@kota1 , Thanx for the compliment. As a child I was always wanted to know how mechanical devices worked. To the chagrin of my parents, I took just about anything apart, and I do mean anything. I got really pissed when I did not have the right tool to do the job and had to get creative. Eventually, this talent became useful as if something broke I would fix it. Thus I became a tool collector.
My first record player was a Zenith portable my father got me when I was 4 years old for my birthday. I was sleeping and he put it on the foot of my bed, woke me up and asked if I could guess what it was. I could not. All the record players I had seen where huge things. When he told me I was up and at it. Best present I ever got. Problem was he would not let me touch it. I had to get him or my mother to get it going which of course pissed me of. Eventually, I dragged my mother into my bedroom and showed her step by step how to place records on the spindle and get things going. She finally talked my father into giving me full operating privileges.
My first stereo was another Zenith portable from there it was an evolutionary process culminating in what you see. At thirteen I constructed my first "audiophile" system from Dynakits. My first turntable was a used Thorens TD 124 with an ADC Pritchard tonearm. The woodworking skills started from here. I needed a cabinet to put all the equipment in so I had my mother rent a router and jigsaw and built one out of plywood and Formica. It was pretty ugly but served it's purpose.
My woodworking skills were fine tuned by Jules the Italian marine carpenter. My father was into boats, cabin cruisers. I hated boats. They were a prison to me. While he was polishing chrome I tagged onto Jules and became his apprentice. He was incredible. In a boat there is not a straight line. I learned how to make such things as curved cabinets that fit exactly, boat railings out of mahogany that ended in a beautiful scroll at the stern, swooping around the boat to a point at the bow, and how to name the boat in gold leaf. All he had for tools was a big band saw on wheels and a box full of hand tools. With that he could make anything and I do mean anything out of wood. He was the best wood worker I have ever known. If it was not for him I would not have gotten very far.
I was always going to have a shop in my house. It was just as important as a kitchen and audio room. I have three phase power, a separate dust proofed room for dust collection and pipes running throughout the shop. I have the finest band saw you can buy, a Northfield, what a beautiful machine. You can see it in some of the photos.
On to the media room. Those recliners are from Stressless a Norwegian company renown for quality. They are custom made in the finest natural leather. I am now 68, so it has taken 64 years to get where I am and I am not finished. I have Atma-Sphere MA 2's coming. The TacT is going to be replaced by a DEQX Pre 8 as soon as it is released and I am working on a new set of subwoofers as I am not totally happy with the last set I built. I hope to upgrade my phono stage to a Channel D Seta L20. I have to figure out a way to get it by my wife. That is as far as I can see into the future. As Robert Duvall said, "You always have to be looking forward," forward to something. This is the secret of being happy when you are old. When you can't look forward you are done.
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I want my system to do what I want it to do not some engineer wants it to do. I have been using digital signal processing since the late 90s and having experimented with hundreds of target curves. I know exactly what I want my system do to.
The masses have always favored simple all in one systems. KLH made it's name doing that in the 60's. They were surprisingly good but I would have taken K horns and Marantz Model 9's. Not one state of the art system I have ever heard was composed of "active" components.
Meyer? Give me a break! That is all marketing BS. Meyer is a modern day JBL. I suppose you could do worse.
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@phusis , I am inclined to agree entirely. The best amps I have ever heard have all been Class A at least up to a certain output. These amps can not be put into an active speaker because of the heat they generate. They are forced to use Class D amps for this reason and I have yet to hear a Class D amp I would purchase. Even Class AB amps if run hard are going to generate enough heat to make an active speaker very uncomfortable. "Activeness" can be applied to any system just by the addition of the right processor like the new DEQX units or the Trinnov Amethyst. Then you have the ultimate control over what your system is doing. The DEQX Pre8 has a full two channel 4 way crossover. It will individually control 8 amplifier channels and apply room control to all 8 channels.
80%, 95% baloney! I want 110%, I want 200%. A home system can easily outperform most concert systems. The best systems are quite capable of fooling you into thinking the instrument is in the room with the right recording. Is this 100%? If you have a fine stereo image and a comfortably realistic volume level on the recording of a stadium concert is that 200%. At the venue what you get is an extremely distorted mono sound at a volume level that hurts.
A system that approaches Harry Pearson's absolute sound is wonderfully comfortable to listen to. There is no distortion, noise or sibilance. People never realize how loud the system is playing. Images of voices and instruments float in space with black spaces in between. The music is palpably real, you feel the venue breath. You feel each individual low bass note. Your eyes actually blur with a pipe organ's low C. Cymbals shimmer but are not too bright. People listen and their eyes always widen. In my 69 years I have heard exactly three systems that perform at this level and I made a living for 5 years installing very expensive systems in the houses of very wealthy people in Coral Gables Florida. I sold Beverages, Dunlavys Magneplanar Tympanies and Acoustats. Powered by Krell, Levinson and Accuphase. Not one of these systems approached the absolute sound primarily because décor was always more important then acoustics. I was never given an optimal situation and at the time probably would not have known one even if it hit me in the face. For 30 years I chased the absolute sound trying to figure out how to make a system reliably perform at that level. The three system's that did did so out of shear luck.
