Invisible speakers?

[fas42]

1. That perfect transparency can be achieved.

2. That you have achieved it.

armirm, those are very good points, and deserve good answers. The only thing is that they are essentially the same point, since if I have achieved it, then it is achievable...

First, I would not use the term "perfect transparency". I am quite certain now that what is going is a trick, an illusion being played by the ear/brain on your physical system, on your headspace, so to speak. Most people with a reasonable setup have achieved it already, by the fact that they talk of the sweet zone! All I am really talking about, is that this sweet zone can be enlarged to be the size of the room, and the house in fact. I have talked of this many times in previous posts.

As proof of it being achievable I submit poor Vince, muralman1, who has been trying so hard, so long to get across exactly what I am saying, what is possible. Some people will say, well, of course, he has Apogee Scintillas, he's got a head start! Yes, it has made it "easier", but he has worked on it for 6 years to get it to the point of having a universal sweet spot (Hey, I think I just coined an expression ...). Other setups may require more work to get there, and maintain the effect, I certainly know from my own experience, that if one, tiny, tiny, tiny thing is wrong then the illusion fails , and the system sounds like sh%t!!

Frank

 

[fas42]

If something has clicked in your room, it is unlikely to represent the truth since the truth cannot be known!

Fair enough! I would just say, if it always sounds good and "real" to me, no matter how "bad" the recording, then I'm happy.

And I don't mean good because someone has thrown a couple of blankets over the speaker! An early high end experience was a setup which started with a Goldmund Reference TT, etc. The vinyl he played was spectacular, even in my memory now; then we tried his CAL CD on one of my recordings. Oh dear! I don't know how layers of blanket dropped on the Infinity panels but it was certainly too many for me!

Frank

 

[fas42]

Please provide your top 5-10 ways of reducing distortion,

As you can see, you stirred up a real hornet's nest with that one thought, pretty impressive!

So, to simplify:

1. Make sure every connection, switch, etc, etc throughout the system is not adding distortion
2. Make sure every component is not affected by any other component, by other electricals around, by the quality of the power supply coming in
3. Make sure that the system is not being affected by air borne interference, called RFI
4. Make sure the speakers are solidly locked to the room structure as much as you can
5. Make sure you can run your system to maximum volume with no change in the imaging, etc

Yes, this is all very obvious, very trite, but they are my ways of doing the job! You would have gone to a lot of trouble doing exactly all of those things to at least some degree; the important thing is to keep on looking at ways of tweaking, and areas where things may not be 100%.

Some people could perhaps say, give me real answers. If they did, say about the 5th tip, I would say you could:

1. Get an amp with a much bigger, hopefully better power supply
2. Completely re-engineer the supply in your current amp so that it works better
3. Get extremely efficient speakers: Klipsch, Zu, etc

All these answers will work, it's your choice which way to go. That's what makes it hard to give a simple answer ...

Cheers,
Frank

 

[JackD201]

Frank I'm thinking you are going through a philosophical exercise and not a practical exercise. You experienced a cathartic moment some time back and have been trying to recreate that moment. Has it ever crossed your mind to that perhaps the system didn't change at all after 15 minutes but rather you did? That when you started listening for all these little things to fix, that in itself caused the illusion to collapse?

 

[fas42]

Has it ever crossed your mind to that perhaps the system didn't change at all after 15 minutes but rather you did?

Jack, if it only was that simple! With my current setup, as I try something different which causes the illusion to collapse, my wife looks at me with a "it's not quite right, is it dear" look. No, I have been going through the ups and downs of it being there, and not being there so many times, I can tell from the other end of the house without any trouble when it's there and not there. Actually, one of the easiest ways to get it back when I first realised the effect many, many years ago was to turn everything off and switch it back on again, which is something that has been mentioned by people on forums a number of times. There was one poor chap, on Audio Asyslum I think, who almost went mad trying to deal with a "weakness" like this. The system would gradually get worse and worse, but he could always restore the sound by switching it all off and back on again. Just like a misbehaving computer, in fact!!

There are so many things that tell you it's "right", including the fact that you have no interest in wanting to fix anything, but just enjoy the music, which, after all, is what this "hobby" is supposed to be about ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

Just had to ask Frank

 

[fas42]

if one, tiny, tiny, tiny thing is wrong then the illusion fails , and the system sounds like

Jack, I just realised you were reacting to that sentence. Because I am experimenting all the time the whole setup is pretty fragile, and, as an example, the cat will literally disturb something which is critically set up, and I don't realise that it's happened. That is the sense with which I am using these words ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I am quite certain now that what is going is a trick, an illusion being played by the ear/brain on your physical system, on your headspace, so to speak.

I'm quite certain of that myself, Frank. In fact, I'm certain that if we could supply you with placebo tweaks, your headspace would hear the same things you're hearing today. How can I be sure it's psychological? I can be sure on a few fronts, because you're hearing the impossible, and that makes everything else you're hearing suspect.

