How and why hobbyists can beat out professionals

[soundminded]

I haven't consdered myself an audiophile in a very long time. Long gone are the days when I'd go shopping at audio stores looking for equipment to buy or just listen critically too. I don't even go to trade shows anymore. I no longer held out much hope of hearing something that would excite me to the point where I felt the state of the art had become so much more advanced, it was time to rethink my equipment wants and shell out big money for new. But time marches on and as luck would have it, in the last few months, I've heard three contemporary sound systems which cost $2000, $10,000, and $25,000. Now understand that I haven't remained idle over all this time, I've been tinkering...and listening...and tinkering... and listening...to both lots of live music and recordings. And it has made me a much more critical listener than I ever was. So what happened with these three sound systems? The cheapest was a surround sound system made by a very famous mass market producer I heard at a store in a shopping mall. I suppose it was intended mostly for movies but as an enhancement to music, I didn't hear much improvement over the quadraphonic systems I heard 30 years ago. The overall impression was ho-hum fair, music in a box but nothing to write home about. The second system was an audiophile's home system which he admitted he hadn't set up too carefully. It had the obligatory satellite speakers costing $1000 (2 way 6") $500 worth of stands, and a single 10" acoustic suspension subwoofer costing $1500. It was missing about 3 octaves of upper bass to lower midrange so typical of audiophile loudspeakers today. With a tube amplifier, it sounded (surprisingly) bright but a $3000 solid state amplifier at least smoothed the high end. It was also ho hum. The third system was a very expensive one in a new high end audio store which just opened near me. It featured a full range hybrid electrostatic speaker system costing $10,000 a pair all by themselves. I counted at least 5 major frequency response errors. Also very disappointing and nothing I'd trade for.

All this made me think, why should I be able to far surpass what people with hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in test equipment, fancy laboratories, and research money achieve in my little home workshop? And then it hit me. While they have all that, when it comes right down to it and you look at what is ultimately most important to have for this kind of work, I have something at least as good as they do, my ears. In fact, after all this critical listening, I think mine are better. I have begun to wonder not only if audiophiles ever listen to live unamplified music but if speaker manufacturers do either. Would a truely accurate sound system be commercially successful? Probably not. And then I realized I have other advantages over the big guys, I don't have to produce something for a market, or meet a deadline, and I am free to explore things they would never even try. Now when I think about it, I see why I and anyone who is really devoted to this hobby can beat the pros, our ears can be at least as good as theirs and we don't have to give up before we are satisfied with what we are designing.

[kkantor]

Naturally, I see the situation somewhat differently. The teams that design loudspeakers for a living tend to have very good and well-practiced listening skills, in my experience. Successful professional loudspeaker designers have better hearing, (and better ability to relate what they hear to the correct factors), than even a serious hobbyist who might listen only a couple of hours a day, to only a few different products a week.

I know this will get people's hackles up, but it is what I think. Darwin weeds out pros who can't make consistently good listening decisions, while hobbyists just argue and call each other names... In addition, we can buy our materials for a tiny fraction of what a hobbyist can.

But there is one critical advantage that the hobbyist has, that the pro can NEVER beat: personally optimized choices. Any loudspeaker design, at any cost, embodies countless engineering tradeoffs. The pro must make these in a way that pleases a sufficient customer base, with certain music, assuming certain rooms, etc. You, on the other hand, are free to build something that is exactly what you want, within your budget.

[Guest Joe2m]

I think both replies have merit. Producers and designers of speakers do have excellent ears and yes, they do have to make compromises. The advantage is clearly in those of us who buy a system an customize it to our own taste. Even here there are compromises. Bugdet, size (and composition) of the room , shape of the room and even the the exterior design of the speakers themselves have to be taken into consideration. That said, the best sounding system is the one that you think is the best sounding system.

From a technical standpoint that may sound silly, but you have to listen to them and if they don't sound good to you then it doesn't matter what they sound like to others. I personally, like the New England sound of the late 70's amd early 80s the best. If you don't need to brag about how much you spend on your system, you can find very capable speakers made in that era on EBay for fraction of the price you are going to pay on new systems. And if you are slightly brave, you can even upgrade the crossovers or make improvements on the cabinent design (i.e. internal bracing). I agree with Huw Powell that technological advancements in speaker design has hit an assumtope starting in mid 60s.

If you can spend 20,000/pair or more on speakers more power to you. But vey good speakers can be found used from a $100 up. That is the savior for those of us that like music. For those of you that like to brag, well they make speakers that will gladly accomadate your taste as well as your snobbery.

[soundminded]

>Naturally, I see the situation somewhat differently.

I would be surprised if you didn't.

>The

>teams that design loudspeakers for a living tend to have very

>good and well-practiced listening skills, in my experience.

>Successful professional loudspeaker designers have better

>hearing, (and better ability to relate what they hear to the

>correct factors), than even a serious hobbyist who might

>listen only a couple of hours a day, to only a few different

>products a week.

That would be the conventional wisdom and what one would expect. But it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Such as why do so many speakers sound so awful, not like real musical instruments at all? Do most designers have as a goal, reproducing the sound of musical instruments accurately or are they pandering to the current tastes of the market as they see it? Why have there been such a huge proliferation of models and why so many from the same people. If they are getting better at it, why isn't the sound of them converging? I know that there is this arguement about preference and differences in hearing but that makes no more sense to me than suggesting that people like different types of visual distortion in camera lenses and that they should therefore be deliberately incorporated in their design. When you actually look at most of what is on the market, do you ever get the feeling that the same relative handful of design paradymes are being copied over and over and over again in a million different variants of the same idea, each one proporting to have an exclusive magic bullet? With one guy it's a tweeter whose cone has less breakup or less propagation delay, with another it's a slight twist on crossover design, with yet another there might be less cabinet resonances but in the end, doesn't it often boil down to tweedle dee and tweedle dum? If actual designs were getting better, why would so many audiophiles keep trading sideways or tweaking using every magic bullet advertised from little spikes to special wires and why would loudspeakers like AR3a be sought after for anything more than nostalgia?

>I know this will get people's hackles up, but it is what I

>think. Darwin weeds out pros who can't make consistently good

>listening decisions, while hobbyists just argue and call each

>other names... In addition, we can buy our materials for a

>tiny fraction of what a hobbyist can.

There is no arguing that manufacturers have access to lower prices but then they have overhead costs to worry about, deadlines to meet, and other financial pressures of running a business hobbyists don't have. Manufacturers of even some of the worst performing equipment seem to go on and on forever and when they die, they seem to be replaced by others just as bad. Selling in this market often has more to do with marketing skills than performance. The market despite its conception of itself is often naive and inexperienced. Listening to the Van Schweikert VR1 and the Martin Logan Summit was surprisingly disappointing. I figured they'd do much better than they did.

>

>But there is one critical advantage that the hobbyist has,

>that the pro can NEVER beat: personally optimized choices.

>Any loudspeaker design, at any cost, embodies countless

>engineering tradeoffs. The pro must make these in a way that

>pleases a sufficient customer base, with certain music,

>assuming certain rooms, etc. You, on the other hand, are free

>to build something that is exactly what you want, within your

>budget.

If you read the very interesting interview recently cited here with the technical director of Revel, he revealed among other things that they had been approached by many people wanting to know if they would be producing a model more expensive than the Ultima Salon costing about $20,000. Apparantly there is a very high priced niche market out there looking for products. That must mean that at least some people are dissatisfied. How disappointing when you've spent $20,000 on a pair of loudspeakers.

As for what I want, it's merely what everyone promises but rarely if ever delivers. I have my AR9s at one end of my listening room, a grand piano at the other, and numerous violins and violas in between. What I want is for the sound coming from the end where the speakers are to be close to the sounds from the rest of the room. And belive it or not, with enough tweaking, sometimes they are.

[Guest kaiser_soze]

Hi all. I'm new to this forum, and this if my first post. I find myself in agreement with a lot of the comments being made here, but I tend to side more with soundminded.

To give you some idea of who I am, I studied physics in college in the '70s, and while I wanted to own a pair of Advent speakers from early '70s, I didn't buy a pair until the early '80s. Right before Jensen bought Advent, there was a short period when Advent was evidently selling off inventory, presumably in an effort to raise cash along with their value in the takeover by Jensen. I happened into a store that had a significant quantity of Advent product, and I bought a pair of the 5012 model, which I believe was the last variant of the "Large Advent" before being taken over by Jensen.

Back the topic at hand. Soundminded said several things with which I can identify. For example, to best of my recollection, every electrostatic speaker that I've ever listened to had very obvious frequency response anomolies, and that goes for headphones as well.

From soundminded's post:

"...why do so many speakers sound so awful, not like real musical instruments at all?"

I can identify with this frustration. One of the trends that started about twenty years ago, was the use of metal tweeters that had very obvious and very annoying resonances. That is not to say that all speakers using metal tweeters necessarily have this problem, but the reality is that at least 90% of the ones that I have heard do have that problem, including some very expensive ones. I recently listened to some very expensive speakers by Paradigm, which are highly regarded by many audiophiles, but my reaction was that it was one of the worst sounding speakers that I had ever heard. This is not just my personal opinion. The frequency response measurements reveal these resonances, and on the rare occasions when you find spectral decay plots for these tweeters, it is very easy to see those resonances, where at a single frequency, the persistence of the acoustic energy is perhaps ten times as great as it is at nearby frequencies. I have not seen a spectral decay plot for the Paradigm speakers, and I suspect that this is not an accident. The testers generally rely on speakers being loaned from the manufacturer, and it would not be in Paradigm's self-interest for them to permit their speakers to be tested by anyone who would likely subject them to such a test.

But the part that baffles me, is why so many audiophiles like these speakers which sound so awful? If they can hear differences in speaker cables as they allege, why can't they hear the inescapably awful ringing in these tweeters?

"Do most designers have as a goal, reproducing the sound of musical instruments accurately or are they pandering to the current tastes of the market as they see it?"

I think that when a particular speaker sells successfully, they emulate the sound of that speaker in their subsequent models. They'd be fools not to. When listening to speakers for short periods of time, many people evidently appreciate the treble being elevated by perhaps as much as 6 dB. Because they buy speakers that have that sound, manufacturers such as Paradigm make speakers that sound that way and they aren't particularly concerned with the resonances because they don't have any reason to believe that it will hurt the sales to the audiophiles who buy their speakers, and the resonances may in fact make the speaker sound more like what the audiophiles want.

"If they are getting better at it, why isn't the sound of them converging?"

