17 of 23 speakers in my studio and home theater systems are internally powered. My studio system is all Genelec and sounds very accurate. I know the best new concert and studio speakers are internally powered there are great technical reasons to design a speaker and an amp synergistically, this concept is much more important to sound quality than the vibration systems we often buy. How can an audiophile justify a vibration system of any sort with this in mind.
@kota1 I took 6 years of of math and physics in college all pertaining to electronics and sound today I've forgotten 90% ya I'd call that confused. I love Dynaudio but I wonder about a company that can go with a wireless option and still sell such a cheep speaker since I know what wireless circuits cost, that means that the wireless option is not as good as a wire and there will be compromise from the start.
A few things confusing in the audiophile world:
Vibration dampening systems like very expensive equipment racks
Not buying speakers and amps designed for each other
Custom fuses
Expensive AC cables
Speaker cable lifters
Records
DACs that will let you listen to 256khz
Thinking you have a golden ear
Pace Rhythm and Timing
DSP fixing a system
Not understand acoustics
Speakers near walls
You can hear 20khz, you can't unless you are a baby
The music originally recorded at the recording studio was done by people that care about the things you care about in your system
psychological factors, confirmation bias = audiophile world more than you think.
I wonder about a company that can go with a wireless option and still sell such a cheep speaker
I have these types of speakers/amps/preamps around the house as part of the Playfi ecosystem. When I am on the patio I run them in wireless mode. When in the LR I connect via ethernet and RCA inputs.
If you wonder about Dynaudio speakers they sell passive (The Confidence line for example), active that aren’t wireless, and active that offer both wired and wireless connections. Take your pick.
I find just one thing "confusing" and the rest a matter of personal taste.
The MOST confusing thing is why would someone invest $$$$ in speakers and practically nothing in the room and room treatments because most of what you actually hear from that speaker is reflected sound, not direct sound.
This is fine of course, but what if you did the opposite? Spent $$$ on the room like @fleschlerdid and a more modest set of speakers. Would @fleschlerlike to weigh in on that one?
When we looked at WiFi modules, the cheapest were <$2.00 those were chip antenna based. The module we eventually settled on was still < $10 but allows an external antenna. Software extensions allow microsecond level synchronization between speakers. Latency is is sufficient for almost all applications and getting better. Acceptance is slow but growing. Live music applications will be slower to accept, the risk is high, but control functions will be the leading edge, then wired, then wireless where failure costs are contained. Leveraging mass adoption technology while maintaining private networks is hard to beat for cost, features and reliability.
My experience with microphones is it is all proprietary, low latency, was mostly analog if I am not mistaken. That price likely includes the microphone too?
Wireless transmitter/receivers have existed for speakers at <$1000/pair for a long time. All proprietary / low latency. Probably not audiophile quality.
@kota1That is a great point, if you spent the money on acoustics rather than equipment. I think the answer is you would be surprised how good some lower priced speakers can be. Paradigm for instance has Canada pumping in lots of money because they are partnered with the government for acoustic research giving Paradigm an unfair advantage against other speaker manufactures. Very few manufactures can afford to build with beryllium. My Paradigm B speakers are 7k each for surround sound speakers but they really hold up as a main speaker with a sub. All to say small speakers with a good sub can sound great. So yes putting money into the room is a good idea, with 1 huge caveat. Acoustics is not a science in that it's completely objective like speaker cables there is a lot of science that can't quite state that this room will sound good. A room that is 12 x 18 x 8 is practically impossible to make sound good because of so many common denominators some rooms have no hope and can't be fixed unless you make them very very dead and move the speakers very close to you effectively wearing headphone with speakers.
"A matter of personal taste". We both know you need good cables that shield RF and we both know that smart and reasonable people list their cables as components but in blind tests no one can tell the difference, sure everyone has a story about the audiophile who takes the test " ok are we now using the good cables or the bad ones" and they get it right. That is not a good test a good test takes the physiological testing out of the equation. When you look down the grocery isle at the market and see a beautiful woman then you realize it's your wife that is a good honest test, not setting up a picture of you wife and your old girlfriend with all the psychological bagger they both bring into the picture. The things I mentioned in confusion are not scientifically valid unless you are selling them then somehow they have all the science in the world on their side.
@kota1Also as far as wireless I assumed you and the man on the video were talking about transmitting the main signal vie RF or bluetooth to the speaker from the wireless transmitter that is a far different story than using a code like FM Play or a format like that using wifi for Roon of something like that is very different than sending the entire spectrum of music via a transmitter and receiver via RF.
