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What good is Stacking?

Stackers in Cabs

Rybeam:
Yes, about 25 years ago I talked with some guy at a speaker maintenance store about that. His eyes took on an ethereal glow. I chickened out.
I didn't have the money for custom cabs at that time. I would do it today if the result would be in a Tower configuration. My listening room is just too narrow for the wide, side-by-side setup you showed.
Tell me, what would be the advantages?

Thanks,
Rick
 
Just an observation, it just seems the general consensus is to listen to one pair of speakers at a time.
I am not real technical but it seems you are splitting up your power, introducing additional sources of possible distortion and adversely effecting the sound stage by stacking speakers.
A single large cabinet will yield better bass with one or more woofers, a single midrange and tweeter will more than handle the rest of the sound with less distortion and improved sound staging over duplicate drivers. IMO
 
FreshMaker said:
If thats true I might have the worse speakers ever for stacking.
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One AK member, can't remember whom, runs a stack consisting of a pair Highboys and a pair of Lowboys (no, I don't know which one is on top and if he stacks any of them upside down) and claims it sounds awesome.

Rgds,
PS! Recently sold my R-III's and seriously regret it - big mistake.:thumbsdn:
 
I love my R-III's! I have done a little repairing to them and I am thinking of Bi-amping them.

I do have the grills btw, just showing the intresting driver placement.
 
Boy am I confused now????

FreshMaker said:
Putting them in parallel gives the current an extra route to go with the same resistance as the original way.
Try blowing out of a straw, then try blow out of two straws at the same time.
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Okay soooo I should run my + and - through one set of speakers to the other set??? Then this will knock down the OHM's to 4??

Damn I feel stupid...
 
Zinker said:
Okay soooo I should run my + and - through one set of speakers to the other set??? Then this will knock down the OHM's to 4??

Damn I feel stupid...
Click to expand...

Yes you are correct and no you shouldn't feel stupid. Parallel/series wiring is not that common in the home audio environment. Talk to a car audio guy we do crazy stuff. Like running 3 dual voice coil 6 ohm subs each wired to 12 ohns then wired together to present a 3 ohm load to an amp that is only 4ohm stable to push the last little bit out of the amp.
 
ManFromPorlock said:
I've found that inverting a single pair of speakers and putting them on two foot high stands helps the soundstage quite a bit; I believe this is because it gets the woofers up from behind the furniture and puts the tweeters closer to seated listening height. It may be that a lot of the effect of stacking speakers comes from the top pair being raised and inverted, rather than from an interaction between upper and lower speakers.

No guarantees, just idle speculation.
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The better imaging will come from not having the woofer right next to the floor. When setting the speakers on the floor you get floor bounce which will add to the lower frequencies and can muddy up the sound. Getting the woofer away from the floor will get more of the music and less of the floor.

FreshMaker said:
Why is it better to stack speakers opposed to setting them next to each other or any other configuration?
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Interference. Stacked or side-by-side speakers WILL interfere with each other. Whether or not that sounds better or worse to you is up to your ears. When you have them stacked you will end up with vertical lobing. Joe D'Appolito got pretty famous by developing the MTM design and working out a crossover topology that minimized this lobing effect of the M's (woofers). This means that the horizontal sound field is pretty much intact so the soundstage shouldn't change much other than the effect of less distortion cleaning things up a bit and the aforementioned effect of no floor bounce on the top woofer (which is less distortion there too). Your tonal balance may go out the window due to the interference patterns but then again it may make things sound better to your ears.

If you put them side-by-side you will get interference in the horizontal plane. With vertical stacking you tend to get a strong central lobe pointed straight out in front. With side-by-side you will most likely get the same effect but in the horizontal plane so if the "sum" of the SBS speakers isn't pointed right at you then you will be in some unknown area of the interference pattern. This tends to make your "sweet spot" more like a point where to laser beams intersect.




Ray
 
To my knowledge, stacking speakers is done for sound reinforcement purposes. I haven't seen stacked speakers demonstrated by manufacturers in audio shows over the past 25 years. I wonder why!!! They stand to make a financial killing if it actually works, so I'm puzzled as to why they consider showing their best material unstacked!!!! Could it possibly be that a stacked pair of speakers has a more destructive effect on the music even though it plays louder? I still believe that if stacked speakers sounded better than one pair, they'd all join the bandwagon and make nice profits along the way!

It's my feeling that stacking speakers makes for more decibel output for professional applications but as far as musical benifits? I'm one heck of a skeptic as I've never heard a stacked pair do anything else but add more noise to the programme material. Then again, some can prove me wrong but the day I'll see reputable manufacturers readopt the stacked speakers, I'll give it another chance! This idea died in the late 70's because it just sounded bad in most applications. There is a huge difference between fidelity and sound reinforcement in professional applications!

