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Speaker Debates

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Posted on November 19, 2014 at 08:51:37
AudioSoul
Audiophile

Posts: 4594
Location: north central AZ
Joined: July 9, 2005

Does anyone know of any professional debates regarding conventional multi driver speaker with crossovers vs. high efficiency speakers without conventional crossovers? Thanks

 

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RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 10:16:17
PeterZ
Audiophile

Posts: 180
Location: texas
Joined: November 8, 2003
Do you mean single driver speakers without crossover or electronic crossover / multi-amp systems as replacing conventional crossovers?
PeterZ

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 11:39:54
AudioSoul
Audiophile

Posts: 4594
Location: north central AZ
Joined: July 9, 2005
I mean one driver or two driver with a cap as a crossover high efficiency speakers.....

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 13:16:36
zako
Audiophile

Posts: 935
Location: Mo.
Joined: March 29, 2004
Define professional.

 

Professional - just same threads we have here minus the "you fathead" type embellishments., posted on November 19, 2014 at 13:57:08
Edp
Audiophile

Posts: 4479
Joined: September 23, 1999
The resources here in Hi Eff are on par most any reference I have ever come across.

And Hi Eff tends to have some of the least contentious threads here at AA.

 

Exactly, posted on November 19, 2014 at 18:46:11
1973shovel
Audiophile

Posts: 10110
Location: Greenville SC
Joined: February 25, 2007
Art Dudley gave positive reviews to the Horn Shoppe Horns in Listener, and again in Stereophile. The reviews got my attention, so I auditioned them, and ordered a pair for myself the same day.

I don't care that they didn't measure very well in Stereophile's testing. I have no doubt that it would be easy to find professionals to tell me why the Horns are "wrong". But they convey music to me in a way no other speaker I owned prior to The Horn did.

That's all I care about, and really, why should I care about what anyone else thinks? I appreciate Art's head's up regarding my Horns, but I certainly didn't buy them simply because he liked them. And I wouldn't enjoy them any less if some Consumer Reports engineer told me they failed his anechoic chamber testing.

Life's too short.



 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 22:49:33
moray james
Manufacturer

Posts: 1599
Location: Calgary on the Bow
Joined: May 19, 2002
you don't seem to be able to articulate exactly what it is that you are after. Why do you care what anybody thinks? Why don't you go out and audition as many full range drivers as you can and see what you think? Your opinion as a consumer is all that should matter to you. Your ears and eyes will tell you if you like them or not so what else matters? Best regards Moray James.
moray james

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 23:08:09
Brian Levy
Audiophile

Posts: 2438
Location: Toronto
Joined: June 5, 2000
What type of a professional? I am a certificate holder from the Society of Audio Consultants (NH-1), SAC. It may be the only organization directly related to the audio industry that issued a professional designation related to audio. Or, I am also a CPA, lawyer and real estate sales agent (Florida). Does that count?


Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 23:10:29
Brian Levy
Audiophile

Posts: 2438
Location: Toronto
Joined: June 5, 2000
I totally agree.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 19, 2014 at 23:14:31
Brian Levy
Audiophile

Posts: 2438
Location: Toronto
Joined: June 5, 2000
A multi driver speaker with only a cap as a crossover is a 1st order crossover and not uncommon. Why do you exclude it from the mult speaker set and include it in the single driver crossoverless set? This would place, amongst others a Bozak coax in the same class as as a Lowther.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 20, 2014 at 05:58:13
AudioSoul
Audiophile

Posts: 4594
Location: north central AZ
Joined: July 9, 2005

I live in a small town in the mountains of Arizona and there are NO places to audition anything. I have owned several conventional speakers over the years and just recently acquired a pair of Tekton Designs M-Lore high efficiency speakers (93 db) that have a bass driver and are crossed over with a tweeter with just a cap. I like these Lores very much. I was just wondering what professionals think about these kind of speakers. You don't read much about high efficiency speakers in magazines. Just the higher end ones......