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@kota1 , you answered your own question. They only use AB on the low power HF amplifier. With a DEQX I can use class A amps at all three levels. And there is another problem, 3 way. I vastly prefer one way plus a subwoofer.
@sokogear , I do not think your analogy works. You can not define "winning" for sonic quality. The target is purely subjective. Athletes do not have to be perfect, they just have to beat everyone else.
I know exactly which recordings can fool people. I have a grand piano in my media room and my daughter plays violin. I can fool anyone into thinking someone is playing the piano, same with the violin if my daughter is home. I have done it to my wife.
What this thread does is convince me that the majority of us have never heard a system that approaches the Absolute Sound. As sokogear suggests it is a confluence of the equipment used but most importantly it is about the speakers and the room. The rest is just icing on the cake.
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@donavabdear , What a beautiful thing. Player pianos have been around forever, but that one gets the cake.
Pianos are like HiFi systems. They will sound different in different rooms. Every one sounds different and their sound is very complex plus they are big. All this makes them hard to record. In studio recordings they use at least two mics and they split them between the channels. What you wind up with is the low keys in one channel and the high keys in the other, as if the piano is as big as the entire band. I HATE that. It totally kills the realism. In the Oscar Peterson box set, Exclusively For My Friends, is an Album called My favorite Instrument, MPS 15 181 ST. It is a collection of solo pieces. From another room it sounds as of the piano is in the room. From the listening position it sounds like the piano is right in front of you. You get the same effect with Maurizio Pollini's Chopin series DGG 2530 550, 659, and 291. The interesting thing is that they are very different sounding pianos/recordings but they produce the same effect except at the listening position Maurizio's piano sounds like it is up on a stage at a distance while Oscar's piano is right in front of you in the room. There are others but these are the ones that really stick in my mind.
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@phusis , trust me on this one. Adding a processor like the Trinnov or DEQX is in no way shape or form a "plug and play" solution. They try to market them as being simple to set up, but if you are perfectionistic they are not. You have to experiment and learn to get the most out of them. It must have taken me 2-3 years to get my TacT tuned the way I wanted the system to sound. Most of this was learning manage the power of such a sonic tool and get the most out of it. It is far more complex and involving than any "active" speaker I am familiar with. You are right about amps. Any amp can drive any driver, the question is how well. That choice can be made by any knowledgeable person. I do not like my choices being made by other people.
@sokogear Then we will agree to disagree. Yes, Ekornes is the parent company's name. I bought mine purely on the look and reputation of the brand. Glad to hear yours was bullet proof, if not sokogear proof:-) We are very happy with them so far. Eventually the batteries will die and will have to be replaced but that is the price you pay for not having power cords lying around.
@donavabdear , I think smart people hate being bored. They always have to be doing something. The piano produces a very complex sound from the percussion of the hammers to the vibration of the strings and soundboard, but it is all sound. It is the job of a HiFi system to reproduce sound, for better or for worse. Because there is so much variability in the way any piano will sound in any room it is hard for us to distinguish real from reproduced if the recording and system are good. Even in extremely distorted form on a terrible system you will still recognize it as being a piano. You can even tell if it is a synthesizer piano or a real one. This in no way reduces the coolness of your digital player piano.
@brianlucey , and that is the art of mastering. Some are good at it, others not so much. It is why a lot of us prefer the old 2 or 3 mic live classical recordings. IMHO the goal should be to fool the listener into believing they are hearing a live recording. In some cases the artist may desire a surrealistic result like Pink FLoyds The Wall and art certainly has it's place. I hear mastering mistakes all the time like pianos and drums that stretch from one side of the stage to the other. Voices on echo and instruments not or some instruments on echo and others not. That makes them sound as if they are in two different environments at the same time. I do not know if this is bad mixing or the result of listening to the systems you are using. These mistakes seem to be much less frequent on live recordings even though most of these are multi tracks from the sound board.
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@brianlucey , first of all let's get this straight, music and sound reproduction are two entirely separate subjects. I can love music on a table radio. Accurate reproduction is accurate or it is not. A 20 foot wide piano is not accurate. A guitar right in front of you and the voice of the guitarist 30 yards away is not accurate. There are innumerable surrealisms created by bad mastering and engineering which is what makes the really talented engineers shine. What is the difference between a bad recording and a great one? Are you trying to tell me there are no bad recordings?
Do me a favor. Please do not feel sorry for me. I do not deserve it. Save it for someone who really needs it.
@sokogear , Stressless chairs can now be ordered with battery power supplies. They do not need to be plugged in which is really nice if you have three of them. You charge them up every 3-4 months. For serious listening I would say about 50/50 digital/analog. In the shop it is 100% digital for obvious reasons.
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@brianlucey , As I said before, the enjoyment of music, music itself is a totally separate issue from the science of sound reproduction. Sound reproduction is not a matter of taste. Amplitude response is important and if you look at my system page you will notice that we agree on target curves. I intentionally put a " bump" in the low end and the high frequencies are rolled off depending on the dynamic loudness curve in use at the specific volume. I think where you and a lot of sound engineers have trouble is with casting a realistic image. I mentioned specific errors before. These are mixing errors which are unfortunately common with multitrack recordings that have instruments and voices added at separate recording sessions frequently in totally different environments. It in no way sounds like you are listening to a band on a stage or in a room. This can be intentional for artistic reasons but most of the time it is not. I am not and do not pretend to be recording engineer, but I am an extremely experienced listener as are many of us. Yes, I am perfectionistic. In my head there is only one way to do things, the right way. There can always be several right ways. To make the furnisher I make you have to be perfectionistic or you produce garbage.