It's hard enough to adapt 1 speaker for mono sound in a room, even more difficult to adapt 2 speakers for stereo applications and I understand that adding still another pair compounds the problem even more (exponentially) so why should I waste my time when all I need to do is simply get better speakers!

If all you want is decibels, there are tons of high efficiency speakers available to do the job and present the amplifier with an easier load to drive! When you stack speakers in parallel, you theoretically double the amp's output power but don't forget, you're also doubling the current in the amplifier too and a cheap amp driving 4 ohm loudspeakers is an accident waiting to happen!

Just my 2 cents and it ain't worth sh*t! ;)
 
One must understand the original reason for stacking hi-fi speakers.

Back in the 1970s there were a couple of inexpensive speakers, specifically the Advent and Dynaco A-25, that were noted for excellent tonality but suffered from poor dynamics.

So people started using two pairs of these speakers stacked. The gain was an increase in dynamics and a lowering of distortion and it was still relatively inexpensive. Stacking was a cheap and easy fix and one that allowed you too improve the performence of speakers you already had. ALREADY HAD being a key phrase here.

I used to use Dynaco A-25s and I blew tweeters playing them loud, then I bought a second pair and stacked them and stopped blowing tweeters when I played them loud and I got lower distortion too.

My next move was to a pair of speakers that were capable of low distortion and excellent dynamics in the first place but that solution was also considerably more expensive than two pairs of A-25s.
 
Tom, I remember those days very well! I would still argue the point that musically speaking, one pair of Dynacos or Advents will simply sound better than a stacked pair of either, no matter what the single pair's shortcomings are. Most people stack with a japanese amp and you blow tweeters clipping the amp. An amp capable of driving 4 ohm loads and lower while retaining it's musical integrity is a very costly proposition, not a run of the mill mid-fi amplifier. We're talking mega dollar amplifiers here.

Stacking brings along with it a slew of vibrational issues (cabinet vibrations), phase problems (the distance between the 2 woofers) and an acoustic nightmare to match in the said room. I'll give you this much, you get more bass, is that more musically satisfying? Dynamics are mostly found in the classical repertory as you well know. Many amps driving stacks would bottom out on such music (people would realise 200 wpc isn't that much power to faithfully reproduce a crescendo). Had the idea worked, it would have been adopted through the decades, it just didn't survive. But I understand your point, time has proved that it just didn't work (for other reasons too including WAF ...)!

There are other areas that people should consider if they want to upgrade the musical qualities of their systems, stacking isn't one of them. It simply plays louder but not necessarily better.

Btw, I have A-25's and adding another set in a 12x12 room would totally destroy the musical integrity of my system, the room is too small, I stand to lose far more than I could gain as far as I know. More muddy bass (because of cabinet vibrations) is not my goal.

Stacking is a thing of the past, why can't we let it rest in peace? :)
 
When I got my L100T's, I intended to switch back and forth between my L150's but I didn't have anything to lose by trying them both at the same time and I've grown to love the sound. The 035Ti's in the L100T's are a bit bright but meld well with the softer sounding 033's in the L150's. It sounds more like how the 034's sounded in the L150's except without the problem of the plastic frame on the 034's rattling. The 2214H's in the L100T's pump out tons of bass while the passive radiator configuration on the L150's gives a bit extra on the lower-end.

Every time I listen to each pair by themselves it seems like something is missing. It's also nice to worry less about bottoming out the 128H's on the L150's which happened from time to time when I was just running those. My Yamaha M-2 powers the 4 speakers like a champ.
 
I always felt the improved image was from the driver coupling. Rather like a D’Appolito configuration.
I can confirm that my stacked Advents sound better than any single of my Advents. With a pretty good sweet spot. I currently drive three pairs with a 35 wpc Marantz receiver in an office about 12x18 feet. My preferred SPL averages 85dB C weighted. Peaks? My RS SPL meter won't measure peaks. When I first connected all three pair I checked with my scope and the amp was nowhere near clipping at any comfortable sound levels. When I add a fourth pair, soon, I will press another amp into service. From younger days I do recall that stacking didn't always improve the sound. Depends on the speaker model and the driver spacing. But when it works it works well...

Stacking is alive and well! :banana:
 
a single pair of good 2-way speakers on spiked stands with tweeters at ear height floats my boat more than a 'wall of sound'...:yes:
although more volume of the 'surround' sound style that stacking might achieve can induce a decent grin too with the right music...
always fun to experiment though...:thmbsp:
 
Zinker said:
Okay soooo I should run my + and - through one set of speakers to the other set??? Then this will knock down the OHM's to 4??

