A question of value in today's hi-end.

[NorthStar]

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?

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.

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, if you get 120dbSPL there, it does not matter how big the speakers are, or what are we actually doing here with scale exactly? 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...


Tom

Tom,

We always listen to the room as well, and the bigger the room the more spacious and expansive the sound is. It has that realistic sense of scale for Hall music; Classical, Opera, Blues or Jazz clubs, ... Then it determines the type of music which is ideal for these type of rooms.
{For the same overall loudness level, and with the same sound pressure in decibels.}

Smaller rooms are more analytical, discriminatory, more intimate... And the reflections are quicker and can confuse the illusion. Even a small Jazz club is much larger than a regular home listening room, or regular sized living room.

Realistic music requires the same Live space. Studio recording music is also done in rather large spaces, but some are recorded in smaller spaces too.

Achieving the right level and balance in a high-end system starts by the room space.
Or you get mini high-end systems, and big high-end systems.

Sound pressure level is irrelative in true proportion of realistic music in its right place.
120 dB on peaks is quite fine in large venues, when sitting in the sweet spots.
But in smaller rooms, the consistancy for those same peak levels will hit harder and with faster blurring from the direct sound mixed with the indirect one. No?

I guess what I'm coming to is the realistic & natural reverbs of larger avenues.

Just a thought.

 

[NorthStar]

Some people will disagree, but electronics can also add a sense of scale to a system.

I have heard the Maggico M2 playing with the Audio Research Ref 610T in a medium size room and this system had the sense of a big, solid space - the reaction of most people was "they sound like big speakers"! Changing amplifiers spoiled the effect.

But I have no doubt that good room acoustics is needed to get this sense of "scale" - in adverse conditions the scale never "grows".

A difficult question - why most high end electronics only get this "scale" property after some warm-up time (usually from 15 to 60 minutes), depending on type electronics?

All very good points! Some electronics indeed give you a sense of space with larger and deeper soundstage and the larger overall space of the room where the recording took place.

And that is why to match the loudspeakers AND the room with those type of great electronics will propulse you into the high-end dimension!

* As for the answer to your question; it's because it is the exact same thing with a Live band, they need to warm up and get their sound adjusted to the room! Good electronics with first grade and matched parts will do that too; adjust the sound to the room! No? Or is it us indeed who warm up to the electronics? Ah!

 

[NorthStar]

This is one of the things that gets me with the language of audio. What the hell is the "speed" of a woofer?! Is it, that there is a difference of phase angle with frequency, that the distortion components vary, that the dispersion of the bass notes in the room varies, or what?

If we disconnected every driver apart from the woofer in 2 speakers do you think we would hear a difference in "speed"?

Frank

Good one Frank! Speed is everything in Audio! And it starts right at the beginning; the music recording itself, including the musicians, the tuning of their instruments, the singers with their vocal chords, the mics impulse response, the transients of the wires, the phase reversal, the delays from the reflections, the jitter in the machine recorders/reproducers (players), and all the other 'slow' impacts before finally reaching the drivers! Even the crossovers have delays that smear the music in an irrealistic 'donnee', and it isn't the woofers per se that are slow or fast, it's the signals, the audio transmissions, the tunnels, 'la voie lactee', the funnel from the beginning to the end; the hit of one piano note to the vibration of its corresponding string and down to your ears. That is a lot of 'vitesse a emmagasiner'! And the smaller the driver the faster its impulse response. And vice versa for a larger driver. No?

Oh I forgot the waves propagation in different room sizes. That too affect the 'speed' impression.

 

[fas42]

And the smaller the driver the faster its impulse response. And vice versa for a larger driver. No?

I would have to say, no! The small driver certainly does the job, we call that a tweeter. But the bass cone of a woofer is a lumbering giant, dawdling away while the energy from the midrange and tweeter are rocketing away, climbing all over the woofer's output. There is enormous power in a woofer's magnet, the Basspig Mark broke a finger sticking it too close to a woofer cone going hard! Do you think a flimsy bit of cone paper and the bit of air next to it is going to stop that magnet and coil assembly doing its thing! No way, that cone is going to go as fast as the signal driving it, and heaven help anything in the way ....

