"If you don't have a $200k [speaker]..."

[sbo6]

In fact a bit more sophisticated than that. Anechoic stereo, by definition is physically extremely pinpoint. When we add room reflections and the spectral manipulations carried during recording and mastering it can become subjectively more diffuse. In fact, within some limitations, audiophiles can "tailor" the soundstage according to their preference. But as you say the recording can have a strong influence on it.

If we want to know of the artist or sound engineer intentions with exactitude we have to ask him! Fortunately some sound engineers gave us their perspectives on the subject.

Mixing and sound engineers don't mix in an anechoic chamber, and many, many recordings clearly utilize phase and panning to place musicians where they want in addition to where the mic(s) were purposely placed during the session(s).

Ultimately, I think we're saying almost the same thing.

 

[microstrip]

Mixing and sound engineers don't mix in an anechoic chamber, and many, many recordings clearly utilize phase and panning to place musicians where they want in addition to where the mic(s) were purposely placed during the session(s).

Ultimately, I think we're saying almost the same thing.

Just to make it clear by anechoic stereo I meant " a stereo system played in an anechoic chamber".

And, as far as I have read, phase plays an important role in rock and amplified music, much less in acoustic instrumental music recording.

 

[Robh3606]

Just to make it clear by anechoic stereo I meant " a stereo system played in an anechoic chamber".

And, as far as I have read, phase plays an important role in rock and amplified music, much less in acoustic instrumental music recording.

Hello

Why if the phase manipulation is from panning or other studio wonderment ??

Rob

 

[Lee]

I won't speak for YG. I asked YG that question and will let you know if they answer. The closest answer I could find on their website is: https://www.yg-acoustics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/YG_DualCoherent_20.pdf

Rest of system: currently Boulder 1110 and 3060; Playback Designs MPT8 and MPD8. At the time I switched from Wilsons: ARC Ref40 instead of Boulder 1110.

Thanks! You have a very nice system.

 

[morricab]

Dear Ron,

Since long Wilson Audio claimed time alignment to their Aspherical Group Delay technology . John Atkinson explanations in Stereophile were extremely clear since long - I remember reading about it by the time I got my X2. Little to add about the subject. Also since long reviewers and Wislon Audio focused on the "good integration of the drive-units' outputs through the crossover regions in the frequency domain."

Does “good integration of drive units outputs through the crossover region in the frequency domain” sound like it has anything to do with time alignment?? Didn’t think so. JA made up something to help Wilson with their claims…

 

[Amir]

I don’t believe this is accurate based on my experience. Several experts have told me that you don’t need first order to allow time alignment. If you talk to Wilson they believe time alignment is way more important than phase alignment. As I mentioned earlier, hearing phase and frequency response is a different neural pathway than time coherence. Human ears hear very small microsecond level timing differences well into old age. That’s good news for us audiophiles as that helps us hear a precision of instruments on the soundstage.

What Morricab said is right, Wilson Audio use high order crossover and those are not perfect in time response. Time alignment of each driver (of wilson) is not equal to linear phase response (perfect squarewave). Dave wilson believes our hearing system is not very sensitive to phase.
Dave wilson said the Time alignment is important and it means the distance of all drivers to the ear should be equal so all wilson speakers have adjustable spikes to change the driver position.

 

[Amir]

Thiel and Vandersteen have two major issues in using this approach:
1. It is based on an assumed distance and listener ear height. That creates a lack of precision in presentation.
2. Different amplifiers have different group delay characteristics. The Wilson ability to move the drivers can be uses to adjust for different amplifiers. Dave Wilson demonstrated this to me when he changed amplifiers on his WAMMs and had me move the micrometer wheel to the ideal position based on the amplifier used. Wilson even has charts for a wide selection of amplifiers. Nobody else I am aware of is taking it to this level of precision.

I agree the Wilson ability to move the drivers is very effective tools to have good sound and very few big speakers have this option.

 

[Amir]

Im happy that they give good instructions but you are way off base when you are discussing set up particularly since you had someone to do it for you. Wilson speakers are constantly being discussed and the answer to anyone who doesnt like them for anything is the dreaded quote
"well they weren't set up properly"
Well they had 8-9 systems in Munich, they had their crew there, so why did most of them sound at best mediocre to poor? Couldnt they read the instructions?

