A thought. It is asked whether phase/time really matters or if designers so inclined just pay close attention to everything, therefore producing successful products. This week's experiments might shed a little light.
You know Marena. We’ve been working together again in the times of waning Covid fears. She has great ears, a well developed musical sense, and is a performing singer-songwriter. We’re comparing Douglas Pauly’s turbulence control technologies which I call "laminar launch". We’re using the 02 because it’s easy, available and feasible to ship around the country for serial evaluation and input. I became irritated with the one cycle lead of the tweeter - distracting from the deep engagement needed to compare laminar launch variations. So I made 4 sample 02s. R: stock = Reference, which Doug has been using in California. A, B, and C, leap-frog upgrades till now all the same with Thiel CS.5 drivers and 02 XOs implemented with ERSE coils and their best caps plus Mills resistors on separate W and T boards, plus my new super-wire, and nicely braced cabinets with F11 felt on the baffles. Substantial performance improvement over stock. A, B and C all measure and sound very close to identical.
Enter the dark horse. I moved the woofer on A forward until the onset transient is time aligned. Still second order slopes, but all positive polarity and time-aligned, like an SCS / PowerPoint series. A's frequency response and harmonic distortion are undifferentiable from B and C. However, the impulse and step response now show time alignment. Excess phase and group delay are marginally improved. Of note is the waterfall plots behave better, which surprises me. The listening experience is qualitatively different. Subjectively, A now seems less forward, especially the high frequancy edge is gone. Gone. The differences read like many Thiel fans cite as their reasons for liking Thiel’s sound.
Marena and I have practically written each others' comments regarding the improvements.
But now I have a treat to add from this morning. My home is a small village of 1000. I have known Lincoln Fedicovich since he was born, as a rambunctious child and now a hard-working young man of 20, who is helping me move my shop/studio on short notice - another story. When he came for work this morning I asked if he would help me listen. His reply was "sure, but I’m not very musical". My test cut was Sarah Jaroz "Peace" from her "Follow Me Down" album. As is our custom, Lincoln listens blind, in his case very blind with no musical or hi-fi experience, knowing only speaker A and B, each fed a mono-mixed signal through the Classe DR6 to bridged dedicated AHB-2s for each channel. A & B are 4’ apart with listening line 6’ out. Play A, Play B, chat: Lincoln is my ideal "naive listener", interested but quite unexposed or opinionated. He said: "A was more crisp, clearer in every way. B was more like a speaker. Then I told him they were identical speakers except that A’s woofer was on a stand-off to make the music from both drivers arrive at the same time. I added that many experts think that doesn’t matter. We repeated A & B after which he said: "B still seems like a speaker. A is more like the music is here, happening in front of me. Can we listen in stereo?" We did after which he added: A is overwhelming better if every way, like it’s real".
Then he added. "I always wanted to learn guitar. My grandma played lots of music for me growing up. Everything: Classical, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, country folk, Johnny Cash, Nelson - lots of stuff. I haven't thought of that in years. This is good stuff."
He agreed to help listen whenever I want. Now, how’s that for Saturday morning before getting to work on moving!