1) Perfect transparency and imaging, from any position in the room, no matter how close you get to a speaker -- There are a whole lot of reasons why this can't happen, Frank, and a couple of them have to do with the basic laws of physics. You're not altering them with premium caps and switches and extreme power management.

2) It makes even bad recordings good -- No, Frank, really, it doesn't. Trust me on this. It all depends on how the bad recordings are bad, of course, but system colorations (distortion) will mask some recording ills and make others worse. A transparent system, if such a thing exists, will merely reveal bad recordings. If all of your "bad" recordings are bad in exactly the same way, some specific lack of transparency may help. Real transparency will just reveal the difference between bad and good recording/mastering technique more clearly

3) Removing "small distortions" is the secret sauce -- Frank, bud, removing "small distortions" can't make any system perfectly transparent from anywhere, period. Why? Because the big distortions will still be there, and the biggest ones, by a pretty good margin are in the transducers, where you can't tweak. You can totally tweak the power supply, the switches the caps, the cat and the cell phone. You can even go into the tweakable area you haven't mentioned and change the components in the passive crossovers (which can be a source of some relatively huge distortions). Better yet, you could take those crossovers out altogether, design and implement a really good active system (and I definitely encourage you to do so if you have the ability) and you'd still have driver distortions to deal with that are huge compared to any distortion you might eliminate from any competent system with any of the tweaks you're talking about.

So, yeah, I agree, this is happening in your headspace, but with that said, I encourage you to shut off your computer, stop listening to reason and go listen to music. It's a beautiful illusion your headspace has created for you. Stop trying to convince the rest of us and enjoy it.

Tim

 

[Steve williams]

I'm quite certain of that myself, Frank. In fact, I'm certain that if we could supply you with placebo tweaks, your headspace would hear the same things you're hearing today. How can I be sure it's psychological? I can be sure on a few fronts, because you're hearing the impossible, and that makes everything else you're hearing suspect.

1) Perfect transparency and imaging, from any position in the room, no matter how close you get to a speaker -- There are a whole lot of reasons why this can't happen, Frank, and a couple of them have to do with the basic laws of physics. You're not altering them with premium caps and switches and extreme power management.

2) It makes even bad recordings good -- No, Frank, really, it doesn't. Trust me on this. It all depends on how the bad recordings are bad, of course, but system colorations (distortion) will mask some recording ills and make others worse. A transparent system, if such a thing exists, will merely reveal bad recordings. If all of your "bad" recordings are bad in exactly the same way, some specific lack of transparency may help. Real transparency will just reveal the difference between bad and good recording/mastering technique more clearly

3) Removing "small distortions" is the secret sauce -- Frank, bud, removing "small distortions" can't make any system perfectly transparent from anywhere, period. Why? Because the big distortions will still be there, and the biggest ones, by a pretty good margin are in the transducers, where you can't tweak. You can totally tweak the power supply, the switches the caps, the cat and the cell phone. You can even go into the tweakable area you haven't mentioned and change the components in the passive crossovers (which can be a source of some relatively huge distortions). Better yet, you could take those crossovers out altogether, design and implement a really good active system (and I definitely encourage you to do so if you have the ability) and you'd still have driver distortions to deal with that are huge compared to any distortion you might eliminate from any competent system with any of the tweaks you're talking about.

So, yeah, I agree, this is happening in your headspace, but with that said, I encourage you to shut off your computer, stop listening to reason and go listen to music. It's a beautiful illusion your headspace has created for you. Stop trying to convince the rest of us and enjoy it.

Tim

Well said Tim

 

[tony ky ma]

Invisible speakers ?

Funny, always has different direction as discussion's going, I guess Frank's point is the hobby's fun in modification,the only problem is do they believe those modification can reach Hi End level or not ? there are no sure indicator for Hi End level don't like the basic one ( power, noise distortion etc,) so argument will go on
tony ma

 

[muralman1]

There is no convincing folks. Listening is the only cure for the rare curious. Tim says the transducer will mess things up and you can't help that. That is why the best speaker will not be a box. I need a better speaker, perhaps the best. The speaker must have downy light drivers that make up their lack of air movement with great size. The drivers must be air cooled, and it's movement damped by air. The bass driver must be of extremely light material. It has to be very large so it can move the most air with little movement. That will make it very fast, which is a good thing, because the perfect speaker for me will have very fast mid and tweeter drivers.

 

[muralman1]

Active vs. passive.... Now that is a subject for another topic. I know a deep pockets fellow who tested active crossovers for years, only to realize in the end that gee, the speaker designers knew what they were doing when they designed the passive crossover for that particular speaker.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

There is no convincing folks. Listening is the only cure for the rare curious. Tim says the transducer will mess things up and you can't help that. That is why the best speaker will not be a box. I need a better speaker, perhaps the best. The speaker must have downy light drivers that make up their lack of air movement with great size. The drivers must be air cooled, and it's movement damped by air. The bass driver must be of extremely light material. It has to be very large so it can move the most air with little movement. That will make it very fast, which is a good thing, because the perfect speaker for me will have very fast mid and tweeter drivers.