I wasnt crazy about what I heard at Robert Harleys were they set up wrong there? They were set up by the experts. I wasnt the only one that felt that way ,but I am not going to name names. Roy Gregory talked about the set ups in Munich not the speakers but the results. Were allof them setup wrong under Wilson's own supervision.
You can't have it both ways sorry.
If they are so easy to set up then why the controversy?

if you do not hear good sound from Wilson audio in MOC it does not mean Wilson Loudspeakers are not good. Roy Gregory told me Wilson WAMM is very very good if you properly setup it. large / complex speakers need proper room and proper speaker placement to give you good sound.
perfect time alignment of wilson speakers has nothing to sound if the speakers are in wrong position. both finding the right position + time alignment is the key for getting good sound from Wilson Loudspeakers.

 

[Robh3606]

Does “good integration of drive units outputs through the crossover region in the frequency domain” sound like it has anything to do with time alignment?? Didn’t think so. JA made up something to help Wilson with their claims…

Hello

Right you can have good frequency integration and have a step response that clearly shows the system is not time aligned. Almost all speakers are not time aligned and unless it's plagued with gross time offsets it's not audible.

Rob

 

[microstrip]

Does “good integration of drive units outputs through the crossover region in the frequency domain” sound like it has anything to do with time alignment?? Didn’t think so.

Others think differently and understand it, no problem. Fortunately you were not part of the US patent verification agency, David Wilson used the expression "time alignment" in his patent.

JA made up something to help Wilson with their claims…

Feel free to go on your crusade ... Fortunately old printed reviews from TAS and other magazines are not free and your magazine literacy is restricted to Google search, the remaining reviewers are free from your insinuations ...

 

[Robh3606]

Others think differently and understand it, no problem. Fortunately you were not part of the US patent verification agency, David Wilson used the expression "time alignment" in his patent.



Feel free to go on your crusade ... Fortunately old printed reviews from TAS and other magazines are not free and your magazine literacy is restricted to Google search, the remaining reviewers are free from your insinuations ...

How did he get around this?? The Urie's all had that as part of the promo's and were time aligned using delay in the crossover.

Rob

 

[morricab]

Others think differently and understand it, no problem. Fortunately you were not part of the US patent verification agency, David Wilson used the expression "time alignment" in his patent.



Feel free to go on your crusade ... Fortunately old printed reviews from TAS and other magazines are not free and your magazine literacy is restricted to Google search, the remaining reviewers are free from your insinuations ...

I had all the old TAS issues in pdf…stop talking about what you don’t know.

Let me ask you a question since I’m the past you pretended to be somewhat scientific (apparently not when it comes to one of your pet brands)…do you consider a speaker where the sound from the tweeter arrives before the mid, which arrives before the woofers to be “time aligned”? Doesn’t TIME alignment mean that all sounds From all drivers reaches your ears at the same time (thus the meaning of alignment)?

A speaker where the drivers are physically aligned such that they could be time aligned if only the crossover allowed it is NOT time aligned just the drivers acoustic centers are aligned but this is meaningless without the crossover doing the right thing.

I realize English is not your native tongue so it might not be easy for you to judge when someone is taking extreme liberty with the meaning of words. In this case “time alignment “ can only mean all sounds aligned in TIME not drivers aligned in a physical location in space, which is what Wilson means and JA allows the bastardisation of the meaning to occur.

 

[microstrip]

I had all the old TAS issues in pdf…stop talking about what you don’t know.

A pity you seem to have forgotten their content. Did you get symptoms of allergic reactions reading most of it?

Let me ask you a question since I’m the past you pretended to be somewhat scientific (apparently not when it comes to one of your pet brands)…do you consider a speaker where the sound from the tweeter arrives before the mid, which arrives before the woofers to be “time aligned”? Doesn’t TIME alignment mean that all sounds From all drivers reaches your ears at the same time (thus the meaning of alignment)?

A speaker where the drivers are physically aligned such that they could be time aligned if only the crossover allowed it is NOT time aligned just the drivers acoustic centers are aligned but this is meaningless without the crossover doing the right thing.

I am not here to ask your diverging questions. In this moment we address just a particular question about your myopic view on a subject that is mostly marketing semantics and you insist on using in your hate crusade against a successful and respected designer/manufacturer.

I realize English is not your native tongue so it might not be easy for you to judge when someone is taking extreme liberty with the meaning of words.

I realize that your english is better than mine in insulting insinuations - many people in this forum have already seen it. Sorry I never trained in such low key fields - my english is mainly science and instrumentation driven, a field that is very different from high end audio, I can't follow you in mud arguments.

In this case “time alignment “ can only mean all sounds aligned in TIME not drivers aligned in a physical location in space, which is what Wilson means and JA allows the bastardisation of the meaning to occur.

David Wilson and others have been clear on the meaning of words and as I said before fortunately you are not a reference in these matters. What else you and I think about it is of little importance and it seems me thee is nothing new to add to the subject.

