You have to consider crossover delays, slope and frequency ime.
I do agree it's an overblown marketing issue but I did the math by hand, tested it and measured it and there are situations where time/phase are very important.
How Do Horn Speakers Get Their Gorgeous Life-like Tonality?
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You have to consider crossover delays, slope and frequency ime.
I do agree it's an overblown marketing issue but I did the math by hand, tested it and measured it and there are situations where time/phase are very important.
Chicken or egg. Is placing the tweeter farther back better because of time alignment or other factors? That's what I've been saying from the start, and that it's other factors.
Just getting the phase right will not guarantee time-alignment. All drivers can be in correct phase but the arrival of sounds is not at the same time due either to physical distance from the listeners ears or group delay, like one would get from a 4th order LR filter. It’s in phase but two drivers are delayed in time.
You can test this digitally, which leaves all drivers in a fixed position. Then correct phase and delay so all sounds arrive at the same time. I have done this at home and heard demos with digital corrections and it matters.
You cannot emmulate what moving a driver does with software.
And trying to correct with delay still leads to the fact you are going to have the situation where changes in frequency arrive closer in time but then then decay late. It may sound different but that isn’t the same as obviously better. It hasn’t gained much popularity over the years for a reason. And manufacurers continue to prove physical alignment isn’t paramount.
And trying to correct with delay still leads to the fact you are going to have the situation where changes in frequency arrive closer in time but then then decay late. It may sound different but that isn’t the same as obviously better. It hasn’t gained much popularity over the years for a reason. And manufacurers continue to prove physical alignment isn’t paramount.
No, this is not how digital time delay works, at least not when incorporated with a digital crossover. The time of all frequencies going to a particular driver are shifted in time so that they lineup with the frequencies generated by the other drivers. If you achieve a perfect step response then all frequencies, regardless of whether or not it is an initial arrival or the decay, will arrive at the correct time.
The situation for a passive speaker is worse where you will have a woofer that is delivering, say 400Hz at one time and the midrange is delivering the same 400Hz at a slightly different time to the ear...even if they are in-phase due to the different path lengths the wavefronts have to travel in space. This smearing in time is sometimes audible, particularly with large group delays and with higher frequencies.
They prove this how? Do they make a version of the speaker available that is with time-alignment vs. one without? No, they do not. Many designers simply don't think it is important and their agenda is different like controlling frequency response on and off-axis, reducing cabinet and driver distortions or whatever. They think because the ear/brain works as an integrator that it will take the scrambled mess that comes out of most speakers and make sense of it...and to a large extent they are right. However, once one becomes accustomed to a time coherent speaker and how it allows an easier time with listening, then one often doesn't want to go back to a non-coherent speaker. Not everyone is sensitive to it but if you are then you hear the lack of coherence.
What Acoustiplan has are a big 16a in the middle, and two smaller 22a by the sides. Both cross over to WE subs, you can play either of them. If you want to do it yourself, the 16a horn itself (replica from South Korea) used to be 7500 euro three years ago. The LM drivers are quite cheap and can be found used. The cost is then to install as getting the power supplies right etc requires someone who knows. And what he also did is, to get the woofers right, he had to buy 4 to 5 pairs to find a matched one. That search process itself will cost a lot.
Well, we are talking about horns here, and most of the horn companies give importance to alignment. It has caught up with horn manufacturers.
Yes, that sounds right...the big one in the middle and the smaller snails one per channel. The woofers though he told me were Jensen and not WE and not replicas.
Either information is left out, or sped up at some point. DSP/crossovers is not smart enough to perfect choice on when notes are played or such. This is a reality because the group delay can't be removed, just moved.
For your 400hz example to be true they would have to be beaming if they're in phase at the speaker. As far as audibility there's a lot more factors that will contribute than these distances that mean nothing.
With horns there are other concerns related to size, shape, and wavelength. So yes, they need to "align" you might say. Otherwise they would multiply the problem greatly compared to a dynamic speaker where tens of thousands of a second don't mean a lot.
For your 400hz example to be true they would have to be beaming if they're in phase at the speaker. As far as audibility there's a lot more factors that will contribute than these distances that mean nothing.
With horns there are other concerns related to size, shape, and wavelength. So yes, they need to "align" you might say. Otherwise they would multiply the problem greatly compared to a dynamic speaker where tens of thousands of a second don't mean a lot.