That is a very good question, and I have asked myself that a lot. In the ideal world, the engineers would all have agreed by now on a theoretical ideal, and all speakers would be converging toward that ideal. I think there are two primary reasons why this has not happened. First, as discussed in the preceding paragraphs, in a market driven by audiophiles with bottomless pockets to pay for stuff that doesn't really have much to do with accuracy, engineering can't afford to emphasize accuracy. Second, and less important, there remains a lot of disagreement among engineers as for what matters. For example, there is the debate over time and phase coherency. The predominant school of thought is that preservation of waveforms in the time domain is a meaningless pursuit. That school of thought seems to be supported by serious investigation into whether humans are capable fo hearing phase shifts over frequency. Yet, there are still some engineers who are emotionally attached to the idea that a loudspeaker must preserve waveforms in the time domain. They go so far as to use short square-wave pulses to show how speakers that are not phase-coherent distort the waveform. The Linkwitz-Riley crossovers that require the tweeter to be connected with reverse polarity in order that both drivers operate in phase with each other at any frequency near or far from the crossover frequency, are criticized because at 20kHz, the tweeter will be almost 180 out of phase with respect to the low bass frequencies, which severly distorts the pulse waveform, when you look at it visually at least. But notwithstanding what you see when you look at the waveform in the time domain, i.e., on an oscilloscope, there just isn't any scientific basis for believing that this form of "distortion" is audible, and there is strong scientific evidence that it is not audible. The view that this sort of time-domain stuff matters, is entirely a presumption, that is not derived from scientific investigation into how we hear. The square wave pulse that is needed to reveal the time-domain distortion clearly on an oscilloscope, would be virtually impossible to produce using actual musical instruments with professionally trained musicians. Yet, this highly educated person who should know better (http://www.musicanddesign.com) seems to have a large following.

"If actual designs were getting better, why would so many audiophiles keep trading sideways or tweaking using every magic bullet advertised from little spikes to special wires and why would loudspeakers like AR3a be sought after for anything more than nostalgia?"

The audiophiles are constantly selling off the equipment that they bought a few years back and buying new stuff. I've been listening to the same pair of Advent speakers now for 22 or 23 years. They have weaknesses, but because I have a precise understanding of what those weakenesses are, I am able to make an informed, rational judgement whenever I consider replacing them. The audiophiles rarely understand the differences between the speakers that they are presently using and the latest and greatest new speakers that they have read about in Stereopile. If they happened upon a speaker perfect in every way, with a perfectly flat frequency response and zero distortion at every listenting position no matter the volume, even if they happened to like the sound initially, as soon as something that looks cooler and shinier and sexier comes along and gives them a woodie, they would put the excellent speakers that they already own up for sale on Audiogon.

[Wally]

Hi Kaiser and welcome,

I have several sets of Paradigms and a couple of pairs of Advents. A pair of the second generation large Advents, ones in the real wood finish cab with the rounded front edges. The 4002 is a slightly smaller cab with the same woofer and a newer dome tweeter.

My Paradigms are Titans, Phantoms and Studio Monitors. The Phantoms and Titans are discontinued and were part of Paradigm's second tier of speakers. The discontinued Studio Monitors are large 3 ways, 2 8 inch woofers, 5 inch mid and a 1" dome tweeter. The Titans are a 6 1/2" woofer with a dome tweeter and the Phantoms are an 8" woof with a dome tweet.

Now to my point. All three sets of Paradigms sound better than either set of Advents which are decent. The large Advents have an annoying mid peak and the 4002's are tizzy in the high end. All of my Paradigms are very even in their response without any obvious anomalies in the mids or highs. The Titans of course don't have as deep bass as the Advents but excellent bass for such a small speaker. All three Paradigms sound much cleaner than the Advents at any level. The Phantoms have excellent tight and deep bass, better imaging and again more even response across the audio band with no obvious or annoying anomalies. This pair never ceases to amaze me because they were inexpensive much like the Advents were in their day. The Advents probably go a bit deeper than the Phantoms but they have to be on the floor or against the wall to beat the Phantoms which are on 24" stands a couple of feet out from any boundaries. The Phantoms bass is tighter and you can hear the growl of standup bass strings on my jazz records where the Advents sound a little bit like someone is picking the strings with gloves.

Now to the Studio Monitors. I'm not using them much now because they need to be 3 feet away from back and side walls for flattest response and my current listening room is too small to set them up permanently. In any case, these floor standing Monitors are about 40" high and weigh about 80 lbs each. They clean the Advents clocks in every way. They go deeper, bass is cleaner, mids and highs are very clean with no harshness and more extended high end than the large Advents, Although the (high end) 4002 is close it seems overly bright or tizzy so it may just be the way it's voiced. Not a fair comparison because the Monitors are 3 ways and they cost $1600 back in 1995. Still, the Phantoms were about $250 in the late nineties and that would have made them about equal to the price of the Advents in the 70's. The newest Paradigm I listened to was several years ago. It was a powered model 20 I believe it was called and they were awesome for a speaker with a 6 1/2" woofer but they were about $2000 if I remember correctly.

As a matter of interest my Monitors came with textile dome tweeters but a couple of years later the new monitors had metal dome tweeters. I was able to replace the domes to 'upgrade' my monitors. This was NOT a Paradigm sanctioned upgrade. I was disappointed in that the new metal (aluminum) domes didn't sound that much different than the textile domes. No obvious improvement but they don't sound shrill or harsh or have any obvious peaks that I can hear. I'll see if I can get a pair of the original textile domes for my tweeters and I'll report back what difference I hear since I did the swap several years ago

I like my Advents but if I could only keep one of these five sets of speakers it would be the Phantoms or the Studio Monitors.

Now Pete B has designed a circuit that does Baffle Step compensation and apparently deals with the midrange peak in the large Advents but I have not tried it yet.

I am currently listening mostly to vintage AR speakers which I find more even in their response than the Advents but they are all 3 ways. I have not compared the 2 way AR4x's to the Advents though or the Dynaco A25x's or Boston A100's. Something for another rainy day.

Bottom line. I'll have to get in to my old dealer to check out the new Paradigm's that you didn't like just to see how different they are from the ones they made a few years ago. If you can remember the model number or describe them would be helpful.

I'm not bashing the Advents because I have owned and admired them since the 70's. They were amazing value in their day and still pretty damn good but they have been surpassed by more modern speakers. I am surprised at your comments regarding the new Paradigms. I've always been impressed with the sound and value of Paradigm speakers, but maybe they too have succumbed to 'marketeering' like too may hi fi companies have. Too bad.

[kkantor]

This is a fascinating subject and I'm glad it came up. I'd like to give a full treatment to it, but not at midnight on Saturday...

Let me just plant a few of my opinions in your head, so you can think about them. Then I will post a longer diatribe over the coming weeks:

1- I'm judging speaker designers by the best of the breed, not the average shill. If you want to study the history of art or music, you usually look at the special talents and great thinkers, not the hacks.

2- It is a myth that one can "reproduce" a spatially and temporally complex 4-dimensional soundfield via a 4:2:4 transform. In other words, recording is lossy compression. All you can do is choose your poison, when it comes to making up the missing information.

3- A meaningful error term may be defined with respect to non-transductive devices, such as amps. No such metric can possibly be quantified for a loudspeaker, even theoretically. Thus, the ability to create any desired physical response from a speaker continues to improve, but the impact on perceptual realism is at the point of diminshing returns. So, the concept of performance "convergence" is non-operative.

4- Music changes, recording styles change. Speaker design is at the mercy of these things. There has never been cooperation, and there probably never will be.

5- Many audiophiles think that some companies, eg- Bose, are producing poor products. But this misconstrues the very idea of making consumer products in the first place. The gourmet might as well claim that McDonald's doesn't know how to cook. That is silly. McDonald's simply has different goals, and sets out to fulfill a different set of customer desires. Who is the arbiter of correctness? Should all movies be documentaries? How boring.

Of course, the vast majority of companies do produce mediocre products!

[soundminded]

>This is a fascinating subject and I'm glad it came up. I'd

>like to give a full treatment to it, but not at midnight on

>Saturday...

>

>Let me just plant a few of my opinions in your head, so you

>can think about them. Then I will post a longer diatribe over

>the coming weeks:

>

>1- I'm judging speaker designers by the best of the breed, not

>the average shill. If you want to study the history of art or

>music, you usually look at the special talents and great

>thinkers, not the hacks.

>

>2- It is a myth that one can "reproduce" a spatially

>and temporally complex 4-dimensional soundfield via a 4:2:4

>transform. In other words, recording is lossy compression.

>All you can do is choose your poison, when it comes to making

>up the missing information.

I assume by 4-2-4 you mean recording four channels compressed into two for storage and then re-expanded to 4 on playback. In my own experiments and calculations, I now believe it may be impossible no matter how many channels you have (N-N-N.) Certainly recording and recovering 4 channels is inadequate because the reqirements of recreating the spatial and temporal components of the reverberant field being highly diffuse and having a very low angular gradient are entirely different from those of the direct field which are tightly sourced (when they are far away) as a function of angle and have a very high angular gradient from the perspective of the listener. Since at least four separate channels are needed to reproduce the reverberant field to get an array of scalar fields to simulate a vector field, and the requirements of reproducers for the direct field are entirely different from those needed to reproduce the reverberant field, 4 channels is clearly not enough. Furthermore, there is no parctical way to record the reverberant field without getting the direct field at the same time through the same microphones and therefore no way to separate them out. One solution which has interested me (for the last 32 years) is to regenerate the reverberant field through resynthesis by solving the problem of the acoustic energy transfer relationship between the field radiated at one point and the reverberant field resultant at another. By this method, it should be possible to recreate any seat in any auditorium under highly controlled and contrived conditions by recreating that particular relationship electro-acoustically. In the real world of home sound reproduction, just getting a sound field similar to any auditorium would be a tremendous improvement over what we now have.

>3- A meaningful error term may be defined with respect to

>non-transductive devices, such as amps. No such metric can

>possibly be quantified for a loudspeaker, even theoretically.

>Thus, the ability to create any desired physical response from

>a speaker continues to improve, but the impact on perceptual

>realism is at the point of diminshing returns. So, the

>concept of performance "convergence" is

>non-operative.