@thespeakerdudeWere these wireless connections RF or were they a coded signal like bluetooth or the like. I can't imagine such a cheep circuit in an RF transmitter with no compression. And of course the FCC is squeezing wireless microphones into oblivion with it's huge sale of RF spectrum to large companies and outlawing people with hundreds of thousands of dollars or wireless equipment that just happens to be in the wrong block. The FCC during the last administration was very cruel to people who owned equipment like churches and performing arts buildings that needed good RF.
but in blind tests no one can tell the difference,
That is a dead end discussion because people buy what sounds good to them, not what won the blind test shootout. If it turns your crank fine, go get an ABX Comparator from Van Alstine and go for it.
The things I mentioned in confusion are not scientifically valid
See the above, no one makes buying decisions based on scientifically valid. You mention beryllium tweeters, it seems that mattered "to you". Fine. It hasn't been blind tested against every other tweeter material in the world, so what?
I think there is some science behind the fact people generally prefer a smooth flat in room frequency response. You can look that one up to confirm.
I think you can make almost any room sound good, but not if you have already picked the speakers. Some speakers will be near impossible in some rooms. It's the science of acoustics that makes that possible. The art part is appealing to likes and dislikes.
Is an artificially generated set of reflections from additional speakers any less real than the artificial reflections in a room from 2 main speakers?
I know people don't buy on scientific specs but when you go into a boutique stereo store there is pressure to appear that you enjoy the finer things in life and to validate your own confirmation bias which stereo stores and magazine marketers are very good at. The psychology of stereo buying and wine tasting are the same, think about that in stereo listening along with wine tasting blind tests don't pass the test but the built up to the psychology fallacies are easy see in retrospect.
"people generally prefer a smooth flat in room frequency response. You can look that one up to confirm." Sorry brother, one of the golden rules of acoustics and studio architecture is that no one prefers a flat room. The speaker DSPs put out a flat curve, this is very simple subtraction and addition to simply make the curve seem flat and the DSP marketing people have let most everyone to think flat is good sounding it's not. Even if there is a good article on Google that says flat it good that doesn't mean it's true, I know that they can't write anything on the internet that isn't true but it does happen some times.
Actually there is a group like this at ASR, not my thing but for some hobbyists its fine.
when you go into a boutique stereo store there is pressure to appear that you enjoy the finer things in life
No, it depends on the store. I recently went into a store like this to buy a replacement remote for my Marantz, the guy just gave it to me! Immediately I became a fan.
Sorry brother, one of the golden rules of acoustics and studio architecture is that no one prefers a flat room.
I am sure you have a link? I don’t want to go there in this thread but the white papers are available if you look (Toole, Olive, AES, etc).
The speaker DSPs put out a flat curve,
No, most speakers that I have seen vary.
So, after all of this conjecture do you even know what the FR in your room is?
The predominant preference is a flat on axis frequency response and a downwards sloping room response. Some of the art of acoustics and absolutely science is ensuring you can do both.
Pull back the curtain and it is not so much we prefer a downward sloping room response but that almost all mixing and mastering is done in rooms with downward sloping room response and somewhat flat on axis response hence it makes sense the home environment should match to sound "right".
Here is the difference between what you guys are talking about and what I’m talking about. It is relatively easy to build a room that will give a flat room response at the mixing position tested on an expensive test microphone usually around $5k or so from a full range speaker that is playing back a simple full range sweep tone. I’m not talking about manipulating the speakers what ever they may be to produce a flat response or a slightly downward response, the curve is simple to create. Just plot the function then add or subtract the frequencies to produce the desired curve, that is a world away from what I’m talking about.
I mentioned it before but John Storyk said himself that flat studios sound bad, so he doesn’t build them he’s been the top studio designer for going on 40 years he used a lot of science to get his results but left room for art and creativity. This has so much to do with immersive audio a flat room is not a DSP flat room what you are really saying is I’m screwing up my wonderful speakers to fit my awful room with DSP (well some DSPs) Im in my second hour of tones for my "room perfect" DSP and it has a rating of 98% for my Yamaha or my Anthem DSPs it takes about 5 min at the most. I don’t know the Trinnov but I didn’t get one because they used a very old i3 processor and I knew that if the readings were so complicated why would they use such an old processor for a new technology. Anyway it is the goal to make a room that the DSP does very little and you like the sound. I was in perhaps the most hailed studio in the world and it was far from flat the studio nor the control room but no one can’t say that thousands of gold records billions of dollars and lots of beautiful music wasn’t made there. Good sounding rooms are not flat, if we wanted flat rooms we should simply print them with a big 3D printer and sell them as audiophile listening rooms that are acoustically flat, they would sound awful. Now if you guys do start printing "audiophile rooms" I want in on some of the profits, it was my idea first.
