it all depends on the musical instrument you need to hear most accurate. I have some lower model klipsch speakers that I swear I can eq/dsp to sound like esl's. but in doing that I lose other characteristics...like rock music kick drums....I say if smart enough and have some gear you can make the sound you love.
Horn listeners - Do you have trouble listening to others?
Hi peeps,
I just had an interesting experience out of my home. I listened to 3 pairs of speakers:
McIntoshMagicoSome unknown theater speaker during Aquaman
And one characteristic followed me: strident / glare
No matter which system played I heard them get glaring at high volumes. Like distortion rose rapidly. I'm wondering if this is because I have become accustomed to high-quality AMT tweeters which are remarkably free of distortion or dynamic compression.
The reason I'm asking you horn peeps this is that dynamic range is one of the main selling points for horn speakers. Do you feel uncomfortable in the same ways?
If so, this is good evidence that we are hacking our brain when we listen. That we are learning to hear in certain ways based on the gear we listen to.
Best,
E
I just had an interesting experience out of my home. I listened to 3 pairs of speakers:
McIntoshMagicoSome unknown theater speaker during Aquaman
And one characteristic followed me: strident / glare
No matter which system played I heard them get glaring at high volumes. Like distortion rose rapidly. I'm wondering if this is because I have become accustomed to high-quality AMT tweeters which are remarkably free of distortion or dynamic compression.
The reason I'm asking you horn peeps this is that dynamic range is one of the main selling points for horn speakers. Do you feel uncomfortable in the same ways?
If so, this is good evidence that we are hacking our brain when we listen. That we are learning to hear in certain ways based on the gear we listen to.
Best,
E
26 responses Add your response
I've recently learned that we have one neural pathway which conveys the electrical signals from our inner ear to the brain. We also have many (30? 40?) pathways coming FROM the brain TO our ears! Why? Good question. My guess is that the brain stores "templates" for what our eyes and ears are "expecting" to hear. Example: I was just listening to a recording with plentiful soundstage (first cut on "Ricki Lee Jones" first album). I could hear the initial reverb (I was preoccupied with something else) but thought there should be "more". I stopped doing what I was doing and focused only on the music. At this point, my brain was probably loading the parameters for "music with vast soundstage". Indeed, I did hear more "depth" and "decay" in the music. Then I found your post. Merry Christmas! |
I bought my first speakers at Radio Shack in 1972 by listening to everything they had. The only real option for a kid with a paper route back then. Several years later with a car and McDonald's money the best I could find was JBL L26's. Those lasted me until well after college. My best friend and college roommate had a pair of L35s. All through college we never saw or heard of anyone with anything better. The relevance here is in the beginning we both chose JBL because being in band we knew what actual live instruments really sound like, and the JBLs of the 70's were closer than anything else we could find. A good dozen years later though it wasn't live instruments we were around and using as our reference any more. It was those JBLs. Not that I was aware of this at the time. And so I went shopping, unaware that I was carrying this baggage around. Speakers had come a long way in those dozen years. Nothing I heard sounded right. Until I heard a pair of JBL L7s. I was in love! The dealer had the good sense and good taste to try and steer me to some of what I now am sure were much better speakers. But I was in love with that JBL sound. Less than a year later I'm with my wife listening to some remarkable tube gear and these weird Linaeum speakers. Weird looking but uncannily holographic, palpably real, unnervingly free of artifact, grain and glare. $2500, much more than I'd just paid for the L7s. Driving home my wife asked if I liked them. Yes. Next question floored me: Can we get them? We did. Now the really, really crazy part. Yeah, as if your wife asking you to buy even more expensive speakers to replace the ones you just bought isn't crazy enough! So I have these JBLs to sell. More than a month goes by, not even one inquiry. Finally this guy at work, he likes that they are very efficient, wants to come check them out. Still not the crazy part, but getting there. So he's coming, I hook them up. Put something on. Very low volume. Hardly anything at all. Softer than normal conversation level. Not sitting in front of them either. Just low background level. Only now that I was used to the Linauems, any volume at all from those JBLs felt like someone jamming an ice pick in my ear. I mean that literally. I do not mean they sounded bad. I mean they were PAINFUL! Its very easy for people to become convinced that bad is good. I know another guy, lifelong audiophile. First time hearing his system I went home with a headache. I do not mean it sounded bad. I mean it gave me a headache. Lasted for hours. The centerpiece and love of his life were some massive Krell mono blocks. Over the years he sometimes would buy a good piece of equipment. Every time he did this he would find some way of correcting his "mistake" and getting his system back to being exhausting and painful to endure. He was extremely dedicated to this. He was convinced he could build interconnects as good as any on the market at any price, because he couldn't hear any difference in his system. One time he was so sure he brought some over to show me, so I could hear in my system just how great they were. Only in my system it was night and day. He even admitted it to me. In my system it was very easy for him to hear not only the huge differences, but to hear that the professionally built one was miles better in every way. Yet I believe him when he says they sound the same in his. Long time later this was still a puzzle to him. He didn't like the answer one bit. He always considered his system much more resolving, neutral, pick your audiophile buzzword that means better than mine. Well then why can't it resolve the differences between two interconnects that are obvious with mine? I hope people get what I'm saying. We are prone to carrying around all kinds of preconceptions of how things should be. In a world so overwhelmingly complex we need this to some degree. It simplifies things. We need that. To some degree. Sometimes. Maybe even more than sometimes. But we could at least try and be open to the possibility that this is what we are doing. Just maybe there is more going on than we think. |