What a depressing notion. We can characterize and control electromagnetic particles and fields virtually invisible and all but conceptually infinitesmal to the degree where creating a recognizable image on a color television screen is today about as self evident as the wheel and where we can confidently accelerate subatomic particles in an atom smasher to very high speed and energy, force them to collide, and determine from the aftermath what they were made of and what they became but we can't characterize the acoustic field of a loudspeaker transducer and accurately compare it to the field produced by musical instruments it is intended to recreate. How frustrating. IMO, this is still a very primitive art. One area which has been little explored as far as I can tell is the geometric properties of the way sound waves are launched, their interactions with rooms, and the resultant fields heard by listeners. Speaker designers talk about dispersion, room resonances, and then all but walk away leaving it at that. I think if they looked at the geometric radiating patterns of musical instruments and then at their own products, they would design radically different speakers performing very differently and much better. And on top of that, what little control the end user had to adapt the performance of sound systems in his own room, tone controls and presence and brilliance controls has largely been taken away from him, reducing many to look for substitutes by experimenting with different wires and the like, all at a time when the possibilities for adapting performance to environment are cheaper, more accessible, more measurable, and more predictable in their effect than they ever were. Let's face it, the paradyme of the two way or three way direct firing loudspeaker system with or without a subwoofer has been exploited to its limit and now the designers are banging their heads up against the ceiling of that limit, one I don't think they will successfully break through.

>

>4- Music changes, recording styles change. Speaker design is

>at the mercy of these things. There has never been

>cooperation, and there probably never will be.

All true but hearing doesn't. Two sounds are either perceptably different or they aren't. If high fidelity's goal is still to reduce the differences of sound produced by music and sound reproduced by recordings to imperceptability, then the problem remains the same. if it has changed to some other goal such as generating profits by pandering to the current whims of market taste then one sound system is as good as another because there are no objective ways to predict which equipment will achieve its goal and which won't.

>

>5- Many audiophiles think that some companies, eg- Bose, are

>producing poor products. But this misconstrues the very idea

>of making consumer products in the first place. The gourmet

>might as well claim that McDonald's doesn't know how to cook.

>That is silly. McDonald's simply has different goals, and

>sets out to fulfill a different set of customer desires. Who

>is the arbiter of correctness? Should all movies be

>documentaries? How boring.

The one serious attempt Bose Corporation made to market what could be considered a compeitive product which would attract audiophiles was its original 901 over 30 years ago. There were many ingenious original ideas which remain unique to this day. As the owner of one, I have commented on it and experimented with it extensively in the last two years. I have explained what I think its (fatal) shortcomings are and how I overcame them. When a professor of electrical engineering and acoustics from MIT speaks, I listen. Most loudspeaker manufacturers don't have the kind of technical or financial resources available to Bose. Bose having a sales volume of $1 billion a year and privately owned could if it wanted to, successfully research, manufacture, and market audiophile grade components today at any level of performance. However, as a business model, it sees its greatest profits in other areas and is not interested in selling to audiophiles, manufacturing high quality products for the non audiophile market. Frankly, for the life of me, I can't understand why audiophiles keep thinking that is not the case and then bashing them for it.

>

>Of course, the vast majority of companies do produce mediocre

>products!

How tragic.

[Guest kaiser_soze]

Wally,

This has already strayed away from the topic as initiated by soundminded, so this post will have my final word.

First, due to the fact that the Advent speaker is a 2-way design using a low-order crossover, the phase cancellation within the overlap frequencies throughout the midrange is substantial except for when you are listening at a position that is almost exactly the same distance from both voice coils. As such, the frequency response varies considerably as you vary the vertically off-axis listening position, and it makes little sense to characterize the sound of the Advent speaker unless you specify the vertical axis or location.

Statements such as, "They clean the Advents clocks in every way.", do not convey any useful information to me about the accuracy of a speaker. They only reveal information about the person. When you rely on your subjective impressions to make absolute statements about the quality of a speaker, how is it that you are able to determine that what you prefer equates to unbiased accuracy? How do you know that you do not prefer an elevated response in the treble? It is relevant for me to ask how old you are, and to ask when you last had your high-frequency hearing checked. I do not mean that as a sarcastic slur or whatever. I mean only that it is relevant, and unless you are in your twenties and have never had much exposure to loud sound, you could not be confident that you would hear a high-frequency resonance unless you had your high-frequency hearing checked recently.

The Paradigm speakers that I listened to were the Signature S8, as well as one of the smaller Signature speakers, which were on a stand. I listened to them in a high-end boutique type of retail place, where they used only equipment of high quality. It was immediately apparent to me that there was a pronounced resonance in the higher treble frequencies. I cannot say for certain that the resonance is due to standing wave resonances on the dome surface, as opposed to being merely the normal resonant frequency of the tweeter within its enclosure.

I have done a search to see if I could find some frequency response plots. I would much prefer to see spectral decay plots for this speaker, because that would reveal the nature of the treble peak. If it is a standing wave set up on the dome surface, there will be little damping, and the spectral decay plot will reveal a narrow frequency response peak after the emitted energy has decayed at surrounding frequencies. I was however able to find a couple of frequency response plots, and they both confirm that there is a peak in the response at 9kHz - 10kHz, 3 to 4 dB higher than the surrounding frequencies.

http://hometheatermag.com/floorloudspeaker...igm/index2.html

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurem...m_signature_s8/

The measurements taken by Soundstage indicate that the response peak is not higher than the typical response in the lower midrange, but starting at a few hundred Hz, the response shows a steady decline that continues to about 7 kHz. The peak that then follows appears less severe in the listening window response due to the output at that frequency being more directional. If you look at the on-axis response, the peak appears to be at least 3dB, perhaps 4dB, higher than the surrounding frequencies over a very wide range, which means that this peak will be easily audible. You see the same peak in the measurements taken by Home Theater magazine, except they show the output relatively flat starting at about 60 Hz, with the peak being perhaps 3dB above the typical response over the full range starting at 60 Hz. The differences between these two sets of measurements are small, and they both clearly indicate that this pronounced peak in the output at 10kHz should be readily audible to anyone with normal hearing at that frequency.

The greater majority of metal tweeters exhibit a similar response peak at or about this frequency. In general, it is due to both effects, i.e., partly due to the tweeter's natural resonance in its enclosure falling within its operating range, and partly due to standing waves on the surface of the dome. Even if it happens to be due only to the tweeter's natural resonance, it raises questions about the design goals.

While I was just looking at Paradigm's web site, I read something that gave me a chuckle: "The deep gold-anodizing process used on the dome produces an exceptionally rigid dome, without adding mass." This of course is marketing glitz. When aluminum is anodized, it usually refers to a layer of aluminum oxide being caused to form on the surface. The familar coloring that accompanies anodized aluminum is due to dyeing the aluminum oxide after it is deposited. Perhaps they have used a gold-colored dye, in which case it looks pretty and allows them to use the word "gold" in the brochure. Gold of course is very soft, so there is no way that real gold could enhace the rigidity of the dome. Moreover, real gold would probably only interfere with the depositing of aluminum oxide. If the dome were electroplated with gold, that would prevent the depositing of the thin layer of aluminum oxide that will occur naturally in the atmosphere. No matter how you slice it or dice it, "gold-anodizing" is marketing glitz that flies in the face of anything that is technically sensible.

What is even more interesting, is what is written over to the side: "Aperiodic Resonance Breakup fins capture and quickly disperse residual internal resonances, rendering them inert". Looking at the exloded view of the design of the tweeter, the ARB seems to be the back of the tweeter enclosure, and is designed to disperse the acoustic waves that strike that surface, as opposed to absorbing them. Given that you had decided not to absorb them, it would probably be better to scatter the wave than allow it to bounce straight back to the rear of the dome. But if you wanted to make the frequency response of the tweeter as flat as possible, you would do everything that you could do to absorb the acoustic energy within the tweeter enclosure. The engineers in this case clearly chose not to do that because it would reduce the efficiency of the tweeter. They made a conscious decision to sacrafice uniformity of frequency response in favor of a having a very efficient tweeter so that it would have the sort of elevated treble output that audiophiles are known to prefer.

All of the genuine facts which are in evidence support what I said.

[soundminded]

"This has already strayed away from the topic as initiated by

soundminded"

I have to disagree. Quite the opposite, your message kaiser_soze is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Whether it's the Advent speakers or Paradigm, it should be easy for any really determined hobbyist to equal or exceed the performance of any of these today. Of the two product lines, the Advent models were a more serious effort to produce an accurate loudspeaker...30 years ago. Today the kind of parts used by Advent, design models, test equipment which were all rare and expensive at that time are available in great abundance and when adjusted for inflation, dirt cheap. You should be able to more or less duplicate any of them yourself if you wanted to but why bother when you can do better.

But whether the object of these products was accuracy or catering to current market preferences which IMO is the goal of Paradigm speakers, the two companies had at least one thing in common, they could not correlate what they measured to what they heard and in the end resorted to tweaking their designs by trial and error. In my view this reduced them ultimately to tinkerers. The difference between engineering and tinkering is that engineers set out with a specific performance goal in mind as judged by objective measurements and then determine the success or failure of their designs by whether or not their efforts met or failed those goals. But in this area of endeavor, the primitiveness of the science of design is only exceeded by the primitiveness of measurement. At least AR judged the success of its best efforts by live versus recorded testing even if they could not establish a complete set of performance parameters which correlated with the results. Most other manufacturers in this industry don't even go that far. On another web site, I argued with a famous amplifier designer who freely admitted that although he had what he considered some of the best measuring equipment available, he could not correlate what he considered his best designs with measurements. In other words, amplifiers and preamplifeirs he designed which tested better than others he designed in his opinion performed worse. When I suggested he go back to his laboratory and find out why, he ignored it going right back to his hit or miss design efforts. Tinkering is not necessarily a bad thing, it can result in excellent products, the problem is that the tinkerer has no way to know in advance what the outcome will be and he can tinker away for years without coming up with a superior product. You or I can do the same. It doesn't matter then that manufacturers have elaborate testing facilities, they are used to document what they have done rather than establish what they need to do because without a relatively strong understanding of how what they measure translates into what we hear, they cannot be sure that another product which has equal or better measurements will perform as well.

BTW, I agree with you about gold, it would seem a poor material for deposition on a loudspeaker driver, especially a tweeter having neither strength, lightness, nor a favorable strength to weight ratio. I also agree that it is difficult to see any metal as a good choice for a loudspeaker since they have a tendency to ring which is why they make bells out of it.

[Guest kaiser_soze]

Soundminded, much of what you said there resonates (...) harmoniously (...) with some thoughts that I had after I finished the post discussing the Paradigm tweeter.

