Chilling out at home on a very cold night with some potent seasonal beers, doing some audio experiments that I'm sure I'll have to redo, I came to look at a graph in this thread and thought I'd respond to some stale comments here:
True, but it's a lot less than the LX521, which is approaching $3k, and the $800-$1000 xover can't be used for anything else whereas the Note II uses miniDSP that you can adjust or repurposes as you see fit (or you can use a PC-based xover, too).
As I mentioned to Tom in PM recently, I found out I was wrong about this; thanks to some motivated DIYers, the LX521 has extensive options for more affordable, non-specific DSP crossovers that were meticulously designed for miniDSP and Linux software, approved (and even tested) by Siegfried himself. I take it back
. Some really nice work done on these software solutions (google LX521 DSP, I'm too lazy for links).
As for the Geddes approach, seems like his round WG's with generous mouth radii would have the same issues as the TD15M/QSC ctc spacing problem. Might this be why he seems not to produce his 15" Summa anymore? I can't say I've followed all of this closely. I guess the trade-off is not so bad for an earlier onset of constant-directivity.
IIRC (lord help me if I don't), there was some sort of price increase needed where he felt they already cost more than people interested were willing to pay, and he didn't like building them very much. The speaker worked just fine, though.
The squashed type of CD guides limit crossover frequency with their vertical size to some extent, and maybe more importantly they make crossover design difficult as you approach their limits. Geddes' big ones using lower xovers, he hasn't put out vertical data, only descriptions, but I wish he would.
I have come to think I understand that not only would they be only a little worse than competitors as far as lobe spacing and magnitude, but they would be
better inside and outside the nulls, which I think may actually be more important. Also, they simply
have to be much better on all other axes (there are infinitely more than two, remember). That's what I meant by "beginning to side with Geddes' take on this type of 2-way". Don't get me wrong, I'd sign up for another QSC waveguide speaker tomorrow - just talking ideals here.
Well-produced jazz recordings have a way of sounding better than most other music I think.z
Yes, for various reasons they lend themselves to normal stereo hifi very well. I am kind of embarrassed about making that reference. I made it because I had just been listening to some Three Blind Mice jazz records on these speakers and meant it as a counterpoint to my "sterile" comment, because they sounded quite alive and real. I do NOT use such records for critical evaluation, I use them for maximum appreciation once I'm done. For critical listening, I start with various pop/rock records I'm familiar with (no particular quality needed) to make sure I know where I'm at with bass/midbass, and then I use various fancy speech recordings, symphony recordings (I need a better library of excellent ones there, keep meaning to research that), and the EBU SQAM test CD that I'm in love with.
Side note on that SQAM CD/set: It's horribly boring, but SO well made and helpful if you are familiar with hearing common acoustic instruments. Actually, even if you aren't, the simple test of various instruments playing a scale or other pattern (it has a lot of those) can reveal gross errors in speakers and rooms that are commonly described in vague audiophile nonsense terms.
I really think there are so many speakers that people stretch their vocabulary to describe when it could be as simple as "when the clarinet hits C and C#, everything goes to hell", and that kind of thing can be easily located in measurements, and addressed. It's also free (google). If anyone has similar test sources, I'd love to hear about them.
