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aimen
03-27-2004, 04:43 AM
wt does 2.5 way mean
i have seen some speakers like paradigm, b&w saying 2.5 way???

and also
does it reallyy make any differance having sperate mid range other then base drivers, i m not abt sub woofer
i mean like paradigm or polk or b&W or etc, many manufacturers use same size driver for mid and woofer, but they keep the mid sperate and just for mid freqs, and use
2 or 3 drivers gruoped for base, does it make any diff having seperate midrange, does it make it more defined when it does not have to produce bass freqs??


thx

bturk667
03-27-2004, 06:44 AM
It is a marketing gimick. It is when you have one bass only woofer and another when the woofer acts as a bass/mid-range driver.

I prefer a 2-way to most 3-ways in the sub-$3500 price range.

RGA
03-27-2004, 01:03 PM
More drivers cause phase problems take a look at the Audio Note AN E/D ~$2500.00 It's a two way with one 8 inch woofer. you'll get more bass and better sound from it thatn you will get from The Paradigm Studio 100 with it's 4 drivers or Energy Veritas etc or B&W CDM 7 or 9NTs etc.

As the other poster mentioned...it's a gimmick...looks like you're getting more when in fact you're getting less. Most speakers are designed to LOOK good rather than sound good. Most speakers use cheap parts cheap wood - if it is even wood, and then spend money to advertise and advertise and seduce reviewers with advertising dollars to keep the magazines going. Then when you dig you find out what speakers those reviewers actually own. And reviewers from Hi Fi Choice, Enjoythemusic.com, and Stereophile own Audio Note's or Quads or Apogees etc.

http://www.stereotimes.com/speak071701.shtm

3db
03-27-2004, 05:54 PM
More drivers cause phase problems take a look at the Audio Note AN E/D ~$2500.00 It's a two way with one 8 inch woofer. you'll get more bass and better sound from it thatn you will get from The Paradigm Studio 100 with it's 4 drivers or Energy Veritas etc or B&W CDM 7 or 9NTs etc.

As the other poster mentioned...it's a gimmick...looks like you're getting more when in fact you're getting less. Most speakers are designed to LOOK good rather than sound good. Most speakers use cheap parts cheap wood - if it is even wood, and then spend money to advertise and advertise and seduce reviewers with advertising dollars to keep the magazines going. Then when you dig you find out what speakers those reviewers actually own. And reviewers from Hi Fi Choice, Enjoythemusic.com, and Stereophile own Audio Note's or Quads or Apogees etc.

http://www.stereotimes.com/speak071701.shtm


RGA.. Sometimes I think yer pullin some of these idea's out of your rectum. Companies like PSB who use the NRC's facilities do not use them to tweak a speakers esthetics. They have design goals in mind which include minimizing the effects of the cabinet on the sound wave leaving the driver ( refraction) among other things. I have hard time believing that companies spend their efforts on appearances rather than sound. Thats just your opinion with no facts to back it up.

http://www.goodsound.com/equipment.shtml Reviews of the Axiom 60 vs the Axiom 80 indicates that the 80 digs deeper into the lower end than its the 60. Cabinet volume plays an effect on this but so do the extra drivers;


http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_1/axiom-m60ti-speakers-3-2004.html
The reviewer here owns PSB Image 6T and found that they have better base extension then the Axiom MTi69 because of the extra driver per cabinet compared to that of the Axiom. It also demonstrates that reviewers own and use other speakers other than Audio Notes, Quads, etc

Reference systems used by Audioholics;

http://audioholics.com/about/staffsystems/system1.php

http://audioholics.com/about/staffsystems/system2.php

http://audioholics.com/about/staffsystems/system3.php

Home Theater uses B&W CDM 9NT Towers .

RGA
03-27-2004, 06:15 PM
I have problems with audioholics because they don't compare apples to apples. Nor do they review high end speakers IMO.

PSB is not interested in the high end field. Using NRC facilities - well yeah thta is a lot cheaper than actually having your own facilities...you can rent out your overhead.

PSB makes some good speakers - that wasn't really my point.

Once people get away from the reviews and go from what they themselves hear from desgns that are not carbon copies of PSB...after all look how many have the same approach, then the opinion of them may change. It did for me I can't speak to what others will feel.

And of course Audio Note is much smaller than many of the others...many reviewers have not heard any Audio note products. UHF magazine has been around since 1982 and they finally got their hands on Audio Note's entry level CD player...which they said in many ways beat their reference cd player. The point is that they have been reviewing a long time and only now got a product.

Audioholics reviews all like systems. 6 slim line designs all sorta look the same with a metal tweeter and they're trying to figure out which one is best? I did the same thig they did with some of the exact same speakers they listened to and arrived at a very different opinion. It's not an issue that I'm right and they're wrong...each person has to decide that for themselves. reviews tend to push people.

Then when I look at owner's responses of Axiom on Audio Asylum - we get more of the truth from people who have lived with them long term...and they are not the deal the reviewers tout them to be it would seem.

Reviewers give a short listen generally...Speakers that have a wow factor are loved...wow factor speakers over the long run tend to be up for sale or worse owners stop listening.

If you can't listen for 4-8 consecutive hours at a relatively high level because it gives you a headache chances are the speaker has a problem IMO. http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/speakers/messages/156829.html

3db
03-27-2004, 06:54 PM
I have problems with audioholics because they don't compare apples to apples. Nor do they review high end speakers IMO.

PSB is not interested in the high end field. Using NRC facilities - well yeah thta is a lot cheaper than actually having your own facilities...you can rent out your overhead.

PSB makes some good speakers - that wasn't really my point.

Once people get away from the reviews and go from what they themselves hear from desgns that are not carbon copies of PSB...after all look how many have the same approach, then the opinion of them may change. It did for me I can't speak to what others will feel.

And of course Audio Note is much smaller than many of the others...many reviewers have not heard any Audio note products. UHF magazine has been around since 1982 and they finally got their hands on Audio Note's entry level CD player...which they said in many ways beat their reference cd player. The point is that they have been reviewing a long time and only now got a product.

Audioholics reviews all like systems. 6 slim line designs all sorta look the same with a metal tweeter and they're trying to figure out which one is best? I did the same thig they did with some of the exact same speakers they listened to and arrived at a very different opinion. It's not an issue that I'm right and they're wrong...each person has to decide that for themselves. reviews tend to push people.

Then when I look at owner's responses of Axiom on Audio Asylum - we get more of the truth from people who have lived with them long term...and they are not the deal the reviewers tout them to be it would seem.

Reviewers give a short listen generally...Speakers that have a wow factor are loved...wow factor speakers over the long run tend to be up for sale or worse owners stop listening.

If you can't listen for 4-8 consecutive hours at a relatively high level because it gives you a headache chances are the speaker has a problem IMO. http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/speakers/messages/156829.html


Apples vs oranges? I don't understand what that has to do with owning Audio Notes or other high end products?

I know your not knocking PSB. Ive ony used them as an example because I know for certain that they use the NRC facilities. I would have to look up the others to make sure. I think PSB"s new Platinum series is there step into the high end market. I also appreciate that PSB passes there cost savings onto the consumer by using rented facilities rather than factoring in the overhead of owning their own facilities into the cost of the products

This carbon copy I think is an evolution of speaker design brought onby home theater in an attempt to provide good frequency response with a smaller footprint. I'm pulling this one out of my butt :)

I'm not saying Audio Note is good or bad . My point is that other reviewers own a variety of equipment other than Uadio Note or Quad.

Audio Asylum tends to be snobbish IMO and the speakers that they find pleasing, I cannot afford. And they scoff at all the rest. The longer term reviews of Axioms on this forum are still favourable. But you make a good point. Maybe we should have along term review section in here based on a minimum of 3 years of ownership.

Oh, and theres no way in hell I can sit for 4 -8 hours.. My butt always gives up long before than. :)

RGA
03-27-2004, 11:30 PM
In my view home theater has completely destroyed the quality of loudspeakers. It is precisely the point that they are trying to get better graphs by changing the way they measure and making a small footprint. This way they can stick 6 loudspeakers on a plane instead of two and sell six speakers instead of two - sound? Well since all the competitors do the same thing they all pretty much sound the same...and people go out and listen to an Energy and Paradigm and they both sound sorta the same - both use NRC too - or did.

I was a big B&W supporter for a long time but now that I've been hearing different design concepts and B&W to me is falling back...actually they are not falling back they were always there...I just never bothered to hear different KINDS of designs. Pretty much ALL the home theater set-ups are slim line designs with multiple drivers and a metal tweeter. I continue to recommend them because of budget but really I doubt I could stomach the thought of owning them long term.

Dynaudio's new SE might be kind of the price range along with VR...but then those two are not home theater first companies either nor do they use metal if memeory serves. both pluses IMO.

PSB used to not use metal...if that's still the case it's probably a bonus.