I didn't say the boxes were flawed (even though they are). I said the transducers were flawed. Cones, domes, ribbons, panels. Bipole, dipole, cardioid or "controlled directivity," they are the weak link, always have been, even when the best electronics were much, much worse than midfi is today. You can deny that, but you'll be very, very lonely, not because the weakness of acoustical transducers is conventional wisdom, but because it is established science. And I don't care how much you tweak the electronics, how perfect you get them, even the best transducers in the world will not allow you to hear what Frank hears. Only your imagination is capable of that.

Tim

 

[microstrip]

I don't think any of us are looking for a magic potion, Frank. But a bit of science, or engineering, or even simple, practical application would be useful.

Tim

Tim,
I applause the second part of the sentence, although I believe we are still mostly relying in the magic portion concerning domestic hi end audio. In real life, the number of variables and constraints is so high that no models can can be synthesized from the situations I have been reading in this forum.

As far as I am seeing, only audio industry is taking profit of science to make better engineered hi-end products having higher quality, but reproduction of music in small / medium rooms is still ruled by practical application. May be it is why we disagree so much ,,,

 

[JackD201]

Like I said, the technology isn't there yet and it probably never will get there either. Some sci-fi thing like directly plugging your brain into The Matrix or getting into the world of Inception will probably be possible before the equally Sci-Fi imaginations of a full range massless and room independent loudspeaker. The only way to make a speaker truly invisible in all respects from anywhere in the room is to do away with it altogether.

There's nothing wrong with accepting limitations in order to really enjoy what we have. I'm a pretty subjectivist guy but all this is way too much for even me to take in.

 

[muralman1]

I didn't say the boxes were flawed (even though they are). I said the transducers were flawed. Cones, domes, ribbons, panels. Bipole, dipole, cardioid or "controlled directivity," they are the weak link, always have been, even when the best electronics were much, much worse than midfi is today. You can deny that, but you'll be very, very lonely, not because the weakness of acoustical transducers is conventional wisdom, but because it is established science. And I don't care how much you tweak the electronics, how perfect you get them, even the best transducers in the world will not allow you to hear what Frank hears. Only your imagination is capable of that.

Tim

How do you think ribbons constitute a, "Weak link?"

 

[muralman1]

Like I said, the technology isn't there yet and it probably never will get there either. Some sci-fi thing like directly plugging your brain into The Matrix or getting into the world of Inception will probably be possible before the equally Sci-Fi imaginations of a full range massless and room independent loudspeaker. The only way to make a speaker truly invisible in all respects from anywhere in the room is to do away with it altogether.

There's nothing wrong with accepting limitations in order to really enjoy what we have. I'm a pretty subjectivist guy but all this is way too much for even me to take in.

JackD201, Your speakers are one of the best at getting out of the way of the music. Like mine, they need a big room to sound there best, and that is what you have given them.

 

[Robh3606]

I have a couple of systems where my speakers dissapear. At least in the sense that I get a nice soundstage in front of me and I can't realy hear the speakers as individuals unless there are hard pans to the L or R. To me at least it's not an impossible feat as long as you take your time and set them up properly. I also feel it is definately recording dependant as not all recordings seem to have that magic formula where this happens. It won't happen of the early Beatle stereo recordings. I actually think the mono's sound better. At least in this instance.

Rob

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

How do you think ribbons constitute a, "Weak link?"

They constitute a weak link relative to the rest of the system because they alter the input signal more than the rest of the system. It's really that simple. You can, of course, choose electronics that alter the signal significantly, but that significant coloration is not necessary and avoiding it is not even particularly expensive, unless you send your amp off to face a crazy load, like say a 1 ohm speaker. That would be a bit of a challenge, but it would just take more money, watts and current to address it and once again make the amp out-perform the transducer by any and all objective metrics. Weak link. Always has been.

Tim

 

[muralman1]

They constitute a weak link relative to the rest of the system because they alter the input signal more than the rest of the system. It's really that simple. You can, of course, choose electronics that alter the signal significantly, but that significant coloration is not necessary and avoiding it is not even particularly expensive, unless you send your amp off to face a crazy load, like say a 1 ohm speaker. That would be a bit of a challenge, but it would just take more money, watts and current to address it and once again make the amp out-perform the transducer by any and all objective metrics. Weak link. Always has been.

Tim

I gottcha!

The tweeter and mid ribbons run vertically through a powerful magnetic field their full length. The bass is handled by a huge trapezoidal panel. This is a 1 ohm speaker. My amps and preamp were devised by an owner of the same speaker as I have. They are the only power amps that truly control 1 ohm speakers. The speakers were built in the mid-eightees. The amp technology took another dozen years to come about to match them.