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 20, 2014 at 09:10:28
Joseph Crowe
Audiophile

Posts: 53
Location: Ontario
Joined: February 19, 2014
I think the general consensus is that they are legitimate contenders in the pursuit of excellent sound quality. I have both single driver and multidriver speakers, it depends on my mood which one I'll listen to! Combining a wide band driver with a super tweeter with a single cap is a solid design which provides very good integration and coherence. One of the challenges faced with no crossover is how to compensate for the loss of bass from baffle step losses. The Markaudio CHP-70 driver adds a little boost in the upper bass to naturally compensate for this. Other options include back horn loading the driver, or adding another driver with a 3.5mH inductor to fill in the bass. The common denominator being no crossover on the wide band driver. Arguing over what is truly a fullrange, multiway or whatever is just semantics and the whole debate should be avoided like the plague, I mean who cares?

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 20, 2014 at 10:12:10
zako
Audiophile

Posts: 935
Location: Mo.
Joined: March 29, 2004
BRIAN LEVEY,,BEING A LAWYER DISQUALIFIES YOU...

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 20, 2014 at 11:26:33
tomservo
Manufacturer

Posts: 8149
Joined: July 4, 2002
I am not sure this falls into the debatable category since words no more tell you what you hear than measurements do.

I can explain the mechanism which allows two identical measuring (magnitude and phase) sources, one a multi way and the other a single driver, to sound entirely differently.
A single tiny driver, mounted to a large flat baffle radiates as an acoustic point source. As a result, if went where there no strong reflections like outdoors and you measure distance X and measure it and then move the microphone to the side a little (at the same distance) it will measure the same.
If you take a conventional multi-way loud speaker and measure it at the same distance and then move it to the side, the measurement can have / usually has some significant differences. Multiple sources producing the same frequency as well as diffraction and operating a cone “too high” can all produce an interference pattern. When present, this can be seen in a polar plot of the system as a pattern of lobes and nulls.
While one might measure the same response from both speakers and they will sound very similar, in one odd way they can sound very different. If you close your eyes and listen to a soft voice through one speaker of each type, it will be easy to hear right to left where the speaker is BUT it is harder to “hear” how far away the single driver is because what reaches both ears is closer to being identical and so has no location information leaving the recording’s clues to dominate. A speaker that radiates more of an interference pattern is easy to hear “it’s there, about 6 feet away” as opposed to a vague “that direction, some distance away”. In other words, to a degree we can hear “how” a loudspeaker radiates and ironically there are no measurements for a loudspeakers “spatial identity” or lack of.
In stereo the simple acoustic point source has a more solid mono phantom image, in the ideal case, one can play a mono signal and it appears to be directly in front of you and you can’t hear the right and left speakers producing the image. Notice that in many recording studio’s, there are a pair of very small speakers right above the meters on the recording console. These are “near field” monitors mounted so that there are no room reflections until WAY after the direct arrival at the engineer’s head, usually less than a meter away.
The same thing is wrong with many recordings, they sample sound from too many places and usually place the location of each signal leaving at best a fair stereo image.
Best
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 20, 2014 at 19:31:02
thetubeguy1954
Audiophile

Posts: 6112
Location: Orlando, Fla
Joined: January 7, 2001
I'm not a professional anything, but I am an audiophile/music lover who's been involved with audio since I was 13. That's some 47 years now. So I feel I have some fairly extensive knowledge. In those 47 years I've used a myriad of 2 and 3-way speakers. At first they were usually 2 & 3-way dynamic speakers ---{way too many to remember them all but there were Large Advents, Genesis II, EPI, Boston Acoustics, DCM "time windows" and the last were Aliante Pininfarina Ones}--- However after about 10 years of traveling down the 2 & 3-way dynamic speakers in boxes path. Those box speakers eventually led me to a fork in the road. I then took the left fork and traveled the 2-way, dipole, ribbon/dynamic hybrids ---{ESS ATM-1 towers with a transmission line labyrinth, Original Carver Amazings, Monsoon FPF-1000, Fostex RP1001 and Infinity RS-2.5}--- until finally 8 years ago now I went with an 8" "full-range" driver in Sachiko double-back-loaded horns with a pair of Fostex T900a super-tweeters crosses in a 8Khz!