92135011
03-27-2004, 11:52 PM
As you split the signal 1 more time with 3 way speakers compared to 2 way speakers, you may run into some problems syncronizing the times of arrival to each driver. So instead of 1 inaccuracy in a 2 way, there are now 2 inaccuracies.
I think I also heard that if you dont design a good crossover, then you might end up with humps in the music, much like it you set the crossover on the subwoofer too high.

Jimmy C
03-28-2004, 09:38 AM
...Paradigm Studio 60s... a 2.5-way.

A 2 or 3-way is self-explanatory... the 2.5 utilizes a midrange that is cut off on top, but allowed to roll off naturally, as opposed to being cut off at a certain low point.

This is, of course, if memory serves... :*)

aimen
03-28-2004, 12:55 PM
thx 4 de help

sorry for my ignorance RGA but wt u mean by more drivers ???
more ways ( 3way or 4 way)
or 3-4 mids or 3-4 woofer stuff

secondly wt is phase problem
is it a big one for average listener??


regards

92135011
03-28-2004, 01:46 PM
dont think there is such thing as a 4 way in the market unless you match a 3way speaker with a subwoofer.

2 way just means that the input signal is split between the tweeter and the other drivers (such as the midrange/base). Each driver is just each cone with magnet.

I think RGA was talking about how its hard to match the signals after you split them to go to each driver. So the signal may reach the tweeter before it reaches the midrange/base. With each time you increase the times you split the signal, there is difficulty matching the signals. 3 way just means that you are spliting the signal between high freq, midrange, and bass. Sometimes you might see a tweeter, a 4 inch midrange, and a 7-8 inch bass. Its more common in older stuff, these days all I see is a tweeter and the midrange and bass drivers are about the same size.

bturk667
03-28-2004, 08:12 PM
Legacy Audio makes a Five-way. Super Tweeter, tweeter, mid-range, woofer, and Sub-woofer. It has four cross - over points.

92135011
03-28-2004, 09:16 PM
wow o.o must be a chunky thing

RGA
03-28-2004, 09:46 PM
3-4 or 5 etc way speakers can be good but generally not cheap.

UHF magazine among others generally hold that the best sound would come from a point source(a tiny point in space) and that a two way standmount is the closes to the ideal. The difficulty is achieving bass and volume from small speakers. The designers of my speakers hold that anything beyond a two way is inherently inferior...and since they achieve full range with a two way they deem it unnecessary to over-complicate things because each addition also adds a problem which must be corrected. It's a rather extreme approach but at least theystick to it throughout ALL of their products including the no times oversampling cd players. Oversampling is a system where by the player corrects errors when reading the disc and must INVENT information to fill the gaps causing a measurable time delay problem. There approach is not to make any error in the first place so you don't have to CORRECT anything...that is passed through as far as possible to the end result.

None of this means others are not making good gear but if you listen to even some very highly touted two ways such as the B&W N805 a two way very good product you can here a "GAP" from where the midrange leaves and the metal tweeter takes over. One reason I bought my seaker over the N805 is because the drivers are not treated as separate entities. The Audio Note has a very similar material for botht he tweeter and the woofer which overlap each other with an ever so slight pass-off at 800hz or so. The N805 is a clearly audible suck-out - which is why some find the speaker bright because part of the midrange is basically gone. You can imagine that adding ANOTHER driver so you can have the same problem at another frequency isn't helping matters. Of course in a chamber it all looks nice testing each speaker driver. Bahh.

Metal tweeters add a lift to the upper frequencies and when people are comparing they stand out more with bit of extra "detail." This term is ridiculous and if you hear a speaker salesman blathering on about the extra detail run don't walk away from such speakers. Chances are the detail that gets you to buy em today will be the same detail that gets you to sell em in 6 months.

This is not to attack metal tweeters...there are some very good spekaers using them...The JM Labs Utopia and the B&W Model Nautilus and N800 line...Still not sure I would want to own them though compared to some competition.

Just try and listen to totally different designs and see if you can tell what is good bad and ugly about them. For instance listen to three speakers with a metal tweeter and are SLIM designs...like the Paradigm Studio 100 or B&W CDM 9NTor 603S3. Then try and listen to an electrostatic panel from Quad or Martin Logan and a planar design such as Magnepan. Then listen to some speakers using silk domes like Audio Note, Reference 3a and if you can some speakers using horns or ribbon drrivers.

The reviews are mostly funded by the home theater driven speaker companies and most of them say little other than it's a great speaker...well no actually not every speaker is great, but reading the magazines you certainly would get that idea.

Sorry to take this off topic - but the only thing that should really concern you is the sound not the designs. There is no need to go beyond a two way unless you listen to the pedal organ...adding a sub will make it a three way but with proper set-up it's better generally than a built in third way unless we're talking 10k speakers. Most of us can't do it so buying a good $2k 2-way and maybe adding another 1k sub or two you're looking at $3-$4k ... you'll probably better most 10k speakers on the market - depending on your set-up(requiring an SPL and test disc and possibly a parametric EQ) and the quality of the standmounts you get at the outset. The Subs will likely produce more bass than a 10k speaker.

As Woochifer often says and is very correct...the best place for bass is not always the best place for the mid range and tweeter. Trouble is most people including me, have had nightmares with subwoofer integration(Same problem i mentioned above with the suckout in the N805) that we'd rather not have the sub and live without bass. But, we learn from our mistakes...back then I had never heard of the parametric EQ and the dealers were no help and there was no internet to get help from people - so if you were not a studio engineer you'd probably have no clue.

aimen
03-29-2004, 05:03 AM
thx all
i was asking abt designs rather than sound cuz i m thinking to build or buy actually custom built speakers ( from a local guy).
i need deep impact in movies and kick in music
there r many options when u r the boss what kind of design u want, like built in subs in towers is an option or two way bookshelf or 2 or 3 way typical floor-speakers.
i was thinking of having a side firing sub in a tower or something like NHT evolution T5 ; bookself over sub,, but reading over here suggests that side firings are not always suitable for every room, other suggestions to me were like floorstandig with 3 or 4 mid/wofers with a tweeter and seperate sub, etc
ofcourse i would have to ask him to make a test version first but that would came at a cost so wanted to have it correct the first time, that local guy can also help me in design but i dont think he does know much abt designs he will make what claint will say, so wanted a thought here.

most econmical and simple and better option i to have simple good quality 2way tweeter-woofer thing all around the room and one sub in corner but he doesnt have good quality drivers, they are all the same average quality drivers from a company called CLARION, i searched on the net abt them they produce car speakers but not any high quality HT drivers

i think i will test a tweeter and 4x 6 to 8inch mid/woofer 2way floorstander??? but RGA said there can be phase probs when to many drivers r involved but i guess i would have to try myself if they bother me.

there r lot of debates going in my mind but will save them for later
btw my room is 23x17x10feet, brick-concrete structure, carpeted , not a dedicated HT room.


regards

omikey
03-29-2004, 05:52 AM
Dynaudio's new SE might be kind of the price range along with VR...but then those two are not home theater first companies either nor do they use metal if memeory serves. both pluses IMO.

PSB used to not use metal...if that's still the case it's probably a bonus.
RGA in your reference to VR, is that as in VR series of the Boston Acoustics ?

If yes, then your memory isn't serving you well, on this point anyway.

I'm posting this as information only, not making a statement of good design or bad design, to each his own in the sound you like. (I happen to like the sound of BA :D )

Here is the specs on the tweeter implemented in the Boston VR series:


THE VR<SUP>®</SUP> TWEETER


http://www.bostonacoustics.com/popup/technology/images/VR_Tweeter.jpg You may notice that all our Reference speakers have at least one thing in common: the VR tweeter. So what makes it tick? Aluminum. We use a specially anodized aluminum dome in our VR tweeter for several reasons. Compared to a soft dome, aluminum is equally light, yet more rigid. Compared to other hard dome materials—such as titanium, phenolic, and polycarbonate—an aluminum dome is unrivaled in its ability to accurately track the input signal. In other words, when the voice coil says “jump,” our aluminum dome does so, without changing shape.

AMPLITUDE MODIFICATION DEVICE (AMD™)

http://www.bostonacoustics.com/popup/technology/images/AMD.jpg AMD is used to further optimize the aluminum dome's output, without taking anything away. AMD is a patented acoustical tuning device that uses precisely sized hollow tubes positioned in front of the tweeter to refocus short wavelength energy and create an extremely smooth, flat response. This is done without using elaborate electronic components that can degrade the sound's purity. A Boston engineer figured it out: Blow across a straw, and it produces a tone, right? Reproduce that same exact tone and pass it in front of the same straw, and the tone will be, miraculously, canceled. Finally, every VR tweeter with aluminum up front has some aluminum in the back—this time in the form of a die-cast heat sink that removes damaging heat from the equation and allows the tweeter to handle a lot more power.