Damn I feel stupid...
Click to expand...


Just to make things clear, here is a picture. I know its crappy, it was a quick draw.
 
Tapehead47 said:
Just curious: I stacked my 4311's and am very satisfied with the resulting sound. But just exactly why do they sound so much better? Is it the amount of air the drivers are moving?

Will it have any negative effects on my Amp?

Rick
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I think the most likely cause of improvement will be moving tweeters closer to ear level. A lot of people fail to place their speakers at an ideal level, and if you use a bunch of speakers to create a 'wall of sound', one of them is likely to be near ear level. Try this: Just play the set on top, and see what you think compared with both at once. Try to match the volume precisely when comparing; otherwise, the louder one will almost certainly be subjectively perceived as better, due to non-linear hearing in humans (which is what "Loudness compensation" controls try to address). A very slight difference in volume is subjectively perceived as the louder one being fuller, with more bass, and with greater detail at all frequencies.

As others have said, you are likely to have sounds out of phase with each other when using more than one speaker at a time, and this will almost certainly make the frequency response less flat due to cancellations of out of phase sound. You may (or may not) like such irregularities in the frequency response, though it will be less like the original intention of those who made the recording.

If you were overdriving one pair into unpleasant distortion, two pairs at the same volume will be less distorted as has also been said by others.

It will only have negative consequences for your amplifier if the resulting impedance is too low for your amplifier to handle. Otherwise, it will not hurt anything.
 
"I would still argue the point that musically speaking, one pair of Dynacos or Advents will simply sound better than a stacked pair of either, no matter what the single pair's shortcomings are."

Far be it from me to tell you what to prefer. But if somebody else prefers them stacked what can you say? It's like telling someone who is laughing at the Three Stooges that they aren't funny; if they weren't funny why would the person laugh?

Myself I don't want A-25s or Advents anyway whether single or stacked to kingdome come. But I understand people who do like them playing with them or trying to get more out of them.

"Most people stack with a japanese amp and you blow tweeters clipping the amp."

Not me though. I was blowing tweeters by putting too much clean power to them in an attempt to get them loud, simple smoking. American power for what it's worth, Dynaco 400, remember Dyna-Guard? ;-) But your general point is taken.

I understand your points but in any event there's no accounting for taste. And I enjoy your well reasoned arguments.

Kind Regards
 
Tom: If I had your speakers I wouldn't feel the need to stack mine. Your points are well taken. It's funny that I was content having one pair hooked up when I first constructed my 'listening studio' (Man-cave). Then my lovely wife asked me to remove the stored pair from our closet. Hmmmm....there's an A, B, and C speaker switch on my amp. I have some nice wire here. Should I? Why not!
Like the 'wall of sound' at the Fillmore! Musicians use tons of speakers and all we try to do is emulate their sound with our home systems. Seems to me the best way to reproduce the ambience of a live performance would be to have an exact duplicate of the bands equipment. Not practical, of course. Building an auditorium is out of my price range, too.
I can live with or without stacked speakers. I usually listen to the A pair. Sometimes the B set. But when I have a few beers on a Friday night and want to blow the walls out I'm prepared!

Rick
 
I never got the whole stacking thing. I tried it with Advents, AR4x, Infinity and a few others. It is most certainly louder. I just recently have stacked my JBL CF120's (storage issues). I like them very much on their own. They are fun, as mentioned already, when a few beers have been consumed. I would really much rather listen one of my 2 main pairs of speakers by themselves though.
 
I agree with the reason behind stacked speakers being a more dynamic sounding system with lower distortion, and I can understand the thought of a cheap upgrade by just buying another pair, but the fascination nowadays kind of eludes me. There are plenty of big dynamic speakers out there that won't suffer from the ill effects of stacking. If I want a wall of sound, i'll either buy wall sized speakers, or build some wall sized speakers. :)
 
I think Chris Brown said it best. There is just something missing going back to a single pair after stacking (Advents in my case) and it isn't just volume.

There is an added ease to the sound with multiple drivers and a more "you are there" effect.

So, I put it to you all that the theoretical lobing effects and phase aberations may not actually occur in real use. We don't, after all, listen to speakers in an anechoic chamber.

I don't stack them in the conventional "accepted" configuration either. Mine are all upright with the tweeters on top. There is a wonderful spaciousness that I won't give up by using just a single pair.

I don't even use my C-9 hologram generator much anymore because there doesn't seem to be much of a need.

Doug
 
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