I prefer the cat analogy. I love cats. If I visit you, and you have a cat, I will love your cat, but my cat is the BEST cat.......no matter what you say.
Talk but not walk?
Hi Guys
This isn't meant to start a fight, but it is important to on lookers. As a qualifier, I have my own audio forum where we report on audio issues as we empirically test them. It helps us short cut on theories and developing methods of listening. We have a wide range of systems and they are all over the world adding their experiences to the mix. Some are engineers, some are artist and others are audiophiles both new and old. One question I am almost always asked while I am visiting other forums, from some of my members and also members of the forum I am visiting is, why do so many HEA hobbyist talk theory without any, or very limited, empirical testing or experience?
I have been around empirical testing labs since I was a kid, and one thing that is certain is, you can always tell if someone is talking without walking. Right now on this forum there are easily 20 threads going on where folks are talking theory and there is absolutely no doubt to any of us who have actually done the testing needed, that the guy talking has never done the actual empirical testing themselves. I've seen this happen with HEA reviewers and designers and a ton of hobbyist. My question is this, why?
You would think that this hobby would be about listening and experience, so why are there so many myths created and why, in this hobby in particular, do people claim they know something without ever experimenting or being part of a team of empirical science folks. It's not that hard to setup a real empirical testing ground, so why don't we see this happen?
I'm not asking for peoples credentials, and I'm not asking to be trolled, I'm simply asking why talk and not walk? In many ways HEA is on pause while the rest of audio innovation is moving forward. I'm also not asking you guys to defend HEA, we've all heard it been there done it. What I'm asking is a very simple question in a hobby that is suppose to be based on "doing", why fake it?
thanks, be polite
Michael Green
www.michaelgreenaudio.net
2,135 responses Add your response
Hi bdp24 Shows how out of touch I am. I thought they closed up a few years back. They got a bunch of my goodies over in Nashville (same studios right?). I know he had several buildings. My main contact in LA was A&M so after they closed I mostly got calls from private in-home studios but not too many commercial. That area use to be wall to wall recording hot spots. Probably still is, and I know there's a lot of in-home stuff going on. mg |
| Post removed |
check it out Google uTube for it. I watched it. very short, stupid commercial. Way more interesting are the behind the scenes of the Victoria Secret models for that shoot in another video.BTW he was wearing the sort of clothing he usually wears. (sadly no Victoria Secret stuff with big wings and all. But who knows what underwear he wears??? Boxers or briefs? I have a feeling Bob is a boxer shorts kind of guy. |
From interview Dylan gave in 1965 at KQED : The criticism that you have received for leaving the folk field and switching to folk-rock hasn’t seemed to bother you a great deal. Do you think you’ll stick to folk-rock or go into more writing? What would you call your music? Do you think there will ever be a time when you’ll be hung as a thief? In a lot of your songs you are hard on people – in “Like A Rolling Stone” you’re hard on the girls and in “Positively 4th Street” you’re hard on a friend. Do you do this because you want to change their lives, or do you want to point out to them the error of their ways? If you were going to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose? Mr. Dylan, I know you dislike labels and probably rightfully so, but for those of us well over thirty, could you label yourself and perhaps tell us what your role is? |
As an addendum to my above comments about the spacing of planars from the wall behind them, 5’ or more is no guarantee that the resulting sound will be good. In 2018 I attended the U.S.A. premiere of the new Magneplanar MG30.7 at a retail location (Echo Audio in Portland Oregon), with Wendell Diller himself having set up the speakers. The 30.7’s were quite a distance from the wall behind them---about 8’, though the bass panels were only a foot or so from the side walls. The sound was surprisingly disappointing to me (I own Tympani T-IVa’s, of which the 30.7 is a reinvention). I don’t want to say any more about the sound, as the digital-only source material (streamed?) was accessed from a handheld remote controlled by the shop owner, almost all of it previously unheard by myself. The electronics were also unknown to me, and the room itself was completely untreated---absolutely no acoustic treatment. The room was constructed of what appeared to be cement, all the walls bare and very reflective, including of course those behind the speakers. Ridiculous! |
Corners are interesting. If you ever map out the room for sound pressure peaks, I.e., reflection points, echo locations, standing waves, etc. what you’ll find is that corners are where very high pressure standing waves set up. Using a SPL meter and test frequency generator what you’ll discover is sound pressure levels in room corners are often 6dB or more than the average sound pressure level in the room. |