After I did that, I took a closer look at the exploded view of the tweeter and the accompanying descriptions. It seems that the space within the tweeter enclosure is filled with a felt. At first I thought that this would explain why the back of that enclosure, facing the reverse side of the dome, has that wave scattering shape that reminds of a Fresnel lens. But then I wondered, why, if the felt is really effective, is there any point to scattering the waves as they strike that surface? The fact that this special device is there, gives evidence to the likelihood that the felt is not effective. It is probably due in part to the small amount of felt that you can fit into that small a space, and it may also be that the fibers aren't effective at higher frequencies. Whatever the reason, it seems that the felt isn't effective, and instead of coating that rear enclosure surface with something that would be more effective at absorbing the energy, they opted for a more ambitious solution. But did they really believe that scattering the energy would be as effective as absorbing it, and did they test the results afterward to find out whether it actually worked as well as they anticipated?

I also saw that the crossover for this tweeter was much lower, about where you would expect, and I don't remember at the moment, but I think it was 1.8kHz. But the response of the tweeter is commendably flat for the first couple of octaves of its operating range, and the response peak is about 1 octave in width. This suggests to me that the response peak is likely not due simply to the tweeters nominal resonant frequency within its enclosure, but is due to a secondary resonance of some sort. The sound that I heard also suggested to me that is a resonance having a longer decay time than the nominal resonance of the tweeter.

The actual cause may be something that has not occurred to me, but two possible causes occur to me. One possibility of course is standing waves on the dome surface. Another that occurs to me is a standing wave within the enclosure, which won't greatly influence the tweeter's nominal resonance since that is determined by the spring effect of the air which depends on the volume.

Regardless, it is apparent that the engineers did not do a good job at all of identifying the cause and correcting it. It is as though they come up with ideas such as that dispersion plate inside the tweeter enclosure, but if the new invention doesn't work as well as they had anticipated, they don't set it aside until another couple or two generations down the road, at which point their marketing literature will make no further mention, as if yesterday's breakthrough wasn't so much of a breakthrough after all. I think that the reason is that the development of these "solutions" is as much about perception as about actual effect. When the manufacturers put those exploded views that highlight their proprietary technologies into their marketing literature, they are in effect selling the public a belief that this or that gizmo will make a significant difference in the quality of the sound. But they rarely ever offer any tangible proof of the effect. If the gizmo is effective at convincing the believers that it is sonically effective and will lead them into audiophile nirvana, they could hardly afford to tell the public that it was just a gimmick that didn't actually do anything. It costs money to sell the public on the effectiveness of a certain gizmo, and once that investment has been made, it would be financially foolish to not milk that investment for as long as possible. As long as consumers are willing to take the manufacturer's word for the sonic benefit of the various gizmos that appear in the exploded diagrams in the glossy product brochures, the designs and the gizmos that show up in the designs will be driven as much by the potential marketing appeal as by their actual sonic effect. Why don't audiophiles tell the manufacturers that they are no longer interested taking the manufacturer's word for the effectiveness of the gizmos, and demand that the manufacturers instead submit their products to an industry-funded independent testing lab that will publish accurate spectral decay plots alongside 3D on-axis/off-axis frequency response plots? Almost none of the manufacturers make any effort at all to give the consumers that sort of information. Perhaps they don't think that the audiophiles would be capable of interpreting the information or don't think that audiophiles think that such empirical methods are useful. It is a sad commentary to think that audiophiles ostensibly deem the gizmo glitz that appears in the glossy brochures to be meaningful, but do not find any value in any laboratory endeavor which might prove or disprove the alleged effects of the gizmo.

Which brings me back to the "gold-anodized" tweeter. In order for the buyer to be persuaded to pull out the AMEX card, the buyer's disbelief that the product is actually worth what it will cost, must be suspended. The purpose of the gold-anodized tweeter is to suspend that disbelief. If you define value in terms of what people are willing to pay for something, that gold color of the tweeter probably adds more value relative to cost than any other isolated aspect of that speaker, and probably so by an enormous margin. That's the mystery of gold. Throughout history, gold has always made people behave irrationally.

[soundminded]

Funny thing about how people react to gold. About 20 years ago I bought a gold Rolex wristwatch at a flea market for $25. I showed it to my boss at the time who wasn't the sharpest card in the deck. He was drooling and gushing over it. Later I had a laugh about it with some other employees when one of them asked me why I bought a fake Rolex. I said so I could afford a real Lincoln. When you think about it, the gold plating on any base metal only has to be a few atoms thick and it will look exactly as if it was made out of solid gold. And although the watch kept perfect time just like any other watch having a 10 cent Chinese made quartz movement, I soon grew tired of it and threw it in a drawer never to be seen again. It was so big and clunky, I couldn't even imagine wearing a real one.

You have to wonder why any speaker system manufacturer would make their own tweeter today given the vast array of them out there made by people who specialize in making tweeters. The one I heard in the VSA VR-1 seemed like a very good one probably made by Morrell and retails for somewhere between $25 and $75 but of course is far cheaper to manufacturers who buy OEM in quantity. There's tons of others. Sometimes the system manufacturer will specify a custom designed exclusive non stock item. I'm convinced that this is so that they have the only exact replacement drivers available when their system needs repair and so that nobody else including hobbyists can reverse engineer it at a fraction of its ultimate sales price. There are exceptions and in the early days, AR was one of them creating what were breakthrough designs (the 3/4" AR tweeter still has the best dispersion of any tweeter I've ever seen as evidenced by curves published on the AR message board in another thread.)

It's a funny thing also about so called high end audio equipment, the cost of the parts are at most only marginally higher than more ordinary equipment, the labor is about the same, and although much of it is manufactured using the least cost effective methods, the price is so far out of line with the cost to build, I wonder how some of these guys can ask what they do with a straight face. And above all that, as time goes on, they charge more and more while delivering less and less, the only area of electronics I know of where that is true. And the science of it continues to recede as snake oil salesmen become the predominant breed in the advertising department. Yet they do manage to attract a never ending line of suckers ready, willing, and able to make the sacrifice of their hard earned cash for this years miracle and next year's all but forgotten products. So that may be one reason it would be so easy for a determined hobbyist to beat them handily at their own game.

>Soundminded, much of what you said there resonates (...)

>harmoniously (...) with some thoughts that I had after I

>finished the post discussing the Paradigm tweeter.

>

>After I did that, I took a closer look at the exploded view of

>the tweeter and the accompanying descriptions. It seems that

>the space within the tweeter enclosure is filled with a felt.

>At first I thought that this would explain why the back of

>that enclosure, facing the reverse side of the dome, has that

>wave scattering shape that reminds of a Fresnel lens. But

>then I wondered, why, if the felt is really effective, is

>there any point to scattering the waves as they strike that

>surface? The fact that this special device is there, gives

>evidence to the likelihood that the felt is not effective. It

>is probably due in part to the small amount of felt that you

>can fit into that small a space, and it may also be that the

>fibers aren't effective at higher frequencies. Whatever the

>reason, it seems that the felt isn't effective, and instead of

>coating that rear enclosure surface with something that would

>be more effective at absorbing the energy, they opted for a

>more ambitious solution. But did they really believe that

>scattering the energy would be as effective as absorbing it,

>and did they test the results afterward to find out whether it

>actually worked as well as they anticipated?

>

>I also saw that the crossover for this tweeter was much lower,

>about where you would expect, and I don't remember at the

>moment, but I think it was 1.8kHz. But the response of the

>tweeter is commendably flat for the first couple of octaves of

>its operating range, and the response peak is about 1 octave

>in width. This suggests to me that the response peak is

>likely not due simply to the tweeters nominal resonant

>frequency within its enclosure, but is due to a secondary

>resonance of some sort. The sound that I heard also suggested

>to me that is a resonance having a longer decay time than the

>nominal resonance of the tweeter.

>

>The actual cause may be something that has not occurred to me,

>but two possible causes occur to me. One possibility of

>course is standing waves on the dome surface. Another that

>occurs to me is a standing wave within the enclosure, which

>won't greatly influence the tweeter's nominal resonance since

>that is determined by the spring effect of the air which

>depends on the volume.

>

>Regardless, it is apparent that the engineers did not do a

>good job at all of identifying the cause and correcting it.

>It is as though they come up with ideas such as that

>dispersion plate inside the tweeter enclosure, but if the new

>invention doesn't work as well as they had anticipated, they

>don't set it aside until another couple or two generations

>down the road, at which point their marketing literature will

>make no further mention, as if yesterday's breakthrough wasn't

>so much of a breakthrough after all. I think that the reason

>is that the development of these "solutions" is as

>much about perception as about actual effect. When the

>manufacturers put those exploded views that highlight their

>proprietary technologies into their marketing literature, they

>are in effect selling the public a belief that this or that

>gizmo will make a significant difference in the quality of the

>sound. But they rarely ever offer any tangible proof of the

>effect. If the gizmo is effective at convincing the believers

>that it is sonically effective and will lead them into

>audiophile nirvana, they could hardly afford to tell the

>public that it was just a gimmick that didn't actually do

>anything. It costs money to sell the public on the

>effectiveness of a certain gizmo, and once that investment has

>been made, it would be financially foolish to not milk that

>investment for as long as possible. As long as consumers are

>willing to take the manufacturer's word for the sonic benefit

>of the various gizmos that appear in the exploded diagrams in

>the glossy product brochures, the designs and the gizmos that

>show up in the designs will be driven as much by the potential

>marketing appeal as by their actual sonic effect. Why don't

>audiophiles tell the manufacturers that they are no longer

>interested taking the manufacturer's word for the

>effectiveness of the gizmos, and demand that the manufacturers

>instead submit their products to an industry-funded

>independent testing lab that will publish accurate spectral

>decay plots alongside 3D on-axis/off-axis frequency response

>plots? Almost none of the manufacturers make any effort at

>all to give the consumers that sort of information. Perhaps

>they don't think that the audiophiles would be capable of

>interpreting the information or don't think that audiophiles

>think that such empirical methods are useful. It is a sad

>commentary to think that audiophiles ostensibly deem the gizmo

>glitz that appears in the glossy brochures to be meaningful,

>but do not find any value in any laboratory endeavor which

>might prove or disprove the alleged effects of the gizmo.

>

>Which brings me back to the "gold-anodized" tweeter.

> In order for the buyer to be persuaded to pull out the AMEX

>card, the buyer's disbelief that the product is actually worth

>what it will cost, must be suspended. The purpose of the

>gold-anodized tweeter is to suspend that disbelief. If you

>define value in terms of what people are willing to pay for

>something, that gold color of the tweeter probably adds more

>value relative to cost than any other isolated aspect of that

>speaker, and probably so by an enormous margin. That's the

>mystery of gold. Throughout history, gold has always made

>people behave irrationally.