These speakers have me hooked. I cannot think of a speaker I ever previously owned or heard that I would prefer over my present Sachiko cabinets with Dayton PS220-8 with Rispoli treated cones. These Ps220-8 full-range drivers sound the best of any full-range drivers I've heard ---{Fostex FE206E, FE206ES-R, FE208ES-R and Lowther DX4}--- IMHO people who talk about all the supposed problems with using a quality single fullrange speakers either haven't heard a good single full-range implemented correctly or used with real high quality audio components! I can play a small 4 piece ensemble with these PS220-8 drivers and I hear all the delicacy, inner-detail, correct harmonic tone, color and timbre that one would expect to hear with a Reference level SET amp and high-quality full-range drivers. Yet on the next song I can play some Prog-rock like "Miracles From Nowhere" by Kansas at 100dB+ with amazing dynamics, transient response all the details listed above and absolutely no "Lowther shout" and not a hint of strain! The best way to describe their sound is to imagine listening to a set of Quad ESLs that have a 95dB sensitivity rating, but with better bass & treble extension.

I'm listening to Club de Sol by David Chesky




Thetubeguy1954 (Tom)

Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns --- High Sensitivity Speakers


 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 21, 2014 at 05:29:44
jsm71
Audiophile

Posts: 1123
Location: Cincinnati OH
Joined: June 16, 2011
The term professional only denotes that you are getting paid for your efforts. No opinion here qualifies including mine, but we're not influenced to praise something either just because we are getting paid. Absolute Sound has their annual buyers guide, but that is just an accounting of the gear thay have reviewed over the most recent years. There are tons of super products that don't make that list.

If you are trying to make yourself feel good about your purchases, that is simply a decision. Happiness is a choice, but it can be fragile. I have swapped out half of my system in the past because I heard a product that altered what my perception of good was. I was satisfied, now I'm more satisfied. It could happen again. Who knows?

If you are just curious about public opinion and looking to get educated, this is as good a place as any.

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 22, 2014 at 07:54:16
AudioSoul
Audiophile

Posts: 4594
Location: north central AZ
Joined: July 9, 2005

I am not trying to make myself feel good about my purchase at all. That came naturally. Now that I have tried a high efficiency speaker and like it I was wondering what professionals Ie. magazine writers speaker engineers think of high efficiency speakers compared to your typical multiway speakers.....

 

RE: Speaker Debates, posted on November 22, 2014 at 21:11:17
Paul Joppa
Industry Professional

Posts: 7294
Location: Seattle, WA
Joined: April 23, 2001
Re: "professional" here's my background: audio amateur from the age of 12 or so; acoustical engineer in aerospace for a career, now designing tube amplifiers to supplement my retirement but my first love is still loudspeakers.

It is clearly easier to obtain a desired measurement using relatively low-efficiency speakers and relatively complex crossovers. I fully expect some arguments on that - this is an asylum after all! - but as an overview I'll stand by it. I also readily admit that this approach is more cost-effective (smaller boxes) and that might affect the conclusion.

In the other hand, in my experience, a certain quality of naturalness and immediacy is lost any time you increase complexity or reduce efficiency. But reducing efficiency and increasing complexity can always reduce coloration and distortion (if done right). When I have done (DIY) speaker designs I have observed this with great regularity. Any "finished" design will end up making a compromise between these poles.

Beyond plausible but unproven theories, I have no explanation for the virtues of high efficiency and low complexity, whereas the opposite approach has plenty of supporting data. But as I said, I'm as much audio enthusiast as engineer, so I try to split the difference. :^)

 

Well said-nT, posted on November 25, 2014 at 07:55:02
Cleantimestream
Audiophile

Posts: 7542
Location: Kentucky
Joined: June 30, 2005
!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.

 

RE: Yes. nt, posted on November 27, 2014 at 11:53:54
Cpk
Audiophile

Posts: 1518
Location: PA
Joined: May 13, 2005
Z

 

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