As usual Opalchip conveys what I'm thinking better than I can convey myself ! LOL
Great post
Great post
Is harmonic accuracy and timbre important at all?
Disclaimer: I am not Richard Hardesty in disguise. But I have reached similar ground after many years of listening and equipment swapping and upgrading and would enjoy discourse from a position that is simply not discussed enough here.
I feel a strong need to get on a soap box here, albeit friendly, and I don't mind a rigorous discussion on this topic. My hope is that, increasingly, manufacturers will take notice of this important aspect of music reproduction. I also know that it takes time, talent, money and dedication to accomplish accuracy of timbre in speaker design and that "shamanism" and "snake oil," along with major bux spent on fine cabinetry that may do little to improve the sound, exists everywhere in this industry.
I fully acknowledge that Dunlavy and Meadowlark, a least for now, are gone, and that only Vandersteen and Thiel survive amidst a sea of harmonically inaccurate, and frequently far more expensive, speakers.
Can you help me understand why anyone would want to hear timbre and harmonic content that is anything but as accurate as possible upon transducing the signal fed by the partnering amplifier? It seems to me if you skew the sonic results in any direction away from the goal of timbral accuracy, then you add, or even subtract, any number of poorly understood and potentially chaotic independent and uncontrollable variables to listening enjoyment.
I mean, why would you want to hear only some of the harmonic content of a clarinet or any other instrument that is contained on the recording? Why would you not want the speaker, which we all agree is the critical motor that conveys the musical content at the final stage of music reproduction, to provide you with as much as possible by minimizing harmonic conent loss due to phase errors, intentionally imparted by the speaker designer?
Why anyone would choose a speaker that does this intentionally, by design, and that is the key issue here, is something I simply cannot fathom, unless most simply do not understand what they're missing.
By intentional, I mean inverting the midrange or other drivers in phase in an ill-fated attempt to counter the deleterious effects that inexpensive, high-order crossovers impart upon the harmonic content of timbre. This simply removes harmonic content. None of these manufacurers has ever had the cojones to say that Jim Thiel, Richard Vandersteen or John Dunlavy were wrong about this fundamental design goal. And none of them ever tries to counter the fact that they intentionally manufacture speakers they know, by their own hand, are sonically inaccurate, while all the all the same in many cases charging unsuspecting so-called audiophiles outlandish summs of money.
Also, the use of multiple drivers assigned identical function which has clearly been shown to smear phase and creates lobing, destroying essentially the point source nature of instruments played in space that give spatial, time and phasing so important to timbre rendering.
I truly belive that as we all get better at listening and enjoying all the music there is on recordings, both digital and analog, of both good and bad recording quality, these things become ever more important. If you learn to hear them, they certainly do matter. But to be fair, this also requires spending time with speakers that, by design, demonstrably present as much harmonic phase accuracy that timbre is built upon, at the current level of the state of the art.
Why would anyone want a speaker to alter that signal coming from the amp by removing some harmonics while retaining or even augmenting others?
And just why in heck does JMLab, Wilson, Pipedreams and many others have to charge such large $um$ at the top of their product lines (cabinetry with Ferrari paint jobs?) to not even care to address nor even attempt to achieve this? So, in the end I have to conclude that extremely expensive, inaccurate timbre is preferred by some hobbyists called audiophiles? I find that simply fascinating. Perhaps the process of accurate timbre appreciation is just a matter of time...but in the end, more will find, as I did, that it does matter.
I feel a strong need to get on a soap box here, albeit friendly, and I don't mind a rigorous discussion on this topic. My hope is that, increasingly, manufacturers will take notice of this important aspect of music reproduction. I also know that it takes time, talent, money and dedication to accomplish accuracy of timbre in speaker design and that "shamanism" and "snake oil," along with major bux spent on fine cabinetry that may do little to improve the sound, exists everywhere in this industry.
I fully acknowledge that Dunlavy and Meadowlark, a least for now, are gone, and that only Vandersteen and Thiel survive amidst a sea of harmonically inaccurate, and frequently far more expensive, speakers.
Can you help me understand why anyone would want to hear timbre and harmonic content that is anything but as accurate as possible upon transducing the signal fed by the partnering amplifier? It seems to me if you skew the sonic results in any direction away from the goal of timbral accuracy, then you add, or even subtract, any number of poorly understood and potentially chaotic independent and uncontrollable variables to listening enjoyment.
I mean, why would you want to hear only some of the harmonic content of a clarinet or any other instrument that is contained on the recording? Why would you not want the speaker, which we all agree is the critical motor that conveys the musical content at the final stage of music reproduction, to provide you with as much as possible by minimizing harmonic conent loss due to phase errors, intentionally imparted by the speaker designer?
Why anyone would choose a speaker that does this intentionally, by design, and that is the key issue here, is something I simply cannot fathom, unless most simply do not understand what they're missing.
By intentional, I mean inverting the midrange or other drivers in phase in an ill-fated attempt to counter the deleterious effects that inexpensive, high-order crossovers impart upon the harmonic content of timbre. This simply removes harmonic content. None of these manufacurers has ever had the cojones to say that Jim Thiel, Richard Vandersteen or John Dunlavy were wrong about this fundamental design goal. And none of them ever tries to counter the fact that they intentionally manufacture speakers they know, by their own hand, are sonically inaccurate, while all the all the same in many cases charging unsuspecting so-called audiophiles outlandish summs of money.
Also, the use of multiple drivers assigned identical function which has clearly been shown to smear phase and creates lobing, destroying essentially the point source nature of instruments played in space that give spatial, time and phasing so important to timbre rendering.