3db
03-29-2004, 06:09 AM
In my view home theater has completely destroyed the quality of loudspeakers. It is precisely the point that they are trying to get better graphs by changing the way they measure and making a small footprint. This way they can stick 6 loudspeakers on a plane instead of two and sell six speakers instead of two - sound? Well since all the competitors do the same thing they all pretty much sound the same...and people go out and listen to an Energy and Paradigm and they both sound sorta the same - both use NRC too - or did.

I was a big B&W supporter for a long time but now that I've been hearing different design concepts and B&W to me is falling back...actually they are not falling back they were always there...I just never bothered to hear different KINDS of designs. Pretty much ALL the home theater set-ups are slim line designs with multiple drivers and a metal tweeter. I continue to recommend them because of budget but really I doubt I could stomach the thought of owning them long term.

Dynaudio's new SE might be kind of the price range along with VR...but then those two are not home theater first companies either nor do they use metal if memeory serves. both pluses IMO.

PSB used to not use metal...if that's still the case it's probably a bonus.


I guess what you like is what you like and I'm happy that you found soemthing you liked. However, I think its incorrect to say that speaker designers designing towers try and measure frequency differently. And I think aiming for a flat frequency curve is inherently a good thing as no frequency /range gets emphasized. But that doesn't mean that Paradigms, PSB, B&W all sound the same. Thats simply not true. You also mentioned that the ideal source is a point source and in that sense, tower designs are trying to achieve this by minimizing the width of a speaker.

I've never heard electrostats or planars before and I need to go down and listen to a pair just to see what their all about. But thats not everybody's cup of tea either. From what I've read, they give a very diffuse sound stage where as the regukar old drivers give a more
detailed stage in terms of depth..etc. BUt I have to listen for myself.

And your absolutely right. Lsiten to a speaker and ignore the design behind it. If it sounds good and its in one's pricve range, buy it.


I do have a question about cross-overs. I knowthey induce phase distortion because of the capactivce/inductive effects. But is it correct to say that they split up the signal? I was always under the impression that the signal gets filtered into its frequency components in series; ie full range in, (bass to woofer) and mid-high signals move on to the next filter stage where the mids get stripped from the signal and passsed to the mid leaving the highs to the tweeter.

bturk667
03-29-2004, 07:28 AM
What?

topspeed
03-29-2004, 09:39 AM
thx all
i was asking abt designs rather than sound cuz i m thinking to build or buy actually custom built speakers ( from a local guy).
i need deep impact in movies and kick in music
there r many options when u r the boss what kind of design u want, like built in subs in towers is an option or two way bookshelf or 2 or 3 way typical floor-speakers.
i was thinking of having a side firing sub in a tower or something like NHT evolution T5 ; bookself over sub,, but reading over here suggests that side firings are not always suitable for every room, other suggestions to me were like floorstandig with 3 or 4 mid/wofers with a tweeter and seperate sub, etc
ofcourse i would have to ask him to make a test version first but that would came at a cost so wanted to have it correct the first time, that local guy can also help me in design but i dont think he does know much abt designs he will make what claint will say, so wanted a thought here.

most econmical and simple and better option i to have simple good quality 2way tweeter-woofer thing all around the room and one sub in corner but he doesnt have good quality drivers, they are all the same average quality drivers from a company called CLARION, i searched on the net abt them they produce car speakers but not any high quality HT drivers

i think i will test a tweeter and 4x 6 to 8inch mid/woofer 2way floorstander??? but RGA said there can be phase probs when to many drivers r involved but i guess i would have to try myself if they bother me.

there r lot of debates going in my mind but will save them for later
btw my room is 23x17x10feet, brick-concrete structure, carpeted , not a dedicated HT room.

Here's the problem aimen, not only do you not know what you want, which is OK, but to compound the problem your local speaker builder doesn't know squat, which is inexcusable. Any speaker builder that uses Clarion speakers is someone that I wouldn't trust. There are so many better options by reknown speaker manufacturers such as Dynaudio, Seas, Scanspeak, Vifa, and Focal/JM Lab, among others. Honestly, I think you'd be better off getting a kit from PartsExpress.com and doing it yourself. It'd probably sound better than anything your local guy is doing. If you want "impact" to your music, buy/build a powered sub.

omikey
03-29-2004, 09:57 AM
I do have a question about cross-overs. I knowthey induce phase distortion because of the capactivce/inductive effects. But is it correct to say that they split up the signal? I was always under the impression that the signal gets filtered into its frequency components in series; ie full range in, (bass to woofer) and mid-high signals move on to the next filter stage where the mids get stripped from the signal and passsed to the mid leaving the highs to the tweeter.
Yes, each stage gets the full signal input ... in PARALLEL, The signal is feed to the crossover circut all at one time, then there are seperate frequencies sent to the respective speaker componts (Tweeter, Mid, Woofer, sub)

Here's an excerpt from an article that I was reading:

When you get to the part about ACTIVE versus PASSIVE ... think of your receiver when you think of active .... where you can set your mains to large or small, and freq crossover for the sub ... all can be adjusted in the receiver and by setting this options you are actually determining the freq range that is going to be sent to those speakers.

Enjoy:

to dedicate each driver to a particular frequency range, the speaker system first needs to break the audio signal into different pieces -- low frequency, high frequency and sometimes mid-range frequencies. This is the job of the speaker crossover.


The most common type of crossover is passive, meaning it doesn't need an external power source because it is activated by the audio signal passing through it. This sort of crossover uses inductors (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/inductor.htm), capacitors (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm) and sometimes other circuitry components. Capacitors and inductors only become good conductors under certain conditions. A crossover capacitor will conduct the current very well when the frequency exceeds a certain level, but will conduct poorly when the frequency is below that level. A crossover inductor acts in the reverse manner -- it is only a good conductor when the frequency is below a certain level.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width=400 align=center><TBODY><TR><TD><CENTER>http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/speaker-11.jpg</CENTER></TD></TR><TR><TD><CENTER>http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/speaker-12.jpg

The typical crossover unit from a loudspeaker: The frequency is divided up by inductors and capacitors and then sent on to the woofer, tweeter and mid-range driver.
</CENTER>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

When the electrical audio signal travels through the speaker wire to the speaker, it passes through the crossover units for each driver. To flow to the tweeter, the current will have to pass through a capacitor. So for the most part, the high frequency part of the signal will flow on to the tweeter voice coil. To flow to the woofer, the current passes through an inductor, so the driver will mainly respond to low frequencies. A crossover for the mid-range driver will conduct the current through a capacitor and an inductor, to set an upper and lower cutoff point.

There are also active crossovers. Active crossovers are electronic devices that pick out the different frequency ranges in an audio signal before it goes on to the amplifier (you use an amplifier circuit for each driver). They have several advantages over passive crossovers, the main one being that you can easily adjust the frequency ranges. Passive crossover ranges are determined by the individual circuitry components -- to change them, you need to install new capacitors and inductors. Active crossovers aren't as widely used as passive crossovers, however, because the equipment is much more expensive and you need multiple amplifier outputs for your speakers. Crossovers and drivers can be installed as separate components in a sound system, but most people end up buying speaker units that house the crossover and multiple drivers in one box.

Jim85IROC
03-29-2004, 01:11 PM
It is a marketing gimick. It is when you have one bass only woofer and another when the woofer acts as a bass/mid-range driver.

I prefer a 2-way to most 3-ways in the sub-$3500 price range.
Not necessarily. A 2.5 way is a very legitimate design that has its advantages. In your typical 2-way design, you've got to design a crossover that includes a baffle step compensation. Do a google search for more info on baffle step, but basically it's a 6dB drop below frequencies that are the same wavelength as your baffle width. To compensate for this in a typical 2 way speaker requires you to attenuate everything above the baffle step frequency by 6dB. That means that you're going to have to pad the crap out of your tweeter, which is going to give it a lifeless sound. With a 2.5 way design, that 2nd woofer has a single inductor wired in series to produce a 6dB/octave low pass to compensate for the baffle step. With a typical system, you get the 3dB of added sensitivity from the extra cone area, as well as an additional 3dB from the halved impedance within the low-pass region. With commercially available speakers that still adhere to the "8-ohm" guideline, I'm guessing that they are using 16 ohm bass drivers, so compared to a single 8 ohm equivalent driver, you're only getting an additional 3dB from the 2nd driver. But... that's still 3dB less padding that you need to stuff on the tweeter.

Also, keep in mind that not many people are going to buy a speaker with an 83dB sensitivity. Designers target AT LEAST an 87dB efficiency for mass-market speakers. This forces 2-way designers to use extremely efficient drivers. This is generally a very small pool to choose from, and typically doesn't include very much stuff that sounds all that good.

Far more than marketing.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
03-29-2004, 04:52 PM
3-4 or 5 etc way speakers can be good but generally not cheap.