As for my enjoyment of music, that is really none of your business and not the point of this forum. I find it interesting that you are dictating to me how much I do not enjoy music. Can you climb into everyone's head like that?
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@kota1 @donavabdear , I guess you missed my point. Rash generalization are always a point of concern. They always fail.
As far as I am concerned there is no active speaker that can attain the absolute sound. Quite simply I have not seen an 8 foot tall, ESL active loudspeaker. I have not seen an active full range active line source for home use. I have not seen a fully horn loaded active speaker. I have not seen anything but dynamic drivers stuck in a box with an amp and rudimentary digital signal processing. There are many higher performing speaker drivers out there and far more advanced DSP preamps. I am all for digital signal processing. I have been using it for 25 years. There is absolutely no need to shove it into a loudspeaker with what you can assume is a cheap amp. Maybe these things have a use in a studio environment, that is not my area of expertise. My own preference is for very large dipole line sources, specifically ESLs which would disqualify any active speaker I know of. If people want an all in one solution to save space and simplify their situation and they are not that critical I can understand the use of these speakers.
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@donavabdear , No problem, glad you liked them. Since you like Oscar you should get the whole box. What is REALLY fun is I use Channel D's Pure Vinyl to make 24/192 PCM files of other peoples records. It is a great way to collect out of print recordings. The program has a built in 80 dB/oct 10 Hz rumble filter and built in pop and tic removal which is done prior to the application of RIAA correction. I keep the raw files and apply RIAA correction, rumble and pop filters on playback. You can "render" the album by applying RIAA correction with or without the filters. The rendered file can be played back by anyone just like any FLAC or ALAC file. The only kicker is you need a phono stage with a flat output. (No RIAA correction)
I'm sure there are active speakers that surpass the performance of many of the passive speakers on the market. The environment of a concert tour is so different than what you will find in a home. We baby our equipment in comparison. These kinds of speakers are modular and are stacked to form very large linear arrays which works well in the bass and lower midrange but fails dismally in the treble because the tweeters are way to far apart. Ultimate sound quality is usually not the goal here. The finest concert system I have ever heard was used for Return to Forever's "Where have I known You Before" tour. It was a totally passive system performing in real 2 channel stereo. Stanley's bass played through a stack of bass cabinets 20 feet tall which was place right next to him center stage. It was a mind bending performance. RIP Chick.
To me, everything you say about active speakers sounds like marketing. I do not hear any specs and usually do not see any. All I see available for home active systems is little point source speakers. I do not like little point source speakers. They do not produce a convincing sound stage and they usually spray sound all over the place leading to more room interaction.
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@kota1 , Now those Avant Guard Horns are the first packaged speaker system I would not mind hearing. I did not know they had done that yet. It is still a point source system but at least it is directional (less room interaction.) I bet we can all afford them :-)
I have been to probably over 50 stadium concerts. They use line arrays because they are acoustically much more powerful not because they cast a better image. There is no image at these concerts and distortion from a number of factors is very high. The Absolute Sound is not the goal. Home HiFi is a totally different application. Line arrays or line sources are still more powerful but they broadcast a larger more life like image with greater depth. ESLs are renown for being....polite shall we say. They are not known for being power houses and many of them can not achieve realistic levels. Turn them into a full range line source, take the lowest three octaves away from them (subwoofer) and use the right amp they then become a totally different animal. They become as dynamic and as powerful as horns up to 105 dB. Ultimately they loose out to horns and the better dynamic drivers which can make it up to 115 dB (twice as loud!) My loudest listening level is 95 dB. Anything louder will certainly damage your hearing. Within their capability, because they are line sources the sound is more powerful, dynamic yet delicate and detailed. Because line source linear arrays are perfectly directional they reduce room interaction better than any other type of speaker. Room interaction is distortion and it can not be managed with just DSP. Digital has its limits. 0 dBFS is a hard barrier and lowering volume levels decreases the number of bits available. With the faster processors we have now running at high rates this is much less of a problem but 0dBFS remains a hard barrier. The kind of deviations you see in the bass in residential rooms frequently require 10 to 15 dB corrections that can bump into the 0 dBFS barrier or/and push many amps into clipping. You have to try to keep the deviations under 5 dB with acoustic management then DSP can handle the rest. You still need a power house of an amp for the subwoofers and efficient subs is not a bad idea.
I am not disagreeing with the basic idea of an active loudspeaker system. In essence I have had one for 25 years. I use all the same tech used in active systems and have much more control over what it does. My new processor will have a complete digital 4 way crossover, bass management, room control and high resolution equalizing capability. Check it out. DEXQ Pre 8. https://www.deqx.com/products/ I can choose amps specifically for the type of driver and frequencies it has to cover. I can chose the quality I can afford. They are right under the speakers keeping speaker wires very short. I use only Kimber Kable 12tc. My subs are wired internally with 12tc.