Frank

 

[Mark (Basspig) Weiss]

An interesting fact about 'speed' of a driver, is that, contrary to what one might believe based on common sense, the transient response of a driver is not so much affected by mass as it is by inductance of it's voice coil.
The change in acceleration of a diaphragm in a driver is strictly a function of the current through the driver.
The biggest obstacle to rapid changes in current flow in the voice coil (what we're after in order to produce rapid acceleration) is inductance. Inductors prefer to pass steady state voltages and resist passing rapidly changing voltages.
With series inductance, the transient current flowing through the voice coil is limited. High inductance, sluggish response. Low inductance, fast response.
Look for a low Le value in the driver's T-H parameters. When you've found the lowest Le, you've found the faster driver.

Oh, by the way, I only sprained that finger, but it was a wake up call. The cone was made of Kevlar and was only doing 1/4" p-p excursion, but at 60-70Hz, so the velocity was high, thus kinetic energy was enormous. The injury was a real world confirmation that appealed to the emotional side of the brain what the intellectual side understood.

 

[NorthStar]

Thanks Mark to what sounds the right 'speedy' explanation!

* Lol, looking at my three above posts I noticed that I got the same question on both threes! ...No?

A good way to sharp some minds around. And I'm glad that you guys with sharp minds indeed responded to it in a very gentle manner, and educative as well.

I bet that there are a lot of people (like me) that think/thought that a small super tweeter is faster than a large eighteen inches woofer.

 

[fas42]

Look for a low Le value in the driver's T-H parameters. When you've found the lowest Le, you've found the faster driver.

Mark, curious what the real world values of the series inductance for different woofers are, what sort of range of figures? Also, knowing that essentially all crossovers use an inductor to reduce the treble content fed to the woofer, what would the typical range of values of those inductors be?

Frank

 

[garylkoh]

An interesting fact about 'speed' of a driver, is that, contrary to what one might believe based on common sense, the transient response of a driver is not so much affected by mass as it is by inductance of it's voice coil.
The change in acceleration of a diaphragm in a driver is strictly a function of the current through the driver.
The biggest obstacle to rapid changes in current flow in the voice coil (what we're after in order to produce rapid acceleration) is inductance. Inductors prefer to pass steady state voltages and resist passing rapidly changing voltages.
With series inductance, the transient current flowing through the voice coil is limited. High inductance, sluggish response. Low inductance, fast response.
Look for a low Le value in the driver's T-H parameters. When you've found the lowest Le, you've found the faster driver.

Mark! You are giving away the secret

However, the Le also has to do with cone inertia, suspension stiffness, and hence mass. Measuring just inductance, increasing the mass and/or increasing the stiffness of the suspension also increases the Le.

So, while you are correct that the lowest Le gives you the fastest woofer, the low Le is a result of, including other things, the mass of the driver.

 

[DaveyF]

Wow, I'm really learning something here...love it
OTOH, I'm not really too sure as to how all this has to do with my
OP

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You guys are confusing me. Is this illusion of "scale" a function of how much of the air in the room is moved, making it relative and meaning you would need to scale the size of the system proportionate to the size of the listening space, or is the illusion of "scale" a function of how much air is moved, period, making it a function of the size of the space itself? So would you need an auditorium-sized room to reproduce an auditorium-sized "scale?"

I realize the latter may be a slight exaggeration of what you're driving at, but even if it can happen somewhat in miniature, that would mean you'd have to scale the size of your room to the size of the recording venue which is, of course, impossible, or at least impractical. And isn't it all still pretty much a moot point except for those rare live recordings that are recorded from a position in the audience, in an attempt to re-create the hall ambience? Maybe I just don't understand you, but it seems to me like much ado about very little. If you just like the sound of huge speakers in a huge room, there is nothing wrong with that, of course. But if you're trying to somehow scale your system and your room to reproduce the scale of the hall, what hall? If it has to do with the size of the physical listening space, how can it be right for Carnegie Hall and not be wrong for The Village Vanguard?