We are not talking about different things. Not sure how many pages you need to go back, but I addressed this. DSP is to fix minor issues once you have everything correct already. You cannot fix the room response with DSP without breaking the on-axis response and you want a flat on-axis response over critical frequencies and declining off axis response.
I have not been in enough recording/mixing/mastering studios to say that they are all a bit on the dead side with a rising bass response, but, by virtue of how they are designed, they tend to be and I have been in quite a few.
So what would happen if you were exposed to a studio that didn't sound that way? You would think it sounds bad. There is a lot of conditioning at play here.
From a psychoacoustics view, the on-axis response does need to be accurate to properly portray positioning .... at least if a recording was made simulating human hearing. Without conditioning, what is the correct room response? It would be almost impossible to determine as you would need unconditioned test subjects. At this point it does not matter, we are where we are. A studio sounds the way it does somewhat by convention and we want our listening spaces to somewhat match that convention.
The other variable is the ratio of direct and reflected sound that is used to match that convention for room response. That allows a lot of latitude for personal preference.
The predominant preference is a flat on axis frequency response and a downwards sloping room response. Some of the art of acoustics and absolutely science is ensuring you can do both.
I mentioned it before but John Storyk said himself that flat studios sound bad, so he doesn’t build them he’s been the top studio designer for going on 40 years
This is where you are getting into the weeds, if you want a "Storyk Curve", build one, NP. Where is the link to the Storyk paper published in a peer reviewed journal citing his research?
Now, what DID you build? A "storyk curve", a "Harman curve", a "Lyngdorf curve".
From a psychoacoustics view, the on-axis response does need to be accurate to properly portray positioning .... at least if a recording was made simulating human hearing. Without conditioning, what is the correct room response? It would be almost impossible to determine as you would need unconditioned test subjects.
You are still very new to the hobby. If you like this type of research check out ASR, you will find many adherents there.
Check out the "Kota Curve" , I received a compliment recently from a professional acoustics engineer with many years in the business on the UNCORRECTED curve, even before DSP he said it was very good and it showed I paid attention to details:
You are still very new to the hobby. If you like this type of research check out ASR, you will find many adherents there.
There are very few on the ASR forums, in my experience, that are highly experienced in acoustics and psychoacoustics. I have noticed the odd person posting of some experience. It is a very small and specialized field.
There are very few on the ASR forums, in my experience, that are highly experienced in acoustics and psychoacoustics.
100% true, however they LOVE to wrap themselves in psychobabble and consider themselves experts (in their own mind at least).
Maybe @donavabdearcould help them out, at least he would find a like minded audience.
BTW, you know who has a GREAT chapter in their book on the topic? Both Earl Geddes and Tomlinson Holman.
I think both you guys should get the THX guy’s book, even if it is familiar territory. Check out chapter two in this one. Read chapter five, ten, and twelve too, even though its a different topic:
Before being flippant with people's names like John Storyk, you may want to do a little research to understand who he is. He is not just another "studio" designer, he is probably "the" studio designer. There are not that many known designers, Suffolk, Manzella, Berger, Pilchner/Schoustal, but many would say Storyk sits on top.
It is not a matter of whose curve it is, it is a matter of psychoacoustic properties and conditioning mixed with physical properties of the room and speakers. You could have the same speakers, with the same room curve, but a much different sound dependent on the room acoustics.
This is where you are getting into the weeds, if you want a "Storyk Curve", build one, NP. Where is the link to the Storyk paper published in a peer reviewed journal citing his research?
BTW, you know who has a GREAT chapter in their book on the topic? Both Earl Geddes and Tomlinson Holman.
There are probably few books on speakers and acoustics I have not read over the last 20 years and I would not be surprised if not over 500 papers. Much of audio, acoustics, and speakers is not about right answers but right directions.
There are probably few books on speakers and acoustics I have not read over the last 20 years and I would not be surprised if not over 500 papers.
If you are "all that" give me links to what you have PUBLISHED in peer reviewed journals, I got google for the rest. I never saw a bibliography that cited @thespeakerdudeas a source.
As for the gurus in the industry I didn’t dis Storyk and if his research helps ME improve SQ great, give me a link.
BTW, of all the papers you read did you get any catalogs? Did you finally get some speakers???
His website was basically a brochure online, give me something that is research.
"None of this has anything to do with the internal room acoustics, which is a totally different animal. That’s what we do on the inside of rooms…including treatments, panels, diffusers, absorbers, reflectors, scattering elements and changing the geometry."
