The problem with loudspeakers

He want's speakers that sound like headphones? Good for him.
But I don't. Different preferences I guess.

cheers,

AJ
 
Well said. That’s what I don’t get. I like headphones, but no space in between the music. By definition the music is immediately in your head. A close friend is going down/spending his money on the expensive headphones and headphone amp route. I don’t get it.
 
OK so his buddy Bill Brier was a certifiable 'wacko', that qualifies him as an audiophile, OK fine ......
 
If you don't care about soundstage, maybe.

I listen to 'phones at work a lot, but they are by definition a compromise. I've heard the 10k headphone setups at shows and am mystified why someone would pay that for head in a vice sound. Closed back headphones are my least favorite - I feel like I'm in a tunnel. How is that hifi?
 
KeithR said:
If you don't care about soundstage, maybe.

I listen to 'phones at work a lot, but they are by definition a compromise. I've heard the 10k headphone setups at shows and am mystified why someone would pay that for head in a vice sound. Closed back headphones are my least favorite - I feel like I'm in a tunnel. How is that hifi?
Click to expand...

Totally agree.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Is think what Herb is reacting to, at least in part, is the incredibly low distortion that headphones provide, even at relatively high levels. It's uncanny. Speaker manufacturers don't release distortion specs because customers would be put off by the numbers - they are usually not good and vary a lot with level and frequency.

My LCD-4's image outside my head when the recordings allow it, so with some smart DSP who knows what is possible?

When I was in avionics we did a bunch of spatial work at Wright Patterson AFB and could get full spherical direction discrimination to about +/- 10 degrees. That's left/right/up/down/front/back. With a pair of Bose headphones and sophisticated DSP. To do that we had to physically model the listener's pinnae and adjust accordingly.

Point is, headphones are already more linear the speakers, and the 'head in a vice' and 'between the ears' deficiencies can be eliminated.

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy both speakers and headphones for what they are, and headphones will never shake my body on the low stuff.
 
Funny ,

maybe just me , what i got from his Prose is me tinks Herb is suggesting speaker designers try and scale up headphones to a Full range crossover-less loudspeaker system with high sensitivity and efficiency .

A 6 ft tall Sennheiser, 16 ohm nom , [email protected]/M..



:)
 
a.wayne said:
Funny ,

maybe just me , what i got from his Prose is me tinks Herb is suggesting speaker designers try and scale up headphones to a Full range crossover-less loudspeaker system with high sensitivity and efficiency .

A 6 ft tall Sennheiser, 16 ohm nom , [email protected]/M..



:)
Click to expand...

I vaguely remember that Joe Grado was working on such a speaker back in the 80's or 90's. I believe HP may have mentioned it in TAS.
 
Herb Reichert is obviously a daydreamer. For that matter, the same is true for me. I am fairly confident a full range single driver speaker with a flat impedance curve across the entire audio spectrum would already be on the market, not to mention be quite popular, were it possible to create. There are some great minds in the business of manufacturing speakers, not stuffing someone else's speakers in a cabinet and calling it your design, but actually manufacturing the speaker drivers. Were it possible to build a speaker that could faithfully deliver the visceral impact of frequencies between 20Hz and 100Hz, the silky smooth, accurate, and dynamic midrange of a well designed cone, dome or ESL panel, and deliver the crisp, airy, zest filled high frequency range of well designed silk, titanium, or beryllium dome tweeter with ranges that extend to 25KHz and beyond, I think we would already be seeing such speakers available. The closest we have probably come to the concept is probably the Tannoy two-way dual concentric loudspeaker with a 99dB efficiency with one watt input. Granted, this speaker is a two way design but its concept of proper time alignment between two drivers in the way the tweeter is installed in the center of a 15 inch woofer ensures remarkable coherence and imaging with limited impact from some complicated crossover.

The laws of physics weigh heavily on the notion that a single driver speaker can manage to move large enough volumes of air to faithfully create accurate and powerful deep bass wave frequencies while at the same time do honorable justice to midrange clarity and dynamics, and also maintain the air and sparkle necessary to faithfully recreate accurate and extended high frequencies to a minimum of 20KHz and beyond. No doubt the idea is attractive. One driver, no crossover, flat impedance curve across the full audio range, it's quite the fantasy. Perhaps one day a smart team of audio engineers will pull this hat trick off, but for now it seems we will remain mated to multi-driver speakers to reproduce the full spectrum audio we know and love.
 
The exact same laws of physics that allow this in headphones, prevent this in an acoustic space like a living room.
Of course scientific knowledge and prolific blathering skills are two different things entirely.

cheers,

AJ
 
a.wayne said:
Soundlabs ....
Click to expand...
Neither high sensitivity nor impedance...those pesky laws of physics again.
Full bandwidth outside of headphones = multi-way.
Multi-way high/flat impedance/sensitivity is possible.
Whether Herb would like is another matter entirely, he seems a bit temperamental. :)
 
I ran the Voxativ from my Pure Audio direct to my amp. It was amazing in ways. So much more pure and clean. I could see a transmition line speaker with a subwoofer getting good results. Maybe put a signal cap in the amp to cut the low frequency at 80hertz to 100 hertz to the Voxativ.

What about bi- or Tri -amping with active crossovers. Isn't that pretty much the same. A direct coupled speaker to an amp with a specific frequency applied.
 
Here's a single driver loudspeaker that I happen to still own:
36635903631_7fcbdcb6e7_k.jpg


Probably as far from a set of big headphones you can get, but still interesting as a single driver loudspeaker. I think the modern MBL embodiment is far superior, but this was pretty innovative for 1973.

It was the combination of poor efficiency and poor power handling that ultimately killed this design. That, and these were shipped from the factory broken, the ferrofluid cooling the voice coil also attacked the voice coil former to cone adhesive Ohm used. Idiots.

But the doppler distortion created when the cone moved from transmission line to acoustic suspension really really colors the sound.

Single diaphragm speakers will all suffer from this distortion as the excursion needed to create realistic bass levels will also create doppler distortion by modulating all the treble information by the large diaphragm movements required to reproduce the bass.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3424873A/en


https://www.cnet.com/news/forty-years-ago-the-ohm-f-speaker-was-a-game-changer-it-still-is/
 

Attachments

  • 36635903631_7fcbdcb6e7_k.jpg
    36635903631_7fcbdcb6e7_k.jpg
    653.5 KB · Views: 10
AJ Soundfield said:
Neither high sensitivity nor impedance...those pesky laws of physics again.
Full bandwidth outside of headphones = multi-way.
Multi-way high/flat impedance/sensitivity is possible.
Whether Herb would like is another matter entirely, he seems a bit temperamental.
Click to expand...

Less Define high sensitivity, put a numeric value on it ..

Soundlabs are crossover less and full bandwidth, i think Ralph at atmasphere drives them with his OTL.....

only class D struggles on them .... :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top