Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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Re: "loss of sharpness in transient attack"

Posted by David Aiken (A) on March 27, 2007 at 23:05:34

In Reply to: Re: "loss of sharpness in transient attack" posted by SoftwireEngineer on March 26, 2007 at 15:46:33:

I posted a reply to this but it doesn't seem to have "stuck".

The circuitry in an active sub introduces a small amount of time delay, plus there's the additional delay in arrival time if the sub is further away from you than the main speaker. What that means is that the sound from the sub is always lagging behind the sound from the main speakers. If there's a big enough time lag, you notice the sub as a separate source, in the same way that you notice an echo as coming from a different location to the original sound. If the time lag is too short to be discernible as a separate source, it still 'blunts' the attack of any transients with frequencies in the sub's range. You need the sound from the sub and from the main speakers to arrive almost simultaneously in order to avoid this.

Locating the sub near a main speaker, or at the same distance from you as the main speaker may not be enough, depending on how much delay the sub's circuits introduce.

Phase correction won't fix this. Getting the phase right will affect the overall volume of the sound since the more out of phase the sub sound is, the more cancellation of the main speaker's sound will occur. The problem is simply that if the sounds from all speakers don't arrive together and aren't far enough apart to be experienced as an original sound and echo, the duration of the transient attack phase is going to be increased and that's going to affect how you perceive the attack of the transient.

David Aiken

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