John Storyk: I don’t think video is going to grow as much, but immersive audio will. The reason is that four billion people listen to 98 percent of their music on earbuds. They don’t walk around with TV screens. And they are definitely not going to walk around with those stupid AR goggles. There is plenty of time for audio, but one has to be in front of a screen for video. That will always limit it.
+1, it seems me and John agree on the important stuff already 😎
While you are at it, perhaps you can work on reading comprehension and googling how not to be a jerk online.
Don't blame me for putting yourself out there. You claim you are all about speakers and you don't even know how to put a system together, you admitted as much to @donavabdear. You claim you read everything on audio but the impression I get is you are a DIY guy sitting in his basement with an ipad and some duct tape. If you didn't say a bunch of stuff you can't prove it wouldn't invite the scrutiny.
I am glad that we are in agreement about the quote and thanks for your compliment to my audio gear. I'll let them know! lol
Viewing your system page makes me want to listen. The room correction, speaker placement, and room treatments. Looks like you invested a lot of time and effort; and it was all worth it.
I'm curious about your system. Are you on YouTube by a chance? I would subscribe.
Thanks for the kind words. I don’t have a youtube channel, however the video that helped me a lot was the series on acoustics that had Anthony Grimmani as a guest. He was kind enough to correspond by e-mail and really helped me with implementing his "acoustic recipe". The recipe was a good starting point and then you roll up your sleeves and start hanging products. Auralex was the vendor I chose and they were great to work with. I used the Dolby specs for most of my speaker placement. For the size of my room I divided up the room using the fibonacci ratios for seating and treatment placement.
The MLP is at the 50% point exactly between my front and back wall so those speakers are equidistant from the MLP. Front speakers with tweeters at ear level, the bottom of the screen starts at eye level.
If you look at my ceiling you’ll see absorption in the front third of the room, at the mid point I have those diffusors, "geofusors" based on the geodesic dome, that are filled with polyfil so they double as bass traps. At the two thirds point between front and back wall I have my surround and top middle surround speakers. Then 75% of the distance from the front wall I have my PJ and the "acoustic cloud" hanging which is a 3D diffusor. The second row of seating is just below it.
The panel placement on the walls are asymmetrical. If I have an absorber on one side wall (yin) it is mirrored by a diffusor on the opposite wall (yang). Then each side wall is interleafed (absorption, diffusion, absorption, etc)
The panels are also placed at the same fib ratios, 1/3 from the front wall, 50%, 66% and 75%. This worked for me because of the length of my room, for a longer room you would need to add more rows of seating, have a bigger screen, etc.
I am interested in active speakers but for now disappointed. When I run the passive speaker from my main system tube amp, instead of the amp in the active speaker, it sounds way better (Sony, Elac etc). But you can't stick my Atma-sphere MA-1 into a small speaker.
@thespeakerdude@kota1Really looking forward to the world premier of your new YouTube channel and podcast. I think it should be called "The final word in sound". You guys could argue for an hour each week, it would be perfect!
Suppose we did build 3D printed rooms that we could take time to fine tune everything about the sound, would the color of the room make a difference would the kind of drink you had made a difference in how you enjoyed it (caffeine does change hearing) if the room sounded "perfect" but was ugly would anyone enjoy the sound? The more I think of building the perfect room the more I understand why Storyk rooms are so beautiful, it’s for the same reason why I love my Mercedes AMG GT-c and love the way it performs it’s not the fastest car ever but it helps me understand the saying "Contentment is poverty of desire". I love this car in a the way I want to love my sound system, really exciting, keeps me on the edge of my emotions, and a little dangerous. I’m not there yet but you guys have given me some good ideas. Thanks
@o_holterI love tube amps also, I don't know of speakers that are made for tube amps, the dampening factor for a solid state and a tube amp would be very different, generally tube amps don't have near the power of SS amps of course, it there were speakers that were designed for a tube amp that would be a big deal and I would go out and buy it.
@kota1is right outboard crossovers, at line level, then amplified to a speaker that was designed for that particular tube amp would be amazing. @kota1 probably knows of a company that does just this, that's the answer.
@o_holter I just searched a measurement of the MA-1 amp and the figure they arrived at was 10.5 ohms output resistance. There are very few speakers that will not experience a huge change in their output frequency response with this amp. You have become accustomed to or just like this change to the sound so I would not expect anything else to sound at all similar without an equalizer.
