Sounds good to me too, that's what I would expect, but from the speakers rather than headphones. Are you able to get that at a decent volume?
... currently running Double, "Blue": one of our all time favourites.
Frank
2.4KW amp, anyone?
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... currently running Double, "Blue": one of our all time favourites.
Frank
Tim, just going back to that drumming bit with lots of reverb. Is your sound clear in the way I've described?
Frank
Frank
I'm not at all sure, Frank, these descriptions are so variable and subjective. But I'm not having any trouble separating the attack, the rattle of the snares, the (rather loose) tone of the head, etc., from the reverb it's swimming around in, if that's what you're after. That's why I described it to you the way I did. I figured the best way to communicate if there is clarity, transparency and impact in a system is to describe, in sonic detail, what you hear musically. Anything less, IMO, just opens the door to ambiguity.
Tim
Of course the tonality changes Frank. We lose 6dB for every doubling of distance on AVERAGE. Frequencies fall off at different rates. Then as we get closer to boundaries we get those reflections too. Moving within a smaller zone (about 15 sqm) the stage remains intact but tonal shifts are readily apparent as I move around this. That's at the SAME output.
Now staying in one place, I would say that there are tonal shifts as I go from 85 to 100 with the same program material as well. In a sense it is "the same" just both louder and larger, in that the sound remains in A RANGE of "balance", but even within this range there are differences. Are my electronics delivering nothing more than a bigger "copy" of the input signal with the proportionate amount of distortions? Maybe, but there are other factors at play that the electronics can't predict or do anything about, my anatomical and cognitive reactions to more than doubling of perceived loudness and the acoustic byproducts of doing that in a finite space which will have it's own reactions to the increase in SPL.
But that's just loudness variation. If I stand 1 metre from central to the speakers, then go to 2, then 4, and finally 8 metres effective distance then I don't perceive, in my brain, a change of tone. It's used to doing this sort of thing with live sound, and it automatically compensates for the changes in volume, doesn't thingkanything's happened to the way the sound is produced.
This is where either my hearing or system is different from others: when the audio is good then moving anywhere in the general vicinity of the sound production always registers as being the same thing ...
Sounds like it's working well: I'm looking for the equivalent of getting closer to the sound by upping the volume rather than moving there. Many systems fail this test by starting to compress, by the fact that you can clearly hear the electronics start to misbehave ...
Frank
If you're not getting any blurring, even if you increase the volume to realistic levels, then that implies that you're getting decent sound; so it's curious that we have such a different perspective on what's possible. Might need to try that Status Quo album ...
Frank
Here's why I think we are perceiving things differently Frank. It's a propagation issue. I'm using a quasi-pointsource array with a super cardioid pattern. A ribbon supertweeter, ring radiator tweeter, a midrange and two midbass drivers facing forward, another ribbon and a 15" powered woofer facing backwards. You are using what is essentially a point source. You can go much closer to your loudspeaker before it loses cohesion. I require some distance from them. By nature of the way my loudspeakers project the acoustical energy into the room, going closer to any of the drivers would be like me being in that story about the blind folded guys describing an elephant by what they could feel. It's like a snake! No! It's like a tree trunk!
I was at a friend's place yesterday and he was playing with some vintage speakers he'd won at e-bay. They were Sequerra tiny satellites about the size of a six pack of Red Bulls (looked like half the size of a MET 7 perhaps even smaller) and came with a passive subwoofer. In this set up which eerily seems to have been a progenitor of your HTIAB, I had no problems getting close to either of the satellites. Most probably because anything below maybe 120 to 200 Hz was coming from it's sub anyway and our ears are lousy at localization in those ranges and really starts to crap out at about 80Hz.
Mystery solved?
I was at a friend's place yesterday and he was playing with some vintage speakers he'd won at e-bay. They were Sequerra tiny satellites about the size of a six pack of Red Bulls (looked like half the size of a MET 7 perhaps even smaller) and came with a passive subwoofer. In this set up which eerily seems to have been a progenitor of your HTIAB, I had no problems getting close to either of the satellites. Most probably because anything below maybe 120 to 200 Hz was coming from it's sub anyway and our ears are lousy at localization in those ranges and really starts to crap out at about 80Hz.
Mystery solved?
I presume what you mean by losing cohesion is that you can easily hear each driver operating as a source of sound in its own right: as an example, this is the effect I have always heard listening to Wilson speakers, you had to work hard mentally to ignore the obvious auditory impression that everything was coming from the cones, unless, as people will say, you're in the infamous sweet spot!
The thing is, I've had the same way of thinking about the listening with my other setups, which used the classic 2 way arrangement, and 3 way is only a slight extension of that in terms of where the meat of the music is. And, the HT speakers are more full range with super tweeter and single sub, not really that far from yours!
As I've mentioned before, my biggest problem is that the speakers on the HT are pretty low grade, and they have to be thoroughly warmed up to get the best out of them: a hammering for at least an hour if not 2, every day! While going through this it's easy to separate the sub from the mains, sounds pretty midfi in many ways; as it then tones up the sub completely integrates with the mains, I've actually got the sub sitting central and quite a bit forward from the left and right, simply because that is the only reasonable place I can put it. When the sound is together I can stand with my head literally above the sub, looking at the two little fellows and have no sense of any sound coming from the sub. In fact, in many ways this is close to the best bass I've had in a system: it's big, rich and tight, does a jazz acoustic bass very nicely! For comparison, my friend uses a Naim amp with Naim Ariva speakers, very nice in many ways; but many times the bass on his setup seems pretty anaemic ...
Frank
It appears not Lee. We should get back on topic or better yet get Frank to the electronics supply store
Just to close this one out.....
Yes Frank that's what I mean about losing cohesion. Cohesion between drivers. I don't know about the Wilson example as this is true of any multidriver system or even single driver systems with whizzers for that matter. Add to that that you GAIN the 6dB you lose halving distance that we lose going farther away. At a foot from the tweeter, my ears as twice as far from the farthest midbass in the same enclosure. At 6 inches it's 12dB up. I'm not a speaker designer but I'm sure Gary can explain lobing as it relates to the wavelengths per frequency. I'm just saying unless your feedback loop in the amp includes my brainwaves you can only get so far with the amp
Off to the store Frank!
Just to close this one out.....
Yes Frank that's what I mean about losing cohesion. Cohesion between drivers. I don't know about the Wilson example as this is true of any multidriver system or even single driver systems with whizzers for that matter. Add to that that you GAIN the 6dB you lose halving distance that we lose going farther away. At a foot from the tweeter, my ears as twice as far from the farthest midbass in the same enclosure. At 6 inches it's 12dB up. I'm not a speaker designer but I'm sure Gary can explain lobing as it relates to the wavelengths per frequency. I'm just saying unless your feedback loop in the amp includes my brainwaves you can only get so far with the amp
Off to the store Frank!
Lee, it is relevant to the thread because making an amp that functions well enough to create an illusion of reality is what I'm about. As mep said, no point in me doing, and I'm not interested in, something that's available right now, even if they sell for outrageous prices. The argument between me, and Jack and Tim and mep, et al, is that the solution is the electronics, vs. solution is speakers and room.
If I can't get Wilson speakers to disappear I won't be happy: of course, someone might have to get inside them and fix up any problems first ...
Jack, I still have to deal with design, time and money: your headmaster should have also told you a thing or two about being impatient!
Frank
If I can't get Wilson speakers to disappear I won't be happy: of course, someone might have to get inside them and fix up any problems first ...
Jack, I still have to deal with design, time and money: your headmaster should have also told you a thing or two about being impatient!
Frank
Me? Impatient? I wanted those pics yesterday. Tim wanted them during the crossing of the Delaware
Oh, and Steve's Wilsons disappear. So it isn't impossible. They just don't disappear when you stand too close to 'em, not that anything does.
Oh, and Steve's Wilsons disappear. So it isn't impossible. They just don't disappear when you stand too close to 'em, not that anything does.
And this is the biggy for me, vs. most people on the forum. They WILL disappear when you're next to them, similar to how the mbl 101Es do it, assuming the electronics driving them are in good shape ...
Frank
Aha!! Now I understand, you're all really frustrated photography forum freaks! Well, you'd betta get 'cross to one of them there things real smart now, you hear me ...
Frank
Here we go again...I'm just trying to help you out here, Frank -- this is one of several places where your credibility totally breaks down with people who know what they're talking about. Maybe it's just bad communications skills and you don't quite mean what you're saying (benefit of the doubt given again, though long-ago squandered). You say you've had two-ways. Are we talking 5-6 inch monitors or large advents? Because the little monitors with really good dispersion can be just a meter away and still have good coherency. Something the size of the Advents? Not so much. Wilson Alexandrias? When you're a couple of meters away from a pair of Alexandrias, Frank, the tweeter is aimed at your head, the midrange is buzzing your midsection and the woofers are, quite literally, flapping your pant legs. Driver coherence is a physical impossibility. So when you say stuff like this, we know that "maybe I don't hear like other people" is one of the great subtleties of the history of anglo-saxon understatement. And when you take it to its most illogical extreme, as you have a few times on these pages, and tell us you can stick your ear a few inches from the tweeter and not only get perfect coherence, but unchanged stereo imaging, we're left with nothing to conclude but that...well I'm not sure there's anything I can say here that won't get me a personal note from my friend Steve. Suffice it to say we know that's not a realistic assessment of what you're ears are actually receiving. You seem to really want to be taken seriously, Frank. Get serious. Get building. Don't forget the pictures. It's not because we're photo freaks, it's because we need evidence.
Tim
Okay, we'll let it go, we've had too many rounds on this one. You're sure about your position, fundamentally because your personal experiences always confirm what you're saying; and I'm sure about my position, because I've had the contrary experience. I'm certain if I had only been exposed to the same systems as yourself up to this point in time I would have the identical view as yourself, but our mutual misfortune is that I accidentally experienced otherwise. My last words: "Driver coherence is a physical impossibility" is correct, but you ignore psychoacoustics and the interpretive powers of the ear/brain at your peril: you are probably familiar with the vision inverting glasses story -- send an image of an upside world to the retina, and the eye/brain catches on to what's been done, and turns it right side up again ...
So, back to amps again! One issue is that I want to run the amp off a normal point, no silly doubling of spurs to be required, and that's not a problem for music playback. But if people feel that the 600W continuous, both channels driven be really part of the package, to keep people like JA happy then we have a problem.
I want to do this in A/B, mainly because that's what I'm familiar with, had the experience with. Class D is efficient enough to do the 600W average off a single point but class A/B isn't. I mean here, that if you try and do the test with the A/B version the amp will do it, but the power circuit won't: the fuse or circuit breaker back at the electrical board will trigger. The ways to get around this is to have a silly arrangement in the amp to allow two spurs to be hooked up, purely as a oncer so people can test its theoretical capability; or, insist that anyone doing such a test has to organise a special high amperage circuit.
Thoughts?
Frank
I don't ignore them at all, I recognize them for what they are and come to the only logical conclusion: It's all in your head. You're not accomplishing these impossible feats through tweaks of anything other than your imagination. IE: I know it's psychoacoustic; I've known it all along. You seem to have been supposing it was the result of tweaking electronics.
Pictures. We need pictures.
Tim
Hey! I said we'll let it go ...
Pictures??? Design first, some construction second, pictures a distant third! I need to toss ideas around, juggle conflicting requirements, and get some feedback from you lot. So, on my last point in the previous post, any comments?
Frank
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