Has anyone heard it? What's the brand? ..Can this sound good? ... At least it looks like it can play at lethal level if needed
Plus Gary that is not a panel speaker that is a "wall" speaker
Do we still need panel speakers in 2012
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Has anyone heard it? What's the brand? ..Can this sound good? ... At least it looks like it can play at lethal level if needed
Plus Gary that is not a panel speaker that is a "wall" speaker
horses for courses. my main speakers are joseph audio pulsars and quad esl-57s, if space werent an issue id have a large collection of both panel and box speakers that i love. imo, the perfect all-round speaker has yet to be invented. moving coil drivers still seem to be the best at replicating the powerof a full sym orch especially in the bass. conversley i have yet to hear a moving coil driver match a 'stat for midrange purity/transparency.
Has anyone heard it? What's the brand? ..Can this sound good? ... At least it looks like it can play at lethal level if needed
Plus Gary that is not a panel speaker that is a "wall" speaker
That's the Grateful Dead "Wall of Sound."
Thats a hell of a reference ...
Yes, it is. But sometimes it leads to an abusive extension in reviews - judging the quality of a system mainly by its abilities to play a piano recording. Professional musicians are not usually ideal reviewers - their preferences are very peculiar.
I have heard systems that sound great and accurate on a solo piano recordings but were not able to play a great orchestra decently.
I fully agree with your view, but if you are prepared to accept some limitations in the very low bass, big panels such as SoundLabs can sound powerful in symphonic music if used with very powerful tube amplifiers.
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
"Gary , did say the newest generations are a vast improvement over previous"
Isn't that always the case. How else could they get you to get rid of what they used to tell you was the greatest thing since sliced bread at a huge loss and buy a new one to replace it for a lot more money? Do you think these people are in business for the fun of it?
Not always - reason I kept both 3.5's and 3.6's around was that I preferred the 3.5's even though the 3.6 had a better ribbon. The 3.7 was a vast improvement over the 3.6 and the 3.5. I still have the 3.6 around as a "competitor's reference".
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
That is because most of these large panels beam at frequencies that are smaller than the width of the panel. They more approach being a plane source rather than a line source in the upper mids (for the sound lab) and high mids (for the ML). The resulting sweet spot is limited by this.
Check this out for a very simple overview of sound propagation.
http://www.kemt.fei.tuke.sk/Predmety/KEMT320_EA/_web/Online_Course_on_Acoustics/propagation.html
just bought my first set of Stats last month , Sanders 10c and matching magtechs
will not be selling these for a very , very long time , True giant killers
will not be selling these for a very , very long time , True giant killers
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
That will be extremely interesting. If you can have the entire front wall covered in drivers, and the side and back walls completely absorb, you will create a plane-source. That is the Holy Grail of loudspeaker design. A Wall of Sound.
However, recordings are not made for this plane wave. There have been some interesting studies made in wave field synthesis that may make this the ideal.
i had Soundlab A-3 with krell monos - they were very statisfting save for the last octave. i got to hear Dr Wests giant electrosatic bass panels at CES, they were wonderful at med volumes and needless to say, integrated well with the main speaker but couldnt convice at high volumes. the magnepan tympani were similar, very good bass at medium volumes but that familiar panel 'crack' crept in when driven to realistic SPLs.
If you read my post about my experimental sound system and my concepts you'd know I won't be going in that direction. This would just be for my own interest and curiousity to see what a large array speaker system made from dynamic drivers can do. I intend to try monopolar, dipolar, and spherical arrays. I also intend to try other types of directed arrays where the propagation in each direction are independly adjustable for loudness and FR to compensate for room reflections.
I look at Bose 901 as a limited FR range system consisting of one forward firing speaker and two small directed arrays firing indirectly. The results can approximate a planar array if the reflective surface behind the speakers is successfully exploited. It took two attempts, the second one taking four years to successfully re-engineer it into a two way full range bi-amplified system. The system is specifically engineered for the spot it's in in a particular room. If it were moved it would have to be re-engineered all over again.
I was curious to see if it still made a piano or any other instrument including a human voice sound like it's 8 feet wide. It doesn't. I attribute that to the improved high end frequency response (flat to 20 khz including reflections) very wide high frequency dispersion especially from the first arriving wave and the principle of first arrival establishing direction being skewed towards high frequencies. Like the other system this one has to be equalized for the room AND for each individual recording. Unfortunately the equalizations for each recording in the two systems are entirely different. They just evolved that way and there's nothing I can do about it now short of starting all over again from scratch with one or the other. That's something I'm not going to do.
Parts-Express had on their catalog cover last year a tall skinny and arched back line source speaker. Plans are on-line and free.
http://www.parts-express.com/cbt36/
Also isn't your theory already built by McIntosh in several versions?
http://www.shows.soundstagelive.com/shows/avtour2005/ced_showstoppers_5.shtml
http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/img/avw/docs/404/909/html/ias1_31.jpg.html
http://www.transtec.nl/index.php?l=...and=mcintosh&sub=leftsub6&page=mcintosh.xrt2k
I am curious about this speaker the theory behind is quite interesting ... Has anyone heard it?
I'm sure you could find something in the DIY Audio forum if you searched it.
Right now I'm listening to the video presentation by the designer which is in the link (it's in 6-parts, pretty good so far).
There is also theory, charts and diagrams in the link:
http://www.parts-express.com/cbt36/
A link from the link with even more information:
http://www.xlrtechs.com/dbkeele.com/CBT.php
They seem more worried about floor reflections than ceiling reflections in this design for some reason.
These are nothing like what I have in mind. The Parts Express design is clearly a modified line array. BTW I think not all the speakers play at the same loudness. There is some explanation in one of their flyers and I'm sure on lne.
Neither are the McIntosh designs. The tweeters are strictly a line array. The slightly larger midrange drivers constitute two line arrays but not really a large surface array horizontally even for the largest model. I don't know where they cross over but if I'm going to need a subwoofer, I'd want it to cross over fairly low, probably not above 200 hz if that. If I go for a 3 way design I'd probably like a 4" midwoofer. That seemed to work fairly well after great difficulty. But a 4 way design offers far more flexibilitiy. It may seem more expensive but I think it's easier to implement. Dynamic drivers usually have a usable range of about 2 1/2 to 3 octaves at best. To cover 10 octaves with 3 driver ranges somethin's gotta give. There's invariably a weak point somewhere unless extrordinary measures are taken to overcome those problems. IMO that's why AR resigned itself to a 4 way tower with the AR9. They just couldn't manage a 3 way system on three ranges.
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Someone built a pair for our club's biannual DIY loudspeaker contest. I remember that it sounded pretty good. Very coherent for a near-field line source. very little comb filtering. You need to sit pretty close to them, and they are quite big. Not sure I understand how it works or why they curve them like that.... but I didn't look deeply into the design.
They were designed by some serious people:
"Don Keele and Marshall Kay of Audio Artistry have changed the way that line arrays operate."
As some may remember Kay worked with Linkwitz at AA and Keele was a reviewer (and developed many speaker measurements) for Audio magazine.
http://www.xlrtechs.com/dbkeele.com/
http://www.audioartistry.com/papers_keele.htm
http://dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=938
"Don Keele and Marshall Kay of Audio Artistry have changed the way that line arrays operate."
As some may remember Kay worked with Linkwitz at AA and Keele was a reviewer (and developed many speaker measurements) for Audio magazine.
http://www.xlrtechs.com/dbkeele.com/
http://www.audioartistry.com/papers_keele.htm
http://dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=938
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