@Soudnsrealaudio I did. Hysterical. :) First 1/3 the underwater scenes looked filmed in a pet store tank. No one gets a good hair die. Reused props from Lord of the Rings And Black Mantis - Damn. The HUD display effects were right out of the 1980s. I guess atlantis never got past 320x200 16 color displays Aquaman in 1985 still watching a 1960’s TV And again, Black Mantis, the cinematography was just atrocious. Last, worst offense: No one in Atlantis can give you a decent hair dye |
@erik_squires -- ... I can’t quite follow the conclusive part of the above. Learning to hear (in certain ways), or seeking to attain particular traits (that are more or less inherently "correct" to one’s ears) that we’re then further accustomed to? I’d say this is an important distinction. To me it comes down to the process of discovering the least prohibitive aspect in the overall sonic presentation of a given loudspeaker, and I don’t find this to be a learning process as such - actually the opposite is true, I find. A learning process, where sonic perception goes, to my mind bears the distinction of trying to persuade yourself about something that you’d otherwise be more naturally inclined - as an immediate, synthesized feeling - to deem "false," in a sense. An audio or visual experience that may even approach an aesthetic ditto is all about being the least prohibited and having the feeling of being "washed over" of sensual stimuli; letting it come to you with your guards lowered and the mind at work as little as possible. This is why I find the better speaker is usually more able to elicit an emotional reaction to music. That’s the one core aspect I cherish about quality (all-)horn speakers, that they’re the least prohibitive to me. What this comes down is rooted in a range of traits, such as presence and warmth even, effortlessness, dynamic and transient capabilities, very little smear to the sound, overall sonic size (i.e.: big, but not unnaturally so), coherency, and an inherent sense of power or force, even at lower volumes. I won’t argue that many feel horn speakers (or more likely: horn hybrids) to be strident, nasal, colored or whatever, but I’d wager most of them haven’t heard really good all-horn speakers and that their frame of reference is limited or unfortunate. Another important aspect of horn sound, and that is very much part of the its core trait, is how horns actually couple the sound to the air as if the sound is somehow "connected" or linked to the medium, and effectively carried to one’s ears. Direct radiators often sound as is their sound somehow vanishes in front of me, and the energy of music is easily lost this way. It’s not that I’m really troubled listening to other speakers, I’m just not really involved - bored even. I’ve found a good way to assess whether your stereo, speakers not least, really appeal to you is to pay close attention to the reaction of your first impressions of the stereo having not listened to it for a while. Let it play at more than moderate SPL’s though for an hour or so while you’re out of the listening room, prior to this small "test." |
@erik_squires My GF and I have no troubles conversing while playing my system. Glare is not universal with any technology. Certainly not horns. I've heard some solid state amps that are glare-free too (considerably more rare). Glare IME is an indication of distortion- IMD or higher ordered harmonics, both of which aren't particularly pleasant. I like scyfy/fantasy a lot and read Aquaman comics when I was a kid but that movie sucked. |
AMT tweeters give me a headache. The sound of stressed plastic is fatiguing... @sciencecop IMHO, this eally depends on the quality of the AMT and the implementation to me. This is what Golden Ear speakers sound like to me. My AMTs at home sound nothing like that. I will say I’ve heard a few speakers lately that were not AMT’s but really liked to accentuate the reed sound of horns. Made it sound like the instruments were made of a food storage plastic container. Best, E |
@ erik_squires IMHO, this eally depends on the quality of the AMT and the implementation to me. This is what Golden Ear speakers sound like to me. My AMTs at home sound nothing like that. Can you give me a couple recommendations on ATM speakers to listen to? I auditioned a pair of Golden Ear speakers several years ago and as a result have completely dismissed ATMs form consideration since then. |
@schwartz36 I made my own speakers with Mundorf drivers, and the only other commercial AMT drivers I’ve heard were Golden Ear. The difference in quality was gross. As for what I would want you to listen to so you could get a better idea: ESS has the original AMT driver designs and are producing new speakers based on them. As far as I’ve read, they sound as good if not better than the originals, which never had the kinds of issues the cheapies had. I’d also be curious to listen to Legacy, Martin Logans. Perhaps the most ambitious speakers I know of with AMTs are from Gryphon. They use the same model of Tweer I do in a couple of their designs, but at $20K and up !! I can tell you that measurement-wise, the Mundorfs are superb transducers, not only with a smooth frequency response, but fantastic time domain behavior, very low distortion, and incredible dynamic range and power handling. Those are all characteristics which describe a world class tweeter. I’d put them up against the best Be or Diamond drivers anywhere. Best, E |
@erik_squires It depends on the sound you want from them. If they're too bright all them models have pots to dial them back, and if that's not enough, just put a wash rag behind them. It'll soak up more sound. I did a good bit of work to mine. The first gen models were roughly finished and the only ones with 10" alnico drivers. I sanded the top halves down and sprayed them with a few coats of black semigloss that exactly matches the AMT housing. I also went completely through the crossovers. Out went the cheap Mexican caps and in went a pile of nice Solen PP caps. That really changed the game with those. Placement is a little tough, but once you get them sorted out, I think they bring the best of electrostats to the game with none of the silliness that comes with gigantic radiating surfaces. I use spiked plinths with mine and those make a significant difference in terms of stiffening up the weak mid-range. I like them. |