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In Reply to: RE: Dolby Atmos and planer surrounds posted by MG-bert on July 13, 2014 at 11:06:35
Nope, not what I meant, although it's understandable that you might think so. As you say, line sources are good at reproducing height cues, if they're in the recording -- basically floor bounce (Satie's theory and it makes perfect sense). Because a full-height dipole has no specific floor bounce of its own, it doesn't override the height cues on the recording. (It does of course bounce off the floor and ceiling, but the acoustical effect is to reflect and extend the line -- nominally to infinity, in practice, it's shaded by absoprtion so maybe 2-1/2 times the physical height of the line -- and the reflections are delayed a bit).
What I'm talking about are the height cues created by a speaker itself rather than the cues in the recording. That is, the pinnae (and to some extent the head and body) reflections comb with the direct sound and the brain is very adept at correlating the combing with source height, doubly so if the head moves vertically. So you hear the sound from a point source speaker coming from the height of the speaker, and a shorter line source, too, e.g., the sound from the MMG's seems to be coming from too low! Which always annoyed me.
Follow Ups:
Josh358:
Always learn something from your posts; many thanks!
As far as "So you hear the sound from a point source speaker coming from the height of the speaker, and a shorter line source, too, e.g., the sound from the MMG's seems to be coming from too low! Which always annoyed me." goes, me too! That's why I took the Gunned MMGs, which are designed to sit on the floor in a tilted position, but them up on cinderblocks and shimmed them to be almost vertical (an inch tilt-back seems ideal in my room) so it acts closer to a floor to ceiling line source.
The only lower (in height) speaker I've heard tilted back which DIDN'T sound like the soundstage was in the floor are the JansZens. Their setup in the audition room at DC Capital Audiofest last year had issues, but that aspect of their sound was impressive.
MG-bert
Interesting, I wonder how they did that? (JansZen, that is).
I raised my MMG's up too. Made a big improvement in image height and depth, but the bass goes to hell. Never finished my speaker stand which was to have had a piece in front to fill the gap between the bottom of the speaker and the floor, that might have helped some -- acting like a little wing of sorts. But then again, it could have had negative effects since it would have increased the effective baffle size and you'd also get an interference pattern between the speaker and its floor reflection where 2x the floor gap was greater than the wavelength in question.
Josh358:
As you know, the Gunned MMG has a lower panel which I suppose acts a bit like a wing. Could try extending the "wing" all the way to the floor, but I use the holes in the cinder blocks as a pass through for cables to and from the amplifiers, which sit on concrete pavers on the floor in front of the MMGs. In my room, the MMGs have a bump around 58 Hz, so my 1/3 octave EQ is set to reduce the FR at 50 and 63 Hz, keeping 40 Hz flat. As a result, my response is flat down to 50Hz, and down 3-5 dB at 45 Hz. Not bad indeed.
MG-bert
How much space do you have under the baffle? You can get away with a few inches . . .
Josh, you just reminded me of something that I had wanted to mention long ago. For the benefit of the ones that do raise their Maggies, pluging that whole, the way that you thought, IS the right thing to do. Bass will return in most cases.
Not plugging it was a mistake I made for a few weeks long ago when I first raised my MMG in a final manner. This had not shown up as the cause of bass loss in earlier tests because other factors hid it from me. So, at first I blamed the wrong factor.
Folks, if you use stands that raise the Maggies, cover that space down to the floor. You can test with cheap pieces of wood. Also, in many cases, placing absorption material on the back of this cover will be of further help. Let the baffle become larger...bass may not be the only thing that will improve (but that's a longer story).
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