BTW, are you going to ask Ron and Steve to consider you an WBF Expert in technical language censorship? Crusades and Inquisition had some common points ...

 

[morricab]

A pity you seem to have forgotten their content. Did you get symptoms of allergic reactions reading most of it?



I am not here to ask your diverging questions. In this moment we address just a particular question about your myopic view on a subject that is mostly marketing semantics and you insist on using in your hate crusade against a successful and respected designer/manufacturer.



I realize that your english is better than mine in insulting insinuations - many people in this forum have already seen it. Sorry I never trained in such low key fields - my english is mainly science and instrumentation driven, a field that is very different from high end audio, I can't follow you in mud arguments.



David Wilson and others have been clear on the meaning of words and as I said before fortunately you are not a reference in these matters. What else you and I think about it is of little importance and it seems me thee is nothing new to add to the subject.

BTW, are you going to ask Ron and Steve to consider you an WBF Expert in technical language censorship? Crusades and Inquisition had some common points ...

Not sure what you want to imply that I am missing from old TAS. To my knowledge they never made measurements, so how would they actually know if the speaker they were auditioning was time aligned/coherent or not? Answer: They didn't know...only what they were told by the manufacturers.

You can't answer my question and still hold your position, which is why you won't answer it.

Yes, I agree that Wilson engages in marketing semantics because they claim something their speakers are not and then claim that 'time alignment' means something different from what it has historically meant.

Just pointing out the language thing because the words time and alignment seem to elude you as to what they actually mean. I am shocked that if you are science and instrumentation driven that you continue to defend something that it is obviously from the DATA not true.

i don't care about David Wilson's twisting of words. He was a salesman first and foremost and would tell you that the speakers walked on water if he thought it would increase sales.

Scientific language ceases to be such when everyone starts to adopt their own definitions for marketing purposes...

 

[Alrainbow]

B

 

[Robh3606]

With time aligned speakers if you look at the step response you should have a triangle or darn close to it. Here are 2 "time aligned" vs Wilson.

Rob

 

[morricab]

With time aligned speakers if you look at the step response you should have a triangle or darn close to it. Here are 2 "time aligned" vs Wilson.

Rob

Look at my example above from Vandersteen and from Thiel...they did it successfully.

The other two you show clearly were less successful examples... but at least all the drivers move the same direction...just not quite at the same time.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I am not here to ask your diverging questions. In this moment we address just a particular question about your myopic view on a subject that is mostly marketing semantics and you insist on using in your hate crusade against a successful and respected designer/manufacturer.

Brad's Post #372 was understandable even to a non-scientific person like me. He asked you a simple question:

do you consider a speaker where the sound from the tweeter arrives before the mid, which arrives before the woofers to be “time aligned”? Doesn’t TIME alignment mean that all sounds From all drivers reaches your ears at the same time (thus the meaning of alignment)?

Instead of answering with intellectual honesty a direct and understandable question you chose to dodge and parry. (You did the same thing several times on my suspension of disbelief thread when, in response to my polite solicitation to give us your definition, you consistently chose not to, preferring, instead, to complain repeatedly about the source of the definition I posted.)

This, candidly, is why some people find you frustrating. You are all rational and scientific and objective up to a certain point, but then when the going gets intellectually hot you choose to obfuscate, to make excuses, to fold.

 

[cal3713]

Im happy that they give good instructions but you are way off base when you are discussing set up particularly since you had someone to do it for you. Wilson speakers are constantly being discussed and the answer to anyone who doesnt like them for anything is the dreaded quote
"well they weren't set up properly"
Well they had 8-9 systems in Munich, they had their crew there, so why did most of them sound at best mediocre to poor? Couldnt they read the instructions?

I wasnt crazy about what I heard at Robert Harleys were they set up wrong there? They were set up by the experts. I wasnt the only one that felt that way ,but I am not going to name names. Roy Gregory talked about the set ups in Munich not the speakers but the results. Were allof them setup wrong under Wilson's own supervision.
You can't have it both ways sorry.
If they are so easy to set up then why the controversy?

Aside from the periodic devolving into bickering, I find this whole discussion really interesting. And I wonder if much of the "controversy" (i.e., variability in opinions) regarding Wilsons has to do with listener sensitivity to the various time-domain (vs. frequency domain) issues identified in the thread.

 

[Ron Resnick]

And I wonder if much of the "controversy" (i.e., variability in opinions) regarding Wilsons has to do with listener sensitivity to the various time-domain (vs. frequency domain) issues identified in the thread.

I think this is an insightful point. Our idiosyncratic sensitivities to certain things, and our idiosyncratic insensitivities to other things, undoubtedly drive some of our subjective preferences.