Accuracy in Loudspeakers---Define

RayW said:
Once again we're back to the difference between "accurate" and "sounds better". I think those should be seperated out. As was said about a hundred posts ago,

Ray
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There comes a point where they can't be seperated. As was also said about a hundred posts ago.

I'm gonna go argue about Orson Welles on another board now, then watch my new John Ford box set.

Vaya con Dios Amigo
 
Tom Brennan said:
So what's your personal opinion of what an accurate speaker should do? ;)
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It's quite simple: it should sound like Quads. Oh, but put in a switch to add some chesty boominess on male voices, so that the Altec/JBL lovers enjoy it as well.

You could call the button, uh, "Mid Presence". :D





OK, I'm sorry! I take it all back now. :zoom:
 
Aage said:
Oh, but put in a switch to add some chesty boominess on male voices, so that the Altec/JBL lovers enjoy it as well.
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JBL's Everest I had that button, a three-position switch, a I recall.

I forget what it was called, but I'll look it up next time I'm over there....

Edit: Variously, "Mid-bass contouring" or "Mid bass attenuator." :p:

Tom Brennan said:
There comes a point where they can't be seperated. As was also said about a hundred posts ago.
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At that point, when the rubber hits the road, accurate sounds better.

You want something else, you use parametric EQ to do it.

I am reminded of the "Modeling" guitar amps. Set a bunch of presets for standard artificial colorations, and pick your fake "Loudspeaker du jour."

My Sony system controllers have that. I can make 4430s sound like L100s (less the phase anomalies, of course). They've been running "Flat" ever since the novelty wore off sometime in the last century.
 
Tom Brennan said:
So what's your personal opinion of what an accurate speaker should do? ;)
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I'm pretty sure I made that reasonably clear way back, but here's a less technical version.

Speakers that can confuse a bird so it calls back to them, a gun shot so perfect you think there's a shooter in the house and take cover. A cricket sound that makes your cat go crazy looking for it. A meow that makes your dog attack the speakers looking for the cat. Your wife's recorded voice so perfect you don't know which is a recording and which is real. Calling out to your child from a recording and he/she thinks it is you. A lawnmower recording that confuses the neighbours.

Basically, real sounds reproduced without any colouration able to trick animals with small brains (wives excluded) (because they have no 'personal taste' when it comes to sound in loudspeakers)

Try a few tests and you will be shocked how bad pretty much all our speakers really are.
 
View from the peanut gallery.

Two camps
objectives and subjectives

I think you can have both, but subjectives say nay.
 
restorer-john said:
"disfranchisement" ? A result of a 'buzzword' site?
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Naw, I had it spelled different, but the handy $4.95 toolbar Webster's said this was the preferred (and less expensive) version, so I thought I'd give it a shot.... :p:

Tom Brennan said:
For instance some people will choose a closed box for bass because it has lower group delay than bass reflex and say a closed box is more accurate. But then the bass reflex has less distortion for a given output than a sealed box so one can maintain that IT'S more accurate. Then the guy that likes horn bass thinks they're both on the wrong track.
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I believe the hornies have it, though not being real familiar with the technology, I'd have to do more research. Problem is, in order to get the requisite low frequency extension, you need a really big horn mouth. I recently saw pics of an installation where that comprised the entire front of the stage in a disco and reached mighty low. Until informed otherwise, I'm voting that one "most accurate." SR guys stack bass horns to sum similarly via mutual coupling. I think they know something.

Second would be closed box for LF extension and group delay/transient response. I'll dismiss the distortion by saying there's ways to mitigate that if, as with the bass horn, you're willing to pay the cost of doing so.

Vented box would be inherently the least accurate of the three options; it's what we build because it's practical, and inexpensive.