UHF magazine among others generally hold that the best sound would come from a point source(a tiny point in space) and that a two way standmount is the closes to the ideal. The difficulty is achieving bass and volume from small speakers. The designers of my speakers hold that anything beyond a two way is inherently inferior...and since they achieve full range with a two way they deem it unnecessary to over-complicate things because each addition also adds a problem which must be corrected. It's a rather extreme approach but at least theystick to it throughout ALL of their products including the no times oversampling cd players. Oversampling is a system where by the player corrects errors when reading the disc and must INVENT information to fill the gaps causing a measurable time delay problem. There approach is not to make any error in the first place so you don't have to CORRECT anything...that is passed through as far as possible to the end result.

None of this means others are not making good gear but if you listen to even some very highly touted two ways such as the B&W N805 a two way very good product you can here a "GAP" from where the midrange leaves and the metal tweeter takes over. One reason I bought my seaker over the N805 is because the drivers are not treated as separate entities. The Audio Note has a very similar material for botht he tweeter and the woofer which overlap each other with an ever so slight pass-off at 800hz or so. The N805 is a clearly audible suck-out - which is why some find the speaker bright because part of the midrange is basically gone. You can imagine that adding ANOTHER driver so you can have the same problem at another frequency isn't helping matters. Of course in a chamber it all looks nice testing each speaker driver. Bahh.

Metal tweeters add a lift to the upper frequencies and when people are comparing they stand out more with bit of extra "detail." This term is ridiculous and if you hear a speaker salesman blathering on about the extra detail run don't walk away from such speakers. Chances are the detail that gets you to buy em today will be the same detail that gets you to sell em in 6 months.

This is not to attack metal tweeters...there are some very good spekaers using them...The JM Labs Utopia and the B&W Model Nautilus and N800 line...Still not sure I would want to own them though compared to some competition.

Just try and listen to totally different designs and see if you can tell what is good bad and ugly about them. For instance listen to three speakers with a metal tweeter and are SLIM designs...like the Paradigm Studio 100 or B&W CDM 9NTor 603S3. Then try and listen to an electrostatic panel from Quad or Martin Logan and a planar design such as Magnepan. Then listen to some speakers using silk domes like Audio Note, Reference 3a and if you can some speakers using horns or ribbon drrivers.

The reviews are mostly funded by the home theater driven speaker companies and most of them say little other than it's a great speaker...well no actually not every speaker is great, but reading the magazines you certainly would get that idea.

Sorry to take this off topic - but the only thing that should really concern you is the sound not the designs. There is no need to go beyond a two way unless you listen to the pedal organ...adding a sub will make it a three way but with proper set-up it's better generally than a built in third way unless we're talking 10k speakers. Most of us can't do it so buying a good $2k 2-way and maybe adding another 1k sub or two you're looking at $3-$4k ... you'll probably better most 10k speakers on the market - depending on your set-up(requiring an SPL and test disc and possibly a parametric EQ) and the quality of the standmounts you get at the outset. The Subs will likely produce more bass than a 10k speaker.

As Woochifer often says and is very correct...the best place for bass is not always the best place for the mid range and tweeter. Trouble is most people including me, have had nightmares with subwoofer integration(Same problem i mentioned above with the suckout in the N805) that we'd rather not have the sub and live without bass. But, we learn from our mistakes...back then I had never heard of the parametric EQ and the dealers were no help and there was no internet to get help from people - so if you were not a studio engineer you'd probably have no clue.

RGA,

The trouble I am having with you post is that it is filled with some truths, and some VERY obvious biases.


UHF magazine among others generally hold that the best sound would come from a point source(a tiny point in space) and that a two way standmount is the closes to the ideal.

Not necessarily true. If that two way speaker is not phase/time correct, then it will have the same arrival problems as a three way. In order for a point source to exist, all frequencies my leave the speaker at the same time, and the DIRECT output must arrive at you ears at the same time. Just because a speaker is a two way, it does not mean it meets this objective.


The designers of my speakers hold that anything beyond a two way is inherently inferior...and since they achieve full range with a two way they deem it unnecessary to over-complicate things because each addition also adds a problem which must be corrected.

This is an obvious bias. It is almost impossible for a two way to be full range and behave cleanly because if it were, it would suffer one or two problems. One is a distortion effect that comes when a speaker tries to do deep bass and the midrange out of the same driver. The long excursions from the cone doing deep bass, will shift the pitch of the midrange which depending on frequency requires very fine movements. That is why it is beneficial to seperate the bass from the mids(whether its by using a sub, or a seperate driver within the speaker enclosure).


The Audio Note has a very similar material for botht he tweeter and the woofer which overlap each other with an ever so slight pass-off at 800hz or so. The N805 is a clearly audible suck-out - which is why some find the speaker bright because part of the midrange is basically gone.

With speakers with overlapping crossover points presents another problem. Driver interference. When two drivers are producing the same freqencies, there is cancellation and boosting of frequencies at wavelengths that equal the distance between the two drivers. If you are sitting on axis, this may be an audible problem if the acoustics of the room does not swamp it. Another has to do with the dispersion pattern of the particular drivers, and the power response also. 8" drivers cannot do deep bass, it takes a 12" and larger to accomplish that. 12" drivers do not operate well above 800hz, and 1" tweeters do not do well at below 2000hz. A 12" driver would beam profoundly at 1200hz, and a 1" tweeter would burn up trying to reproduce 1200hz. .Using the same material for the tweeter and woofer from what I understand is not the greatest of ideas when trying to insure accuracy over both of the drivers operating range.

A good two way speaker can sound VERY good. A well made three way can sound better, play louder, and be a little more accurate over most of the audible frequencies we can hear. So it is not good to make a blanket statement that two ways are better than three ways.

thepogue
03-29-2004, 05:22 PM
RGA,

The trouble I am having with you post is that it is filled with some truths, and some VERY obvious biases.



Not necessarily true. If that two way speaker is not phase/time correct, then it will have the same arrival problems as a three way. In order for a point source to exist, all frequencies my leave the speaker at the same time, and the DIRECT output must arrive at you ears at the same time. Just because a speaker is a two way, it does not mean it meets this objective.



This is an obvious bias. It is almost impossible for a two way to be full range and behave cleanly because if it were, it would suffer one or two problems. One is a distortion effect that comes when a speaker tries to do deep bass and the midrange out of the same driver. The long excursions from the cone doing deep bass, will shift the pitch of the midrange which depending on frequency requires very fine movements. That is why it is beneficial to seperate the bass from the mids(whether its by using a sub, or a seperate driver within the speaker enclosure).



With speakers with overlapping crossover points presents another problem. Driver interference. When two drivers are producing the same freqencies, there is cancellation and boosting of frequencies at wavelengths that equal the distance between the two drivers. If you are sitting on axis, this may be an audible problem if the acoustics of the room does not swamp it. Another has to do with the dispersion pattern of the particular drivers, and the power response also. 8" drivers cannot do deep bass, it takes a 12" and larger to accomplish that. 12" drivers do not operate well above 800hz, and 1" tweeters do not do well at below 2000hz. A 12" driver would beam profoundly at 1200hz, and a 1" tweeter would burn up trying to reproduce 1200hz. .Using the same material for the tweeter and woofer from what I understand is not the greatest of ideas when trying to insure accuracy over both of the drivers operating range.

A good two way speaker can sound VERY good. A well made three way can sound better, play louder, and be a little more accurate over most of the audible frequencies we can hear. So it is not good to make a blanket statement that two ways are better than three ways.
Very well said....I seached a bit the other night and edumacated meself on 2 1/5 way design and found quite a few (including the B & W Natilus) non-obscure speaker companies use it....and for good reason I'm sure. Thanks for a good read. Peace...

Jalen01
03-29-2004, 07:00 PM
omickey,

Not to come to Anyones defense. I think the "VR" that RGA may have been refering to was: Von Schweikert Audio (http://www.vonschweikert.com/default.htm)
Which uses Soft/Fabric Dome Tweets.










would be nice if I knew how to post pictures....

RGA
03-29-2004, 08:35 PM
RGA in your reference to VR, is that as in VR series of the Boston Acoustics ?

If yes, then your memory isn't serving you well, on this point anyway.

I'm posting this as information only, not making a statement of good design or bad design, to each his own in the sound you like. (I happen to like the sound of BA :D )

Here is the specs on the tweeter implemented in the Boston VR series:


THE VR<SUP>®</SUP> TWEETER


http://www.bostonacoustics.com/popup/technology/images/VR_Tweeter.jpg You may notice that all our Reference speakers have at least one thing in common: the VR tweeter. So what makes it tick? Aluminum. We use a specially anodized aluminum dome in our VR tweeter for several reasons. Compared to a soft dome, aluminum is equally light, yet more rigid. Compared to other hard dome materials—such as titanium, phenolic, and polycarbonate—an aluminum dome is unrivaled in its ability to accurately track the input signal. In other words, when the voice coil says “jump,” our aluminum dome does so, without changing shape.

