What's Left In Speaker Design To Reduce Distortion/Increase Detail Retrieval?

[Galliardist]

Not quite sure what you're asking, I'm simply saying I'm not aware of any preference for/against coaxials/symmetric vertical radiation by listeners. I'd be happy to look at any evidence.

I understood the virtual point source to be a hard physics concept rather than preference and I thought there were actual equations used to derive the distance between driver centres for this.

I’ll take preference data if you’ve got any.

 

[gnarly]

I think headphones are a bit instructive. They can show detail, distortion, noise etc better than speakers (generally).

Yes, for sure. It's blatantly simple logic that detail that can be heard with headphones, that can't be heard with speakers, is part of the recording.

I suppose one could find a remote outdoor location quiet enough, and try good speakers without a room. You'll need to sit closer and have plenty of power, but does this get one better detail retrieval than conventional speakers in a room? It would be one test of how much the room is a problem.

Ime, it doesn't take a quiet outdoor remote location to try speakers without a room, to hear the increase in detail.
It has been immediately apparent for me, even in pretty noisy environments.
By immediate, I mean almost instantly, certainly within a song or two.
Be warned though ....If the speakers have any balls, particularly bass, it may forever change one's idea of what good sound is

Wind is a bigger factor than noise in the outdoor test though. Wind doesn't work.
Interestingly, outdoor measurements have the same trouble with wind.
Whereas the effect of noise can be largely removed with temporal averaging. (one of the benefits of dual channel FFT)
Seems our ears do some of the same noise masking somehow.



So for me, the hierarchy of assessing available detail in a recording is very straightforward.
1. headphones
2. single speaker outdoors
3. single speaker indoors
4. stereo is always a complete jump ball, indoor or out


Oh, to repeat a test i posted earlier somewhere (maybe in this thread, if so sorry) that shows how much of a problem the room is ....
Play music on the speaker(s), but listen to it through closed back headphones getting their source from a measurement mic.
A measurement soundcard with a headphone out works fine. Can be quite ear/eye opening.

 

[MattHooper]

I never said the way you can tell it’s in the recording is by listening through speakers, whether they are are flat, colored, or otherwise. It why I specifically used an example of 2 channel digital recording.

The information, all of it, is reflected graphically through software on a DAW. That information can be separated and isolated. My example included toe taps, baton tapping, HVAC hum, and a whole host of other things. Those are all real world examples, all of those thing can and have happened during a recording. It wouldn’t matter what speakers you played them through, nobody would be able to “hear” them in isolation because they are buried in the mix well below the general recording level of the performance. But all of it is there on the recording.

And how do we know that? We can take that 2 ch. digital recording and run it back through a DAW with something like Protools, run narrow high and low pass filters around the 21.7 hz and there is the HVAC hum, clear as day. The same with the toe taps, baton tapping, the defective hammer on the piano, (which might be identifiable by some with no isolation), and all the rest. The information/content is in the recording.

Good.

As I said, the question I mentioned is answerable. I like the direction of your answer.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Oh, to repeat a test i posted earlier somewhere (maybe in this thread, if so sorry) that shows how much of a problem the room is ....
Play music on the speaker(s), but listen to it through closed back headphones getting their source from a measurement mic.
A measurement soundcard with a headphone out works fine. Can be quite ear/eye opening.

Where do you place the microphone for listening to speakers over headphones?

 

[gnarly]

Where do you place the microphone for listening to speakers over headphones?

It's best to be able carry the mic around, while wearing the headphones.
Of course, try listening position probably first. But all around the room works too.
Because the purpose is to demonstrate how much processing is going on with our ears & brain, vs the signal the mic captures.
Don't expect it to sound close to the speakers when the headphones are off..... lot's of processing going on

 

[Blumlein 88]

It's best to be able carry the mic around, while wearing the headphones.
Of course, try listening position probably first. But all around the room works too.
Because the purpose is to demonstrate how much processing is going on with our ears & brain, vs the signal the mic captures.
Don't expect it to sound close to the speakers when the headphones are off..... lot's of processing going on

I haven't done that same experiment. I have recorded different places in the room and played it back over speakers. That also makes it obvious our hearing does a bunch of processing and is not just acting as a microphone for sound.

 

[MattHooper]

We can't.

The point you are missing is that some lack of Absolute Certainty doesn't mean we have no basis on which to justify our conclusions that one speaker is more accurately
reproducing the recorded detail than another! Transducing more or less of the signal.

Again, I already mentioned one (of many) justifications for such conclusions - applying the consistent principle of equal amplification to speaker performance as we do to the gear preceding the speaker. Like I said, it falls to a skeptic to explain why a speaker with flat frequency response WOULDN'T be assumed to be reproducing the content of a recording.