@donavabdear , I totally agree with everything you said, but I am very particular and want to do the designing myself. Manufactures have to survive by selling their product by making a profit and keeping the cost of the product competitive with what their market demands. They tend to cut costs where you can't see it. With audiophile products it is really weird because many of us think if it costs more it must be better. In many instances prices are inflated for that reason alone and I had one manufacturer of cartridges admit that to my face!
There are many roads to Rome. Our expectations might also be different. I will probably never use anything but a stereo system, a 2.2 system. IMHO and from what I have heard adding more channels just confuses the issue and adds more distortion. At one point I though of adding rear speakers with adjustable delays to replicate the echo of large venues but I decided not to. I have other sonic priorities.
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@kota1 It is not a contest. It is about achieving the ultimate sound. It's not about achieving tolerable or OK sound. I have owned and listened to every type of speaker driver made. I even had access to a set of Hills Plasmatronics for a month, nitrogen tanks included. I have the sound I am looking for in my head and I know the path to that sound as I have been on it for close to 40 years since I got my first pair of ESLs in 1979 , Acoustat X's which were active speakers by the way! They had their own special high voltage amps in back. The problem for Active speaker designers is that the room is an integral part of the system. You have to be able to measure the speaker in the room and have a means to respond to the discrepancies. The only other path to the absolute sound is shear luck. Using Room control for the bass only is not good enough. You have to use it full frequency. Then you have to make sure the frequency response of both channels is exactly the same or imaging will suffer. No two speakers are exactly alike. When you place them in different locations they can become vastly different. This is why the speakers have to be tested in place. There are some products that do this, it is becoming more popular in subwoofers. The very best way is to get your own USB measurement mic and the right computer programming. But, you have to be able to respond to amplitude errors and group delays. Without digital signal processing you are stuck with acoustic treatments and wishful thinking. However it is important to note that DSP has it's limits and appropriate room acoustic management remains very important.
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@sokogear, They are a powered recliner just like any Lazy-Boy. They are not specifically designed for theater use although I use three of them in a theater set up. There is a second row behind up on a platform. It uses a Stessless love seat. I am going to have to get creative to make a foot rest for it as there is no room for ottomans. The problem was that I could not find any theater seating that could be made with the kind of leather I wanted. Most of it is not built very well.
@donavabdear , I am agreeing entirely. The only difference is I prefer to be the one to choose the amp. I use two types of drivers, ESLs and subwoofers. Never is a long time but it is highly unlikely I will ever use anything else. Both types of driver have very specific requirements and are demanding to drive. The ESLs are very reactive being nothing but large capacitors with very low impedance at high frequencies. Then there are the subwoofer drivers that have huge magnets and 4" double layered voice coils which throw enough back EMF to light a city. Although there are some amps capable of driving both types it turns out the best amp for driving the ESLs is not good at all for subwoofers.
Another point is that the room is an essential part of the loudspeaker system. I use microphones and computer programs to measure the result and apply digital equalization to get what I want.
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@kota1 , Atmos may be cool for cinema and gaming but not for an ultimate two channel system, they just do not need that kind of help. All you are doing is adding more distortion. My system sounds better, much better without it. If your system sounds better with it you have work to do. I HATE headphones. I use special Etymotic ear buds to protect my hearing when I am mowing the lawn, cutting down trees or riding the motorcycle. Music is a visceral experience you feel the music as well as hear it. Headphones cut off 1/2 the experience.
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@lonemountain , you are absolutely correct. This concept applies to all speakers. Theoretically, you can get any speaker to perform at it's best in most rooms if you are given free rein and have enough processing power. Back in the day the tools we had available were awful. I managed he problem by picking the right speaker for the room. I used a lot of Maggies because they caused less room interaction and my typical customer was not interested in high volumes.
It was fun just to sit and watch the Plasmatronics glow. We did not sell any. Did you miss the Levison HQD system? That was really nuts.
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@rudyb , My current processor has dynamic loudness filtered programmed into it. They look like the reverse of the Fletcher Munson curves. As the volume changes the processor hops from one curve to the next, but it is not just in the bass. Treble changes also. The end result is that the system sounds exactly the same regardless of volume.
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@kota1 , the reason that the active Paradigms go lower is because the bass is EQed up. You can do that with the passive speaker and digital EQ. No magic here.
By the way, what are you sending to the loudspeaker? An analog low level line? RCA or XLR? Can you give it a digital cable, SPDIF or AES?
Is the crossover analog or digital?
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@kota1 , Atmos is also marketed for music. Glad to hear you do not use it for that.
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@kota1 , they are straight analog. Measurements is someone else's room does you no good. The measurements have to be taken in your room. Analog crossovers are distinctly inferior to digital ones. The ultimate approach is to have digital crossovers in connection to a room control system that measures the speakers in your room and then sends each driver the right part of the signal. You could also completely digitize an active speaker and I do believe some of the better studio monitors do exactly this. I can make your system sound way better by using outboard amps and digital processing/crossovers. Your speakers may sound better than similar passive speakers with certain components, I could not say. But, you can not beat the power of modern digital processors. The potential is there to any uncorrected system sound better.
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@phusis , It seems like we are pretty much on the same page.