AMPLITUDE MODIFICATION DEVICE (AMD™)

http://www.bostonacoustics.com/popup/technology/images/AMD.jpg AMD is used to further optimize the aluminum dome's output, without taking anything away. AMD is a patented acoustical tuning device that uses precisely sized hollow tubes positioned in front of the tweeter to refocus short wavelength energy and create an extremely smooth, flat response. This is done without using elaborate electronic components that can degrade the sound's purity. A Boston engineer figured it out: Blow across a straw, and it produces a tone, right? Reproduce that same exact tone and pass it in front of the same straw, and the tone will be, miraculously, canceled. Finally, every VR tweeter with aluminum up front has some aluminum in the back—this time in the form of a die-cast heat sink that removes damaging heat from the equation and allows the tweeter to handle a lot more power.

No I actually meant Von Sweikert...VS oh well.

RGA
03-29-2004, 08:58 PM
RGA,

The trouble I am having with you post is that it is filled with some truths, and some VERY obvious biases.



Not necessarily true. If that two way speaker is not phase/time correct, then it will have the same arrival problems as a three way. In order for a point source to exist, all frequencies my leave the speaker at the same time, and the DIRECT output must arrive at you ears at the same time. Just because a speaker is a two way, it does not mean it meets this objective.



This is an obvious bias. It is almost impossible for a two way to be full range and behave cleanly because if it were, it would suffer one or two problems. One is a distortion effect that comes when a speaker tries to do deep bass and the midrange out of the same driver. The long excursions from the cone doing deep bass, will shift the pitch of the midrange which depending on frequency requires very fine movements. That is why it is beneficial to seperate the bass from the mids(whether its by using a sub, or a seperate driver within the speaker enclosure).



With speakers with overlapping crossover points presents another problem. Driver interference. When two drivers are producing the same freqencies, there is cancellation and boosting of frequencies at wavelengths that equal the distance between the two drivers. If you are sitting on axis, this may be an audible problem if the acoustics of the room does not swamp it. Another has to do with the dispersion pattern of the particular drivers, and the power response also. 8" drivers cannot do deep bass, it takes a 12" and larger to accomplish that. 12" drivers do not operate well above 800hz, and 1" tweeters do not do well at below 2000hz. A 12" driver would beam profoundly at 1200hz, and a 1" tweeter would burn up trying to reproduce 1200hz. .Using the same material for the tweeter and woofer from what I understand is not the greatest of ideas when trying to insure accuracy over both of the drivers operating range.

A good two way speaker can sound VERY good. A well made three way can sound better, play louder, and be a little more accurate over most of the audible frequencies we can hear. So it is not good to make a blanket statement that two ways are better than three ways.


Quick note however. Audio Note speakers don't use a pistonic effect from their woofers like typical long throw designs. Audio Note spekaers use almost no internal damping...tather than absorbing resonances like speakers that heavily damp they immediately "get rid" of resonances at alternate inaudible or unobtrusive frequencuies. Their speaker suse the box to re-indforce bass so that the speaker is rated at 17hz -6db from their two way with an 8 inch driver though the actual driver probably begins to rolloff at 55hz - the speakers also require a corner placement to achive greater bass response but that's how they were designed...the AN E D is capable of 12hz in a corner placement. Bass distortion is extremely low all the way through the treble region which is why Hi FI Choice and Stereophile magazines use them to test equipment - such as amplifiers. They are also time coherent according to the measurer at hi-fi choice.

from AN.
"they are actually 1940's cabinet shapes, read L. L. Beranek's Loudspeakers and you will find the calculation for all our speakers, cabinet shape, driver position etc.
What you will not find is how we match the drivers to each other to maximise efficiency, dispersion and overall tonal balance.
Asto the drivers, they are both from Vifa in Denmark, the tweeter is a highly modified version of the TD19, no ferro fluid, no damping and a special ferrite magnet, the woofer is also a Vifa which is a derivative of the original standard driver.

Now I should say this does not mean you won't find speakers with more bass - because you will but few speakers are as tonally right from top to bottom sounding of a whole than other speakers. For instance I have yet to hear any speaker using a metal tweeter do it justice under 10k. 2, 3, 4 or any other way. But then if I didn't feel that way I would not have bought from them...it had to be sound because they don't have great looks nor are they a household name.......yet.

3db
03-30-2004, 05:09 AM
Yes, each stage gets the full signal input ... in PARALLEL, The signal is feed to the crossover circut all at one time, then there are seperate frequencies sent to the respective speaker componts (Tweeter, Mid, Woofer, sub)

Here's an excerpt from an article that I was reading:

When you get to the part about ACTIVE versus PASSIVE ... think of your receiver when you think of active .... where you can set your mains to large or small, and freq crossover for the sub ... all can be adjusted in the receiver and by setting this options you are actually determining the freq range that is going to be sent to those speakers.

Enjoy:

to dedicate each driver to a particular frequency range, the speaker system first needs to break the audio signal into different pieces -- low frequency, high frequency and sometimes mid-range frequencies. This is the job of the speaker crossover.


The most common type of crossover is passive, meaning it doesn't need an external power source because it is activated by the audio signal passing through it. This sort of crossover uses inductors (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/inductor.htm), capacitors (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm) and sometimes other circuitry components. Capacitors and inductors only become good conductors under certain conditions. A crossover capacitor will conduct the current very well when the frequency exceeds a certain level, but will conduct poorly when the frequency is below that level. A crossover inductor acts in the reverse manner -- it is only a good conductor when the frequency is below a certain level.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width=400 align=center><TBODY><TR><TD><CENTER>http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/speaker-11.jpg</CENTER></TD></TR><TR><TD><CENTER>http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/speaker-12.jpg

The typical crossover unit from a loudspeaker: The frequency is divided up by inductors and capacitors and then sent on to the woofer, tweeter and mid-range driver.
</CENTER>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

When the electrical audio signal travels through the speaker wire to the speaker, it passes through the crossover units for each driver. To flow to the tweeter, the current will have to pass through a capacitor. So for the most part, the high frequency part of the signal will flow on to the tweeter voice coil. To flow to the woofer, the current passes through an inductor, so the driver will mainly respond to low frequencies. A crossover for the mid-range driver will conduct the current through a capacitor and an inductor, to set an upper and lower cutoff point.

There are also active crossovers. Active crossovers are electronic devices that pick out the different frequency ranges in an audio signal before it goes on to the amplifier (you use an amplifier circuit for each driver). They have several advantages over passive crossovers, the main one being that you can easily adjust the frequency ranges. Passive crossover ranges are determined by the individual circuitry components -- to change them, you need to install new capacitors and inductors. Active crossovers aren't as widely used as passive crossovers, however, because the equipment is much more expensive and you need multiple amplifier outputs for your speakers. Crossovers and drivers can be installed as separate components in a sound system, but most people end up buying speaker units that house the crossover and multiple drivers in one box.


Silly me imagining that a crossover network were a series of low pass filters cascased together in series. Yeah, that would definaltely introduce phase distortion especially using Butterworth filters as they introduce a 90 degress phase shift for every order. So all frequencies should be arriving at the drivers at roughly the same time since the signal is being split at the same time. I can see that the signal would be slighty out of phase with one another depending on the impedance of the crossover network at differebt frequencies. So this is what they mean by not being phase aligned? What about time aligned? Or is that just a a marketing gimmick?

aimen
03-30-2004, 06:37 AM
thx 4 the help so far, thx Mr. Terrible for good piece of info

thx topspeed and.....as u said i should go for DIYs , well thats what i think but thats not a option as i caant get the kits at my place, as far as buying branded goes , one easily available is Bose whose fan i m not. others i will have to import costing huge money, local stuff available at my place are old technics and infinity box like speakers with 10 10 inch woofer costing roughly around 500$/pair
someone told me of that this local guy that he can make better speakers than those for equal or less many, thats the only rreason i m thinking at him.
i listened to his some of speakers he made for a dance floor, i didnt really like them, base was good, but mids or highs were not detailed and were on the face agressive shrill even at low volumes, he is also making a theatre for someone and he says hell get it THX certified, i'll listen to that soon

Does THX certified stuff means good sound or is it all abt technical terms???

topspeed
03-30-2004, 08:27 AM
THX in this application is a technical standard, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with sound quality.

Again, run, run away from this guy. If you can recieve mail, I don't understand why a kit from PartsExpress is out of the question? Import tariffs? Taxes?

markw
03-30-2004, 08:36 AM
If you can recieve mail, I don't understand why a kit from PartsExpress is out of the question? Import tariffs? Taxes?