You have a funny notion about what is going on with DSP, I have to say. What you are saying really doesn't make sense with reality. What does being smart enough and notes have to do with it? These are all just frequencies that get processed in time, notes or decay etc. has nothing to do with it. The DSP knows what frequencies it is sending to which driver and the signal that has been divided to go to that driver is delayed in time. That delayed signal is fed into the driver then based on a given delay. It is up to you to decide what is the right delay (unless the system has an automated way of doing this...many now do). If a signal is being fed to a passive speaker, then based on measurement, it can figure out which frequencies in time need shifting based on the group delay in the speaker then the SIGNAL is delayed based on the frequencies until they are arriving to within a certain limitation of the measurment hardware (probably a few microseconds). This then compensates for phase shift, and driver offset from the listening position...these are the two things that contribute to group delay.
Most drivers are not "in-phase" at the speaker other than at the crossover frequency so that they sum flat. However, a crossover is not an infinite slope (at least not in the passive world) and there is significant overlap that is not necessarily in-phase. This has nothing to do with beaming, although off-axis is usually significant contributor to mis-alignment of drivers in phase (and why off-axis often starts to look pretty strange with many speakers).
To claim these effects are not important or audible tells me you have never really tried the experiment of taking a non-coherent speaker and running software that will time alter the signal so that the output of the speaker is time aligned at the listening position. It is most definitely audible. Now, you might ask then why not just get any old speaker and correct it? Well, the correction does not compensate for non-linear distortions that have a big effect on the speaker character. What I am talking about is all things being equal, ie. the same speaker with and without digital time correction. The only problem I ever had with this is that I could hear the digital fingerprint that was stamped on the sound from the processor (you could hear this also in the uncorrected when a flat curve (ie. DSP engaged with no actual correction) was applied...again to make apples to apples comparisons.
'Well, we are talking about horns here, and most of the horn companies give importance to alignment. It has caught up with horn manufacturers.'
Well that may be true but unless they are using a DSP based active crossover there is no way they can be time aligned with the different path lengths in the horns themselves. You can physically offset them but that really doesn't solve the problem. You have to realize that virtually all of the classic horn systems are not even close to being time aligned. Any modern horn that uses a passive crossover is typically not as well. I really don't worry about it as long as it is under the B/L criteria for the audibility Group Delay.
Rob
Well that may be true but unless they are using a DSP based active crossover there is no way they can be time aligned with the different path lengths in the horns themselves. You can physically offset them but that really doesn't solve the problem. You have to realize that virtually all of the classic horn systems are not even close to being time aligned. Any modern horn that uses a passive crossover is typically not as well. I really don't worry about it as long as it is under the B/L criteria for the audibility Group Delay.
Rob
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I not allways agree with you but in this topic and this reply i do.
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[QUOTE="morricab, post: 541452, member: 5671"
To claim these effects are not important or audible tells me you have never really tried the experiment of taking a non-coherent speaker and running software that will time alter the signal so that the output of the speaker is time aligned at the listening position. It is most definitely audible. Now, you might ask then why not just get any old speaker and correct it? Well, the correction does not compensate for non-linear distortions that have a big effect on the speaker character. What I am talking about is all things being equal, ie. the same speaker with and without digital time correction. The only problem I ever had with this is that I could hear the digital fingerprint that was stamped on the sound from the processor (you could hear this also in the uncorrected when a flat curve (ie. DSP engaged with no actual correction) was applied...again to make apples to apples comparisons.[/QUOTE]
I also have tried/experiment a lot with delays and corrections with dsp . And meassuring everything , i did and still can learn a lot.
Imo aligning does a lot , not everything for fr but for soundstage and first atack of cymbal, piano or string it does a lot.
But physical align i prefer much much more than dsp.
I can’t listen to dsp in my big system only in my office system and than it’s only good (imo) under about 150hz or under room-Schroeder frequency. So for me dsp only for testing/learning and for subs.
To claim these effects are not important or audible tells me you have never really tried the experiment of taking a non-coherent speaker and running software that will time alter the signal so that the output of the speaker is time aligned at the listening position. It is most definitely audible. Now, you might ask then why not just get any old speaker and correct it? Well, the correction does not compensate for non-linear distortions that have a big effect on the speaker character. What I am talking about is all things being equal, ie. the same speaker with and without digital time correction. The only problem I ever had with this is that I could hear the digital fingerprint that was stamped on the sound from the processor (you could hear this also in the uncorrected when a flat curve (ie. DSP engaged with no actual correction) was applied...again to make apples to apples comparisons.[/QUOTE]
I also have tried/experiment a lot with delays and corrections with dsp . And meassuring everything , i did and still can learn a lot.
