MoFi or Harbeth (used)


I’d be grateful for advice choosing between the MoFi SourcePoint 10 or a used pair of the Harbeth Compact 7-ES 35th Anniversary Edition. My room is about 10 by 18 and I will be slightly off axis. My associated equipment is Krell KAV 250 a amp and Audio Research pre amp. I use a BlueSound Node as the source. I listen mainly to blues, jazz, and rock. Thanks very much for any advice. 

hugo1

Showing 2 responses by mijostyn

@panzrwagn I am 100% right if the line source ends at barriers like the floor and the ceiling. The line source behavior then extends down to 1 Hz. As you note, line sources project power better and are used exclusively at large concerts. Their vertical dispersion cuts off sharply so they curve the arrays to cover the height of the arena. In my instance the line sources are dipoles and their horizontal dispersion also cuts off sharply. The Sound Labs are therefore curved to cover a 45 degree arc. The advantage of this is much less room interaction. I only need sound absorption directly behind the speaker. 

The baffle effect may add 6 dB but the volume still drops off at the square of the distance making it more difficult to hear the speaker farthest from you. 

You might be interested in this https://imgur.com/gallery/building-resonance-free-subwoofers-dOTF3cS  These were not designed to be high output. They are - 3 dB at 20 Hz. Their sensitivity is 89 dBSP/1watt/1meter. Getting the right bass response still requires a lot of power and digital signal processing. 

Did you get to see the concerts you rigged? The most insane bass rig I ever heard was Stanley Clarks line array with RTF back in the 74. Must have been 30 feet tall. The most incredible bass I ever felt was Les Claypool with Primus at Red Rocks with one exception, Jerry Marotta's Bass drum in Peter Gabriel's Security Tour. It hit so hard I was getting nauseated!  

Harbeth by a country mile.

@soix  All point source speakers are relatively poor off axis as the volume the speaker produces drops off rapidly with distance including the Ohms. The best kind of speaker for off axis listening is a line source. Because the volume drops of much slower with distance you can still hear the far speaker clearly. A full range line source has to run from floor to ceiling, anything shorter becomes a point source at low frequencies. As an example Magnepans become point sources at about 200 Hz. Above that they are line source and clearly audible off axis. The only full range line sources I am aware of are the 8 and 9 foot Sound Labs ESLs.