LOL! I was going to say, give me your house keys and I can quickly arrange disappearance of not only your speakers but the remainder of your system.
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What makes speakers "disappear " and can it be measured?
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
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Yeah, surprised we didn't any posts from Mrs. H. (those who know, know)
DavidMcRoy
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Under these conditions, audio on one speaker sounds like it’s coming from a small point in space at the speaker, with no part of the image wandering within a broad cloud of space.
I always seem to gravitate to point source speakers, they always sound “coherent “ to me. I’ve had Tannoy definition’s, and Piega C8 ltds, somehow it’s always the type of speaker I end up picking out. I also often play with fairly close listening positions.
One thing I do not is I generally like good space between back and side walls if I want an image that mostly sits behind the speakers. Without enough space behind I find it’s hard to get depth of soundstage.
I think there use to be speakers designed for wall placement…. Maybe audio notes?
Holmz
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I do not recall reading any words on Amir’s nor Erin’s reviews on hearing phase in single speaker listening.
The FR is commented on, and the impedance.
The polar plots are commented on.
Resonances are commented on.
With one speaker as in mono? See in measurements an issue at crossover audible? How would you know what it's supposed to sound like.
Stereo drivers out of phase? For a bass driver decidedly less bass and for mid and treble imaging goes out the window becomes very diffuse. Both are audible.
Go find a test disk for stereo set-up and listen to the phase test track. I would be amazed if you couldn't hear the difference.
Rob
I think you are talking about a pair of speakers and flipping wire on one box relative to the other.
That certainly make imaging disappear.
Yes, agree...
And, at least in my case, the sound deadening space behind my head/listening position also would be critically important for effective disappearance of SPs as well as for wider 3D sweet spot/sphere around the center of listening position;
- Not only the precision (0.1 msec level) time alignment over all the SP drivers but also SP facing directions and sound-deadening space behind the SPs plus behind our listening position would be critically important for effective (perfect?) disappearance of speakers: #687
furthermore, I found that the effective/proper wide 3D reflective dispersion of metal-horn super-tweeter sound of narrow directivity is also effective more than thought/expected;
- A new series of audio experiments on reflective wide-3D dispersion of super-tweeter sound using random-surface hard-heavy material: Part-4_Provisional conclusion to use Case-2 reverse reflective dispersion setting in default daily music listening: #929
I used thick heavy panels behind the sofa/chesterfield and that deadened the reflection from the rear wall, the imaging became very good and it was like being in a zone of sound with few reflections except the side walls and the front wall. It was very nice.
KEF made the C15 or maybe the C25 which is designed for wall placement. I used them many times, owned a set and I wall placed them in the PC room. They sounded fantastic. They like power too.
If you diy a 2 way and make a mistake wiring one of the drivers when you power up the pair you will hear it.
Rob
Holmz
Major Contributor
If you diy a 2 way and make a mistake wiring one of the drivers when you power up the pair you will hear it.
Rob
yeah yeah…
But if you make the same mistake with, say the bass,the same on both boxes.,,
Then will you hear that?
You are going to end up with a ragged response. I say 50/50 depending on crossover slopes, type and frequency. Sooner or latter something is just going to be off. This is one of the reasons why you verify with a measurement after a build. Anyone can make a mistake.
Same thing with building up a crossover wrong values and wiring can completely change things so verify with measurements.
Rob
DavidMcRoy
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The question did not include a caveat that anything proposed has to have been reported upon by Amir, Toole or anyone else. Drivers out of “acoustic phase,” with each other, which is what I’m taking about here, will have adverse effects on the polar response and the frequency response.
I do know what two “complete” speakers out of phase with each other sounds like. I worked in broadcasting for 45 years.
OP
Pearljam5000
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audiofooled
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No. The cause of that would be loudspeaker design fault(s). Directivity mismatch in the crossover region, time/phase offset between the drivers or even between the two loudspeakers. Early reflections would give conflicting cues and thus image drifts.
A proper word of advice to the guy would be to take some measurements.
Or buy speakers that don't require you to hand pick recordings, rather than listen to the music you actually like.
Besides the things you say, the guy who asked the question may have speakers with highly directional tweeters very sensitive to toe-in setup. I heard that effect in a demo of a pair of JBL HDI3800 which I suspect wasn't set up correctly, I believe they needed to be pointing more toward the listening position than what was the case. It caused the tweeters to be hard as two separate sound sources, to the extent that I could detect the singer's voice as two separate sounds coming from each speaker instead of a unified phantom-centered sound.
But with the above said, cymbals are often panned far to one side of the stereo field, and the nature of the sound is a strong transient which is highly directional followed by a longer "washy" sound that is way harder to pinpoint the direction of, so it's not that strange if someone finds it hard to know were exactly that sound should be coming from.
As both of us understand, a closely recorded sound object hard-panned to the position of one of the speakers can never "disappear" or escape the position of the speaker, but that is just a visualizing problem and all we have to do to avoid strongly "connecting" that type of sound object to the speaker position is just to shut our eyes.
audiofooled
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Very good point. For me to comment on this would be a massive undertaking, but in a nutshell, no, the setup wasn't right as far as the room interaction goes with speakers of this design. I would hope that what Erin says here would partially answer the question to what you were able to hear:
I'm not going to say more than that the problem isn't always horizontal, without having to touch on the complex topics here. But still, it's the matter of loudspeaker design and understanding how to make the best of it (if you cannot change it), rather than what the Mr. McG. is saying.
People may also take a look at this video here, which I think needs no introduction, (again, time cue to what I would like to highlight in this case):
So, IMHO, what this thread is all about can certainly be measured, but it's not entirely straightforward and it takes deeper understanding on some topics which, to no surprise, keep coming up because of the complexity.
In the end, what we hear is most important but what's hard is to comprehend and find correlation to what we measure and what's audible or not.
MattHooper
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As mentioned earlier in the thread: I’ve never encountered an Audio Physic speaker that did not totally “disappear” in the classic sense of that word we are talking about.
I’ve had the audio physic Virgo, Libra and Scorpio in my listening room and all “disappeared” as sound sources, casting a huge soundstage with precise imaging, with ease. The same for every other model I can remember auditioning. They must be doing something right.
I’ve had the audio physic Virgo, Libra and Scorpio in my listening room and all “disappeared” as sound sources, casting a huge soundstage with precise imaging, with ease. The same for every other model I can remember auditioning. They must be doing something right.
OP
Pearljam5000
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Yes, speakers with dual concentric design for example: Genelec The Ones, KEF Reference, Tannoy…Or buy speakers that don't require you to hand pick recordings, rather than listen to the music you actually like.
This video is funny, it sounds like a commercial for his books!
You have to admit he has built a sustainable business based on “Audiophiles”
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