@donavabdearthere are two types of speakers that match best with tubes. Constant impedance speakers (Magnepan), and high impedance 16 ohm speakers of which there are not that many any more. There are boutique brands I am sure someone here is up on. What these speakers do is remove most of the character of the tube amp. Somehow that seems counterproductive. Similarly an active crossover with a tube amplifier would be remove most of the tube amp character as would a room correction system.
I could argue the elevated room response in the upper bass lower mid that is preferred would be a perceptual effect of tube distortion. Distortion is least masked at these frequencies due to increasing sensitivity of hearing but from tubes mainly pleasant so there can be a perceptual loudness bump.
@thespeakerdude Last night I worked on my Genelec system, I changed wiring, moved some equipment around and changed some setting on DadMan which is the patch bay for ProTools, I played a DVD and was amazed I did something accidental and my Genelec sub came alive, I did your suggestion of combining my big JL Audio subs with that system but they didn't work well together. Last night after I put everything back together the Genelec sub shook the house like it ought to, and now that system sounds like it should. In your experience with speakers why are the subs so important, now everything sounds dialed in the sub changed everything the Genelec speakers always did a great job at imaging of course but now they sound so much more musical, the important ambiences I have also sound much better simply because of he sub. What is the technical reason why the low frequencies make the mids so much better. I added a JL Audio under my dest for my Elacs and it made a world of difference, I knew it would I just don't know why, I bet you do.
I am mainly standing on the shoulders of others answering that. That is deep into psychoacoustics. From a basics, 20-160Hz is 3 octaves, so perceptually nearly as wide as 160-1.2KHz, though we don’t hear well down at 20Hz, however, still 2.5 critical octaves of music. Also basics, who knows what your system was like without the sub tuned properly. So into the psychoacoustics:
The most recent research w.r.t. the importance of bass is around timings, i.e. getting into the beat of the music. If the bass is lacking, we literally cannot "get into it".
I can remember reading papers that surmised that the physical experience of bass, not just the audible experience probably helps us with the aforementioned timing and getting into the song.
That is not the whole question you asked though, you also asked why good bass makes the mid-range perceptually better. There are two (maybe 3) factors here. One is basic psychoacoustics; conditioning, adaption, and expectation. Is that 1 or 2? We have an expectation of how something should sound, and because of that, our hearing adapts to match our expectations, but it is imperfect. Our brain is trying to fill in the missing bass, but screwing up the midrange while doing it. That is when it is missing. When there is excessive bass, the bass is muddy, or there are peaks in the bass, again, our hearing adaptation tries to make the most of it, which can impact the mid-range perception, but add to that peaks in the upper bass that should not be there will mask mid-range sounds especially if coupled to higher distortion. This is especially true in the the mid/upper bass.
Finally, we get into music theory where a proper bass response forms a correct tonal balance / timbre which gives the perception that the mid-range is correct, and effectively it is when viewed as proper harmonic ratios with the bass ..... which is pretty much the same answer as the last paragraph, but taking a different view.
@donavabdear, from your description of musical, it sounds like your Genelec system now being musical is perceptually warmer?
… Paradigm for instance has Canada pumping in lots of money because they are partnered with the government for acoustic research giving Paradigm an unfair advantage against other speaker manufactures.
…
The Canadian is not running a “fairness in competition” for speaker manufacturers… and they can do what they want.
They would not (and should not) disadvantage themselves.
@holmz Oh ya I'm all for it, I bought their best speakers 9h and 4 of their Persona B bookshelf speakers for my surround sounds then I bought their best ceiling speakers. I'm all for doing the best you can! I even bought 10 channels of Anthem amplification and another Anthem receiver for another surround system.
@thespeakerdudeI like your answers about bass helping the entire spectrum of music, yes it is warmer and more tube like, less harsh. Seems to me that the bass being important in the beat is not the reason because even ambiences sound better. Even your last reason that proper bass frequencies give a musical foundation in harmonic ratios doesn't really hold water either because in nature bass notes aren't tuned to the other frequencies in the environment. Could it be that bass simply needs to be in what we hear to make any environment more pleasing, just like the rumble of records makes them sound better. Odd that we strive to make record groves more accurate and 16 ohm speakers take the tube effect of amps away when all the time it is the low frequencies that we enjoy in tube amps and records.
The movie Ford vs Ferrari the engines were "tuned" to match the music and the music was changed in pitch to match the engines in some scenes, it won an Oscar for sound. Think about our happiest times in life, in your Moms arms as a baby, in a safe bed, wrapped in a blanket sitting by a fire, listening to music in a great building. And then think about bad times in your life, school rooms, cheep tinny cars, the screechy voice of your teacher, a cold icy night, hospital rooms all places where there is very little low frequencies and an abundance of high frequencies. Just saying.
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