Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.
Return to Planar Speaker Asylum
69.167.9.84
In Reply to: RE: Here you go posted by Satie on July 09, 2017 at 12:16:35
Satie, what do you mean by "time behavior of reproduced music is harder to get right.."? (as perceived, reproduced?) And "issue of transient hearing being much more resolved..."? (bold is by me)
I do get the transients part as it relates to older ears preferring more, probably compensating for the HF loss. I even see it with my friends, and steer them on their audio purchases accordingly.
And after we clear this up, there's my own worry to keep my ears balanced enough as I age. The hope is that, as I lose too much HF hearing, I'll still retain enough of the spatial perception which allows me to keep enjoying great sound stage with 3D imaging. Along with other SQ attributes, this would be great even after I start missing the top end. (I have not yet seen any research on this spatial perception of music as we age. If I am wrong about this...Klipsh La Scala, here I come! :)
Follow Ups:
Localization is largely a matter of transient perception which are very short events like a breaking branch or a crunched dry leaf. They do not have pitch information - and where we can distinguish localization down to 10us of ITD - and better than 0.5degrees of the horizontal arc for clicks and note onsets, our pitch hearing (sine wave) localization is as bad as 15 deg of the arc. So in those terms spatial resolution is 30 times better for transients than pitch. But we also use phase and timing differences in pitch to obtain depth or distance perception like from floor bounce.
Transient hearing is mostly concerned with very short transients due to onset of sound before pitch develops, typically they are single sided positive pressure high slew spikes followed by relaxation and are 10-30db stronger than the steady state sound that carries pitch. Rise times go from 10us (0.01ms) for some percussion and brass (also have the greatest crest factor) to 200us for bowed strings, which also have a continuous string of transients which are part of the tonal texture.
We perceive the pressure event straining the cilia along the cochlear spiral and time the pressure wave going through. The cilia don't resonate (yet) and since the delicate small high pitch ones are at the end of the path, their stiffening up and lack of ability to resonate only affects transient perception mildly and more so for small ones than for note onsets of loud instruments.
Because the time scale is so much shorter than that of our pitch perception and it is mostly about timing, then group delay in speakers and feedback in amps can smear the transients or cause them to fall out of time. Low pass filters also affect them - but for 1st order linear phase ones where the time aligned drivers will preserve the transients. Apogee and Eminent Tech chose to leave the mids without a low pass and ease in the tweeters at a high frequency, I do the same now in order to preserve the spatial performance of the Neo8 line array on its own without missing the sparkle and extension of the ribbon. ..
CD resolution misses on the shorter transients and mistimes them with wrong rise times and smearing from the prefilters. Analog, and particularly direct to disc does a better job of preserving the transients DSD and 24/192 are pretty much sufficient to give some differentiation between note onsets of an ensemble. Sony touted this transient performance in its marketing of DSD for archiving and later as SACD.
Thanks, Satie. That did the trick greatly. I did have to eat my whole lunch bar just to fuel the brain cell into making the figuring, but that's what a spare chocolate bar is for. :)
I am sorry that my reply was a little condensed. The explanation was put together over a few years of research into audiology papers and a few audio papers and lots of conjecture that was later confirmed by bat cat and rat audiology studies. I assembled the explanation over a couple of years of argument on other forums and emails and took some 500 discussion posts. I created a fuller more coherent explanation that fills out 3 pages but am waiting for more documentation to close it. So I tried to condense it into as short an explanation as I could.
If you want me to expand on any point then I can do so.
No need for an apology, on the contrary. I was actually surprised that someone was able to cover the key points so well and briefly for such a complex matter. It delivered the goods just fine. Kudos! And thank you.
Moving on to (lighter) related subjects, Aceinc mentioned that the shape and side openings on the M-T-M enclose were meant to play a role. It may not be obvious in my pictures but the upper enclosure is not really rectangular.
I need to ask him to elaborate on this but, perhaps you've seen this approach before? I have not, but then again, neither have I found Neo's in M-T-M configs.
Thanks.
Re openings in the "wings" are a practice from other dipole speaker makers including Genesis Nola and Legacy. Though I don't know how these are designed to do their jobs but that they are there for sustaining the dipole null and its contribution to the acoustic roll off and the positive effect on clarity due to the elimination of the air spring behind a thin diaphragm driver by those vents.