I did a session at a studio in (coincidently) Studio City (in the San Fernando Valley, just over the Hollywood Hills from L.A.) and the engineer instructed me on where he wanted the drumset. That location happened to put the drum throne about 3’ from a cinder block wall, with my back to the wall. After the first "keeper" take the players went into the control room to have a listen, and I was shocked at how bad the drums sounded. All phasey and "discombobulated", the drums lacking body and tone, the cymbals way too "splashy" (they were very nice sounding Paiste 602’s). While the engineer reconsidering his mic choices, it occurred to me, based on my awareness of comb-filtering, that the cinder block wall might be the problem. I suggested I move the drumset further away from the wall, and the engineer, though dubious, obliged me. We did another take, and went in to listen. Problem solved! Audiophiles know wall reflections can greatly affect the sound heard in a listening room, but this recording engineer wasn’t aware that the cinder block wall would affect the sound of a drumset? How many recordings had he made with drums in that location?! At a different session (in Hollywood) a young engineer had set up the main mics, and was now considering where to place his "room" mics. When he stuck one right in the corner where two walls and the ceiling met, I knew the guy had no education in acoustical engineering. The corners, the worst sounding location in any room! I said nothing (you don’t want to get on the bad side of your engineer), and we did a take. Listening to the playback, with the corner-located room mic isolated (the engineer wanted to show-off his talents ;-), the sound was just horrid, like a speaker playing in a 50 gallon metal barrel! Instead of being proud, the engineer was embarrassed; he had revealed his ignorance of basic acoustic theory and the physics of sound. Learning on the job. |
Hi Glupson With anything it takes a few generations to go from hand adjustments to auto tune. But it's on it's way when listeners are ready. Might not happen in my lifetime but I've already designed the automated tunable room and system. I'm sure I'm not alone in this development. I can't imagine younger minds who have tuned are not already thinking how to incorporate what I have done into the next level. There aren't that many dots to connect when you look at auto-tuning for musical instruments. With the HEA generation the stalling point was when they took a detour away from adjustability, but as you can see that is quickly being reversed. Sometimes old school doesn't meet new school till an innovation is well into the mainstream. I personally enjoy doing the adjustments by hand much like a musician enjoys playing their instrument, and tuning that instrument to a room and other musical instruments. For HEA though the whole plug & play thing was so heavily pounded into the brains of listeners for so long and with such a cult like loyalty the mere mention of anything variable took away from their climb to the top of the marketing food chain. Tuning was always going to be the end game when it comes to music and electronics, but when you have a hobby that was so strong with personality types such as the EE generation produced, where numbers are God, you can see where the hold up happened and why. Think about it, we had a whole generation in this hobby who put measurement creating above listening. Numbers are a tool but they are not a note being interpreted by the human brain and senses. mg |
"At the end of the day, don’t get stuck on numbers." Numbers or understanding/developing calculations can help a person be more efficient. It is all really just patterns of interactions. They are numerous so they become inconvenient to predict, unless someone at some point puts them all together and comes up with a formula/algorithm/something that will take all of them into consideration. Until then, if it has not happened yet, we will be sticking planks on the walls and guess where they should be. And then repeat and repeat and repeat until we get the right combination. It may be fun as a hobby but it is very inefficient if someone’s goal is getting the result and not attempting to get the result. Of course, experience may shorten the experimentation, if that is one’s life calling. For those who do not have that much time, nice calculations would be way more useful. Other fields have gone quite far with such a mathematical approach. I am not sure that room tuning is that high on this civilization’s list of priorities so maybe that is why the current approach seems to be still 15th century. Having said that, I wrote it yesterday on another thread but it seems to be more suitable here, I just met a person who studied at the college for which Michael Green did some work on a music hall (or something in that sense). It was mentioned ad nauseam earlier in this thread. Be it what it is, this person, completely unbiased and not particularly interested in anything regarding audiophile topics, is very impressed with acoustics of that place and the sound that is experienced there. |