Tim

 

[Mark Seaton]

No, they are not equal. The larger speaker system will move more air than the smaller speaker system at the same loudness level and thus will sound bigger.

Same answer as above. Three 15” drivers will move lots more air at the same 120dB SPL than the speaker with three 10” drivers.

By straight definition, this is precisely incorrect. Might you have a different connotative definition/meaning for "moving more air?"

SPL from an acoustically small source (relative to wavelength) is directly related to the volume of air moved. This only starts to change when you have acoustically large sources for the frequency range where they begin to behave like lines or planar sources.

I take no issue with the subjective observation, only the attributed cause. Physically arger speakers radiate sound into the room in a different manner when we look at all the full sphere of sound which is produced. Physically larger speakers also will often (not always) have greater maximum capabilities, where dynamic peaks are never seen even in "fast" mode on a common SPL meter which can require significant headroom to maintain linear operation at all levels.

 

[Mark Seaton]

This is one of the things that gets me with the language of audio. What the hell is the "speed" of a woofer?! Is it, that there is a difference of phase angle with frequency, that the distortion components vary, that the dispersion of the bass notes in the room varies, or what?

"Speed/fast" is a horribly lacking descriptor on its own in the context of bass reproduction. With plenty of additional qualifiers and descriptors it can be used to communicate a subjective observation, but it is easily confused as many want to tie the description to the cause. This is clearly exemplified in the inferences we have already seen in this thread.

After I'm done rolling my eyes when asked about how "fast" the bass is, I typically then follow with more probing questions as to what details of the reproduction and subjective sound the listener is referring to.

If we disconnected every driver apart from the woofer in 2 speakers do you think we would hear a difference in "speed"?

Subjectively yes. In this specific example the speaker with the most remaining high frequency response (highest woofer crossover frequency) or the response which is tilted up as frequency rises is most likely to be subjectively described as "fast."

The real disconnect is that the woofer itself only plays a partial role in what accounts for this description which so many interpret so differently in their minds. Most have never experimented to see how much the overall spectral balance up into the tweeter and the response smoothness affects what falls under the subjective umbrella of "fast bass". <cringe>

I personally much prefer terms like accurate, responsive, precise, no overhang, etc, etc.

 

[Ethan Winer]

After I'm done rolling my eyes when asked about how "fast" the bass is

Totally agree. A lot of people don't understand that bass instruments have substantial energy up to 1 KHz and often much higher. The "click" sound you hear with a string bass attack is a huge part of that instrument's definition and clarity. But at 500 Hz to 2 KHz it's hardly a "bass" frequency. Even for the "body" portion of a bass, most of the energy is at 100 Hz and above.

--Ethan

 

[Mark Seaton]

Mark, curious what the real world values of the series inductance for different woofers are, what sort of range of figures? Also, knowing that essentially all crossovers use an inductor to reduce the treble content fed to the woofer, what would the typical range of values of those inductors be?

Frank

Straight inductance only holds for the same impedance driver. The factor Mark was pointing at is Le/Rdc. Of course what this really tells you is the relative high frequency responsiveness of one driver to another... given all other factors are equal, which they rarely are.

As you note with respect to the use of crossovers, by definition they limit frequency extension. In short, we only need a driver to be fast enough for the intended frequency range and integration with the next higher frequency device. There are many good things that come from low inductance designs, but this is an indirect correlation.

 

[garylkoh]

Sorry, Davey. Back to your OP, I do agree with your statement that the ratio of cost of high-end gear to average income ratio was far more in-line many years ago.

However, unfortunately the high-end income had grown disproportionately compared to average income. So, as a ratio, if you look at the cost of high-end gear to the high-end income, the growth of income has actually outstripped the growth of the high-end.

Take for example, the loudspeaker. The Genesis 1 was introduced at $125,000 in 1993, the equivalent today the Genesis 1.2 is $235,000 - say 2 times. If you look at the top 0.1% of wage earners in the US, then we have the following picture -


from http://web.williams.edu/Economics/bakija/BakijaHeimJobsIncomeGrowthTopEarners.pdf


For some professions - like medical, if they could afford the G1 at about 8% of their annual salary in 1993, they may not be able to afford the G1.2 now at about 12% of their annual salary. However, for someone working in Real Estate, the corresponding percentages has gone down from 9% to 4%.