Consider the case of Sub1500, a very long read, but an interesting study of trade-offs and compromises hammered out essentially by committee at LHF:

http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=1790

Here is (was, really, because they are NLA but for deep pockets and persistant pursuit of the contemporary equivalent,) a quality driver which could be used in either closed or vented alignments as a formidable system woofer or sub. In the end, I believe closed box prevailed for sub use, which, in combination with in-room boundary effects, produced the most accurate response, i.e., for the specific application, as suggested earlier in this thread. I have also heard it used effectively in a vented alignment as a system woofer....
 
I know this is a little off topic but still quite interesting in a discussion about accuracy in speakersound.
Even if one do not have a speaker that is close to be accurate,it is still possible to detect improvements made on other equipments.
If you change your amp,you will most likely hear that;even if we change to an amp supposed to be,if we look at all measured figures,very similar. And here we are normally talking impact way below the impact of the speaker.
/gusten
 
I believe the hornies have it, though not being real familiar with the technology, I'd have to do more research. Problem is, in order to get the requisite low frequency extension, you need a really big horn mouth. I recently saw pics of an installation where that comprised the entire front of the stage in a disco and reached mighty low. Until informed otherwise, I'm voting that one "most accurate." SR guys stack bass horns to sum similarly via mutual coupling. I think they know something.

Second would be closed box for LF extension and group delay/transient response. I'll dismiss the distortion by saying there's ways to mitigate that if, as with the bass horn, you're willing to pay the cost of doing so.

Vented box would be inherently the least accurate of the three options; it's what we build because it's practical, and inexpensive.
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You're not gonna tell this to the stats and planar guys are ya?:D

Thanks to Zilch, Tom B. and the rest of y'all, this thread continues to dispense a lotta valuable information, and food for thought.:thmbsp:

An observation to support the above Zilch, in surfing the web looking at home installations, it seems that the furthest extremes being taken currently by audio enthusuiasts, at least in eurpoe, are the installation of said HUGE bass horns. It would also appear that the compromises in many of these "extreme" installations are being made on the part of the human rather than in the design and execution of the horns.
 
bowtie427ss said:
You're not gonna tell this to the stats and planar guys are ya?:D

Thanks to Zilch, Tom B. and the rest of y'all, this thread continues to dispense a lotta valuable information, and food for thought.:thmbsp:

An observation to support the above Zilch, in surfing the web looking at home installations, it seems that the furthest extremes being taken currently by audio enthusuiasts, at least in eurpoe, are the installation of said HUGE bass horns. It would also appear that the compromises in many of these "extreme" installations are being made on the part of the human rather than in the design and execution of the horns.
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Actually I find the planar bass to be very accurate, though not as deep-reaching as large cones, (Scintillas/Divas, an "exception" to the rule, reach 20hz with an ease that's incredible) but far more detailed (accurate) than nearly any cone system I've heard barring mega-buck servo types of subs. I think it's the low mass driver of planars that inherently sound better, IMHO.
 
botrytis said:
...As I said before, I will state it again, Accuracy in speakers is how well the speaker reproduces a recorded instrument with all of it's particular harmonics. Example - classical guitar - can you tell the difference between a player that uses nylon vs. steel strings? Each one has its own particular sound and should be played back so you can tell the difference. If not - the speaker is NOT accurate.

Dave
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Actually, while I wouldn't necessarily disagree with your overall premise, that is not what this thread is discussing. That's where so many posters are getting confused. It has nothing to do with personal bias. The thread is about speakers, not about music, harmonics, or instruments.

Your statement is correct if you're talking about the end-to-end system, not just the speakers. In your example, if the original recording of a classical guitar performance was done with very poor quality mics, placed in poor positions, in a recording hall with crappy acoustics, with indifferent mastering, and the speakers were perfectly accurate, the sound coming from the speakers would NOT let you discern the difference between steel and nylon.

That's why this thread is ONLY about a speaker's ability to relatively accurately reproduce a specific electrical test input, NOT its ability to reproduce music.
 
