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A Question About Time Alignment

I was reading a review of the Wilson Alex V on Stereophile recently. (Published just in time. I’m thinking about picking up a pair. Maybe a couple for the bedroom, too.) And it raised a long-standing question of mine, one that I hope the wiser minds on this site can answer. 
 

Wilson’s big selling point is aligning the different frequencies so they all reach your ear simultaneously. As I understand it, that’s why they have minute adjustments among the various drivers. The woofers put out bass notes that move slowly thanks to their long sound waves while the tweeters are playing faster moving, high frequency notes with short waves. Wilson lets you make adjustments so that they all arrive at the ear at once. 
 

It seems to me, however, that live music isn’t time aligned. Suppose I’m playing the piano and you’re sitting across the room. When I stretch out my left hand to hit the low notes, those notes travel along the same long, slow wavelengths as the notes from Wilson’s woofers. Similarly, the treble notes I play with my right hand move quickly through the short wavelengths. The notes from the piano are naturally out of alignment. If Wilson’s goal is to achieve a lifelike sound, aligning the frequencies doesn’t seem like the way to do it. 
 

Wilson has been selling lots of zillion dollar speakers for lots of years and people continue to gobble ‘em up. Something must be wrong with my line of reasoning. Would someone please point out where I’ve gone wrong? Nicely?

paul6001

Showing 1 response by avanti1960

avanti1960
1,557 posts
 

I have a time alignment system in my car that allows me to make minute adjustments between woofer, midrange and tweeter.  

this function does make a difference in sound quality but it is more of an advantage aligning left to right speakers in a car interior setting.  

time aligning the individual drivers of one speaker does have some benefit but you may not find big gains in sound quality. 

the best thing it can do for you is to align the speakers at their crossover frequency 

which avoids out of phase cancellations of frequencies and adds coherence and more of a point source focus of the sound image.  this will lead to a flatter frequency response and better imaging. .  

you will need test tones and pink noise with measurement tools to get the most out of it.  no way you can adjust by ear with music. 

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