I should point out that Janszen ESLs do incorporate an air spring in their ESL designs where the panels are loaded by an enclosure. They extol the lower distortion this produces vs. open baffle ESLs but are criticized for slightly lesser detail and clarity compared to dipole ESLs.
Similarly, VMPS loaded their planar drivers with an enclosure in all but one design for the same reason and have a bit less clarity and detail because of this - my observation.
Finally, the Neo3 tweeters have far less distortion with a closed cup, but lose some of their "magic" when applied this way, vs. dipole operation.
LOL, as soon as I saw "Nola", I remembered the side openings on the Nola Baby Grand Reference I heard a few years ago, though they are fully rectangular.
Saties mention of direct-to-disc LP's brings me back to the day I first heard one, and what a startling thing it was. I was hearing not only the lack of analog tape recorder distortion (of all types, including the all-important smearing in the temporal domain), but it just so happened I heard that LP on Magneplanar Tympani-I's! The first "full" range planar loudspeaker I had heard, though I had heard the great RTR ESL tweeters in the ESS TranStatic I, as well as the Infinity Servo-Static ESL speakers.
It was the second Sheffield album---The Missing Linc (Volume II). Normal LP's sounded positively anemic after hearing that LP---the transient attack, the "aliveness" and immediacy of the Sheffield LP, showed how much damage was done to the signal after leaving the recording studio input pre-amps. Not just the recorder, but all the electronic outboard gear the signal is processed through, as well as the mastering stage of LP production. As much better as some things have gotten since that day in the early 70's, there is STILL nothing that sounds as live as a good direct-to-disc LP.
I remember listening to those recordings on my AR-11's. By the time I had my 1-D's, digital was happening and the emphasis has shifted to things like the Telarc 1812 -- also spectacular, but missing the purity of the Sheffields!
I should say, the AR-11 were something else at the time. In those days, I had a love/hate relationship with the New England Sound. Then, I heard the AR-11 and things changed.
You've may have seen me talk about the Telarc 1812 LP several times along the years. In its own league, it was spectacular. I even pre-ordered pairs of woofers in preparation for what would sooner or later happen...boom they went in pieces, yeah baby! The one thing I probably never mentioned is why I kept ordering those same woofers.
The very same woofers that could take 1812 cannons on for only a few plays, were requisite for top SQ on the finer recordings. It was because of Sheffield, Mobile Fidelity, the direct-to- disc and other exceptionally well made LP recordings. Better power rated woofers could not deliver what these more accurate woofers could.
So, when you mentioned the "purity of the Sheffields" my mouth still watered with those delightful sonic flavors. So good, that I could not sacrifice them for a more powerful woofer, for more Telarc 1812 "cheap thrills".
Which - come to think of it now - is really what most of us decided by going for planars. First and foremost more of the purity, then the rest.
Yep. Growing up. For me the revelation was in college when a friend scored a pair of KLH-9's. I'd been kind of proud of my AR-11's, but this was a different experience entirely -- detailed, natural, airy, three dimensional. I bought my 1-D's sight unheard, and never looked back.
But really, those 1-D's could rock! I blew many a fuse listening to the 1812. The IVA's can play loud, but they sound more stressed and you have that ribbon tweeter to worry about.
Right out of college and having already known that I will one day be a planar man, I was still pretty much the kid out for cheap thrills on my symphonic spectaculars. So JBL Centuries is where I went to get them. A tweeter upgrade to Yamaha NX1000 beryllium domes made for a great improvement towards resolution, but left me with a very dynamic mid and somewhat ripe midbass. Still very exciting. I still had delusions of obtaining a CLS resolution and imaging and dynamics of an Altec VOT with the tight bass of a multiwoofer tower in one speaker at some point in the future without swapping my house for it.
LOL, Satie, right out of college I was not that mature, or smart enough. Still unfamiliar with planars, and even dipoles, I pretty much had given up on finding something "good enough".
You spend your life living with live music almost every day and as a result become a slave of it, in a real way. Box speakers, at that time, had been a major compromise for me. In my philosophy of those days (and still today) they were an additional instrument. One that you ADD to the music, inevitably turning it all into something else. Enjoyable, yes, but not close enough to the real thing. The very good speakers did help you evoke some of the good moments, at times. But the illusion never lasted long enough.
Years later I learned about planars. And later still, long story short, a pair of Acoustat 2+2 visited me for 2 weeks on demo.