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@donavabdear , I have a complete digital workstation and have complete control over everything. It will tell me the exact timing errors of every group. Everything is on a simple wireless network. Only important equipment is hardwired. It seem to be way less complicated than what you are doing judging by your description. I did not need anyone's help to do anything. I have a system in the shop, one in the garage and another in the workout room. They all run on the network and I control them all from a phone.
@kota1 , I hate to sink your ship but that thing you showed us is an indiscriminate vibration machine. That is a terrible way to design a subwoofer enclosure. That enclosure is going to resonate it's back side off. The Newtonian forces generated by that driver have considerable leverage over the enclosure. The end result is that enclosure will shake, vibrate and that vibration is distortion. Subwoofer drivers need to be as close to the floor as possible with the bulk of the enclosure's mass behind the driver to neutralize those forces as much as possible. Even then, if the driver is not counterbalanced by an identical driver pointed in the opposite direction the enclosure will shake to some degree depending on it's mass. Look at my current subs on my system page. The 12" drivers are low to the floor and the enclosures are made of Corian and weight almost 200 lb. They still shake which has prompted me to build a new set using opposing drivers and an even stiffer method of construction.
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@donavabdear , That is a more intelligent design, the cylindrical enclosure in particular. It still has problems but it is much better than the stuff you see from Rel, ML and just about everyone else. Here is what I do not like. You can hand it a digital input but all it's outputs are analog so it has to have a DAC on each channel. It has a general digital output but that is all. I guarantee you they are not very expensive ones. The ideal system is run by one central digital processor with an ADC for analog inputs and a high quality DAC on the generated outputs after all the processing has been done. In my case, a 2.2 system, there are 4 DAC channels. This eliminates a lot of back and forth and allows DSP on all channels not just the crossover but full range room control and EQ capabilities. You also have more control over the DACs. You can even use outboard ones if you want. I still prefer outboard subwoofer amps. The Genelec is also not a balanced force design so it is going to shake. It is however a big step in the right direction.
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@donavabdear , My system is really very simple. I have a digital preamp that takes digital inputs from a universal disc player, the TV box and a Lynx Hilo. Connected to the Hilo is my phono stage, an Apple Mini, the Apple TV box and the Sonos connect. The Connect is hooked up to a very powerful router along with the Apple TV box. All the processing is done in digital. The processor is managed by a PC not the Apple mini which just plays music from a 6 TB hard drive. The processor has 4 DAC channels that power two speaker amps and two sub amps. The Hilo is a studio ADC/DAC mixer of amazing capability. There is nothing on the consumer market like it. As soon as it is released I will be getting a DEQX Pre 8, a full digital preamp with Room control, EQ and a 4 way crossover. It have 8 DAC channels. I may add ribbon tweeters to my ESLs.
As far as subwoofer enclosures are concerned a square or rectangular box is the worst design. The air within the enclosure is a spring. In the old days this was called acoustic suspension and like any suspension it has a resonance point. There are no standing waves within the enclosure. The enclosure wants to expand and collapse. Each size panel now has it's own resonance point as they flex and that resonance point can be up in the midrange! Put your hand on the enclosure while the sub is handling heavy bass 30 Hz at 90 dB. First put your hand on a corner. The vibration you feel there is the enclosure moving back and forth from the Newtonian forces generated by the driver. Next put your hand in the middle of one of the sides. Here you feel a combination of the enclosure moving back and forth along with it expanding and contracting. A cylindrical enclosure is inherently stiffer and will be very resistant to compression and expansion. It will still move back and forth to Newtonian forces unless you mount an identical driver on the opposite side and drive it in phase with the front driver. This is called a balanced force design. You would have to double the enclosure volume resulting in a larger subwoofer but with the right modern subwoofer drivers you could still limit the size to 2 cubic feet excluding the volume of the drivers about another cubic foot. 3 cubic feet is not horrendously large.
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@kota1 , the absolute best place for a sub woofer is on the floor in a corner. The next best place is on the floor against a wall. You are sort of horn loading the sub. The only problem is time alignment which can be easily taken care of digitally. You can see the group delay with a good measurement system but in order to correct it you need DSP.
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@thespeakerdude , I do not care if you can produce a complicated enclosure or not. I am not limited by financial and space confines. I can build whatever I want. That is the beauty of DIY. If you have the tooling, you can make just about anything. I already have a technique for building cylindrical enclosures and the beauty of it is that the wall thickness varies continuously repetitively between two inches and 1.5 inches 10 times.
@phusis , that is absolutely correct. The smaller the excursion the lower the distortion. It is why bigger drivers have less distortion than smaller ones. The problem with horn loading is size and the difficulty building a large dampened enclosure. The alternative is using multiple drivers. Every time you double the number of drivers you increase efficiency by 3 dB which requires 1/2 the excursion. In a 16 X 30 foot room 8 12" drivers in corners and against the front wall will do admirably.
@kota1 , Earl is trying to do the distributed bass gig in his own way. Drivers against a wall on the floor are 3 dB more efficient than drivers not against a wall. Drivers in corners are 6 dB more efficient. More efficient drivers = less distortion. It is also important for the drivers to be less than 1/2 the wavelength at the crossover point apart. Say you want to crossover at 100 Hz. That wavelength is about 10 feet. You do not want your subs more than 5 feet apart. Within 5 feet they are acoustically operating as one driver. If you look at my system page, the front wall is 16 feet. The subwoofers are 4 feet apart forming an infinite line source. This makes them even more efficient and sonically more powerful.