Likewise there are other ways of not being stuck in the Plato's Cave of uncertainty regarding the question. For instance, if one asks "are speakers capable of transducing all the information in recordings?" one can point out that speakers use a principle consistent with microphones that are the conduit for laying down that detail in a recording - what ends up in a recording is firstly determined by how a microphone works in transduction the sound waves via a moving diaphram to electrical information.
If you are using essentially the same theory to turn the electrical information back in to sound waves, you have a basis for speakers being capable of reproducing whatever microphones were capable of recording. (Insofar as one can spell out the tight technical similarities).

So, again, "we can't" is no barrier to the question I've asked.

But if you want to answer a completely separate question of how to improve transduction via speakers, by improving the speakers themselves, that requires Post #13
Just like Toole, Klippel etc do and have done for decades.

It's not a "completely separate question." The question I've asked about the ability of speakers to accurately resolve recorded information is intricately linked to the performance of loudspeakers! It's the point of designing (accurate) loudspeakers!

That then begs the question of just how much improvement in speakers is needed, given what JJ was demonstrating decades ago...with "real" type auditory memory references, such as orchestra.
With 99% of studio fabricated music..

Red herrings. As I've already said: that a particular sonic demonstration may "sound real" does not tell us whether the speakers in question were capable of resolving all recorded detail. "Realism" and "accuracy" are separable. You can ADD things to sound (which is a distortion) to make them sound more real (I do it all the time).

Trying to keep our eye on the ball here.

 

[gnarly]

I haven't done that same experiment. I have recorded different places in the room and played it back over speakers. That also makes it obvious our hearing does a bunch of processing and is not just acting as a microphone for sound.

Yep, that's another good technique to show how our hearing works ....generation loss recording, as I've heard it called.
Record the speakers, play that recording, and record that recording. repeat, repeat....

It's also a great technique, maybe one of the best if not the best, for evaluating a speaker's accuracy (if accuracy is defined as acoustic output being equal to input signal...as in a transfer function).
When done outside as reflection free as possible, the test is to see how many recording generations hold up as acceptable.
Record the speakers, play that recording, and record that recording. Play the 2nd generation recording and record it..........repeat process, repeat process...
Takes a very good speaker to survive two generations, ime. Four is extraordinary.

 

[MattHooper]

I think headphones are a bit instructive.

Agreed.

If we hear details on some headphones that we can't hear on a pair of speakers, that seems to be changing an important variable suggesting a deficit in the speakers. Of course there are as you've mentioned things like room effects as well. As you suggest it would be nice to be able to do a comparison where we could remove the room influences on the speaker sound.

And as I've mentioned, there are separate questions as to what a loudspeaker can resolve vs what our ears/brain can resolve. So it can be addressed from either (or both) sides of the question. This is where known speaker distortions, masking effects on audibility etc. Come in. As well as distortions that someone might speculate upon in this thread.

 

[tuga]

So for me, the hierarchy of assessing available detail in a recording is very straightforward.
1. headphones
2. single speaker outdoors
3. single speaker indoors
4. stereo is always a complete jump ball, indoor or out

Do you convert stereo to mono for 2 & 3?

 

[gnarly]

Do you convert stereo to mono for 2 & 3?

Yes, I do.

Funny thing about taking stereo to summed mono though....total bass output can vary a lot, track by track.
For "comparative detail" tests, i try to use tracks where stereo, and both sides playing summed mono, sound more or less the same.
Takes one more variable out of the comparison, i think.

 

[tuga]

@MattHooper have you seen this post by Jack Oclee-Brown from another thread?

There's always more that can be improved on the drivers to make them more ideal. With good measurement and analysis equipment it's pretty easy to find flaws in their behaviour and it's our passion to find these, try and understand them and fix them. In my opinion there are audible gains to be had by continuing with this.

To completely avoid on-axis diffraction ripple requires a cabinet with extremely smooth surfaces. If you look through the measured data that we publish you will see how far you need to go (hint: take a look at Blade). We strongly prioritise off-axis average responses because it's our experience that this is more important than the on-axis, so it does rather stand out in the data. One thing to mention is that a standing wave or driver resonance can cause a flaw that will be present on all responses in every direction (and every Spinorama curve) and hence be very audible. Four-way would be nice in many ways, but it's really hard to find a system layout for a four-way that can match the directivity behaviour of a three-way.

 

[MattHooper]

@MattHooper have you seen this post by Jack Oclee-Brown from another thread?

I did see that, thanks. I have a feeling that post was floating a bit in the back of my mind too, though had forgotten the details.

 

[Travis]

...Matts wishful thinking fallacy of "missing detail" is based on his fantasies about knowing what's "in the recording", based entirely on uncontrolled sighted "listening", baseless science free conjecture about Reduce Distortion/Increase Detail Retrieval

Comically funny. So real sounding both observers said indistinguishable from real, but Matt fantasizes that he knows there were details missing. Based purely on Wishful thinking.