"as it brings to the fore problems of dogma, and the stuff folks just carry around.. preventing them from looking at problems in a fresh way." I've had clients first starting to tune completely in audiophile stuck world. They were being controlled by home brewed theories this hobby's "experts" wrote up somewhere and became fake facts. Once these same folks started to allow themselves to be their own experts their systems took huge leaps forward. I have some listeners when they come to one of my places, I just hand them the keys and I enjoy what they come up with and the way that they tune my systems to their sound. MG |
There was a mastering room I was doing some work on in Nashville. The engineer was remastering some SNL shows and had ordered in some new amps and speakers at the same time I was doing my thing in there. The guys from the speaker company and the mastering engineer were sold on the idea that for true staging there was a certain placement formula that needed to be used. Fine, wasn’t my gig so they did their thing and at the end of the day it sounded horrible. No one liked it, but they were determined to stay on course. A day or two later I asked if I could set things up for the heck of it, and after I got some dirty looks they said go ahead. 2 hours later it was like the SNL cast was walking through the room. Everyone was pretty freaked out and one guy super mad suggesting what I just did couldn’t happen :) I’ve been through this same thing hundreds, probably thousands, of times in person. Same thing happened when I was a mic tech. The only formula that works is the one you create. another Nashville example I was tuning up a drum room and the drummer kept getting mad at me the way I was doing the miking on the kick drum. He got stuck in his head that kick drums don’t have a note but instead are raw pressure. (guess he never met "sugarfoot"). It was a long day and every time we went into the control room you could hear the kick was out of tune throwing off the bass line. Stubborn as he was we ended up retuning the room and kick and mics together. You know how I fixed it. A little thing called a pressure box. A lot of folks in this hobby try to make full range speakers do what a room is telling them not to do. Right around 80hz and down panel speakers (all speakers) start to challenge the rooms walls density. One little move and the speakers will shift upward. You might get your staging just about right and then play another recording and there’s that range shift. People blame it on the recording or start looking for other components or start filling their rooms with traps, instead of realizing the walls in the room are having a conflict with the mechanics of the speakers. Somewhere in that room there is a pressure build up or the opposite keeping the bottom notes from fully forming. Major problem right? Nope, it’s actually an easy fix. You can get a professional Pressure Box made from me, but to take care of the basic problem you can make your own ported pressure box and move it around the room till it activates and restores the pressure in the room to balance. At the end of the day, don’t get stuck on numbers. Learn how the control pressure. And always remember, your not hearing the speakers, but pressure. Once you start treating your room like a speaker things get a lot easier. mg |
Going back to what MG wrote: ""
when you get out from underneath these audiophile prescribed myths. Keep
in mind that the folks making these myths are folks who themselves are
only theorizing. If they haven't gone and done they are doing the same
thing that the "talkers" here are. ... There's a big difference between drawing drawings and
talking theory vs actually doing.
"" . Which was the original start of this thread. When I wrote I did my speakers my way, not the theory of the 5m/10ms, seemed like the theory had to be defended by the person who mentioned it, rather than accept what worked for me, it just is someone's made up theory and I find it to not be of much use. (sure it is true 10ms takes 10m however in practical use, it does not correlate to a 5m distance from the rear wall) That is the thing with notions. Once you have them IN YOUR HEAD, folks tend to defend them, like personal property. So I really liked this thread.. as it brings to the fore problems of dogma, and the stuff folks just carry around.. preventing them from looking at problems in a fresh way. |
It’s a fluid situation in the room. The whole dynamics of speaker locations, listener position, the size and shape of the room and type and number of room treatments, among other variables, combine to determine the sound quality, all other things being equal. But as I pointed out in my last post, all this *uncertainty* changes when you employ the speaker set-up track on the XLO Test CD or similar Test CD. Using your own ears - move a little/listen a little - to try and find optimum speaker locations is bound to fail. You might find locations that you deem better than when you started but they won’t be the very best locations. There are a million possibilities. People get it into their heads that speakers should be far apart for a wider soundstage and toed in toward the listener. You will discover when using the Test CD that is actually not the case