Likewise, http://www.madisound.com has inetresting ideas to offer the DIY maven.

omikey
03-30-2004, 04:13 PM
Silly me imagining that a crossover network were a series of low pass filters cascased together in series. Yeah, that would definaltely introduce phase distortion especially using Butterworth filters as they introduce a 90 degress phase shift for every order. So all frequencies should be arriving at the drivers at roughly the same time since the signal is being split at the same time. I can see that the signal would be slighty out of phase with one another depending on the impedance of the crossover network at differebt frequencies. So this is what they mean by not being phase aligned? What about time aligned? Or is that just a a marketing gimmick?
I was sure you'd see the error of your ways :)

Yes, the signal will be slighty 'out of phase' and known as the phase shift caused by the components in the crossover filters. As far as I know that term 'Time Aligned' is just another market term you might hear from a salesman.

omikey
03-30-2004, 04:29 PM
[QUOTE=topspeed]THX in this application is a technical standard, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with sound quality.
QUOTE]

FWIW - here's my view on how THX relates to sound quality.

Certainly THX has plenty to do with Sound Quality, as it does with Video Quality. These are only TWO of several componets that are included in the THX standards:

THX looks at a number of theater qualities, which fall into four basic groups:

Physical structure
Projection system
Seating arrangement
Sound system
It is the specificaiton of the 'Standard' for the sound system and physical structure (effecting accoustics, reverb, echo, delay, etc) that in fact assures the level of 'Quality of Sound' you hear.

If however if what you meant to say was that THX is a STANDARD and as such should not be confused with a audio format, you are totally correct.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
03-30-2004, 05:18 PM
I was sure you'd see the error of your ways :)

Yes, the signal will be slighty 'out of phase' and known as the phase shift caused by the components in the crossover filters. As far as I know that term 'Time Aligned' is just another market term you might hear from a salesman.

No, time aligned is not a marketing ploy. It has some VERY palpable benefits. If you consider that a microphone picks up all frequencies(fundamentals plus harmonics) that a instrument emits at any given moment simultaneously, it would benefit a speaker to be able to reproduce that signal in exactly the same way. I time aligned speaker has certain benefits over non time aligned speakers. More accurate tonality, and MUCH improved imaging.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
03-30-2004, 05:24 PM
[QUOTE=topspeed]THX in this application is a technical standard, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with sound quality.
QUOTE]

FWIW - here's my view on how THX relates to sound quality.

Certainly THX has plenty to do with Sound Quality, as it does with Video Quality. These are only TWO of several componets that are included in the THX standards:

THX looks at a number of theater qualities, which fall into four basic groups:

Physical structure
Projection system
Seating arrangement
Sound system
It is the specificaiton of the 'Standard' for the sound system and physical structure (effecting accoustics, reverb, echo, delay, etc) that in fact assures the level of 'Quality of Sound' you hear.

If however if what you meant to say was that THX is a STANDARD and as such should not be confused with a audio format, you are totally correct.

Omikey,

Stay in context here, we are talking about speakers. When THX is applied to speakers then its NOT about sound quality. but about dispersion, power handling, and distortion. THX approved speakers tend to sound exceptionally well with soundtracks, but rather dull, sometimes clinical and lifeless with music. THX speakers usually outdo non THX speakers in the area of clarity, and imaging because they interact less with the room's floor, ceiling, and side walls.

omikey
03-30-2004, 06:38 PM
Omikey,

Stay in context here, we are talking about speakers. When THX is applied to speakers then its NOT about sound quality. but about dispersion, power handling, and distortion. THX approved speakers tend to sound exceptionally well with soundtracks, but rather dull, sometimes clinical and lifeless with music. THX speakers usually outdo non THX speakers in the area of clarity, and imaging because they interact less with the room's floor, ceiling, and side walls.
Certainly I agree with you that THX is a standard designed for soundtracks more so than 'music' ..... however

It seems to me that a part of your explaination in fact supports what I was saying, that THX does in fact relate to sound quality, even though it is a 'standard' developed for soundtracks ...

Even though you say:

"When THX is applied to speakers then its NOT about sound quality. but about dispersion, power handling, and distortion"

aren't all of those things impactual on sound quality ? Regardless if its soundtrack or music ? Isn't the amount of power that a speaker can handle reflective of the speakers abiltiy to provide high quality sound (at a given volume), can't that same thing be said about distortion ? Rregardless of the soundtrack or music - distortion isn't related to audio format but the speaker capability to reproduce quaility sound, yes?

It confused me when I read that speaker distortion doesn't have anything to do with sound quality .... regardless if the speaker is THX certified or not. When the speaker manfuacture rates the distortion factor of the speaker, do they list one for THX and one for non-THX certified speakers ?

I don't mean to be off track, or to be nit picking on this .... so if you think that I'm way out on some branch here, just let me know and I'll leave it go.

Mikey

WmAx
03-30-2004, 11:08 PM
No, time aligned is not a marketing ploy. It has some VERY palpable benefits. If you consider that a microphone picks up all frequencies(fundamentals plus harmonics) that a instrument emits at any given moment simultaneously, it would benefit a speaker to be able to reproduce that signal in exactly the same way. I time aligned speaker has certain benefits over non time aligned speakers. More accurate tonality, and MUCH improved imaging.It is speculation that time alignment is important in a normally reverberant room with loudspekers, at this point. I am not familar with any scientificaly valid study that concludes this is important. If you have a reference to a study, please provide it for me to read. However, it is a fact that time alignment makes designing a speaker with good crossover integration and power response easier. As a matter of habit, I do time align my designs with drivers spaced/offset on the z axis to align acoustic centers on the intended horiztonal listening axis window.But a time aligned speaker will no nescarrily provide the benefit of reproducing the singal in 'exactly' the same way it was recorded. Assuming we ignore the off axis non-linearities(that are signifcant), a phase coherent(so they call them) design is not a direct result of time alignment. Time alignment is only alignining the speaker acoust centers. Multi-way phase coherent designs require crossovers with an acoustic target slope of 1st order butterworth or a quasi-transient perfect 2nd order, both of which have a byproduct of worse powerr esponse as compared to a even ordered L-R design, for example.

-Chris

RGA
03-31-2004, 10:33 AM
Thiel speakers are time aligned...the one I heard was abysmal. The drivers are so far apart that there is a massive suckout in the midrange and you can hear a disconnect throuout their sound...no doubt they measure fine in a chamber - in the real world at a normal listening distance you are basically listening to a tweeter a woofer and midrange driver as separate entities rather than a whole. Things are much better if you sit very far back at least twice as far back as the speakers are apart. But then because they are not easy to drive you need more power, because they are very poor dynamically and can't play loud it limits your selection. Great reivews puzzle me greatly on their stuff because I personally think they're one of the worst values in the industry.

Monster cable also claims that their wires are time aligned and tht is a bogus unprovable claim as well.

Time alignment should be a relatively simple match-up of driver sensitivity. Klipsh jumps out because their tweeter is so much more sensitive than their woofer and on some models they didn't account for this.

I'm not saying it's not important but if you LOOK at my speakers they don't look like the typical time aligned speakers like a thiel...and yet the review said they were time aligned more than most. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong.

THX is a certification standard...If you pay enough money they will cetify ANYTHING with a THX standard. If it has the logo you'd be better off NOT buying it because you're paying a lot of money for nothing.

aimen
03-31-2004, 01:34 PM
DIY kits r not available locally
i sent a mail to parts express about there delivery to my country and import charges and taxes and shipment costs etc and will they deliver to my door or i have to goto customs office to clear stuff up etc but is no reply until now, thats the prob y DIY r not the option here unfortunatly.

anyhow thx for the help u guys have given. i'll do some homework abt this stuff and will be around

regards
aimen

Sir Terrence the Terrible
03-31-2004, 02:20 PM
Certainly I agree with you that THX is a standard designed for soundtracks more so than 'music' ..... however

It seems to me that a part of your explaination in fact supports what I was saying, that THX does in fact relate to sound quality, even though it is a 'standard' developed for soundtracks ...

Even though you say:

"When THX is applied to speakers then its NOT about sound quality. but about dispersion, power handling, and distortion"

aren't all of those things impactual on sound quality ? Regardless if its soundtrack or music ? Isn't the amount of power that a speaker can handle reflective of the speakers abiltiy to provide high quality sound (at a given volume), can't that same thing be said about distortion ? Rregardless of the soundtrack or music - distortion isn't related to audio format but the speaker capability to reproduce quaility sound, yes?

It confused me when I read that speaker distortion doesn't have anything to do with sound quality .... regardless if the speaker is THX certified or not. When the speaker manfuacture rates the distortion factor of the speaker, do they list one for THX and one for non-THX certified speakers ?

I don't mean to be off track, or to be nit picking on this .... so if you think that I'm way out on some branch here, just let me know and I'll leave it go.

Mikey

Mikey,

You can have a speaker with a fairly even dispersion pattern, and it still won't sound good. You can have a speaker that can handle alot of power, and it won't sound good either. You can have a speaker that has low distortion, and that doesn't necessarily equate to good sound.