But that is for the top 0.1% of earners.

If you look at the income distribution for us mere mortals, then your OP is absolutely accurate:

At the 50th percentile, income has hardly grown. So, the lowest model Genesis with a built-in subwoofer is the Genesis VI at $8,500 introduced in 1994. The latest version is the G7.2f at $8,500 in 2011. This gives you an idea of how I as a manufacturer think when I design products and target price-points.

You know the problem that I encounter? The G7.1f too "cheap" to have credibility as a truly high-end loudspeaker.....

*sigh!*

 

[Old Listener]

Value?

I read this post on another forum recently:

"I recently purchased a Bryston BCD-1, with which I am happy. Now I see an AR CD3 for sale on A'gon by a dealer for $2k. Ad states that the unit has recently be "reconditioned" by AR. I am unable to audition the AR prior to purchase.

I seek your opinion to this question: is the AR sonically superior to
the Bryston? Is it mechanically superior to the Bryston?"

I think this captures the mindset of many of the audiophiles who keep high end audio companies in business. Poor research before purchases, impulse buying and a restless desire to keep buying the same functionality over and over would look like costly weaknesses to most people. The audiophile world is dominated by a small group of customers like this one who can't wait to spend (more) big bucks on something high-end. Value is the farthest thing from their minds.

There used to be a segment of the audio market with consumers who made careful decisions about big-ticket purchases and lived with the result for years. I don't think that they are well served by high-end companies or by audiophile media including forums and web sites.

Bill

 

[Mark Seaton]

There used to be a segment of the audio market with consumers who made careful decisions about big-ticket purchases and lived with the result for years. I don't think that they are well served by high-end companies or by audiophile media including forums and web sites.

Bill

A good question might be how many in this segment of the market will end up purchasing a *new* upper echelon product or system after doing the careful research?

 

[microstrip]

I read this post on another forum recently:

"I recently purchased a Bryston BCD-1, with which I am happy. Now I see an AR CD3 for sale on A'gon by a dealer for $2k. Ad states that the unit has recently be "reconditioned" by AR. I am unable to audition the AR prior to purchase.

I seek your opinion to this question: is the AR sonically superior to
the Bryston? Is it mechanically superior to the Bryston?"

I think this captures the mindset of many of the audiophiles who keep high end audio companies in business. (...)

Just one detail - your are mixing two different things in your posting. If you include a comparison of equipment of similar price in new and used condition you are not doing a fair picture of the typical situation.

One think is true - an used ARC CD3 mk2 at used prices is a bargain. I keep one I bought used for a second system and it is one my best buys considering value for money!

 

[Old Listener]

not my point

Just one detail - your are mixing two different things in your posting. If you include a comparison of equipment of similar price in new and used condition you are not doing a fair picture of the typical situation.

You missed my point. The person whose post I quoted appeared to want to buy the ARC player as a replacement for the Bryston. Buying a Bryston player which proved to be satisfactory and then selling it and acquiring the ARC player is not an efficient use of money (bad value).

Out in the real world, most people make a decision about a major purchase and have to live with their choice.

Bill

 

[Mark (Basspig) Weiss]

My browser freaked out and instead of copying a backup of what I typed, it pasted what was in the copy buffer from a previous copy session.

Anyway, the synopsis of what I wrote:

Typical pro woofers (18") 1.25 - 1.6 mH Le
A high efficiency midrange (halfspace reference efficiency = 8.6%), 0.4mH Le.

Good phase alignment between drivers and crossover frequencies is important to good 'fast' transient response. I like to use a square wave as a measurement of overall system response including transient response, time alignment, etc. If you get a decent square wave at the listener position, then you've got good transient response.

Wow, those income charts are amazing.. I don't see 'videographer' on them. I guess I'm below the 10th percentile on income.