[Wally]

Hi Kaizer,

>This has already strayed away from the topic as initiated by

>soundminded,

We're still on topic because we are discussing possibly differnt approaches to products presented by two companies.

The Advents date from the 60's and 70's, the Paradigms I was referring to are from the mid nineties and you referred to current models.

I admit quite readily that I was defending Paradigm because it is a Canadian company and they have turned out what I consider to be world class product, certainly in the past. All of the models I referred to were well reviewed in their day so I don't stand alone in my opinion. I could not find the reviews for reference but I do have them somewhere.

Reference has been made elsewhere in these forums to the fact that the Advents were designed to take on the AR's so the response was ( may have been?) voiced to out market AR by catering to subjective impressions rather than specifications.

>First, due to the fact that the Advent speaker is a 2-way

>design using a low-order crossover, the phase cancellation

>within the overlap frequencies throughout the midrange is

>substantial except for when you are listening at a position

>that is almost exactly the same distance from both voice

>coils. As such, the frequency response varies considerably as

>you vary the vertically off-axis listening position, and it

>makes little sense to characterize the sound of the Advent

>speaker unless you specify the vertical axis or location.

The Titans and Phantoms are also 2 way designs and I was comparing on the basis of a sitting listening position. I have not done any scientific tests in this regard but the 2 sets of Paradigms ( I'm not including the Studio Monitors because they are 3 way) maintain a very nice image and response when moving around in my chair. Perhaps this is because the woofers are 8" in the one and 6 1/2" in the other, allowing the centers of the woofers and tweeters to be closer together and perhaps the smaller woofers acount for less'beaming'.

>Statements such as, "They clean the Advents clocks in

>every way.", do not convey any useful information to me

>about the accuracy of a speaker. They only reveal information

>about the person. When you rely on your subjective

>impressions to make absolute statements about the quality of a

>speaker, how is it that you are able to determine that what

>you prefer equates to unbiased accuracy? How do you know that

>you do not prefer an elevated response in the treble? It is

>relevant for me to ask how old you are, and to ask when you

>last had your high-frequency hearing checked. I do not mean

>that as a sarcastic slur or whatever. I mean only that it is

>relevant, and unless you are in your twenties and have never

>had much exposure to loud sound, you could not be confident

>that you would hear a high-frequency resonance unless you had

>your high-frequency hearing checked recently.

I made specific statements regarding tighter bass response, perceived flatter response and cleaner sounding, ie lower distortion. Of course it's subjective. I made no claims that I measured these responses nor did you in your evaluation of the new Paradigms. You then refer to test reviews from some magazines. Could you have been influenced by these writeups?

My hearing was checked about 3 years ago. Exhibits a reduced sensitivity in the mid range. Probably due to years playing in a bar band, but I was always relatively cautious about loud levels and that probably accounts for my still having average high end response for my age. Now to my point. I have been a 3rd rate musician for a lot of years. Lots of fun. Not a star. I believe I know what a cymbal or a snare sounds like, a bass drum, acoustic or electic bass, and an acoustic guitar. Had my own recording studio so I am somewhat familiar with 'decent' sound. Whether my hearing is flat or not it is certainly capable of hearing differences in how those 2 speakers reproduce the 'original' sound. My un flat hearing would hear the same way whether it is live or a speaker. My opinion was based on how I felt one or the other speaker coloured the original material..... again sublective becuse none of us has heard the exact same cymbal that was used in the studio or the exact same acoustic guitar on the day it was recorded because they do sound different as strings age, temperature, humidity etc.

I'm from the old school that believed that a speaker should reproduce what is fed into it without adding coloration.

It seems that today, many of the 'high end' speakers, and other equipment is tweaked to 'sound good'.... based on market needs, or current trends.

I don't expect a speaker and the attendant equipment to reproduce the exact sound field that was in the studio. My environment, which has such a dramatic impact on speakers, is nothing like the original studio environment. Also I don't know about the mixing engineers' hearing or preferences , speakers he used as monitors and the signature that the microphones, and electronics, eq, added reverb, compression etc. used to modify the original sound. With the current type of multi track recording, I don't believe it is possible to recreate the original environment because often different tracks (mixed to make a single rcording)are recorded on different days and even in different studios.

I want my speakers to essentially meet the standards that AR was trying to achieve/prove with their live vs recorded concerts. It would be interesting to do these tests agin with modern speakers and see how they fare against our old AR's. My (subjective) opinion is that the Advents would not fare as well as the old AR's did and I think that the Paradigms I mentioned would do very well. We'll probably never know.

>The Paradigm speakers that I listened to were the Signature

>S8, as well as one of the smaller Signature speakers, which

>were on a stand. I listened to them in a high-end boutique

>type of retail place, where they used only equipment of high

>quality. It was immediately apparent to me that there was a

>pronounced resonance in the higher treble frequencies. I

>cannot say for certain that the resonance is due to standing

>wave resonances on the dome surface, as opposed to being

>merely the normal resonant frequency of the tweeter within its

>enclosure.

I haven't heard the S8's so I can't comment on them other than to venture a speculation that Paradigm is fighting for market share in a high end market where specifications are less important than the perception that the technology and some subjective reviews are more important than accuracy. I have no love for the ultra expensive mini speakers that are missing the bottom 3 octaves and supposedly 'image' amazingly in the voice(mid) range. If they can't reproduce a fair chunk of the bottom ranges of music, then that is distortion to me.

>between these two sets of measurements are small, and they

>both clearly indicate that this pronounced peak in the output

>at 10kHz should be readily audible to anyone with normal

>hearing at that frequency.

>

>The greater majority of metal tweeters exhibit a similar

>response peak at or about this frequency. In general, it is

>due to both effects, i.e., partly due to the tweeter's natural

>resonance in its enclosure falling within its operating range,

>and partly due to standing waves on the surface of the dome.

>Even if it happens to be due only to the tweeter's natural

>resonance, it raises questions about the design goals.

Several companies, Paradigm (90's), Celestion (80's, 90's), addressed the issue of the resonance peaks in metal tweeters by designing the domes in such a way that this peak was above 20kz and the crossovers were designed to roll off sharply enough in the high range to supposedly make this problem inconsequential.

>naturally in the atmosphere. No matter how you slice it or

>dice it, "gold-anodizing" is marketing glitz that

>flies in the face of anything that is technically sensible.

>

>What is even more interesting, is what is written over to the

>side: "Aperiodic Resonance Breakup fins capture and

>quickly disperse residual internal resonances, rendering them

>inert". Looking at the exloded view of the design of the

>>>>>>>>>>>

>efficiency of the tweeter. They made a conscious decision to

>sacrafice uniformity of frequency response in favor of a

>having a very efficient tweeter so that it would have the sort

>of elevated treble output that audiophiles are known to

>prefer.

>

>All of the genuine facts which are in evidence support what I

>said.

I'm not surprised even if I am disapointed in Paradigm. When you charge the prices that high end stuff is ging for these days, you have to justify the price with some sort of black magic that the competition doesn't have. The market for 'accuracy ' is small compared to the market for pezzazz (Home Theater), penis comparisons..(ie car 'audio') or convenience ( Ipods, MP3's).

Sure sounds to me like Paradigm has shifted to selling 'wow' rather than 'accuracy' which is what they promoted in prior years.

Maybe we can't get 'perfect' reproduction but there are some good modern products (well 90's any way) out there that can do a credible job and they're not necessarily 'high end'.

[kkantor]

>I assume by 4-2-4 you mean recording four channels compressed

>into two for storage and then re-expanded to 4 on playback.

>In my own experiments and calculations, I now believe it may

>be impossible no matter how many channels you have (N-N-N.)

>Certainly recording and recovering 4 channels is inadequate

>because the reqirements of recreating the spatial and temporal

>components of the reverberant field being highly diffuse and

>having a very low angular gradient are entirely different from

>those of the direct field which are tightly sourced (when they

>are far away) as a function of angle and have a very high

>angular gradient from the perspective of the listener. Since

>at least four separate channels are needed to reproduce the

>reverberant field to get an array of scalar fields to simulate

>a vector field, and the requirements of reproducers for the

>direct field are entirely different from those needed to

>reproduce the reverberant field, 4 channels is clearly not

>enough. Furthermore, there is no parctical way to record the

>reverberant field without getting the direct field at the same

>time through the same microphones and therefore no way to

>separate them out. One solution which has interested me (for

>the last 32 years) is to regenerate the reverberant field

>through resynthesis by solving the problem of the acoustic

>energy transfer relationship between the field radiated at one

>point and the reverberant field resultant at another. By this

>method, it should be possible to recreate any seat in any

>auditorium under highly controlled and contrived conditions by

>recreating that particular relationship electro-acoustically.

>In the real world of home sound reproduction, just getting a

>sound field similar to any auditorium would be a tremendous

>improvement over what we now have.

>

Sorry for the ambiguity. I was referring to "dimensions" not channels. And I properly should have said 4:1:4.

p(x,y,z,t):v1(t)&v2(t)(x,y,x,t)

The rest of the stuff I generally agree with, except that p(x,y,z,t) is a scalar field. I don't know how deeply you want to get into the "resynthesis" issue, but this has been a topic that has seen bursts of interest over the last several decades. One key problem that keeps coming up is dealing with the reverberant signature of the listening room.

>

>What a depressing notion. We can characterize and control

>electromagnetic particles and fields virtually invisible and

>all but conceptually infinitesmal to the degree where creating

>a recognizable image on a color television screen is today

>about as self evident as the wheel and where we can

>confidently accelerate subatomic particles in an atom smasher

>to very high speed and energy, force them to collide, and

>determine from the aftermath what they were made of and what

>they became but we can't characterize the acoustic field of a

>loudspeaker transducer and accurately compare it to the field

>produced by musical instruments it is intended to recreate.

>How frustrating. IMO, this is still a very primitive art.

>One area which has been little explored as far as I can tell

>is the geometric properties of the way sound waves are

>launched, their interactions with rooms, and the resultant

>fields heard by listeners. Speaker designers talk about

>dispersion, room resonances, and then all but walk away

>leaving it at that. I think if they looked at the geometric

>radiating patterns of musical instruments and then at their

>own products, they would design radically different speakers

>performing very differently and much better. And on top of

>that, what little control the end user had to adapt the

>performance of sound systems in his own room, tone controls

>and presence and brilliance controls has largely been taken

>away from him, reducing many to look for substitutes by

>experimenting with different wires and the like, all at a time

>when the possibilities for adapting performance to environment

>are cheaper, more accessible, more measurable, and more

>predictable in their effect than they ever were. Let's face

>it, the paradyme of the two way or three way direct firing

>loudspeaker system with or without a subwoofer has been

>exploited to its limit and now the designers are banging their

>heads up against the ceiling of that limit, one I don't think

>they will successfully break through.

