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High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
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High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
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In Reply to: Question for genungo and anybody else familiar with Sonist speakers posted by jec01 on January 29, 2015 at 07:49:03:
"Most of my listening is shared with my wife, so neither of us is sitting dead center between the speakers (more like the 30 yard line). So "head in a vice" imaging will be an issue for us."There is a type of setup which, with the right kind of speakers, can give you a very wide sweet spot.
First a bit of background: The ear localizes sound sources by two mechanisms, arrival time and intensity. With normal speakers in a normal setup (little or no toe-in), this leads to the image being pulled hard to the near side for off-centerline listeners because a) the near speaker "wins" arrival time and b) the near speaker "wins" intensity because the off-center listener is more on-axis of the near speaker and correspondingly farther off-axis of the far speaker.
A superior setup geometry (we'll get to the speaker requirements in a minute) would be like this: Very aggressive toe-in, such that the speaker axes criss-cross in front of the listening position. Let's look at what happens for an off-centerline listener in this case: The near speaker naturally "wins" arrival time, but now the far speaker "wins" intensity, because the of-centerline listener is on-axis of that far speaker! The two localization mechanisms largely offset one another, such that you still get a decent soundstage between the speakers even from well off the centerline. You no longer have the images pulled hard to the near speaker. Not every off-centerline location is equally well served, but all of them are considerably better served than with a conventional set-up.
The key to this working well is the speaker's radiation pattern. The sound pressure level has to fall off fairly rapidly and smoothly as we move off-axis, otherwise there is not enough intensity difference to offset the arrival time of the near speaker. In my experience a constant-directivity waveguide or waveguide-style horn with a 90 degree pattern in the horizontal plane, crossed over to a fairly large diameter woofer at the frequency where the woofer's pattern has narrowed to 90 degrees, is the formula for success.
A fairly large woofer + fairly large horn or waveguide are needed in order to get good pattern control well down into the midrange. Small woofers and tweeters have radiation patterns that are too wide to work well with this cross-firing setup.
At audio shows I usually have at least one listening seat set up way outside the normal listening area, like not even between the speakers. After he's been there for a minute or two, I like to ask the person in that seat how the tonal balance and soundstage are. They are always surprised by how listenable it is from there. I've had reviewers decline an invitation to take the center sweet spot because it sounded good to them from way off to the side like that.
Credit to Earl Geddes for this idea.
Duke
Me being a dealer makes you leery?? It gets worse... I'm a manufacturer too.
Edits: 01/29/15
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Follow Ups
- Sweet spot width - Duke 22:14:35 01/29/15 (2)
- RE: Sweet spot width - jec01 04:03:14 01/30/15 (1)
- RE: Sweet spot width - Duke 00:21:32 01/31/15 (0)
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