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@kota1 , You do not want to add another processor. The best way to do it is add 2 subs, one to each channel and stay with a 2.2 system which is what I do, two subs per channel. Remember the main speakers are equal volume at the crossover point and can be included in the distance factor but if you have a point source system the subs of each channel should be right together but the channels separated by 1/2 the wavelength of the crossover point. You could also put them way apart like some people do with a distributed sub system. My own preference is to put all the subs on the front wall, but I also cross at 100 Hz.
You need to include Hz on the horizontal axis and dB on the vertical. We are need points of reference. Change the size of the file to fit. The subwoofer files are typical. You see the room Modes. Room control is a beautiful thing.
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@thespeakerdude 1+
@kota1 There are very few speakers that do anything gracefully below 50 Hz. The specs are highly misleading. Standard frequency response measurements are taken at one meter. That is fine for wavelengths one meter or less. The longer wavelengths dissipate rapidly with distance in a room and the longer they get the more rapidly this occurs so by the time you get to the listening position a speaker that measured flat to 40 Hz is now down 10 dB at 40 Hz and depending on the room and interference patterns it could be down 20 dB in some places. Then you get some places in the 50 to 100 Hz area that might be + 10 dB producing what I call one note bass. Producing accurate bass requires clever room management, a subwoofer with a lot of power and room control. Why is the sub necessary? Simple, if you try to correct a regular woofer to run flat down to 18 Hz in most rooms you will either run out of power and clip your amp or break your woofer trying to get long excursions out of it that it can not handle. Subwoofer drivers are designed specifically to take long excursions and handle lots of power. They have ported and vented magnet structures so that there is no compression behind the voice coil and spider. The spider is the suspension element that centers and controls the voice coil and the apex of the cone. Another thing is, for a large high fidelity system do not bother with subwoofer drivers less than 12" unless you plan on using them in multitude. I would use no less than 4 10" drivers, or two 12" and up. The more driver area you have going the better. I would not use anything larger than 15" as I think the larger cones are more difficult to control. I have seen slo-mo videos of large cones wobbling instead of moving in pistonic fashion. The "speed" of a driver determines it's frequency response. The larger driver will not have to move as fast to produce a specific frequency because it does not have to move as far. Smaller drivers have to move faster! Larger drivers produce less distortion because they do not have to move as far as fast. They are thus capable of generation much more acoustic energy the result being you "feel" as if you are at a live show. Feeling the music is almost as important as hearing it. It is the feeling that is missing in most systems which IMHO ruins the illusion.
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@phusis , The problem most of us face with subwoofers with normally sized rooms in a residential setting is SIZE. Horn loaded subwoofers would have to be huge to work correctly. Same thing goes for the enclosures required to house a 21" subwoofer. It is much easier and more cosmetically acceptable for most people, myself included, to use multiple smaller drivers is sealed enclosures. With modern drivers you can get a 12" driver into a 1.5 cubic foot sealed enclosure and with enough power and digital signal processing you can get it to do just about anything within the limits of your amplifier to work perfectly. I use 8 of them which equals 4 15" drivers or two 18" drivers. In a 16 foot wide room I have no trouble getting flat down to 18Hz where they are rolled of steeply by a digital high pass filter at 84 dB/oct so as not to waste power and piss of the turntable. They are actually boosted 6 dB or so at 20 Hz to simulate the visceral sensation you get at a live concert at more reasonable levels. They are also in perfect phase and time with the main speakers. This is critical if you cross over at 100 Hz like I do and don't want to know you are listening to subwoofers.
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@kota1 , absolutely not. I have a unique problem in that my speakers are full range line sources. In order for a subwoofer system to keep up with them the subwoofers need to form a linear array. On a 16 foot wall that requires at least 4 separate subwoofers. Also, the more drivers you use the lower the distortion and the more power you can radiate out into the space. I want to be able to put a Nine Inch Nails concert in my media room.
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@lonemountain , I beg to differ Brad. Subs belong in corners. That is where they are most efficient. I have been using digital signal processing including full range room control for 25 years. My main speakers are ESLs and I high pass them at 100 Hz. The result is far less distortion and much higher volumes. The advantage will not be as great for multiway dynamic speakers but still detectible. IMHO digital signal processing done right is a boon to overall system performance for a multitude of reasons not just subwoofer crossover. You can not perfectly match your channels any other way not to mention tuning your system exactly the way you want it. I even use dynamic loudness filters. The system sounds exactly the same regardless of volume.
The best way, IMHO, to manage subs is to put them where they are most efficient using at least two in a symmetrical array with the main speakers, cross them steeply (48 dB/oct at least) using matching high pass filters on the mains putting the crossover point 6 dB down. Then matching the subs in time and phase with the main speakers. I would argue that if a symmetrical array can not be done due to room issues then it is the wrong room for a HiFi system. I have set up systems in rooms I would have never used for HiFi and made the best of it but I always warned the person the situation was not optimal. Most people do not care. They listen to music but do not imagine it. To them an image is something coming from the right and something else coming from the left.
