Moving away from box speakers: Diesis Audio vs Avantgarde Acoustic?
- Thread starter abeidrov
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This sounded GREAT in Munich this year!But the concerts have to be small, usually heard via PA speakers.
To add to the confusion, the Supravox heritage kl 15 is an interesting speaker. 15" bass, midrange horndriver 2" with modern version of klangfim horn, horn tweeter 1" with bronce horn. Lp Magazine, Germany next month test.
KL15 Heritage speaker
KL15 Heritage speaker characteristics Bandwidth : 20 -20 000 HZ Efficiency : 96dB/1w/1m Power rating : 150 watts 3 way system crossing over at 600Hz and 8000Hz. The speaker have been designed and are built in France in our workshop. Bass 15 inches custom woofer designed and built by Supravox in...www.supravox.fr
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I used to live 5 minutes walk from the Royal Albert Hall in London and enjoyed many orchestral concerts, usually with 5000 fellow listeners. They very rarely use speakers and the few orchestral concerts that are amplified, sound poor compared with those that are 100% acoustic. The Royal Opera House similarly didn't amplify their orchestra or singers, though in a smaller venue with about 2200 seats
Looks too much like a DIY speaker, granted a very nicely finished one, but at €43 K they are unlikely to sell (m)any!
Royal Albert has awful acoustics for classical. It is good for amplified concerts indoors.
Agree, I liked Barbican, and when I lived in London we were only 10 minutes from Southbank center, which was also good. Tonhalle in Zurich is better than either of these though.
Your perception of horns (and I understand you are a fan) is rather at odds with my own.
I bought my first horns, Avantgarde Unos in 2002 after reading the excellently descriptive and accurate Stereophile review by Robert Deutsch. At the time, I had ATC 50 Active speakers in my listening room, after KEF 107 Reference before that. The ATCs were far too "in-yer-face" at a 12 ft listening distance, so much so that I wanted to push them 20 ft further away. The Uno review described EXACTLY the sound I was looking for and so different from the ATCs that I bought my first horns after a short showroom demo. At 12 ft they were so open and uncongested compared with the ATCs they were a truly delightful speaker when turned up loudly, or listening at whispering volume without losing much detail. A breath of fresh air! In my present listening room, my Duo XDs are very happy being placed 14 ft from the listening chair.
I suspect that Trios, partly as their drivers are not vertically aligned, may need a greater distance for best sound.
Yes, I agree that the RAH is less than ideal, though it has had its acoustics hugely improved since I first visited when they had heavy drapes hanging from the central top dome. The RFH and Barbican are appreciably better, but that wasn't my point. At all these venues orchestral concerts are normally performed without the need for amps and speakers. One could argue that there's little point in going to live concerts if you are listening to loudspeakers rather than musical instruments.
To be honest I've never done a statistical analysis sampling many speakers to give a number. I'd wager no one else has either. That's why I always say in my experience and in general, horns need more distance than cones which need more distance than panels. A good choice for close proximity cones that reduces that distance IME is coax drivers (Elac, Kef, Fyne, etc.).
Did you listen to the G3 series or just the older models?
In the previous generation of Avantgarde, the tweeter voice coil was about 20cm ahead of the mid driver so mid/tweeter were not physically time aligned therefore anyone could hear a separate incoherent sound from the drivers at very close distances as if the sound was coming from two different sources.
In this case, (without physical time alignment) you had to sit at a greater distance from the AG horns for the integration of the drivers and the formation of a coherent image.These distances to the listener's position were about 4 meters or more for Trios and about 3.1 to 3.5 meters for Duo/Uno.
But in the new gen of Avantgarde, with the correct time alignment of the drivers, which can be adjusted in some models, those long cumbersome listening distances have been reduced to the point where you can sit at a significant distance of 3.30 meters from the big Trios and enjoy the coherent sound (as sbnx did).
I like to go to small clubs, put my feet on the stage and relax in the armchair
If the speaker has destroyed the competition, a few good reviews are guaranteed to come and then it will sell itself. They have been building great speakers for 60 years, so I wouldn't worry.
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With suitably directional speakers, axes criss-crossing in front of the listener moves the first significant sidewall reflection from the same side wall (ipsilateral) to the opposite side wall (contralateral). Arguably this has two advantages and one disadvantage:
The first advantage is the greater time delay before the arrival of the first significant lateral reflections because of the longer path length. This reduces the strength of the "small room signature" of the playback room, the benefits including more precise image localization and a greater sense of immersion in the acoustic space on the recording.
The second advantage is the fact that contralateral reflections arrive at the opposite ear from the first-arrival sound. The ear/brain system can therefore binaurally process the direct sound and its reflection because the two arrive at opposite ears, improving both clarity and the sense of being in a larger acoustic space.
The tradeoff is, without strong ipsilateral reflections, the soundstage is much less likely to extend laterally beyond the speakers unless the recording engineer deliberately engineered that into the recording's spatial cues.