This is the only criteria that THX uses to certify a speaker. What they don't include is crossover design, driver integration and blending, driver quality, or speaker quality. When these things are combined into what they do certify, then your chances are creating a good sounding speaker improve dramatically.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
03-31-2004, 03:20 PM
It is speculation that time alignment is important in a normally reverberant room with loudspekers, at this point. I am not familar with any scientificaly valid study that concludes this is important. If you have a reference to a study, please provide it for me to read. However, it is a fact that time alignment makes designing a speaker with good crossover integration and power response easier. As a matter of habit, I do time align my designs with drivers spaced/offset on the z axis to align acoustic centers on the intended horiztonal listening axis window.But a time aligned speaker will no nescarrily provide the benefit of reproducing the singal in 'exactly' the same way it was recorded. Assuming we ignore the off axis non-linearities(that are signifcant), a phase coherent(so they call them) design is not a direct result of time alignment. Time alignment is only alignining the speaker acoust centers. Multi-way phase coherent designs require crossovers with an acoustic target slope of 1st order butterworth or a quasi-transient perfect 2nd order, both of which have a byproduct of worse powerr esponse as compared to a even ordered L-R design, for example.

-Chris

Chris,

What do you consider a normally reverberant room? I just to nail things down I was referring to time aligned/phase coherent designs. Off axis non-linearities can be tamed by judicial use of acoustic treatment to damp off axis reflections, and using only quality drivers in the speaker. A time aligned/phase coherent speaker will do a much better job in the time domain at recreating the signal, than a non time aligned/phase coherent speaker. Dunlavy and Thiel have proven that with their designs.

Many of the problems with 1st order crossovers can be overcome using quality drivers and crossovers, tight tolarances between drivers, and a consistant manufacturing process.

WmAx
03-31-2004, 06:46 PM
What do you consider a normally reverberant room?An average living room, den, etc., that does not have acoustic damping materials installed at points of 1st refection.


I just to nail things down I was referring to time aligned/phase coherent designs .

Well, thank you for clarficiation. They are not one in the same, and time aligned designs are not nescarrily phase coherent, therefor I was not sure what you meant.


Off axis non-linearities can be tamed by judicial use of acoustic treatment to damp off axis reflections, and using only quality drivers in the speaker.Here is a problem. By deliberately damping the 1st reflections, the apparent ambience is reduced(*assuming you had min. 5ms delay between direct an reflected sound). A speaker with liner power response *does not need to damp the reflections. If one is willing to damp and/or diffuse the reflections to utilize a speaker with poor power response, then that is their choise.


A time aligned/phase coherent speaker will do a much better job in the time domain at recreating the signal, than a non time aligned/phase coherent speaker. Dunlavy and Thiel have proven that with their designs. Depends. Looking directly on axis, yes, the impulse response looks very nice. Looking off axis, the response is not longer excellent. The phase response is not good off axis, either. These speakers will always perform better when an attempt to reduce off axis contribution is implemented(damping, diffusion, near field position, etc.). Careful consideratio of actual audibility of the 'ugly' phase response needs to be considered, also. [1]See below.



Many of the problems with 1st order crossovers can be overcome using quality drivers and crossovers, tight tolarances between drivers, and a consistant manufacturing process
Main problem with 1st order crossovers is the significant overlapping respnose of the drivers, causing respnose irregularities/combing effects that are far more extending then systems using steeper rates, and at fc(crossover region), the output will sum to +3db peak off axis relative to the on axis response, vertical and at skwed horiztonal locations where the vector of two drivers' phase relationships meets at common frequencies in phase. This is due to fact that butterworth 1st order slope sums on axis, flat, with non-coherant signals. There for the potential/peak amplitude does not exist on axis. Additionally, drivers do not retain linear dispersion at varying frequency due to the radiating size vs. wavelength, where wavelength becomes smaller(less than 1/2 teh radiating diameter) and thus begains to comb/cancel off axis as the mulitple differential phase radiation from the opposing edges meets, off axis. Further contribution to off axis problems as you attempt t use such a system across a broader band due to the shallow cutoff slope. Thus, the benefit of using damping/diffusion on the walls to reduce off axis contribution helps all of these issues. Does not matter about tolerance or quality of drivers, these issues are unavoidable. The only one that is a variable of the preceding is the effective radiation area of a driver. Otherwise, the design/quality of the drivers will not matter since the other effects are inherant of the polar/phase response relationships that must exist using the crossover toplogies at issue(phase coherant).

[1] I carefully consider audibility in my designs. Before concluding phase coherance was not important given all other factors of a speaker, I did undergo ABX trials with high quality headphones, testing various samples of instruments; one version of each unaltered, the other version having phase response altered to mimick a 4th order LR 3 way crossover. I scored perfect on 2 sets of 10 trail runs, but only after listening too the samples over about 20 times each to identify the differences. The sound difference was sublte, and this was on headphones which basicly mimick an anechoic chamber(no room colorations/effects). The difference between a speaker that has even poewr resonse and has beneficial room relfections compared to one that is degraded with room reflections is not subtle. It's the end user's preference that must decide this; I choose speaker with even polar/power response.

-Chris

omikey
04-01-2004, 05:01 AM
Very interesting ... mostly over my head, but I'm learning a lot :-)

WmAx
04-01-2004, 06:52 AM
Very interesting ... mostly over my head, but I'm learning a lot :-)
I was trying to give short answers; attempting to avoid long explanations of each specific point. However, if you want a more concise explanation of any of the issues, ask. I will explain in more detail.

-Chris

Sir Terrence the Terrible
04-01-2004, 02:19 PM
An average living room, den, etc., that does not have acoustic damping materials installed at points of 1st refection.

I think most people who can afford to spend the money on time aligned/phase coherent speakers are putting them in dedicated listening rooms that do have some sort of acoustical control. At least that has been my experience in installation. .



Here is a problem. By deliberately damping the 1st reflections, the apparent ambience is reduced(*assuming you had min. 5ms delay between direct an reflected sound). A speaker with liner power response *does not need to damp the reflections. If one is willing to damp and/or diffuse the reflections to utilize a speaker with poor power response, then that is their choise..

Reducing room "ambience" is not a bad thing(unless way overdone) as this ambience is not associated with the recorded venue ambience. Room ambience can sometimes "swamp" recorded ambience therefore creating spatial distortion that is most definately undesireable if accuracy is what you are after. Whether you have a linear power response or not, 1st order reflection should be treated. A untreated room+a speaker with a linear(or non linear) power response=a distortion of the recorded event.



Depends. Looking directly on axis, yes, the impulse response looks very nice. Looking off axis, the response is not longer excellent. The phase response is not good off axis, either. These speakers will always perform better when an attempt to reduce off axis contribution is implemented(damping, diffusion, near field position, etc.). Careful consideratio of actual audibility of the 'ugly' phase response needs to be considered, also. [1]See below..

I always listen to my speaker on axis, and my room is properly treated. This is whether I am using speakers with 1st order butterworth, or 4th order LR. I have no problem with your explainations and your reasoning. It is a speaker designers job to pay attention to what is happen on axis, and off axis. As a audio engineer I am only worried about what is happen on axis, and am not interested in spurious room reflections(room ambience) as it can intertere with listening to what is directly on the tape.


Main problem with 1st order crossovers is the significant overlapping respnose of the drivers, causing respnose irregularities/combing effects that are far more extending then systems using steeper rates, and at fc(crossover region), the output will sum to +3db peak off axis relative to the on axis response, vertical and at skwed horiztonal locations where the vector of two drivers' phase relationships meets at common frequencies in phase. This is due to fact that butterworth 1st order slope sums on axis, flat, with non-coherant signals. There for the potential/peak amplitude does not exist on axis. Additionally, drivers do not retain linear dispersion at varying frequency due to the radiating size vs. wavelength, where wavelength becomes smaller(less than 1/2 teh radiating diameter) and thus begains to comb/cancel off axis as the mulitple differential phase radiation from the opposing edges meets, off axis. Further contribution to off axis problems as you attempt t use such a system across a broader band due to the shallow cutoff slope. Thus, the benefit of using damping/diffusion on the walls to reduce off axis contribution helps all of these issues. Does not matter about tolerance or quality of drivers, these issues are unavoidable. The only one that is a variable of the preceding is the effective radiation area of a driver. Otherwise, the design/quality of the drivers will not matter since the other effects are inherant of the polar/phase response relationships that must exist using the crossover toplogies at issue(phase coherant)...

Great explaination and I understand these principles. However speaker designers design speaker that should fit in all kinds of rooms. Mostly rooms with little to no acoustical control whatsoever. My needs are pretty simple, I need a speaker that is time aligned/phase coherent, smooth on axis frequency response, dynamic, great transient response(in bass and treble), excellent clarity, and able to play loud. Dunlavy's signature line does all of this well. Whatever problems there are with 1st order crossovers, he has figured them out and corrected them. Whatever cannot be perfectly correct, is at least inaudible in his speakers.