Imo aligning does a lot , not everything for fr but for soundstage and first atack of cymbal, piano or string it does a lot.
But physical align i prefer much much more than dsp.
I can’t listen to dsp in my big system only in my office system and than it’s only good (imo) under about 150hz or under room-Schroeder frequency. So for me dsp only for testing/learning and for subs.
I also have tried/experiment a lot with delays and corrections with dsp . And meassuring everything , i did and still can learn a lot.
Imo aligning does a lot , not everything for fr but for soundstage and first atack of cymbal, piano or string it does a lot.
But physical align i prefer much much more than dsp.
I can’t listen to dsp in my big system only in my office system and than it’s only good (imo) under about 150hz or under room-Schroeder frequency. So for me dsp only for testing/learning and for subs.[/QUOTE]
Yes I personally can’t fathom why someone would choose a dsp based crossover if musical pleasure is the goal. I never heard one that sounded natural and with life / vibrancy. The dsp has the uncanny ability to rob the music of the life and soul. Ymmv but imho.
'
Well that may be true but unless they are using a DSP based active crossover there is no way they can be time aligned with the different path lengths in the horns themselves. You can physically offset them but that really doesn't solve the problem. You have to realize that virtually all of the classic horn systems are not even close to being time aligned. Any modern horn that uses a passive crossover is typically not as well. I really don't worry about it as long as it is under the B/L criteria for the audibility Group Delay.
Rob
No they do not have to do it via dsp, it can be a multiway, different path length horns and aligned with a passive crossover like my system. I have explained how to do it before so I won't repeat again.
Yes, the old systems were not aligned but there are people now aligning them via dsp (for ex. hornsolutions) and saying they have a good result. People like Yamamura also did dsp based horn systems and I remember Gian writing that system was the most life like. For hornsolutions dsp based we system, Sven likes it and told me so does Thomas Schick and some other people who have heard it...
"No they do not have to do it via dsp, it can be a multiway, different path length horns and aligned with a passive crossover like my system. I have explained how to do it before so I won't repeat again."
You have optimized it for your listening position and that's about all you can do. Even with DSP it's a one point in space solution. You cannot adjust out the physical distance between the horns in 3 dimensions. Even "time aligned" systems are aligned on their listening axis typically the tweeter as soon as you vary height it goes out the window because the physical offsets change between the listener and the individual drivers. Any doubt about it take a look at your step response , impulse doesn't cut it, at different heights and listening positions in your room as you undoubtedly know.
DSP can do it better you are limited using passive networks.
Rob
You have optimized it for your listening position and that's about all you can do. Even with DSP it's a one point in space solution. You cannot adjust out the physical distance between the horns in 3 dimensions. Even "time aligned" systems are aligned on their listening axis typically the tweeter as soon as you vary height it goes out the window because the physical offsets change between the listener and the individual drivers. Any doubt about it take a look at your step response , impulse doesn't cut it, at different heights and listening positions in your room as you undoubtedly know.
DSP can do it better you are limited using passive networks.
Rob
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"No they do not have to do it via dsp, it can be a multiway, different path length horns and aligned with a passive crossover like my system. I have explained how to do it before so I won't repeat again."
You have optimized it for your listening position and that's about all you can do. Even with DSP it's a one point in space solution. You cannot adjust out the physical distance between the horns in 3 dimensions. Even "time aligned" systems are aligned on their listening axis typically the tweeter as soon as you vary height it goes out the window because the physical offsets change between the listener and the individual drivers. Any doubt about it take a look at your step response , impulse doesn't cut it, at different heights and listening positions in your room as you undoubtedly know.
DSP can do it better you are limited using passive networks.
Rob
Varying height has the worse effects, varying depth does not sound too bad... At your listening point though, it is great and that is what I was aiming for. What can dsp offer more than this, I really won't get into what dsp takes away, what does it offer? A better step response, how, I genuinely would like to learn.
German Physiks Gaudi - time alignment taken seriously : the DDD driver array is mounted on a telescopic arm, which is driven by linear actuators, enabling it to be precisely positioned in relation to the listener, remote controlled during playback. http://www.german-physiks.com/german-physiks-speaker-line/the-gaudi-mk-ii.html
How good are the Universum ?Isn't this whole hobby driven by insensible decisions?
I could visualize them in our living room, but then again the Universums are really extremely good
How much is the retail price of the Pnoes anyways?
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