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@thespeakerdude , If a subwoofer driver is right against a wall (in a corner) as part of a line array on the floor there is no first reflection until you get to the ceiling. The wave is beginning at the wall (no delay). A line array does not radiate past it's ends. If the array is horizontal against a wall those ends are in the corner. This is unique to my situation as my main speakers are line sources. Most people have point source systems and such a subwoofer array would overpower their system. People with point source systems are better off with two subwoofers. Corner placement minimizes the effect of reflections because the driver is up against three surfaces instead of two or none if the speakers are away from the front wall. With subs in the corner the first reflections that are delayed are off the ceiling, opposite wall and back wall. By the time they get back to the listener they are late reflections and not as serious. At high frequencies things get more complicated, one of the main reasons dipoles sound better. The biggest problem with putting subs in the corner at a different distance from the listener as the mains is phase an timing. To make this work you have to use digital signal processing to delay speakers so everything arrives at the listening position in phase at the exact same time. Most people without signal processing are better off with the two woofers any where in the room at the same radial distance as the main speakers from the listener, classically this was between the main speakers but does not have to be.
@juanmanuelfangioii , I think you should change your moniker which is an insult to the greatest racing driver of all time and a great person.
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@thespeakerdude , No it is not speakerdude. I measure everything I do and since when are line array characteristics just theory? They are very easily demonstrated. There are very few hard boundaries is acoustics, everything has a slope. For all intents and purposes line arrays beam severely in what is usually the vertical axis which is why you see them curved at stadium concerts. What is most important to me is that the subwoofers match the main speaker's line array attenuation characteristics as related to distance.
My audio room was also purposely designed for audio. There is not specific back wall. The room is open to the rest of the house eliminating to most significant reflection. The deviations that remain at the listening positions are easily managed by room control. Right at this moment I have three. You can have a listening position wherever you plant the measurement microphone.
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@thespeakerdude , it is sad to see someone who professes to be a professional be so poorly educated as to not understand basic acoustics. Do yourself a favor and go back to school.
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@kota1 , The TACT was SOTA until just recently and there are still some things the newer processors won't due. It's major problem is that it's ancient processor is not fast enough so you have to make sure you are operating it near 0dBfs, something I am used to doing. But, you are right in that it is time to move on. I was going to get a Trinnov Amethyst but it's bass management is no where near as sophisticated as the TacT's. The new DEQX processors were announced 6 months ago and supposed to be available right about now. They just updated their web site so it should be any day. As soon as they are released I will be getting a Pre 8.
A system is 95% speakers and acoustics and 5% everything else. The TacT has served me very well over 20+ years. Very few items are constructed as well as it is and it opened up a whole new world for me. I have been using very complex digital "powered" speakers for 20 years. It taught me that the only way to know what a room is doing is to measure it. My media room was almost a perfect residential music room. I designed it to be that way except the Tact showed me I had made one glaring error. I put a window too close to the right hand loudspeaker and somehow it was skewing the treble on that side. I had the window removed and the hole sided over, big improvement. I never would have known had I not measured it. I thought as long as the wall was reasonably flat it would be OK. I put blinds over the window and that did little to nothing.
Lastly, there are certain rules behind applied sciences that one violates at their own risk. While in medicine the 1/2 life of medical "fact" is 5 years, science such as acoustics are ancient, proven and well established. Unfortunately the math is beyond most of us because we do not have that training. This allows some of us to make thing up as we go along and the rest of us have no idea what is going on. This is how mythology is created. It is prudent that if one of us is aware of the science, to point this out.
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@kota1 , I'd rather not turn my media room into a post office. It is also not a good idea to have a light source in a projection theater, another mistake.
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@kota1 , That wall is on the sunny side of the house. I built the house 30 years ago and all the windows on that side need to be replaced. It was a lot cheaper to cover it over. You would never know there was a window there.
Right at this moment I'm listening to my daughter play a Bach piece on her violin. What a beautiful sound.
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@kota1 , It is great that Anthem makes this kind of gear at a more reasonable price. Their equipment is a real value. Their processor is nowhere near as flexible as the TacT and I am use to that level of flexibility. I did not get the Trinnov because it is not flexible enough. The DEQX Pre 8 can have a similar user interface as the TacT. It also has a 4 way, fully programable crossover. ESLs are essentially wide band midrange drivers. They do not like making low bass or high frequencies above about 18 kHz. Above 12 kHz they can drive amplifiers crazy with the low impedance they present at higher frequencies. Since my hearing falls of at 16 kHz I'm not that interested in what is above 18 kHz. Diverting everything above 12kHz to a Magnepan ribbon tweeter will take a big load off the main amp and allow me more flexibility in adjusting the high end. The problem is getting the tweeters. Magnplanar will not sell them separately. In order to get the tweeters you have to give them the serial number of your speakers. I have to find a store that has 20.7s set up so I can copy the serial numbers:-)
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@thespeakerdude , There is no accounting for taste. There is no explanation for it, never will be. Some people prefer to listen to systems that are too bright or have too much bass. A sales technique we use to use was to figure out what the person like to listen to then EQ the equipment we wanted to sell to their preference. I got myself out of the Mid Fi world because of the skullduggery. Having dealt with digital signal processing for 25 years or so it is absolutely possible to tailor a system's amplitude response to make it sound like anything from a tonality perspective. The thing is you can not make a bad system image no matter what digital capability you have. It is the most difficult aspect to get right. You can make a good system image better with digital processing. My experience with multiple speaker set ups is that they only make things worse. My experience in that regard is extremely limited. It seems throughout modern history the industry has tried over and over to shove multiple speakers and amplifiers down our throats always promising a revolution in sound. The results seem to be that all the serious listener's I know still prefer 2 channel systems. There may be more magic you can perform on the recording side. My knowledge of that part is basic at best.