>

I don't find it depressing. I just ascribe it to the inherent differences between cognitive and perceptual sciences, and so-called "hard" sciences. We want to pretend that audio reproduction is a hard science, but it is a cognitive science as soon as the listening room changes. This is great stuff to me, and moving forward in our understanding of it would be profound step in deciphering consciousness, if that is possible.

>All true but hearing doesn't. Two sounds are either

>perceptably different or they aren't. If high fidelity's goal

>is still to reduce the differences of sound produced by music

>and sound reproduced by recordings to imperceptability, then

>the problem remains the same. if it has changed to some other

>goal such as generating profits by pandering to the current

>whims of market taste then one sound system is as good as

>another because there are no objective ways to predict which

>equipment will achieve its goal and which won't.

>

We disagree here. Of course, one can ascertain if two sounds are perceptually similar, or not. That is a straw man, to me. One cannot design an "accurate" loudspeaker without detailed knowledge of the recording process used. A loudspeaker that produces a perceptually perfect reproduction with one type of recording cannot be expected to work as well with another type of recording.

>

>How tragic.

I guess. Everything in life is graded on a curve, and when you have excellence, you must also have mediocrity. The important issue would seem to be moving the curve upwards, not trying to compress it beyond the point of differentiation.

>

[soundminded]

>Sorry for the ambiguity. I was referring to

>"dimensions" not channels. And I properly should

>have said 4:1:4.

>

>p(x,y,z,t):v1(t)&v2(t)(x,y,x,t)

>

>The rest of the stuff I generally agree with, except that

>p(x,y,z,t) is a scalar field.

By p are you referring to pressure? For the moment, I'll disagree with pressure being a scalar even though we often think of a gas statically trapped in a vessel pushing uniformly outward in all directions. (I'm going to have to think about this, it's been a long time.) Pressure is defined as Force divided by area both of which are vectors. Now you are going to make me take out a book on mechanics and find out what the difference is between a phasor and a tensor, something I haven't looked at in nearly 40 years. But sound exists because of a time varying pressure gradient which is clearly a directed quantity. There countless examples of pressure being a directed quantity the most obvious being that atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude being directed towards the center of earth by the pull of gravity.

>I don't know how deeply you want

>to get into the "resynthesis" issue, but this has

>been a topic that has seen bursts of interest over the last

>several decades. One key problem that keeps coming up is

>dealing with the reverberant signature of the listening room.

This is my principle interest in sound reproduction and has been for 32 years. At times it has been my only interest in it. I see it as the main difference between sound heard from a home sound system and sound heard in a live performance, all other issues being almost trivial by comparison. I'd be happy to discuss it here or off line if you wish in whatever detail interests you.

You are of course right about the acoustics of the listening room. There are three acoustic fields which must be considered; the one which is inherent in the recording whether due to the venue of the recording, deliberately applied in the editing process, or a combination of both, that created by the resynthesis process, and that imposed by the listening room. This last factor is both a detriment and an advantage. It's a detriment because it gives clues to the size of the listening room itself by creating early reflections for the direct field and by creating room resonances. It's an advantage in that its reflective surfaces can be exploited to make the resynthesized reverberant field more uniform reducing the required number of additional loudspeakers. This has to be incorporated into the design, number, and placement of the loudspeakers and af course equalization of all of the speakers is necessary to mitigate the frequency selective properties of room acoustics to as great a degree as possible.

>I don't find it depressing. I just ascribe it to the inherent

>differences between cognitive and perceptual sciences, and

>so-called "hard" sciences. We want to pretend that

>audio reproduction is a hard science, but it is a cognitive

>science as soon as the listening room changes. This is great

>stuff to me, and moving forward in our understanding of it

>would be profound step in deciphering consciousness, if that

>is possible.

Now you are taking me back many decades again. As I recall, one of the functions of clinical psychology is to relate perception and distinctions in perception to objective measurable quantities in the physical world. This involves carefully controlled tests with only one variable altered at a time to determine what quantities are perceptable and to what degree. Were sound reproduction a truely scientific endeavor and not merely a marketing endeavor, it seems to me that this kind of research would be the first order of business. Instead, it seems that for marketing purposes, it is precisely the lack of knowledge which this industry values most. Could you imagine the laughter among videophiles for example if Sony or Panasonic were to market a television set boasting it could reproduce near infrared and ultraviolet light thereby creating a better picture? Would anyone believe it or care? I'm sure there would be those who'd swear it was true. It seems to me that there has been little progress in recent decades, even little willingness to experiment with non conventional ideas. That's what's depressing to me, the endless search to achieve the perfect expression of a limited flawed paradyme no matter what the cost or extent of effort. It seems so pointless, except of course to make money.

>We disagree here. Of course, one can ascertain if two sounds

>are perceptually similar, or not. That is a straw man, to me.

> One cannot design an "accurate" loudspeaker without

>detailed knowledge of the recording process used. A

>loudspeaker that produces a perceptually perfect reproduction

>with one type of recording cannot be expected to work as well

>with another type of recording.

All very true. This is why it is impossible (for me at least) to draw any conclusions about the performance of loudspeakers without hearing large numbers of recordings which to as great a degree as possible typify what the concensus of recording engineers deem as accurate in a documentary sense, the loudspeaker merely being one element in a large chain of elements constituting the overall recording/playback process. More disappointing still is the seeming lack of provision to compensate for variables in either recording processes or in the acoustics of rooms where this equipment is likely to be installed leaving ultimate performance up to chance. This is true to a greater degree than it ever was. That's hardly what I call engineering.

>

>>How tragic.

>

>I guess. Everything in life is graded on a curve, and when

>you have excellence, you must also have mediocrity. The

>important issue would seem to be moving the curve upwards, not

>trying to compress it beyond the point of differentiation.

At least one reviewer for a notorious hobbyist magazine extols the virtues of 78 RPM phonograph records while a surprising number of hobbyists have expressed a preference for monophonic sound. At least in some quarters, it would seem the curve is going backwards. Is the curve ultimately advancing? Despite the countless tens of thousands of advances over the last 100 years, I think that still depends on how you judge it. By one measure, on a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 represents even the most casual listener with normal hearing being able to identify immediately that he is listening to a machine playing a recording and 100 representing even experienced concert goers usually finding it impossible to tell that they are not hearing a live performance, I think we are still mostly at or near 0, about where we were when Edison invented the wax cylinder phonograph. And after so much effort and time given how relatively simple a problem this should be to solve compared to others which are infinitely tougher but which have yielded to solutions, that is something I find tragic.

[kkantor]

>By p are you referring to pressure? For the moment, I'll

>disagree with pressure being a scalar even though we often

>think of a gas statically trapped in a vessel pushing

>uniformly outward in all directions. (I'm going to have to

>think about this, it's been a long time.) Pressure is defined

>as Force divided by area both of which are vectors. Now you

>are going to make me take out a book on mechanics and find out

>what the difference is between a phasor and a tensor,

>something I haven't looked at in nearly 40 years. But sound

>exists because of a time varying pressure gradient which is

>clearly a directed quantity. There countless examples of

>pressure being a directed quantity the most obvious being that

>atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude being directed

>towards the center of earth by the pull of gravity.

>

Please, no spinning, this is math. The sound we hear is p(t) and that is a scalar field. I'd rather spend my time discussing interesting psychoacoustic issues. A scalar field can evolve over time. EG- go play with cellular automata.

http://www.mirekw.com/ca/download.html

>

>

>This is my principle interest in sound reproduction and has

>been for 32 years. At times it has been my only interest in

>it. I see it as the main difference between sound heard from

>a home sound system and sound heard in a live performance, all

>other issues being almost trivial by comparison. I'd be happy

>to discuss it here or off line if you wish in whatever detail

>interests you.

>

I don't know. Because you use a pseudonym, it is impossible for me to judge what your background and qualifications are. Shoot me an email (via my site), that will enable me to look at some of your work and publications. If our professional interests overlap, I'd love to chat further.

>

>Now you are taking me back many decades again. As I recall,

>one of the functions of clinical psychology is to relate

>perception and distinctions in perception to objective

>measurable quantities in the physical world. This involves

>carefully controlled tests with only one variable altered at a

>time to determine what quantities are perceptable and to what

>degree. Were sound reproduction a truely scientific endeavor

>and not merely a marketing endeavor, it seems to me that this

>kind of research would be the first order of business.

>Instead, it seems that for marketing purposes, it is precisely

>the lack of knowledge which this industry values most. Could

>you imagine the laughter among videophiles for example if Sony

>or Panasonic were to market a television set boasting it could

>reproduce near infrared and ultraviolet light thereby creating

>a better picture? Would anyone believe it or care? I'm sure

>there would be those who'd swear it was true. It seems to me

>that there has been little progress in recent decades, even

>little willingness to experiment with non conventional ideas.

>That's what's depressing to me, the endless search to achieve

>the perfect expression of a limited flawed paradyme no matter

>what the cost or extent of effort. It seems so pointless,

>except of course to make money.

What if Sony announced a TV that demonstrated a resolution known to be above that of the eye, and told people that it made viewing more relaxing. You don't think that would sell? I do.

>

>All very true. This is why it is impossible (for me at least)

>to draw any conclusions about the performance of loudspeakers

>without hearing large numbers of recordings which to as great

>a degree as possible typify what the concensus of recording

>engineers deem as accurate in a documentary sense, the

>loudspeaker merely being one element in a large chain of

>elements constituting the overall recording/playback process.

>More disappointing still is the seeming lack of provision to

>compensate for variables in either recording processes or in

>the acoustics of rooms where this equipment is likely to be

>installed leaving ultimate performance up to chance. This is

>true to a greater degree than it ever was. That's hardly what

>I call engineering.

>

Well, documentary audio is dying fast. Personally, I feel more enriched with a Brueghal on the wall, than an Ansel Adams.

