Recently I purchased a pair of hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers (the JansZen Valentina P8). These are offered in an active version, the A8, which I did consider. Price was a consideration but a bigger factor was that I did not want all my HiFi eggs in one basket. I figure actives have more possibilities to go wrong; shipping one of these back to Ohio for repair would be inconvenient. In addition, I wanted the option to use a separate, external DAC. Subwoofer integration may have been an issue too (although I have not investigated this).
Do active speakers interest you? Also, let's talk directivity
Hey all. Don't think I've ever made a thread here. This is a super interesting community for me. I'm an audio professional, a mastering engineer and music educator. I'm someone who differs from much of the pro community, in that I don't see a difference between "pro" systems and "high-end" systems.
There is one way they often differ, and that is in terms of directivity. Home systems are more frequently omni, while and studio or live sound requires directivity.
This was definitely the case in the 70s, back when audiophiles still had parties :D
It's very hard to set up a directional system to fill a large room evenly unless you use a line array.
But let's be honest. Aren't we mostly sitting and listening, and hoping for a good image? We aren't expecting every spot in a big room to sound exactly the same for every guest. Personally, my social life is 95% virtual now and I am generally listening in my mastering room. I have a high end system in every room in my house, but my wife uses the living room system more than me (and she has better taste in music, so it's nice to learn about some new artists when she decides to put something on from he collection).
Anyway, I'm designing an active system. Though the cabinet is not large, with a combination of Hoge's principles and active electronics, we will achieve accurate response through to 20hz.
The reason to choose an active crossover is very obvious. Sending power directly to each driver allows us to use a very low sensitivity woofer, which thus plays much deeper than expected. We are using a ported woofer and a sealed midrange/hi cabinet, which are not sold separately. An interesting feature is the the very low-crossed ribbon tweeter carrying all of the high midrange and treble
It's an 1800w system, aimed at both the professional and home market. I'm curious, does this sound interesting to anyone? We are intending to have a prototype ready by 2022, so it is a ways off.
Part of the directivity concept is also dealing with room issues. Cancelling the rear energy of the woofers can help. I am inspired by Bruno and Merjin (whatever his name :P). a big part of our concept has to do with advanced acoustic materials, which I don't want to discuss too much, as I don't think anyone else has thought of it or connected with that maker, yet
Curious to hear people's thoughts!
There is one way they often differ, and that is in terms of directivity. Home systems are more frequently omni, while and studio or live sound requires directivity.
This was definitely the case in the 70s, back when audiophiles still had parties :D
It's very hard to set up a directional system to fill a large room evenly unless you use a line array.
But let's be honest. Aren't we mostly sitting and listening, and hoping for a good image? We aren't expecting every spot in a big room to sound exactly the same for every guest. Personally, my social life is 95% virtual now and I am generally listening in my mastering room. I have a high end system in every room in my house, but my wife uses the living room system more than me (and she has better taste in music, so it's nice to learn about some new artists when she decides to put something on from he collection).
Anyway, I'm designing an active system. Though the cabinet is not large, with a combination of Hoge's principles and active electronics, we will achieve accurate response through to 20hz.
The reason to choose an active crossover is very obvious. Sending power directly to each driver allows us to use a very low sensitivity woofer, which thus plays much deeper than expected. We are using a ported woofer and a sealed midrange/hi cabinet, which are not sold separately. An interesting feature is the the very low-crossed ribbon tweeter carrying all of the high midrange and treble
It's an 1800w system, aimed at both the professional and home market. I'm curious, does this sound interesting to anyone? We are intending to have a prototype ready by 2022, so it is a ways off.
Part of the directivity concept is also dealing with room issues. Cancelling the rear energy of the woofers can help. I am inspired by Bruno and Merjin (whatever his name :P). a big part of our concept has to do with advanced acoustic materials, which I don't want to discuss too much, as I don't think anyone else has thought of it or connected with that maker, yet
Curious to hear people's thoughts!
Showing 4 responses by tk21
Back to "the room": My very old house has dense log walls 1 foot thick. The floor and ceiling are not parallel and neither are the walls. Even with no room treatments or PEQ, a REW room sweep shows a nearly flat frequency response from highly directional floor standing speakers. Nevertheless, speaker placement and bass management still matter. A lot. So I wonder how well some of the better active speaker systems support subwoofer integration. For example do they support both high level and .1/LFE connections? High pass filtering? IMO, these issues are important, because subwoofers can play a big part in managing room effects. They also can play a big role in imaging, especially if your speakers need to be pulled away from the walls for the best soundstage (but not for optimal bass response). |
"... let’s talk directivity." While we're at it, let's measure it. https://www.princeton.edu/3D3A/Directivity.html |
"Here is an audiophile who finds fewer components of interest." Me too, but ... even with actives, you still may very well need at least one component upstream, unless your actives have a built-in streamer and that is your only source. Even if your actives do have a built-in streamer, chances are, you'll want a music server. Or something. At the very least, you'll have a power cord from each speaker, plus an ethernet cable going into one of them, plus a cable connecting the two. So much for reducing cable-clutter around the speakers. Especially if you're also connecting multiple sources such as a turntable in addition to a streamer. |