Fisherdude said:
That's why this thread is ONLY about a speaker's ability to relatively accurately reproduce a specific electrical test input, NOT its ability to reproduce music.
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Evidently many participants in this thread disagree with you about what this thread is "only" about.

The original question posed was to define accuracy, if someone's definition is that accuracy is the ability to reproduce music to his satisfaction that's a legit answer and on topic. To discuss the merits of definitions given is also what I think this thread is about.
 
I am completely and totally confused. I thought I was following the discussion, but apparently I'm utterly lost.

Dave, I honestly and sincerely apologize. I truly did not intend for my post to be deemed to be arrogant in any way. I'm sorry.

Clay
 
Fisherdude said:
I am completely and totally confused. I thought I was following the discussion, but apparently I'm utterly lost

Clay
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As are many of us. ;)

I have my own notions of what's good in a speaker but being aware of the reasonable objections that can be made to those notions I hesitate to call what I prefer "accurate".
 
When recording it´s very important to have the "right" amount of early reflections from the hall where the music is being performed,if you don´t have that the music will be very dry and boring;the instruments loose the caracters that we normally associate with the instrument in question.

The same principle must be thought of when playing that music in your home environment,or else the performance there will be to dry.
I am in favor of having some reflections from the ceiling,as they must not be to early because then they will be causing ripple and influence the precision in the music.From the floor there should be very little reflections,and that means thick woolcarpets.The worst in my opinion is when you have reflections from the wall behind the speakers,then the music loose rather much in accuracy.
I am now talking about frequencies above 500Hz.
/gusten
 
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Tom Brennan said:
I have my own notions of what's good in a speaker but being aware of the reasonable objections that can be made to those notions I hesitate to call what I prefer "accurate".
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BINGO!

Clearly illustrating again that the source of confusion here derives from the compulsion to overlay the inherently objective "Accuracy" with subjective asessment criteria.

There's nothing wrong with liking inaccurate speakers. But if someone asserts that L100/4311s sound "Real" to them, and are therefore accurate, they've got their ... well, they're confused with respect to the very concept of loudspeaker accuracy.

Yes, surely with an accurate speaker one should be able to distinguish between nylon and steel guitar strings, but that cannot be the criterion (or even "a" criterion) for determining whether a speaker is accurate, or how accurate it is. My crappy Compaq computer speakers here can do that, and surely most everyone's favorite inaccurate speakers can, as well.

Botrytis is correct: A speaker not having even that level or resolution is clearly not accurate. However, the method tells very little (nothing, actually,) about HOW accurate a speaker is, and therefore has limited utility in making such determinations....

[Now, humbuckers vs. single-coil, that's a different matter.... :p: ]
 
botrytis said:
I will give an example - Joe Ackroyd, of Royd Audio, voices and tunes (well did - he retired) his speakers using a piece written by Benjamin Britten - Diversion for piano (left hand) and Orchestra Op. 21. He also mathematically models his speakers also. He does have a particular bias in his head in designing - as do others - so no one is absolutely right here.
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Please see Dickason 7.90 in Loudpeaker Design Cookbook for a discussion of loudspeaker voicing, what it is, and how to accomplish it. From one perspective, it comprises manipulating the design to instill a subjectively desired coloration, i.e., making a speaker inaccurate (or adjusting its inherent inaccuracies) in such a manner as to satisfy the designer's subjective perception of how he wants the speaker to sound.

L100s and HPM-100s are voiced differently from studio monitors. It's what defines and distinguishes their "West Coast" sound, and also what makes them inaccurate loudspeakers. See also your post #2 of this thread. Joe knew the drill.

A very accurate speaker is neutral, transparent, and colorless. To some tastes, that means "dry." If you want a speaker that makes everything sound like it's being played on a '50s Rockola juke box, you voice accordingly. That may make it more "Musical" to a particular taste, but it also makes the speaker decidedly inaccurate.... :yes:
 
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