>

>At least one reviewer for a notorious hobbyist magazine extols

>the virtues of 78 RPM phonograph records while a surprising

>number of hobbyists have expressed a preference for monophonic

>sound. At least in some quarters, it would seem the curve is

>going backwards. Is the curve ultimately advancing? Despite

>the countless tens of thousands of advances over the last 100

>years, I think that still depends on how you judge it. By one

>measure, on a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 represents even the

>most casual listener with normal hearing being able to

>identify immediately that he is listening to a machine playing

>a recording and 100 representing even experienced concert

>goers usually finding it impossible to tell that they are not

>hearing a live performance, I think we are still mostly at or

>near 0, about where we were when Edison invented the wax

>cylinder phonograph. And after so much effort and time given

>how relatively simple a problem this should be to solve

>compared to others which are infinitely tougher but which have

>yielded to solutions, that is something I find tragic.

>

Huh? Who said anything about a live performance? That's one tiny slice of the pie. Most people buy audio to have an enjoyable, relaxing, uplifting or exciting experience. A very tiny percentage of those people give a nanosecond's thought to any kind of live performance.

To me, high fidelity is all about a system's ability to reliably convey the artist's intent, whatever that may be.

[kkantor]

Soundminded,

Upon re-reading, the tone of my last post to you was more contentious than I intended. I'm happy to engage you in casual conversation on the topic here. As a reference to my claim about sound pressure, I found this on Wikipedia:

"Pressure is transmitted to solid boundaries or across arbitrary sections of fluid normal to these boundaries or sections at every point. Unlike stress, pressure is defined as a scalar quantity. The gradient of pressure is force density."

For many years, I believed in the "faithfulness to the source" paradigm of home audio. And I am well-aware of the Gordian Knot that arises if one loses an objective frame of reference. However, there are other ways to define a reference besides "a concert." I would argue that the recent stagnation of progress in high fidelity accuracy has a lot to do with the choice of a reference standard that has little meaning to the consumer.

[Guest kaiser_soze]

Wally,

You said: "I made specific statements regarding tighter bass response, perceived flatter response and cleaner sounding, ie lower distortion. Of course it's subjective. I made no claims that I measured these responses nor did you in your evaluation of the new Paradigms. You then refer to test reviews from some magazines."

I sense something here that I'm not quite able to understand, but what I can tell you is that I made a specific statement about a Paradigm speaker that I listened to, and that after you seemed to take exception with that, I responded by providing some data to back up what I had said.

You said: "Could you have been influenced by these writeups?"

The fact that what you are implying here is plausible, does not explain what might have motivated you to say it. Nothing in the facts in evidence should have led you to hypothesize what this implicitly hypothesizes. It endeavors to refute the truth of what I said in the first place and what I subsequently supported with the two independent tests. As such, it appears to be motivated by your reluctance to accept facts and information that do not agree with your preconceptions.

You said: "Several companies, Paradigm (90's), Celestion (80's, 90's), addressed the issue of the resonance peaks in metal tweeters by designing the domes in such a way that this peak was above 20kz and the crossovers were designed to roll off sharply enough in the high range to supposedly make this problem inconsequential."

Is this an empirical fact that is support by empirical data, or is this merely a reactionary response that had to be given to quiet the voices of the many people who were criticizing the poor sound quality of those tweeters? If it is the former and you know of any reliable evidence to back it up, I would like to see it. Have you studied many of the cumulative spectral decay plots that you can find in Stereophile and less often in AudioExpress? I have, and my observation is that the greater majority of metal tweeters exhibit resonances well below 20kHz and that require a great many multiples of the time period of the frequency at which they occur in order to decay by 3 dB relative to the level at that frequency at the time that the shaped pulse is removed.

Sympathetic resonance will occur between the standing waves on the surface of the dome and the standing waves occurring within the tweeter enclosure. If the frequencies associated with these two distinct sources of resonance are harmonically related, each will be a source of excitation for the other, and that can lead to uncontrolled ringing in situations where either resonance on its own would be adequately well controlled. Even if the standing waves on the surface of the dome are well above 20kHz, if they are harmonically related to standing waves at audible frequencies within the tweeter enclosure, the standing wave on the surface of the dome will excite and amplify the standing waves within the enclosure. It is not sufficient to merely insure that the fundamental mode of the standing wave on the dome surface will be adequately high in frequency and/or low in level to be inaudible. It is further necessary to insure that there is no harmonic coupling of that frequency with the frequencies of the standing waves within the tweeter enclosure.

One particular metallic tweeter that sounded entirely natural to me is the one that Revel uses in the Ultima Salon. The first time that I took a close look at the spectral decay plot for this speaker was last night. Stereophile's spectral decay plot for this speaker (http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/302/index8.html) reveals a pronounced resonance in the neighborhood of 25kHz. This may be due to a standing wave on the dome surface, but because this tweeter has a cap over the tweeter, the air space between the dome and the cap could also be acting as a Helmholtz resonator. In this particular tweeter, the potential for any enclosure resonances to have audible effect was probably avoided by combining an exceptionally powerful magnet with exceptionally high damping, and relying on mechanical spring force in lieu of the effect of the air pressure differential across the diaphragm. This tweeter suffices as proof that it is possible to make an excellent tweeter using a metallic dome, but I cannot help but wonder whether in this particular implementation, the metallic dome is one aspect of a total design solution that includes exceptionally stronger motive force, spring force and damping. This qualifies as an exotic solution to say the least.

There are lots of tweeters made from soft, intrinsically damped materials, that achieve equivalent results at considerably less cost and effort, although I wouldn’t be surprised if that tweeter in the Salon were capable of playing at incredibly high levels without appreciable dynamic range compression or distortion. Perhaps engineers like to make things more difficult in order to feel challenged. Theory runs a wide gamut and all that ultimately matters is what works in practice. I have never been able to find anything in the laboratory measurements that suggests to me that there are significant, inherent shortcomings of soft dome tweeters. I find plenty of evidence in the laboratory measurements that suggests to me that only a small percentage of tweeters designed using metallic radiating surfaces successfully overcome the resonance problem and yield sound quality comparable to typical soft dome tweeters engineered at a fraction of the cost.

[soundminded]

Ken;

No offense taken.

It's been many years. I dug out my old physics book and of course pressure is a scalar. How could I forget in a mere 40 years, it seems like just yesterday. I'll get back to you off line in several days.

>Soundminded,

>

>Upon re-reading, the tone of my last post to you was more

>contentious than I intended. I'm happy to engage you in

>casual conversation on the topic here. As a reference to my

>claim about sound pressure, I found this on Wikipedia:

>

>"Pressure is transmitted to solid boundaries or across

>arbitrary sections of fluid normal to these boundaries or

>sections at every point. Unlike stress, pressure is defined as

>a scalar quantity. The gradient of pressure is force

>density."

>

>

>For many years, I believed in the "faithfulness to the

>source" paradigm of home audio. And I am well-aware of

>the Gordian Knot that arises if one loses an objective frame

>of reference. However, there are other ways to define a

>reference besides "a concert." I would argue that

>the recent stagnation of progress in high fidelity accuracy

>has a lot to do with the choice of a reference standard that

>has little meaning to the consumer.

[kkantor]

Thanks!

Why don't we keep the discussion public, so that others can join in, or at least follow the thread?

[soundminded]

Why should I be interested in accuracy of sound or the role that the acoustics of the venue of a performance have on sound? Is it accuracy for accuracy's sake? No, that would be entirely perverse. The reason is entirely different and IMO much more important.

Ken you said;

"To me, high fidelity is all about a system's ability to reliably convey the artist's intent, whatever that may be."

I agree. And therein lies the rub. AR proved it could build a loudspeaker for a recording/reproduction chain and set it beside a musician producing a sound very similar to that of the instrument being played. It solved that problem over 40 years ago.

I was priveleged at an early age to hear a lot of live music. It's really something to hear a symphony orchestra in a practice room rehearsing one night, in an empty concert hall at a "dress rehearsal" the next, and in a packed hall at a concert the next night. You'd hardly even know it was the same musicians. I've heard a priceless Guanari del Jesu violin in my own and the owner's home many times and the same violin played in live concerts including at Carnegie Hall. The sound is entirely different. The acoustics are not only tied up with the sound, they are inseparable from the music itself. So much of what music is about is tied up in the acoustics, every conductor of a symphony orchestra or a chorus, every soloist who plays to large audiences will tell you how hard and important it is to adapt their performance to the hall. A symphony orchestra builds up to a gigantic crecendo and then the composer has it stop playing for a moment. In a concert hall, that pause when the echoes of the last note are dying out is a buildup to what comes next and the timing of that rest must be adjusted to the hall. On a recording in the near dead silence it becomes a discontinuity. Those late arriving echoes from one note are heard at the same time as earlier sound from successive notes creating harmonies and dissonances absent in recordings. The tone of the instrument themselves is different because as the sound decays at a live performance, its overtones decay faster than the lower harmonics and the sound become subjecively mellower in ways impossible for recordings to capture. A musical instrument appearing many feet away and filling a hall with sound that echoes through time and space is subjectively much more powerful than a recording of the same instrument at the same volume in a small room coming out of a loudspeaker a few feet away. Even the tempo at which music is played must be adjusted to the acoustics of the venue or the sound will become no more than a continuous blur. This is why symphony orchestras on tours often don't perform as well as they do in their acoustically familiar usual concert hall. It's no accident that music intended for cathedrals such as pipe organ music or big choral works where reverberation can be 4 to 5 seconds is usually relatively slow and written in half notes and whole notes rather than in eighths and sixteenths. The inablity of the existing recording and playback technology to capture and reproduce these most critical aspects of live performances IMO enormously detracts from their beauty and interest. Sad but true, the love of classical music seems to be dwindling and I think the recording industry is in part to blame. They seem quite smug and satisfied with the inadequate technology they have, choosing to tweak it to death rather than discard it and advance to a higher level. And that IMO makes it often impossible for the recording to convey the artist's or the composer's intent.

[Guest denmarkdrivers]

if you really think about it it would cost the audio companies a lot more money just to make some of the amps of yesteryear, Not to many companies care about music anymore its all surround sound now. I'm sure im wrong and some still make musical amps but im not willing to spend 10 or 20 grand i opted for a 200 dollar fix i had my harmon kardon 730 twin powered restored ( all caps replaced ) the thing just sounds amazing i gave the guy 2 harmon kardon 730 twin powered recivers and got one back and one gutted for parts to fix the other. best move i ever made i will never try to replace my amp with a newer amp, ive tried it to many times without good results, as a matter of fact some of the amps and serperates costing 4 and 5 times as much couldent even touch the hk 730 twin powered before it was restored let alone afterward, i have more hope in newer speakers then newer amps in general .

