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In Reply to: RE: How many horn speakers are truly "time/phase-coherent"? posted by genungo on October 06, 2015 at 08:23:03
Read relevant papers at AES.org and acousticalsociety.org.
HTH
:)
Follow Ups:
"It" does seem to matter to some people (or, they say they can hear the difference). I know that Floyd Toole decided that time/phase coherence was not a major issue, but right now I'm sort of on the fence regarding the subject.Having noticed sonic similarities shared by a couple of different coherent speaker designs I've heard, I'm sorta curious. The ones I've heard so far had a pleasant sounding but slightly peculiar "laid back" presentation. The reason for this, according to some, is that in a time/phase coherent design the high frequencies do not arrive at the ear ahead of the midrange frequencies and therefore, the highs do not seem to stand "forward" or apart from the rest of the wave launch - as they might do with non-coherent speakers.
All I know is that the sound seemed slightly disconcerting at first. Maybe my ears needed a bit more time to get used to the sound of time/phase coherence? Dunno...
If possible, I'd like to learn about and listen to a few more of these speakers before making up my own mind about the importance of "time/phase coherence".
Edits: 10/22/15 10/22/15
I'm not saying it matters or doesn't matter, or to what "degree" an offset must be in order to be clearly heard, or in what frequency ranges. All I'm saying is that there is some good science which suggests that we're not as sensitive to time alignment as some people think.
When a person goes into a listening session with the already-implanted mental suggestion that it does matter, then potentially any deficiency in the sound can/will be ascribed to lack of time alignment. This "pre-supposing" a cause is a common problem with subjective analysis in many fields, not just audio. It's the way we are, and only by being conscious of this trait and making an effort to evaluate other parameters can we hope to achieve some degree of objective analysis. That is what well-designed studies are designed to do.
:)
Problem is, people will often disagree on whatever it is that a "well-designed study" actually is.For example, Floyd Toole conducted his listening tests and decided that most people could not reliably discern "time-coherent" speaker designs from those that were not time-coherent and that there were other, more important, performance parameters that the speaker designer should focus upon.
OK, so far?
Well, certain proponents of time/phase-coherency would then make the claim that Toole's listening tests were probably flawed, in that Toole only employed college-aged pedestrians in his listening tests (no "experienced listeners" and/or professional musicians) who were probably not very good at discerning musically realistic sound from musically unrealistic sound.
Huh? Ha!
Thanks, but I think I'll try to do my own listening from now on, as much as possible. I don't think I want the published results of "scientific tests" and/or other people's opinions to skew my objectivity.
Edits: 10/23/15 10/23/15
It depends upon the purpose and goal of the study. A person can argue that it didn't cover this-or-that, but if their objection wasn't part of the point of the study, it usually doesn't matter. What matters is: Did the abstract of the paper or study coincide with what the researchers did in the study?Side issues always abound, but they may not be relevant to the point of the study, or they may suggest another study to legitimately explore other point(s).
The mere fact that someone says a study is flawed, and therefore not legitimate, doesn't mean it's so. This sort of thing often happens among competing "schools of thought". And then, of course, there's the qualifications and experience of the objector.
This is just one reason why "audiophiles" need to open a book or join the Audio Engineering Society (aes.org), and not just read magazines. A student membership is relatively cheap - something like $80 a year.
:)
Edits: 10/26/15
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