I truly belive that as we all get better at listening and enjoying all the music there is on recordings, both digital and analog, of both good and bad recording quality, these things become ever more important. If you learn to hear them, they certainly do matter. But to be fair, this also requires spending time with speakers that, by design, demonstrably present as much harmonic phase accuracy that timbre is built upon, at the current level of the state of the art.
Why would anyone want a speaker to alter that signal coming from the amp by removing some harmonics while retaining or even augmenting others?
And just why in heck does JMLab, Wilson, Pipedreams and many others have to charge such large $um$ at the top of their product lines (cabinetry with Ferrari paint jobs?) to not even care to address nor even attempt to achieve this? So, in the end I have to conclude that extremely expensive, inaccurate timbre is preferred by some hobbyists called audiophiles? I find that simply fascinating. Perhaps the process of accurate timbre appreciation is just a matter of time...but in the end, more will find, as I did, that it does matter.
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- 59 posts total
Though at times I needed to keep that loudness button pushed in, while in college I remember the day I realized it sounded much better with it out and the treble and bass controls set flat. The revelation happened on a day when no one was around and I decided to crank it up and find the best setting. |
Stevecham: if you were listening at low volume, you probably were better off leaving the loudness button pushed in. At higher volumes - approaching the "right" level for the recording in question (every recording has one), of course you want to turn it off. I think you need to go back to the posts by Audiokinesis. Take a look at the Earl Geddes articles he recommends. Go to the Linkwitz Labs web site, and read what Siegfried Linkwitz has to say. It may well be that there are more important factors to our perception of audio reproduction than time/phase coherence. I say this while owning a pair of Green Mountain Audio Callistos, and having owned Meadowlarks in the past. I also own active speakers with fourth-order crossovers, which have benefits of their own. There is also the HUGE factor of the implementation. Vandersteen, Meadowlark, Thiel, Green Mountain, Dunlavy all aimed for first order, time/phase coherent crossovers. But their speakers are totally different from one another! Ported, sealed, transmission line, simple crossovers versus highly complex (my god, take a look at a Thiel crossover - what is happening to the electrical signal as it goes through all those passive components???). The signal may pass the triangle test in the lab, and sound not very good in a real room. As an aside, last year after reading all of Hardesty's raves about the Vandersteens, I made the one hour drive to the shop run by his former partner. Heard the 5A's, presumably set up properly, powered by all the gear that Richard Hardesty likes. The resulting sound was muffled, muddied, utterly lacking in life compared either to live music or to the same recordings (NOT compressed crap) played on other systems I've heard. I'm still open to hearing the Vandersteens again - there's no way they can have such a following and sound like that! - but I think most humans would find the sound of other systems closer to "real" rather than what I heard that particular day. On the other hand, the Green Mountain Audio Callistos have tremendous "jump" to them. Anyone who understands that dynamics are part of music, not just flat frequency response, should give these speakers a listen. Flat frequency response, on axis, in an anechoic chamber is not going to guarantee that your bass response, in room, is going to be free of major peaks and nulls - which can wipe out any sense of time/phase coherence when listening. That's why Linkwitz designs his speakers the way he does: to have good, even power response in real rooms, without needing to pile on bass traps and the like, which can end up sucking the life out of the music in other ways. Sorry to run on at the keyboard now, but I can't resist. On the Zu Cable website you can see the rave review their Druid MkIV received from HiFi World magazine in the UK. The photo image of the magazine pages is too fuzzy to read, but the frequency response chart is plain enough. Yeah, those speakers may do away with any crossover nasties, but that response plot is... well, "flat" would not be found anywhere near it. |
Opalchip, Well said. Stevecham, I don't think it is as grim a picture as you paint. Speaker design is necessarily an exercise in compromise. Phase alignement should be critical in producing a speaker that gives accurate timbre. I agree that this is necessarily compromised in many passive speaker designs (meaning that certain instruments may not sound quite right). However dynamic range, sensitivity, bandwidth, frequency linearity to name a few are also important. In achieveing a balance, a speaker designer will compromise in some areas to gain in others. Active speakers, for example, should have much better phase characteristics simply because each driver is paired with active filters including phase adjustment. Therefore active speakers should have a better timbral response....well not necessarily as this link below shows that professionals in a shootout were divided on which speaker they preferred and most found the timbre of the Dunlavys (except in the LF) to be preferred. In the end, classical listeners preferred the Dunlavys and meanwhile "rockers" preferred ATC's. http://bg.mixonline.com/ar/audio_highend_studio_monitor/ Considering that the Dunlavys also use multiple cones for mid range and that this is known to increase phase issues (a design no no), the conclusion seems surprising. Until you realize that the perception of timbre is also closely linked to harmonics, perhaps Dunlavy makes up for phase issues in other ways (harmonics) to eventually score higher than ATC's in the timbre category. So speaker design is all about balance and not a single pursuit of only one or two factors. In the end, two vastly different engineering approaches (ATC vs Dunlavy) have produced two great speakers. ...maybe there is more then one way to skin a cat. |
"...maybe there is more then one way to skin a cat." Yes 4th order crossover by Green Mountain that intentionally present 360 degrees out of phase, yeah that'll fix things. Look, if the speaker demonstrates that wave fronts are leaving the planes of the drivers out of phase and out of time relative to one another, then nothing can be done to correct it before it reaches your ear. This is a matter of timing, and timbre accuracy, regardless of the other so called parameters, cannot be corrected or compensated. If it's damaged, then nothing can correct it. And nothing can be done before it reaches your ears. Nothing. |
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