[jagster]

Gentlemen, gentlemen! The idea that anyone has ever produced the 'perfect' loudspeaker system is a myth. Even with all the progress that supposedly has been made in design, we can take any one of these products apart and easily find the faults. Most all products are market-driven, and have little or no relationship to what they actually do. Look at any consumer product out there, and you will find the love/hate relationship all of them (enjoy). I was in the audio business at the retail level for many years back in the seventies and eighties, having owned two consumer electronics stores that carried the 'high-end' products. The smoke and mirrors moved the product out of the store, not the accuracy or the quality of the product. The amount of trade-ins we took gives some insight into the whole stereo-audio market. You could name any top-rated, rave-reviewed product out there at the time, and I could safely tell you that I have taken it in trade and auditioned it at one time or another. Likewise, the steady stream of factory representatives kept us busy just auditioning their wares. Some product was just plain awful in performance, yet we decided to stock that line. It sold well, usually, and what did not move was reduced in price until it found a buyer. We also had to face the warranty hassle, and some manufacturers were impossible to deal with, especially the 'high-end' lines.

I had Magnepans, Quads, Ohms, and the lot of English and other foreign brands to play with, not to mention the 'honky' Japanese brands. Every last one had weak points, and all you had to do to sell them was to point out the strong points. That too was easy, as you questioned the customer as to his/her taste in music, and if they had heard something that they really liked. It was a fun time, and most everyone seemed happy with what they had chosen. Of course, some product came back to be traded for an 'upgrade', which usually sold for much more. It was a revolving door on speakers, and used equipment usually was more profitable than new.

Bottom line: I have never heard a live performance come out of a box, and there is a very high likelyhood that I will not in my lifetime. Oh, I also owned a business that had live bands every week, so I know what I am talking about.

I am glad to hear and read about the audio hobby and subscribe to several internet sites. I am a dedicated hobbyist, having turned a business into a hobby a few years back, and collect the 'vintage' gear. There was some truely good stuff out there, and I have spent time and money assembling what I feel was the best of the lot. Yes, I tinker and refine, upgrade when it makes sense to me, and try to keep abreast of the new technology. The real disappointment comes when I go to retail outlets and try to listen to what is being offered. Some stores do not even have the product hooked up, and are quick to tell you that if you don't like it, you can bring it back. My, things have changed quite a bit.

[soundminded]

Gentlemen, gentlemen! The idea that anyone has ever produced the 'perfect' loudspeaker system is a myth. Even with all the progress that supposedly has been made in design, we can take any one of these products apart and easily find the faults. Most all products are market-driven, and have little or no relationship to what they actually do. Look at any consumer product out there, and you will find the love/hate relationship all of them (enjoy). I was in the audio business at the retail level for many years back in the seventies and eighties, having owned two consumer electronics stores that carried the 'high-end' products. The smoke and mirrors moved the product out of the store, not the accuracy or the quality of the product. The amount of trade-ins we took gives some insight into the whole stereo-audio market. You could name any top-rated, rave-reviewed product out there at the time, and I could safely tell you that I have taken it in trade and auditioned it at one time or another. Likewise, the steady stream of factory representatives kept us busy just auditioning their wares. Some product was just plain awful in performance, yet we decided to stock that line. It sold well, usually, and what did not move was reduced in price until it found a buyer. We also had to face the warranty hassle, and some manufacturers were impossible to deal with, especially the 'high-end' lines.

I had Magnepans, Quads, Ohms, and the lot of English and other foreign brands to play with, not to mention the 'honky' Japanese brands. Every last one had weak points, and all you had to do to sell them was to point out the strong points. That too was easy, as you questioned the customer as to his/her taste in music, and if they had heard something that they really liked. It was a fun time, and most everyone seemed happy with what they had chosen. Of course, some product came back to be traded for an 'upgrade', which usually sold for much more. It was a revolving door on speakers, and used equipment usually was more profitable than new.

Bottom line: I have never heard a live performance come out of a box, and there is a very high likelyhood that I will not in my lifetime. Oh, I also owned a business that had live bands every week, so I know what I am talking about.

I am glad to hear and read about the audio hobby and subscribe to several internet sites. I am a dedicated hobbyist, having turned a business into a hobby a few years back, and collect the 'vintage' gear. There was some truely good stuff out there, and I have spent time and money assembling what I feel was the best of the lot. Yes, I tinker and refine, upgrade when it makes sense to me, and try to keep abreast of the new technology. The real disappointment comes when I go to retail outlets and try to listen to what is being offered. Some stores do not even have the product hooked up, and are quick to tell you that if you don't like it, you can bring it back. My, things have changed quite a bit.

Welcome to the Classic Speaker Pages. This is another interesting topic which seems to have been shelved for a couple of years. I've had some more time to think about it and I'm more convinced than ever that this problem not only has a solution but that it can be found by those with both the intellectual curiousity and determination to solve it. That has not been the case in this industry. When I refer to a "paradigm" I'm not referring to the speaker brand, I'm referring to a conceptual model. It isn't just a model of how to solve a problem, it's the definition of the problem itself and the method of analyzing it. And when you think about it, there are at least two entirely different problems to be solved. Recreating the sound musical instruments would produce if they were in the same room you are is one and reproducting the sound you would hear at a venue suitable for a public performance like a concert hall or opera house is another. You actually have to solve the second problem which is much harder before you can fully solve the first. Interestingly, IMO the electrical problem of storing, retrieving, controlling, and amplifying electrical signals analagous to music has for all intents and purposes been solved and now the solutions have been inexpensviely comoditized. A manufacturer of an amplifier costing $10,000 doesn't want you to know that you can buy one just as good as his for about $500.

What would someone have to do to study these problems and actually solve them? First they would have to study how musical instruments generate sound and propagate them. They would have to study how sounds interact with rooms including large rooms like concert halls and small rooms like your listening room. Then they would have to study what kind of sound field reaches your ears. They would have to be able to characterize them matematically with precision, not just in vague generalities and they would have to devise tests to determine parameters which count. How would they know which ones matter and to what degree? They would have to understand a lot more about human hearing so that they could determine what parameters are audible, with what sensitivity, and which ones aren't. This is the value of double blind testing, it's usefulness as a scientific tool for research, not a method for determining which component someone likes in preference to another. Besides, the only way to solve this problem is to design systems to perform a function, not individual components that stand alone and leave it to the tyro customer to engineer a sound system like a tossed salad. When all of this is done, then you first start to worry about woofers, tweeters, crossover networks, amplifiers etc. Not only is this the kind of thing most engineers in this business do first instead of last, it's the only thing most of them do at all. It is therefore no surprise to me that all of them have failed. It is also valuable to study why various schemes have failed, schemes like binaural sound and quadraphonic sound. They teach us valuable lessons not only about what not to do but about how hearing actually works, something few audio component equipment designers ever think about. Then any real solution would have to have engineered into it, adjustments to accomodate both variables of recordings and of the acoustics the rooms the equipment will be installed in imposes on what the listener hears. The problem of acoustics is not an electrical engineering problem, it is more related to the mechanical engineering field of fluid dynamics (the fluid in this case being air) although much of the math used by electrical engineers such as Fourier analysis and much about field theory would also be valuable to know.

That little is known or understood about hearing, acoustics, etc. is easy to see. For instance, recently someone commented here on the spectral balance of early AR speakers being that of the sound you would hear some rows back in a concert hall. This if it was truly the design intent would have been a very naive approach since the timbre of musical instruments is a dynamic phenomenon which is not captured in recordings. This means that as the sound of each musical note decays its spectral balance changes and it becomes more mellow, high frequencies being absorbed by rooms relatively faster than middle and low frequencies.

Considering that men have safely gone to the moon three times and back, split the atom, determined the structure of DNA down to the last atom, it seems to me that by comparison, this problem of studying acoustical fields musical instruments make and duplicating them artificially should be child's play...to those with sufficient curiousity and determination. Perhaps the people who work in the field just aren't up to it. That leaves it to knowledgable hobbyists to get the job done first.

[Guest libertasdon]

Gentlemen, gentlemen! The idea that anyone has ever produced the 'perfect' loudspeaker system is a myth. Even with all the progress that supposedly has been made in design, we can take any one of these products apart and easily find the faults. Most all products are market-driven, and have little or no relationship to what they actually do. Look at any consumer product out there, and you will find the love/hate relationship all of them (enjoy). I was in the audio business at the retail level for many years back in the seventies and eighties, having owned two consumer electronics stores that carried the 'high-end' products. The smoke and mirrors moved the product out of the store, not the accuracy or the quality of the product. The amount of trade-ins we took gives some insight into the whole stereo-audio market. You could name any top-rated, rave-reviewed product out there at the time, and I could safely tell you that I have taken it in trade and auditioned it at one time or another. Likewise, the steady stream of factory representatives kept us busy just auditioning their wares. Some product was just plain awful in performance, yet we decided to stock that line. It sold well, usually, and what did not move was reduced in price until it found a buyer. We also had to face the warranty hassle, and some manufacturers were impossible to deal with, especially the 'high-end' lines.

I had Magnepans, Quads, Ohms, and the lot of English and other foreign brands to play with, not to mention the 'honky' Japanese brands. Every last one had weak points, and all you had to do to sell them was to point out the strong points. That too was easy, as you questioned the customer as to his/her taste in music, and if they had heard something that they really liked. It was a fun time, and most everyone seemed happy with what they had chosen. Of course, some product came back to be traded for an 'upgrade', which usually sold for much more. It was a revolving door on speakers, and used equipment usually was more profitable than new.

Bottom line: I have never heard a live performance come out of a box, and there is a very high likelyhood that I will not in my lifetime. Oh, I also owned a business that had live bands every week, so I know what I am talking about.

I am glad to hear and read about the audio hobby and subscribe to several internet sites. I am a dedicated hobbyist, having turned a business into a hobby a few years back, and collect the 'vintage' gear. There was some truely good stuff out there, and I have spent time and money assembling what I feel was the best of the lot. Yes, I tinker and refine, upgrade when it makes sense to me, and try to keep abreast of the new technology. The real disappointment comes when I go to retail outlets and try to listen to what is being offered. Some stores do not even have the product hooked up, and are quick to tell you that if you don't like it, you can bring it back. My, things have changed quite a bit.

Hi Jagster,

I am interested in what you collect and why. I have never worked in the hifi industry, but have always had an interest in equipment and the various magazines that catered to the trade. What do think was the best equipment from the late 60's through the early 80's?

Regards,

Libertasdon