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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Re: Disagree posted by JeffMO on July 23, 2002 at 13:19:35:
Take any of the Nautilus series. They have been engineered to produce ruler-flat on-axis response (as are all B&W speakers). On-axis they do sound "honest" to the source material (painfully honest as far as some are concerned). Unfortunately, most listeners listen in the far field, a little bit off the reference axis. The off-axis response of the N-series suffers, particularly around the upper crossover point. This creates gross tonal balance differences between the on-axis response and off-axis response (i.e. phasiness). This is not good (and not what you would expect in a "top of the line" product). Some individuals are more sensitive to phasiness than others, but its difficult (for anyone) to avoid big changes in tonal balance with position (with this series). You only get ideal tonal balance in one position - so be prepared to lock your head in a vise for the duration of your listening session.Getting the upper crossover right (flat response - drivers working in phase, wide dispersion or at least dispersion matching adjacent frequency bands i.e. even power response) is fundamental to the success of any loudspeaker. It's the starting point for every design - step 1 in the design. For B&W to deviate from this standard recipe indicates design by a (very) different set of standards.
Also look at that kevlar driver (used in most B&W models). It allegedly shrinks as it works higher in frequency (avoiding the break-up modes and cancellations of traditional drivers). Yet, it only approximates this ideal behavior on the reference axis. Off-axis, these drivers are displaying problems with break-up modes leading to uneven response around the crossover point. Their response becomes more and more chaotic, the farther you move off-axis. Usually, you get response cancellations in the off-axis break-up zones which the ear would perceive as "politeness." Yet, move your head just an inch, and your ear could be zapped by a response peak. Ouch! This is what many B&W haters report (without really knowing what the phenomenon is). This chaotic off-axis behavior is not good.
A company this sophisticated could abandon the kevlar gimmick and chose better behaving drivers and engineer better designs overall. The reference should be live music, but right now it seems B&W are engineering speakers that will sound impressive to the most people (to non-audiophiles); speakers that are voiced to sell (but not necessarily measure or sound accurate). I think B&W can do better, and I don't think it will hurt their bottom line to voice speakers for accuracy. Then again, with a large volume company (a mass marketer) that may not be entirely true. So, B&W have an identity crisis. Do they go the way of the consumer mass marketers (like JBL) or do they stick to their specialist, audiophile roots? The choice would be easy if I were running the company. I would stick to my roots, but I definitely see that as these companies get larger and larger, the pressures to go mass-market increase dramatically. In my opinion, there are enough mass marketers to go around. B&W should perfect what they do best (providing a quality product to audiophiles).
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Follow Ups
- Identity Crisis - layman 14:46:40 07/23/02 (5)
- Off-axis response - grblgrbl 06:58:22 07/24/02 (4)
- Re: Off-axis response - layman 13:58:01 07/24/02 (3)
- Re: Off-axis response - grblgrbl 09:18:45 07/25/02 (2)
- Re: Off-axis response - layman 13:02:43 07/25/02 (1)
- You are a marvelous wonder among lesser beings - grblgrbl 07:09:43 07/29/02 (0)
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