at all. Generally, most speakers should be closer together rather than far apart. In any case, for those who experiment with room treatment and other tweaks like vibration isolation, etc., you need to re-visit the speaker set up track *every time* to add or change room treatments or tweaks. Otherwise, things can easily get out of control. Complexity is not your friend. In fact, the best course of action - remove all room treatments from the room, and using the out-of-phase track as a guide, slowly introduce the room treatments back into the system, moving the speakers as required to get the best results from the out-of-phase track. Then, placement of diffusers, absorbers, Helmholtz resonators, tiny bowl resonators, crystals, what have you, is a snap. It also helps to have a SPL lever meter and test frequency track on hand to be able to map out the 3 dimensional space of the room to get a handle on where room treatments should be placed initially. For example, Tube Traps are sometimes best when placed a foot or two *away* from the room corner. It depends on where the standing wave sets up in a given room. There’s also the empty box trick for locating standing waves and similar sound pressure peaks in the room that can be employed. |
Hi bdp24, sorry! You’ve probably noticed by my writing I have a mild form of dyslexia. I use to enjoy having a ghost writer, then when I started my own forum and he passed away I was like, sorry folks! My writing skills make me laugh when I read back through but it makes for good humor for my friends to have something to tease me about. Also, I do enjoy reading your posts using your set as a reference point. Terrible player that I am I’ve had a few fairly nice setups and am like a kid being around drummers, their kits and talent. Your also correct that I’m not so much into diffusers. I’m more of a direction and zoning guy. Even though some folks call my SoundShutters a diffusion type product, it’s more of a wall zoning device. The Areoplanes are another zoning tool that some put in the diffusion camp, but they’re really about organizing the zones and not diffusing them. Have you ever seen one of my SS walls? I do work a lot with back waves and even build special SAM walls made to go behind panels. mg |
MG, I (bdp24, not dbp24; bdp for black diamond pearl---my favorite vintage drum shell finish, and 24 for the diameter of my bass drums in inches) intentionally didn’t include your acoustical products, fine as they are (I have your Room Tunes, Corner Tunes, and Echo Tunes), in my list of those to use with planars because I was speaking specifically in terms of diffusion of their rear wave. You don’t offer QRD or Skyline type diffusers, do you? |
Here's a little bit of the more (you can do all these tests yourselves). Do your echo tests. Did you know that a first reflection test only works if you are outside in a flat open area with one single wall set up? The size of the wall and frequency played at the wall will show you which frequencies actual reflect and reflect intact. As soon as a second wall is put up (attached to the first wall) the reflection is altered. Add a third wall and you will have the development of pressure zones as opposed to reflections. By the time you have 6 walls the frequencies that will reflect in the room are. Mid to high frequencies in an echoslap and selective high frequencies in a wall reflection pattern. Think about how far you can go, when you get out from underneath these audiophile prescribed myths. Keep in mind that the folks making these myths are folks who themselves are only theorizing. If they haven't gone and done they are doing the same thing that the "talkers" here are. I remember when Harry took his flashlight and came up with the first reflection thing. Cute, but it wasn't real. There's a big difference between drawing drawings and talking theory vs actually doing. mg |
Your almost there dbp24. 5 or 6 more years and you might be to the point of adding me to your list, lol. It’s tough isn’t it when you have this idea of someone in your head and your finding out they aren’t what you thought :) You’ll get there we all do. I want to ask you guys something and I don’t want you to answer with audiophile-isms. Instead of thinking about acoustics in such general terms why don’t you get more specific? The cool thing about acoustical, mechanical and electrical is how they are all part of each other. HEA has tried to make cookie cutters to make things easier to sell but in doing so they fail to cover the variables. Let me give you a few examples. In 1989 when I designed and built my testing facility we did several different structures with the same measurements so we could study the surface effect among many other topics. The first rooms were built on the same slab inches apart from each other. Same construction materials and even the drywall screw patterns were the same, and using the same tension per screw. We measured the rooms to try to get them as close as possible from a starting point. As a point of reference I used long time pals at Audio-Technica to do my anechoic measuring at their place in Akron Ohio in exchange for them visiting my tunes, plus 2 of them owned speakers I made for them. (nice to have friends) We tested many different variables in the audio chain and quickly came to the conclusion that at best testing is a snap shot approach to a continuum. This was nothing new as I came to the same conclusions in Atlanta in the early 80’s and further back in Miami and Europe in the 70’s. Audio is not a tape measurer and the more you experience audio the more you want to throw out the rule book and cut to the listening chase. back to the 2 rooms When we did surfaces testing in the two rooms we chose, there are a few things we did that might help you guys understand some variables. 1) when changing paint types the rooms performed differently 2) when changing temps and or humidity different sound 3) adding objects to the room, different again 4) different flooring, different sound 5) how long the signal played, different 6) changing the wall surface type (dry wall to wood to plaster) all different 7) diffusion, different 8) trapping, different 9) dampening, different 10) tuning, different The list goes on, but lets get to speaker placement. With any of the changes above (except for tuning) we found there was no two speaker locations that were the same. With any change, such as hard wood to carpet, the speakers’ locations changed. Even different brands of carpet and padding required speaker placement changes. We found that any and all speaker placement suggestions by the manufacturers to be completely off. We even went to the manufacturers facilities and found the recommended placements were not accurate. In the case of panel speakers, the difference in setup in a plaster walled house and drywalled house are completely different. We also found there is no such thing as "first wall reflection", the way the audio folks describe it. Rooms are mostly made up of Pressure Zones not Reflecting Points. Reflecting points usually stay within a paralleled echo pattern. Remember when I introduced the clap test. there’s more mg |
Geoff, once I had a way better sound quality (from adding the Furutech duplex... I noticed that female vocals were a little out of synch. like slightly fuzzy... I moved my speakers slightly to lock in a stable image. (actually no more fuzzy) Worked for me. From my previous location with the 3.6 Maggies I moved the new speakers at most a few inches forward, and angled more.It worked for me so well I have the exact distances* written down. So if I have to move them, I can lock them right back in.From side wall to closest point, from right farthest edge to rear wall, from left edge to rear wall. |
My 5’/10ms figure was suggested as the minimum distance a planar should be expected to need for anyone contemplating such a speaker. Of course reflections are more than a single line from the back of the speaker to the wall behind the speaker, and then theoretically back to the speaker, and then theoretically to the listener. The fact remains, however, that if you position a planar closer than 5’ from the wall behind it, there will be the very real possibility of negative consequences. If you have ten feet to spare, all the better! If you have less than five feet, you have been warned. I have had Maggies and QUADs 3’ from the wall, and have found 5’ to provide a definite improvement. I have never had 10’, but would sure like to! But remember, it is the 10ms delay between the front and rear waves that is important, not the 5’ distance. You can create that 10ms delay by any means you choose; if heavy tow-in causes the rear wave to reflect off more surfaces, thereby delaying its arrival at your ears to 10ms or more in relation to the front wave, great! By the way, that 5’/10ms figure was not pulled out of thin air, it is the inevitable consequence of the behavior of sound---physics, and the brains processing of sound arriving at the ears from the same direction but at different times. "Toeing-in" a planar speaker provides benefits in a couple of ways, one of which is to decrease the direct reflection off the wall coming straight back at the speaker; toe-in scatters the rear wave, but not as effectively and predictably as do properly designed and built true diffusers (RPG, ASC, GIK, DIY, etc.). |
The best sound and best stereo imaging will occur for the case when the most diffuse sound is obtained using the out of phase track. Assuming your system is in Correct Polarity to begin with. See last sentence. You should hear the sound coming from all around you, from no particular direction. When you get as close as possible to that situation with the system out of phase, after carefully moving the speakers a little at a time from an initial position about 4 feet apart, that’s where the absolute best speaker locations will be. Of course the out of phase track will also highlight whether your system is in correct or reverse Polarity, also nice to know. However, it might very well not be possible to obtain this magical case where the sound is coming at you equally from all directions, no matter where the speakers are. That’s because the room is not treated enough or not treated correctly. Fortunately, the out of phase track allows one to redo room treatments, as required, to have better success with the out of phase track. |
Rather than just guessing, I don’t know why people don’t adopt a sure thing. The out of phase track on Test CDs like the XLO Test CD is just the ticket for finding the absolute best locations for any speaker in any room. And with any level of room treatment, from zero to $20,000. As you improve room acoustics over time the track will allow you keep track and find the best locations as you progress. It’s fool proof. Hel-loo! Trying to calculate or guesstimate or move a little/ listen a little will not work. They will provide only local maximums. You need a guaranteed method. Trial and error methods are like trying to solve x simultaneous equations in x + n unknowns. Don’t be a cube, rube. Go ape! 🦍 |
(added ten minutes later: sorry about this rant. I just had to.. But it is nothing to do with the topic, other than thinking for yourself instead of just parroting other’s notions.) I would comment on the 10ms delay thing.. If one ONLY looks at the single line (instead of endless ones all way) from the back directly behind the speaker. But the reality is the waves travel away in all directions. So my 20.7 being 42" nearest, and 58.5" (they are angled in a lot) farthest from direct back wall line, are actually an infinite variety of distances! The shortest being 45" from actual tweeter location, varying up to about ten feet to the opposite side back wall! I just take issue with using a single measurement, then claiming it is the theory answer. Well it is not. The distance of reflection is changing all across the back wall as the reflections of the sound hit all along the wall and bounce every which way.. Now I do have to say perhaps the ’main’ reflection is the angle from the rear of the speaker to the wall to the space between the speakers at the listener... However the percentage of the total surrounding sound from that tiny little line is pretty small. (if you calculate the actual space, vs all the space as a fraction.. Maybe 0.25% (guessing) of all the sound from the back.. and IMO is lost in the mix. So the made up rule of five feet is just that made up to fit a theory, which theory used in the rule of five feet... IMO is wrong. So the distance planar speaker should be from the back wall... may be anywhere from a few feet, to whatever sounds good... relying on made up theory is not good unless you think it through yourself. Way too often it is just repeated malarkey someone thought made sense.PS the ’five feet’ seemed to suddenly appear just a few years ago. Prior to that everyone was 2 to 3 with 3 being considered best. Then, suddenly the 10ms thing popped up and the five feet became the suggested distance. all based on the theory of 10ms and the first reflection. and nothing to do with actual use Like someone invented it and it suddenly became popular... Just whining.. feel free to "harrump" in disgust that anyone would dare to challenge a theory. |
One thing I can contribute to this discussion happens to be where the subjects of planar loudspeakers and technical facts (at least those posited above by kosst) overlap. Though they are my over-all preferred design, there are very valid objections to be made against planars (as kosst has done), and reasons to not like them. That’s fine. But there were some statements made about planars that are simply not true: 1- ESL’s and magnetic-planars should not be grouped together in terms of the load they present to the power amp. ESL’s have an impedance profile that varies wildly as a function of frequency (fancy term ;-), magnetic-planars (Magneplanars, Eminent Technology LFT’s) do not. ESL’s are an extremely capacitive load, magnetic-planars an almost purely resistive one. Consequently, ESL’s and magnetic-planars present very different challenges to power amps. That’s why Roger Sanders makes two versions of his Magtech amp---one for ESL’s, one for magnetic-planars. 2- Planars interact with the room in very different ways than do non-planars (or, more accurately, non-dipoles), but some of those ways are actually advantageous. For instance, as a result of their line source behavior, dipoles interact less with the room in terms of ceiling and floor reflections, a potentially good thing. Additionally, because of the cancellation to either side of a dipole (where the front and rear wave meet out-of-phase), planars create less side wall reflections, and the eigenmodes created by the room width dimension are less excited by a planar than by a non-planar, both again a potentially good thing. However, the rear wave of planars presents a number of challenges to users. To prevent comb-filtering (too complicated to go into in depth here), planars need to be well away from the wall behind them. Three feet has long been considered the minimum, but that has been found to be insufficient, five feet being much better. Five feet creates a 10 millisecond delay between the front and rear wave (sound travels at roughly 1’/ms)---5’ from the rear of the speaker to the wall, 5’ from the wall back to the planar. 10ms is considered the minimum time required between two acoustic events for them to be perceived as separate events, rather than a smeared single one. The rear wave reflection itself can be dealt with either by absorption or diffusion, or a combination of both. A "too lively" room may benefit from absorption, a "too dead" one from diffusion. |
'technical facts'.. There were NO technical facts in your post to 'comprehend'.. Just lots of quasi-rants. And the one true fact: You do not like planar speakers. Then the attack on MG, and your scathing words, oddly also apply to YOUR OWN ARGUMENT. "Going sideways' Which for YOU is arguing about a particular design of speaker, and has zero to do with MG's discussion, but serves you with a way to rant on about stuff which in the context of the thread have no meaning. Mainly because you do not like the guy, and just are searching for anything to whine about. And finally no one would expect anyone to own equipment they do not like. LOL |
| Post removed |
I've never had the opportunity to hear Maggies or Soundlabs,though I would love to after reading owners descriptions.If I ended up with a pair sounds like it would be quite the aesthetic challenge:)I like my living/listening room to look good and sound good.On the other hand it's pretty much a dedicated room now but furnished so any visitors will feel comfortable(I think:) |
I have a one bedroom apartment. It has a kitchen, bath, bedroom and the music room. Nothing else needed. Music playback IS my living and breathing (room) The music room is perfect and aesthetically pleasing in an audiophile kind of way...(I keep the 2,500 LPs in the bedroom, the 2.500 CD shelving lines the little entryways) At least folks know right off playing music really means something to me. No hiding that. |
I sure miss my Soundlab M1 speakers. They were spooky real and so natural sounding. Very special speakers and I have owned many. I have to say they are at the very top of my list. So musical and meaty. However, thry just take over a room aesthetically. That is the only downside I can think of. I lost my dedicated room and just no way these will ever be in our living room. I will never forget the wonderful music they produced. |
At least it is true Magnepan are a 'love them or hate them' sort of speaker... I am glad I upgraded from 3.6 Maggies to the 20.7s last year. The best upgrade to the sound is midrange clarity. (I was worried the bass would be too much, but I have been able to generally keep it tamed, (some Rock is earphones only though. I live in a 'over 55' complex.) Upgrading the AC duplex to Furutech GTX added a lot to the sound quality. |
@kosst_amojan Your last post says more about you than the person you are aiming your flamethrower at, in this case MG. His questions get right to the heart of the matter at hand, and you failed to answer. To generalize about the sound of all planars is pretty worthless. To say you don't like them and mention that you almost bought a pair is pretty worthless. To say, "They don't sound realistic and they have serious dispersion and room interaction issues." is worse than worthless, it's just plain wrong and does a disservice to the OP. My Sound Labs sound more realistic to me than dozens of other speakers I've owned(e.g. Nolas, Silverlines, Vandersteens, Thiels, Von Schweikerts, Avalons, Quads, Alons, Merlins to name a few) and hundreds more I've demoed. When it comes to serious room dispersion and interaction issues, that varies widely by brand/model. Sure some are "head in a vice", like the old InnerSounds. But the Sound Labs have some of the best measured in room off-axis response you will find. Just a few days ago, a friend who does room acoustical analysis and treatment professionally was here measuring performance of the Sound Labs with his testing gear. He measured on and off-axis at 15, 30 & 45 degrees at 3ft, 5ft and listening position(12ft.) using his omni-mic and pc software. He told me that the off axis performance in room was better than most dynamic speakers and far superior to a pair of planar Apogee Stages + sub that he recently measured. Granted, this is in a treated room with a combo of bass traps, absorptive panels and diffusion set up in Live End/Dead End fashion as recommended by Dr. West at Sound Lab. Some of the results are attributable to the benefit of working on the room, but much of it is because Sound Labs and many other dipoles are less affected by side wall, floor and ceiling reflections than most other speakers. Granted, impact of the wall behind the speakers is great and the wall behind the listener does somewhat come into play. So you've got to attack the wall behind the planars with great amounts of absorption and ideally a bit of diffusion. That's a bit of my experience measuring and listening to planars. So instead of throwing shade at everyone, why don't you share what you've measured, what you actually listened to and what you learned from putting 2 + 2 together? That might actually help someone, including the OP. What I anticipate is a snarky reply belittling me or pretty much everyone. Please prove that assumption wrong. Cheers, Spencer |
Hi Mikey! What an irrelevant set of questions! This kind of questioning gives great insight into your complete lack of technical knowledge. Highly reactive speakers are tough loads to drive. That's just a fact. Lots of reactive speakers sound good with the right amp. I don't personally like planar speakers. They don't sound realistic and they have serious dispersion and room interaction issues. Many are also unreliable and require somewhat frequent and expensive rebuilds. I almost bought a pair of Maggie's a few years back just because they were very cheap, but opted not to. None of that has anything to do with their electrical behavior though. |
I don’t want to leave out Maggies and the others either. When I read people trying to criticize the sound of these great speaker designs I shake my head, because for those of us in the know, we have actually lived with the exchange and interaction these have with the room. Once you have not only learned but have created the interaction yourself there’s a knowledge (wisdom) that puts you in a club that goes way beyond "talk". Listening to a Maggie setup incomplete for the skilled Maggie listener is like ringing the dinner bell for us. Why is simple, we’ve been there. Those triggers go off in our heads and our mind’s eye is redesigning the room cause we know "that" sound is there and it’s just a matter of unleashing it on the room’s acoustics. This is the one place I say to Hombre "be careful". If you are just going to throw your speaker into the room you may not get that magic you mentioned earlier. You could very well place a speaker in the room and get that magic or you could just as easily open a can of worms that might take you out of the fun listening game for months or even years. That’s why I asked, if you’ve got perfect consider the risk of moving away from perfect to something that might require some serious adjusting. Again it may not, but I’m glad to see real (active) users jumping in. They could very well save the day for you, as well as talking to the designer themselves. man, what a sport! MG |
Hi Spencer I've owned many of the speakers above, at least one from each camp except for Gale's latest speakers (I'm sure they're great too). On top of the lists above I've owned many other panel type brands. I too have a special place in my ears for Roger West's products. I've owned the A2, A3 and Dynastat and to this day am pulled into a room when Sound Labs are playing. I even did a couple of my CES rooms using the A3. As a note of audiophile history my RoomTune design was developed in a room with Roger's speakers. Other speakers were involved too, but the Sound Lab/Room interface was the actual room out of my 9 listening rooms at the time that hooked me on knowing I needed to design RoomTune. As with all speaker rooms, the speakers and the room are one and can not be separated. The Sound Lab is one of the best examples of this and the rooms I have tuned to Roger's designing have been some of my favorite audio adventures. The Sound Lab even helped me decide on some of my RoomTune TunePak shapes and sizes. That unmistakable tone to Roger's speakers is like no other. The tone is easy to change but that certain hollow halo sound that the Sound Lab can make is unique (in a positive way) and credit to their character. The richness in the body of acoustical instruments is a trait I have stolen from his sound. It's that sound inside of the instrument that Sound Lab does so well. You hear the baffle board or casing of the instrument, then that air inside and then the back or other side of the acoustical instrument, then of course the cushion of air around. Is there a better panel type speaker for this, I don't know but Dr. West nailed it. It's not an automatic trip but tuned it's a slice of heaven. MG |
Hombre, I think you need to start looking at actually measurements instead of taking a guys opinion as fact. Virtually all speakers are designed to be driven by voltage sources which is why virtually all amps are designed to be voltage sources. Dynamic speakers definitely don't act like resistors. Most are moderately reactive and many are very reactive. A speaker that's acting like a giant capacitor is a VERY reactive speakers by definition. Capacitance takes current to drive, and as it does so it rotates the phase of the current demand away from the phase of the voltage. Very capacitive loads aren't easier to drive. They're require more feedback in the amp to control. |
Elizabeth, you rock Girl!!! Hombre I think you've landed on some great folks to help you on your quest! This thread in particular was made so we as a community can get to that practical experience so many of the posters here are able to supply based on their actual doing of the process. That's golden in my book and does the hobby (bdp would rightly correct me saying lifestyle) up righteously. The "walkers" here you will find have some awesome collective experience. It's not that any always agree but the fact that these guys & gals are able to share beyond quoting someone else or true or false possible "what if" theories. I think this thread has taken on the meaning it was meant to have. My thought is, a forum like what is happening here on Agon has more value than even an audiophile magazine when the community is harnessed and each is able to share at a "doing" level. This doesn't mean that any of us will stick to our, for now, opinions forever. But, what it does is gives real accounts based on real life conditions, both historically and modern innovations. Reading the last three post Elizabeth, bdp24 and sbank wrote, you can just see the experience dripping off their words. To me this is what this is about. As a collective we can do so much more. this is rich! mg |