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@donavabdear , Movies are an entirely different proposition and usually a very different audience. Things move around in movies and people love hearing that motion in sound. Imagine Thelonious Monk loading his piano onto an F1 car and driving it around the room.
There is one application for multiple speakers I may delve into. The door to my workshop faces the back of my media room. I had both the system in the shop going along with the main system and was playing some live record, don't remember which one and darn if it didn't create the third dimension. At the listening position the shop system would have been at least 15 dB down from the main one. The audience noise came from all around like a real show and I felt (sounded) as if I were in a much larger room. The shop speakers are about 30 feet from the listening position, the main speakers 12 feet, an 18 foot difference with a delay of about 1.8 msec. If I mounted something like Kef 50's in the back of the room, ran them 15-20 dB down and delayed them 1.8 msec I should get the same effect. I could increase the delay to simulate a larger venue or turn them off entirely for small ones. Will this detract or add to the 2 channel experience? From what I've heard I think It will definitely add to live albums, maybe not studio ones. The only way I'll ever know for sure is to cough up the money and try it. I'll have an extra 2 channels to play with from the DEQX so all I need is a small amp and the speakers. Ambience speakers only made possible with digital processing.
You can put a line array in a phone booth if you are so inclined. The benefit in a system like mine comes from several traits that tall ESLs have. To have a full range line source in any room the array has to extend from floor to ceiling or it will revert to point source behavior at low frequencies, frequencies with wavelengths longer than the speakers are tall. 100 Hz is ten feet. The problem is that the sound from point source systems decays at the cube of the distance but line sources decay at the square. Line sources project more powerfully. When you walk towards a line source it does not seem to get much louder. Another interesting trait of line sources is they do not radiate above or below the line. Very little energy is sent towards the ceiling and floor. ESLs are dipoles, they radiate very little energy to the sides. Because of all this Line source dipoles cause much less room interaction and the only room treatment I use is behind the speakers. On either side of the screen is floor to ceiling acoustic tile. All of it cost me $89.00.
Line arrays sound more powerful. It is like adding a turbocharger to your car. They cast a larger more lifelike image. It is like moving from the back of the hall to the front. Between 100 Hz and 18 kHz ESL have at least one magnitude less distortion. Big ESLs will make bass but it really screws up everything else. 100 Hz and down is way better off coming from a sub. The end result is a large powerful image with lightening fast transient response and a level of detail not possible with most other drivers. They never seem stressed. There is never any sibilance. Violins and female voices are totally painless. Because both channels are equalized to have the exact same frequency response curve imaging is excellent.
I could go on and on. ESLs are not a panacea. Over 40 years I migrated from Acoustat X's, an extremely flawed loudspeaker, through 4 other pairs of ESLs to the system I have now. From the old X's I heard something at low volumes I never heard out of any other system which attracted me to the type. I knew they could be better, much better. It was a matter of getting that sound up to realistic levels. Smaller ESLs, by smaller I mean less than ceiling height can be wonderful as long as they are not played to loudly, the bass is sent to subwoofers and you realize they are only going to sound right at one distance. They have the problem of changing from point source to line source mid stream which creates variations in frequency response with distance. I find this annoying as they loose that dynamic punch as you move away from them. It is a problem all Magneplaner speakers have. They were going to make the 20.7 8 feet tall but the marketing arm shot that down. ESLs are also difficult to match with amplifiers. Most amps will drive them and most amps will not drive the very well. In my experience it take big amps with huge power supplies that can deal with 1 ohm loads and very high current demands at 16 kHz. They have to have enough power to still be able to put out at 20 ohms in the midbass and they have to be able to handle the reactive nature of the load. These requirements make ESLs a more expensive proposition not to mention subwoofer, more amps and a crossover.
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@kota1 , what I see in those pictures is a whole bunch of cheap loudspeakers scattered about a room that was not originally designed for audio. Not my kind of system.
@thespeakerdude is correct that DSP can do nothing about dispersion which is why room management is just as important, maybe even more so if you have a processor. My own approach is to use speakers in arrays that limit dispersion to minimize room interaction. All the systems I have heard that floated my boat all used speakers with limited dispersion. You can overdo it in that regard. Flat panel ESLs are a great example. In cases where one is using digital "room control" which is really "speaker control" In rooms with unfettered acoustics some troughs can be 10-15 dB down. If a processor tries to correct that it can clip amps and blow speakers. Most processors now will limit the amount of correction they will apply to prevent this from happening, but then you wind up with lumpy response curves. I find it useful to measure the system response with a separate measurement system from the processor. You may be surprised at the results.
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