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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: Better drivers and no cabinet. posted by Bill the K on March 24, 2024 at 09:07:52:
If the target is to enjoy the sound, that is entirely subjective and not strongly dependent on the accuracy of the reproduction but more so on circumstances. Boom Boxes were popular for that reason just as the wide variety of loudspeaker types and sounds and radiation patterns..
If the goal was to make it sound like there was a person or instruments actually in front of you (with a suitable recording) and not be aware of the right and left loudspeaker, that is a much much more difficult task that involves producing an illusion with a small enough level of corruption.
Since side and rear reflections are not part of the illusion in the recording, speakers that do create a stronger image tend to be physically larger because directivity is related to size.
This i believe is one of the missing links that the late Dick Heyser was looking for, a connection or map between what we hear and what is measured.
I used to make electrostatic speaker in the 80's and at one point my old boss asked me to "fix" his esl-63's. I was sort of horrified because they were not cheap and eventually all of my home made speakers died trying to be louder.
After i clipped the protection spark gaps, i spent two days sitting on the floor in front of them in awe.
At 4 feet away, they were plenty loud but the jaw dropper was it sounded like the sound came from behind the speaker. The design was a synthetic aperture made of rings driven sequentially so that although it was actually flat, what it radiated was that of a point source located some distance behind the actual speaker.
I was floored that i was hearing that, all my flat and curved ESS panels did something like that but this was a specific point and in stereo it was closer to real.
So fast forward consider we hear more than we think. Take a multi-way loudspeaker, unless the drivers are within 1/4 wavelength or less at crossover, they radiate as independent sources (if you reverse one, they do not cancel each other out like they do less than 1/4 wl).
Normally there is some "minimum listening distance" before those sources appear to be one speaker.
But if one takes a good SMALL full range driver on a large flat baffle and eq's it to have the same spectrum as the multi-way(sans bass).
One finds that while they have a similar spectrum, they differ in a weird way playing one at a time and in stereo..
With your eyes closed, it is very easy to identify the direction of both types of speakers but with one it's easy to also guess how far away it is while thee other sounds far -or- close, depending on the recording. The speaker has spatial identity or at least that's what i have been calling it.
Point is, loudspeakers radiate or can radiate enough spatial information for your ears to easily triangulate the location in depth while a simpler source radiates less of that information (and so what reaches the right and left ear facing the source is more identical.
In Stereo, the right and left speakers standout in the image or disappear or somewhere in between depending how much of that spatial stuff the speaker radiates.
In hifi, the more well know things are mostly re-radiations where there is a change in profile before the wave has formed. Absorption around a tweeter is an example of trying to kill those radiations as are rounded corners and the famous baffle step compensation. All of those represent changes in the acoustic impedance for an expanding wavefront and potential points of re-radiation.
Heck, proper horns are a way of controlling radiation until the wave has formed and can continue at that angle, the multi-way horns at work are a way to make all the ranges combine into one radiation, a different way of doing that the esl-63 did.
Hope that helps
Tom
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- RE: Better drivers and no cabinet. - tomservo 03/26/2410:45:45 03/26/24 (0)
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