Suddenly for me, the speakers were trying very hard NOT to be part of the music. Well, I grew up and matured STAT!(pun intended :)
Then I wanted to cry like baby when the owner decided to keep them after all.
Ahhh, yes! Direct-to-Disc, better vinyl, half speed mastering, improved electronics...all coming together for the briefest of times before the CD spoiled the party for a good while.
One could not go buy these at the local records store. Typically, we had them mailed in...and not from Columbia House precisely, LOL. Pricey and very scarce, us 3 friends found different ones from Sheffield and others, and alternated to listen together at each other's home. Hardly any loaners; by their nature, the direct-to-discs were limited editions. "You wanna listen to this one? Let's get the beer, wine and some spicy chicken wings for the after-listen party."
Anyway, that was at the peak of the (1st) LP Era. Of course, you and I were babies at the time :)
I heard one in the day and it was stunning. It had real dynamic range that was actually used in the mastering and pressing, as opposed to CD, which might have the potential for better dynamic range but hardly ever has it, as everyone masters it to a -20db standard whereas to capture the full dynamics without compression or cutoff you need to record below -30db..
Satie, I am going to go mostly with what Josh mentions, for I heard it and it could also get a bit ugly. However, I wish the technology had matured enough to avoid the pitfalls.
Like you, I was blown away by some of the recordings. At a time when my audio gear could not possibly take advantage of it, a colleague owned the right dbx and associated gear. All in a small room, including several well-made 18" woofers, a superbly isolated turntable and power to spare. The system could even make one deaf with its lack of distortion at high SPL.
Man oh man, I know what you mean, THAT really showed dbx's might!
I never actually heard a dbx disc.
It still galls me that recordings are compressed when there's no need for it. If they are going to compress them, there should be some kind of record of the compression so that you can undo it if you want. Also, an accurate level reference to allow playback at natural levels or meaningful loudness compensation if you want to listen quietly.
My audiophile mentor was my music teacher and he was a big dbx fan and used the expander liberally (when playing the DQ10 + sub in his tiny studio - as opposed to the Quad 57) he learned to tune the dbx parameters by ear starting with levels suggested by Decca engineers who recorded his orchestra. I probably heard more dbx encoded discs there, but I only had definite knowledge on the one. Playing non-encoded discs he was clever enough with tuning so that he could get it to the point of barely perceptible pumping while the dynamic range was greatly expanded.
I had a Phase Linear Autocorrelator. Subtler expansion so no pumping but not as dramatic an effect!
So, you could not resist some of the dark side charms either, huh? :)
I am taking a break from soldering to have a beer. I've gotta finish this test circuit config (on the PLLXO high pass) and restore the system in time for Game of Thrones. starts this evening. This, of course, is by wife decree. She likes the intro music to be as beefy as can be...me too.
Hmmm . . . I haven't heard the Game of Thrones music yet on anything bigger than my Monsoons. All should change soon but not tonight, I got a little roll-around sit/stand desk for my monitor and keyboard which means moving the computer, and my current cables are in the wrong place . . . so can't listen or watch until I get that all figured out.
The good news is that now that my HTPC has a real home I have my work table back and can get to work on the delam.
So enjoy, and whatever you do, don't tell me what happened!
That recordings can be made which sound so different from each other is where art comes into play. (Pun intended.) 'Mercury Living Presence' and 'RCA Living Stereo' made made decent sounding recordings before the persons responsible for the current technology were born.
Some of my favorite recordings were made in the 50's and early 60's. Simple mic techniques and reasonable sounding tube electronics.
Norman, I fully agree. Those folks made some terrific recordings of many great concert performances! I no longer have a serious LP system but, decades ago, some of those LP's brightened my days in special ways.
In fact, old as they are, some of their master tapes became fabulous transcriptions into SACD. In just 2 channels, some can display sonic imaging that commands and builds its own huge hall, far larger than the room, often with "visuals" included. Some also capture details and textures that more modern recordings missed.
Just this morning I ordered another SACD copy of the one linked below, for a gift. Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" is not light music, even masterfully directed by Charles Munch. However, when played on a planar system, I've seen a teen's eyes widen in amazement, and then refocus them on some of the orchestral elements staged way outside the room boundaries. Then you hear the question you've been asked before, "Did you say 1955? My father wasn't even born then!"
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: