Tom in Black, Jack in Blue
I agree that scale relates to the size of the space. Good points made. I can't even fit Steves and others big stuff in my listening area, so its impractical for me, where as my stuff in their big rooms would not be able to "fill" the room in the same way? but could still produce the same SPL given that with my speakers they would be closer to each other and hence the sweet spot would be closer to them, do these things just scale up, ie, the triangle just gets bigger in a big room if you want it too, so therefore you need bigger speakers with more power because now the speakers are twice as far apart and your sweet spot is therefore a lot farther from the speakers, is that all we are really talking about?
Partly Tom. A speaker's radiation pattern and the level of application of absorption and diffusion also play a part in smaller rooms so it is possible to get large scale in terms of listeners perspective (beyond the walls) as opposed to actual scale (walls are really farther apart) by using a speaker that radiates over a wider area like dipoles and having boundaries that hide their physical location by absorbing or diffusing energy. Having said that, a large acoustic space treated to the same degree as a smaller one will maintain the advantage even with smaller speakers.
But then again, I have never really given this much thought....good point to mull over.
If a smaller phsyical speaker system can hit 120 db SPL, and a big one (bigger speaker sizes) hits 120db SPL, are they equal?
What does a speaker with 3 15 inchers do for me compared to a speaker with 3 10 inchers in terms of scale....lets not talk one going lower in frequency response, lets say the music lows do not tax the 10 inchers, and each speaker delivering 120db SPL at listening spot.
Move as much air per impulse with less excursion (which has advantages in "speed") for SPL but at the same time move more air in terms of initial propagation area. Take Maggies as an example, very low excursion huge wave launch area.
I understand that an outdoor event, if you had ten pairs of speakers each putting out 120 dbSPL you could get more people to hear that level (fill a bigger space), but when it comes to listening rooms, is it the same idea, or is in fact the sweet spot, in a big room or small,
In concert sound we deal with arrays so again propagation is a key determinant in coverage as is with an enclosed space.
if you get 120dbSPL there, it does not matter how big the speakers are, or what are we actually doing here with scale exactly?
Scale is not so much an issue in live sound since we have the eyes to aid us. For example, if you were say at a viewing angle and distance where the performers are the size of your thumb you wouldn't want to hear vocals the size of a grain of rice proportionate to that size. What would matter more is balanced FR wherever you are as well as the timing of arrival sound with the visual components.
Is it that in a big room you can just seperate your big speakers further apart and thus move back the sweet spot further away from the speakers...
Again partly albeit one can do the same in a smaller room by moving closer to the sources of sound. Tom Mallin's set up is a good example. The downside of the latter is that certain things like driver integration, baffle diffractions and effects of driver and electronic distortions are magnified. Specific engineering steps have to be taken to address these issues among others.
One thing seldom talked about is thermal compression in drivers. This is where the sense of ease comes in. A driver less stressed is a happy driver both mechanically and sonically. More drivers employed means a less compressed sound at the same SPL. Take Jim's VR-11s vs my own VR-9s where everything is doubled except the super tweeters. With amps operating well within their operating limits his speakers are literally working half as hard mechanically to attain the same SPL while exciting literally twice as much air on initial impulse. Less compression, more "ease" partially due to the 3dB gain in efficiency.
Of course every solution brings about it's own set of problems and here is where a price has to be paid. He needs a much larger room for them to even work near their potential.
