit more size, but not a really big difference in "bass image size" so a stand up bass sounded similar sized on the Josephs. HOWEVER as we go up the frequency range, like most speakers I hear, the Joseph sonic images loose a sense of size and acoustic power, so things get smaller and smaller until drum cymbals and high end synth bleeps and blips sound more teeny.

But on the Dali speakers, while still "pear shaped," there was more size and heft maintained from bottom to top, so drum snares sounded bigger, higher woodwinds sounded more life sized, acoustic guitar strings sounded bigger, fatter, and even in electronic music, some bleepy blippy stuff I love, even the high register notes, sounded thicker, bigger, more solid and dense. So the speakers maintained an overall sense of scale and acoustic presence and power from top to bottom that just made everything sound bigger and more substantial, not just the bass parts.

And this survived the "close my eyes test" very well. I've had a number of very large speakers "shrink" in sound when I close my eyes and just concentrate on the sound. But these didn't, it was Big Sound.

Why? I don't know. I leave that to the speculation of others more competent in this thread. Just thought I'd share that comparison....FWIW....

Those Dali speakers look like they have 2 tweeters. That may have something to do with it. Maybe you can add a pair of Aperion ribbon super tweeters on top of your towers and see if you get closer to what you heard with the Dalis.

 

[pogo]

First, the soundstaging in my system was significantly "bigger."

Interesting, I had the same experience with this setup including the Epikores, bridged or unbridged, vs. my setup:

What happens with this setup when you switch from the simple unbridged purifi amplification of the M33 to bridge mode with an additional M23 is quite impressive. The soundstage becomes bigger and the sound image sounds less strained.

For me, the bridge mode is definitely set. Whether I will realize it with an additional M23 or NAD will implement the second generation Purifis (the 1ET9040BA is already bridged), who knows.
The first new bridged Purifis seem to be available soon: Link

 

[Descartes]

I heard these at a Dealer in New York and they were phenomenal!

Grande Utopia Em Evo - 4-way floorstanding speaker | Focal

Grande Utopia Em Evo, 4-way floorstanding speaker : enjoy the beauty of sound in the comfort of your own home with our Focal high-fidelity speakers. They reproduce the essence of music to delight the most demanding music lovers.

www.focal.com

I just would have to sell all my possessions to afford a pair.

Grande Utopia Em Evo - 4-way floorstanding speaker | Focal

Grande Utopia Em Evo, 4-way floorstanding speaker : enjoy the beauty of sound in the comfort of your own home with our Focal high-fidelity speakers. They reproduce the essence of music to delight the most demanding music lovers.

www.focal.com

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Interesting, I had the same experience with this setup, bridged or unbridged:

What happens with this setup when you switch from the simple unbridged purifi amplification of the M33 to bridge mode with an additional M23 is quite impressive. The soundstage becomes bigger and the sound image sounds less strained.

That's highly unlikely.

 

[pogo]

That's highly unlikely.

No, this is not the case and has already been described consistently in various tests, including this one:

 

[Keith_W]

Would you like to propose a mechanism where the soundstage becomes wider? I can only think of one - if the speaker has wild impedance swings, particularly in the bass, an unbridged amp might have more trouble driving the speaker. However, bridging an amp also halves the apparent impedance of the speaker (e.g. if it was 4 Ohm, your amp now sees 2 Ohm) ... so there may be no nett benefit. More bass sometimes makes the soundstage seem wider. Have you measured bass output bridged vs. unbridged at the same SPL?

(Giving you the benefit of the doubt here, I too think it is highly unlikely).

 

[pogo]

This has nothing to do with the bass range. Here's an example:
When the bridge mode was removed and we listened to LIBERTY by ANETTE ASKVIK again, the saxophone and the voice no longer sounded as authentic and more strained with less soundstage. It didn't matter at what volume. The advantage in bridge mode was always there.

 

[audiofooled]

The Dalis "hit harder" and more solid in the bass, with a bit more bass depth and so a bit more size, but not a really big difference in "bass image size" so a stand up bass sounded similar sized on the Josephs. HOWEVER as we go up the frequency range, like most speakers I hear, the Joseph sonic images loose a sense of size and acoustic power, so things get smaller and smaller until drum cymbals and high end synth bleeps and blips sound more teeny.

But on the Dali speakers, while still "pear shaped," there was more size and heft maintained from bottom to top, so drum snares sounded bigger, higher woodwinds sounded more life sized, acoustic guitar strings sounded bigger, fatter, and even in electronic music, some bleepy blippy stuff I love, even the high register notes, sounded thicker, bigger, more solid and dense. So the speakers maintained an overall sense of scale and acoustic presence and power from top to bottom that just made everything sound bigger and more substantial, not just the bass parts.

I suspect that you were listening to some fine, dynamic music with a high crest factor. I have a theory that smaller systems suffer from power compression when reproducing such music, but the effect may still remain undetected as such by auditory system. It's just loses sense of scale or dynamic contrast, and vice versa (in case of a larger system). To see what I mean, take a look at this example:

This track is in fact what I would describe to be very dynamic, but the dynamic range is mostly to preserve "snaps" , "clicks" and "kicks", which are very sharp transients, just single vertical lines and mountains when zoomed in this excerpt:

The first one is the "click", followed by a single mountain peak (kick drum), and then something resembling a jagged square wave (bass guitar with modulation effects), and then again a sharp "snap", and so on and so forth. But look at the levels of the peaks! For a system to have any chance of reproducing this loudly without compression, it would have to deliver the "thump" of that kick drum basically in a single blow. Also the high frequency transients.

For a small system it would be easy to fill the room with that lovely bass guitar lines and even provide some sense of envelopment. But guitar is very much down in level and power demand than the transients, also sustained enough for a perceptible pitch. If a system is incapable of delivering the uncompressed transients in this case it would be very easy for the compression to be inaudible, right until the distortion becomes audible. But before that, it would be only sounding louder, and not any "bigger". Keep in mind that transients are too short to have any definitive pitch, they are just low and high frequency attacks of energy.

IMO, the order of things would be, as you go up in level, small system first would "flatten" the peaks, but still be able to deliver "bass guitar which is already distorted on purpose". Peaks are too short and compression remains undetected. Then you go up in level because it still doesn't sound bad and the system responds by just being louder. It's because of the distortion starting to ramp up, but still inaudible as such. No clipping indicators and no audible distortion, but still everything is sort of constricted.

I may be wrong, but it's just the way I'm contemplating on this matter.

On the other hand, at least on my system, as I go up in level, this track just keeps getting bigger and the kick drum just hits hard like a gust of energy but almost inaudible, just a discreet "thump". Higher frequency "snaps" are very life like, loud and clear. Bass guitar is visceral but not loud, basically as it should be. There are also pretty big tom attacks as well. All well sorted, with well defined imaging and not masking each other. I realize that this is highly subjective, but I don't know how else to describe it.

Here's the spectrum of this track. Quite the low end, it appears to be:

 

[My adventures in stereo]

I am using bridged NAD c298 with Revel 126 Be
I get 3 to 6 db gain , with no background noise or audible distortion

At normal listening levels, the transients are more audible and the tweeters have come to life.

 

[Ktacos]

I think it's reflections.

Likely it did.

Your description of small high-frequency instruments is something I also have noticed. So that had to be fixed. It was possible to at least improve things considerably, so you get body and some size of cymbals and triangles.

I notice it, so I got a wide dispersion tweeter and that fixed it.