Yeah Matt, springs under speakers, etc. All sighted and uncontrolled of course.
At this point, I've determined you just like seeing you own threads on front page and how many responses they get, which is very much trollish, aka what you were projecting on others

Yet you persist.

 

[MattHooper]

Yet you persist.

The responses have become increasingly bizarre. At this point I must throw in the towel and charitably interpret his posts as performance art.

 

[ferrellms]

This question popped in to my mind simply from some recent experience listening to some speakers at another audiophile's place.

I currently listen to some smaller floor standing speakers with good quality drivers (Joseph Audio Perspective 2 Graphene) and I find there to be a gob-smacking sense of clarity
and detail in to recordings. Along the lines of "how could it get better than this?" (And I've heard lots of other speakers).

Then I go over to my Pal's place and listen to a pair of big ol' Estelon speakers, one of the newer "it" brands in high end audio circles. I forget which new model, but they retail for something like $65K. Now, most of us have had plenty of experiences showing us that money doesn't necessarily buy you any better sound in high end audio. But I have to say, even though the presentation ultimately wasn't to my liking as much as my own system, they just seemed to obviously dig out more sonic information in the recordings. So for instance drums on a track on my system would be well placed in spatial terms, and I can hear if the drums were placed in a reverb. But the Estelon speakers just seem to effortlessly carve out precisely where the drums are in the soundstage and the precise acoustics or added reverb around the drums...and exactly where that reverb "ends" is more vivid and obvious. Basically there is this constant sense of more sonic information, presenting more precision about what is in the recording.

Which had me wondering what accounted for these differences. Better drivers? The more heroic efforts that went in to removing the influence of the Estelon cabinets? The whole design?

Now, that's just accounting for why this question was on my mind. Anyone can simply ignore the above example (it's just my subjective impressions after all) but still get to the issue I'm wondering about:

What is left in terms of speaker design to achieve, in terms of lowering audible distortion and hence retrieving more neutral sonic information from recordings?

(I add "neutral" because of course one can always hype a speaker's high frequency response to increase perceived detail...that's not what I'm talking about).

Are we done? Or is there more to achieve in terms of materials and design (drivers, cabinets etc)? Is a very flat frequency response all there is (since resonances will purportedly show up in frequency response)? Or could we take a speaker that measures very even, yet some upgrade in driver material/design or even more reduction in cabinet resonances may yield even higher sonic performance, retrieving some subtle details that were obscured before?

Where can we go from here?

Have you heard active DSP-enabled beam-steering cardioid speakers for any length of time? Beolab/Kii/D&D, etc. They may answer your question.

 

[MattHooper]

Have you heard active DSP-enabled beam-steering cardioid speakers for any length of time? Beolab/Kii/D&D, etc. They may answer your question.

(As I've mentioned in other threads, and I think in this one too): I have demoed the Kii Audio 3 THREE speakers a number of times.

I could see the benefits of the design: lots of bass from a stand mounted monitor, a higher level of immunity to room nodes for bass - it was able to be placed closer
to the back wall and still sound pretty even and balanced.

However I didn't hear anything that, to my ear, was paradigm-changing. I prefer any number of passive speakers including my own. I didn't notice any particular advantage from the Kii THREE over a decent pair of passive speakers in a good room, carefully set up. (E.g. when I got home and played the same tracks on my set up, I heard an even better sense of "speakers disappearing," imaging, soundstaging etc along with generally smooth bass).

 

[Purité Audio]

You really need to compare both sets of speakers in the same room at the same volume and at the same time, anything else is really of limited use.
Keith

 

[asc]

if we now then there is no difference speaker , 1 speaker for all rule

 

[Travis]

You really need to compare both sets of speakers in the same room at the same volume and at the same time, anything else is really of limited use.
Keith

I think that for sure is the minimum requirements. Of course some will say you need to do it blind (I don’t necessarily agree with that if you are testing speakers in your own room, as opposed to doing objective research on sample sizes). Some will even argue needs to be “double blind” but I think that’s even more useless.

However, what about one on the left, and one on the right? Back and forth A and B and blind. All of Olive’s testing is single speaker mono, would seem to me (and I have done this a fair amount), that would get you even closer on a preference between two top choices. Determine preference. Then, switch speakers, left to right, right to left, do it over again just to make sure there isn’t a room/corner bias issue going on (which can and does happen, more with comparing a specific driver with another driver in same model of speaker).

Doesn’t that give you the truest preference and comparison? From there you take the top choice pair and listen in stereo to see if anything about imaging is a deal breaker.

I’m asking as this has seemed to work for me pretty well.