So if anyone tells me that time and phase correct speakers are just a marketing ploy, I will direct them to Dunlavy's Signature series, and ask them to compare them directly with a speaker of simular size and quality that is not time or phase correct(as I have) and let them hear for themselves.


[1] I carefully consider audibility in my designs. Before concluding phase coherance was not important given all other factors of a speaker, I did undergo ABX trials with high quality headphones, testing various samples of instruments; one version of each unaltered, the other version having phase response altered to mimick a 4th order LR 3 way crossover. I scored perfect on 2 sets of 10 trail runs, but only after listening too the samples over about 20 times each to identify the differences. The sound difference was sublte, and this was on headphones which basicly mimick an anechoic chamber(no room colorations/effects). The difference between a speaker that has even poewr resonse and has beneficial room relfections compared to one that is degraded with room reflections is not subtle. It's the end user's preference that must decide this; I choose speaker with even polar/power response.

-Chris

Everyone has their choices, but I have never read a review on any of Dunlavy's signature series that stated that these speakers lacked anything. Are they perfect? No, and no speaker is. But I have listen to too many speakers to count in my audio studio, and these were more balanced in terms of benefits versus compromises than just about any speaker I have heard. All speakers damage the original signal to some degree. So the object is to find a speaker that does the least amount of damage. For me, it was a couple of models in the Dunlavy Signature line.( never got a chance to hear them all)

WmAx
04-01-2004, 03:17 PM
Reducing room "ambience" is not a bad thing(unless way overdone) as this ambience is not associated with the recorded venue ambience. Room ambience can sometimes "swamp" recorded ambience therefore creating spatial distortion that is most definately undesireable if accuracy is what you are after. Whether you have a linear power response or not, 1st order reflection should be treated. A untreated room+a speaker with a linear(or non linear) power response=a distortion of the recorded event.I agree and disagree, let me explain: If(this is a big if, and not common even on hi-end designs) the response is linear in such form that the speaker has nearly identical respnose at approximately 75 degrees(150 degree window), for example, then the 1st reflection can create a more realistic 'perception' of space IF the total delay is a mininum of 5ms(under this and the sound will not be perceived as ambience, but as smearing, by human auditory system). A rear reflection of wide disperion that is linear will further produce a more realistic spatial ambience. Though, it is my experience that in such an omnipolar system a damping and/or diffusion should be set up on the center front wall to prevent a cross reflection of the rear radiation(so this is one removal of a first reflection). I agree that this is a distortion of the original event. It is a choice of the target purpose: more accurate reproduction or more realistic reproduction(spatially). Unfortunately, the shortcoming in current recording/playback technologies avaialble make this a no-win situation. I should point out that at a certain point, a linear polar/power response can be a bad thing, too. Where as a good power response, say linearity in just the front plane can be beneficial in many normal rooms, but as you begin to approach an omnipolar design, room placement becomes difficult, requiring large spacing into a room that must be symmetrical on both sides. Example: An omniploar may require a 2.5-3' distance from a sidewall and 4-6' from a rear wall, and both sides/distances need to be symmetrically places. This is unaccpetable for a normal living room, den, etc. that is to be used for more then just a listening room in most cases.



As a audio engineer I am only worried about what is happen on axis, and am not interested in spurious room reflections(room ambience) as it can intertere with listening to what is directly on the tape.In understand this objective. I would NEVER recommend using a speaker such as I recommend for abient enhancement to use as any sort of monitor. Some people also enjoy using a very good monitor for listening; the end product that someone enjoys is purely subjective.


I need a speaker that is time aligned/phase coherent, smooth on axis frequency response, dynamic, great transient response(in bass and treble), excellent clarity, and able to play loud. Dunlavy's signature line does all of this well. Again, I agree. I can not think of a better monitor for accurate reproductin(in a heavily treated room) then some examples from Dunlavy.



Whatever problems there are with 1st order crossovers, he has figured them out and corrected them. Whatever cannot be perfectly correct, is at least inaudible in his speakers.
No one has solved the inherant problems. His speakers require proper room treatment to reduce reflections, othewise the sound quality deterioates due to the non-linearities present off of the design axis. This is unfortunatley an inheratnt charateristic as I described in the last reply.




So if anyone tells me that time and phase correct speakers are just a marketing ploy, I will direct them to Dunlavy's Signature series, and ask them to compare them directly with a speaker of simular size and quality that is not time or phase correct(as I have) and let them hear for themselves.
Unfortunately, the number of variables that exist between any two designs is too great to accurately guage in this manner. The best solution would be a phase coherant speaker such as a signature Dunlavy set up in a well treated room and to use two versions of the same signal samples in an ABX protocol test such as I performed with headphones. This would allow just one variable to be present---phase coherency.


But I have listen to too many speakers to count in my audio studio, and these were more balanced in terms of benefits versus compromises than just about any speaker I have heard. If I was you; I would have probably chosen the very same speaker for my production studio, if I was a music engineer.

-Chris

Sir Terrence the Terrible
04-02-2004, 02:28 PM
I agree and disagree, let me explain: If(this is a big if, and not common even on hi-end designs) the response is linear in such form that the speaker has nearly identical respnose at approximately 75 degrees(150 degree window), for example, then the 1st reflection can create a more realistic 'perception' of space IF the total delay is a mininum of 5ms(under this and the sound will not be perceived as ambience, but as smearing, by human auditory system). A rear reflection of wide disperion that is linear will further produce a more realistic spatial ambience. Though, it is my experience that in such an omnipolar system a damping and/or diffusion should be set up on the center front wall to prevent a cross reflection of the rear radiation(so this is one removal of a first reflection). I agree that this is a distortion of the original event. It is a choice of the target purpose: more accurate reproduction or more realistic reproduction(spatially). Unfortunately, the shortcoming in current recording/playback technologies avaialble make this a no-win situation. I should point out that at a certain point, a linear polar/power response can be a bad thing, too. Where as a good power response, say linearity in just the front plane can be beneficial in many normal rooms, but as you begin to approach an omnipolar design, room placement becomes difficult, requiring large spacing into a room that must be symmetrical on both sides. Example: An omniploar may require a 2.5-3' distance from a sidewall and 4-6' from a rear wall, and both sides/distances need to be symmetrically places. This is unaccpetable for a normal living room, den, etc. that is to be used for more then just a listening room in most cases.


In understand this objective. I would NEVER recommend using a speaker such as I recommend for abient enhancement to use as any sort of monitor. Some people also enjoy using a very good monitor for listening; the end product that someone enjoys is purely subjective.

Again, I agree. I can not think of a better monitor for accurate reproductin(in a heavily treated room) then some examples from Dunlavy.

No one has solved the inherant problems. His speakers require proper room treatment to reduce reflections, othewise the sound quality deterioates due to the non-linearities present off of the design axis. This is unfortunatley an inheratnt charateristic as I described in the last reply.


Unfortunately, the number of variables that exist between any two designs is too great to accurately guage in this manner. The best solution would be a phase coherant speaker such as a signature Dunlavy set up in a well treated room and to use two versions of the same signal samples in an ABX protocol test such as I performed with headphones. This would allow just one variable to be present---phase coherency.

If I was you; I would have probably chosen the very same speaker for my production studio, if I was a music engineer.

-Chris

Great information Chris! I must add that I am not a great lover of omnipolar designs. I often ask myself what is "realism" when it comes to sound reproduction. A speaker that can faithfully reproduce what is on the tape without adding, or subtract much in the way of signal, or one that radiates sound in a room much like the instrument it is reproducing.

I have tried my speakers in treated and untreaded rooms. While I am not a fan of overdamped rooms, a room with a balance of absorbtion, diffusion,abfusion, abflecting, diffraction will make most well designed speakers sound very good regardless of the off axis response.

Including room ambience into the reproduction equation is at best a slippery slope IMO. This practically assures that the sources will not sound consistantly the same(or even close to) as it is reproduced in different rooms(speakers do enough of this already) with varying degrees of acoustical(or none in some cases)control.

You have provided what a think is a very valueable perspective into the differences in crossovers, and how the effect a speakers sound. Thanks for your insight

cam
04-02-2004, 05:34 PM
With all this talk about what is better 2, 2.5, or 3 way can anyone tell me if the paradigm monitor 7's v3 which are 2.5 way are a step up from the v2's which are 2 ways with the same amount of woofers. I know speakers are highly subjective and I was not able to hear them side by side, I may have been duped buy marketing, I just assumed the v3's to be better so I bought them.

RGA
04-02-2004, 06:47 PM
With all this talk about what is better 2, 2.5, or 3 way can anyone tell me if the paradigm monitor 7's v3 which are 2.5 way are a step up from the v2's which are 2 ways with the same amount of woofers. I know speakers are highly subjective and I was not able to hear them side by side, I may have been duped buy marketing, I just assumed the v3's to be better so I bought them.

Pretty sure the V3 has a better tweeter...that alone makes it more than worth it IMO.