Imo the aforementioned advantages can contribute to the system creating a "you are there" presentation (with a good recording), wherein the recording venue's spatial characteristics (rather than the playback room's spatial characteristics) are perceptually dominant.
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Unless you are wedded to horns, I’d recommend looking at electrostatic loudspeakers as well. Of course, if your idea of music is playing electronic rock at 120 dB, or getting a jackhammer drill kind of vibration, they won’t do. Some folks cannot enjoy music unless it’s played at discotheque levels. I get that.
But if you enjoy well-recorded music, particularly classical, jazz, folks acoustic, or choral, played at reasonable levels, I find electrostatics are far less colored than horns. I have both, a Klipsch La Scala full-range horn, and several electrostatic loudspeakers from Quad and Soundlab. Each time I listen to my La Scala, it’s a jolt because I have mentally calibrate to the intrinsic colorations of horns. After an hour, your brain acclimatizes to the colorations or perhaps I’ve had too much good California red wine from my local winery to care anymore! I like my La Scalas. Very much. But a compression driver that is horn loaded has that peculiar sound to it that’s hard to overlook.
But everyone has their preferences in terms of loudspeakers. That’s why there are more than 100,000 loudspeaker manufacturers, and more coming to the market everyday. Good luck.
Thank you very much for this explanation, Duke!
I'm confused about one thing, though. If I understand you, you are saying that the cross-wall reflections provide the benefit of "improving both clarity and the sense of being in a larger acoustic space."
But I thought the cross-wall reflections confuse the imaging, which is why most people seek to absorb or to diffuse the cross-wall reflections.
The late Jorma Saalmi was a gifted loudspeaker designer, who designed the Danish Gradient loudspeakers that tried to cleverly minimize room interactions. I have his Gradient Helsinki model in my bedroom. It’s a quirky design. The tweeter and midrange point up to minimize floor bounce, the initial source of most room-induced colorations in moving coil loudspeakers. The woofer is mounted on an open baffle getting rid of cabinet noise. The midrange is designed to have no radiation in the plane behind the speakers. The tweeter is horn loaded to increase its directionality. When I first heard it, my reaction was wow, finally I don’t hear my room. Play back a great recording of an orchestra in a hall, you hear the hall, and your room disappears. It’s eerie. The recommended configuration is exactly what @Duke LeJeune is suggesting. The speakers are to be toed in so they cross in an axis that’s well within the listening area. And they work remarkably well, but their bass is highly dependent on the room boundaries and if you like thumping subwoofer bass, you won’t get that here. In a world full of boring loudspeakers, this one is a rare original design from a gifted designer who understood that the biggest problem in loudspeaker design is how to get rid of your room induced coloration. Peter Walker worked 18 years from 1963 to 1981 on the ESL to precisely solve this problem from a completely different angle. Anyone can throw cones in a giant box and make them blare loud. Getting the room out of the equation: that’s where genius lies.
Strong early reflections can pull the sound image location in the direction of the reflection. This effect is much more pronounced when the reflection arrives at the same ear that the first arrival sound arrived at, because once the two waveforms have entered the ear, the ear/brain system cannot separate them. This can be enjoyable as it can result in a very wide soundstage which extends to either side of the speakers, but the smeared arrival time also makes the location (including depth) of the sound images less precise.
When the first lateral reflection arrives at the opposite ear, the ear/brain system easily recognizes it as a reflection. So there is very little if any pulling of the sound images in that direction (assuming the reflection is spectrally fairly similar to the first-arrival sound).
By pushing back in time the arrival of the first lateral reflections, the ear is now getting mixed signals about the size of the playback room. The timing of the first lateral reflections now corresponds to that of a somewhat larger room. Imo this weakening/garbling of the playback room's inherent "small room cues" can help tip the balance in favor of the venue cues on the recording being the perceptually dominant "package" of spatial cues.
I agree that it is generally desirable to diffuse that first cross-wall reflection, which should result in a further improvement in the sense of being in a larger acoustic space (and/or help further tip the balance towards the spatial cues on the recording being perceptually dominant). On the other hand, in general I would not favor absorption of the first cross-wall reflections, and can explain my reasoning if you have really bad insomnia.
@godofwealth, I was a Gradient dealer for many years. Imo Jorma was brilliant.
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Hmmmm, I would beg to differ. Strongly in my case.
While I enjoy and prefer some setups and speaker configurations in some cases (within certain parameters), I do not agree with your assessment here.
Please allow me to clarify here, though...
Are you talking about a certain amount of recordings or electronica musical selections, or are you talking about something else?
My experience is something else, entirely. That said, I'd like to know where you are coming from on this. Can we get a specific song you are referring too?
Alternatively, could I offer you a song in opposition? (certain songs bring out the best of topologies/configurations/designs)
What specifically do you disagree with, if you don't mind?
I don't have a particular song or genre in mind.
I'm talking about the effects of early reflections on sound images, and I'd like to hear what your understanding and experience is.
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