Brandon Mull
Active Member
My ears and a couple of Dire Straits songs- tells me what I need to know.
What speaker test do you find most relevant? (tone burst, square wave, etc)
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Brandon Mull
Active Member
Seeing as some of my buddies in bands that use a couple of dire strait songs to set up their live sound systems- for testing eq range and all, to get the best sound for a venue- seems to work well for me. It was explained to me that their sound guy uses that band because their music tends to cover all frequencies. I have heard dire straits through a couple of speakers that I really thought sounded amazing- and I base anything else I hear off of that. Works good for me. No I do no only listen to Dire Straits.
swamppirate
Lunatic Member
I have a Kenny like that driving some Dynaco’s in my garage….great combo
First, a speaker can have no glaring issues. Then what does it do well?
I will take the absolute bass control of an insensitive speaker over the empty bass of a high sensitivity speaker.
I remember my first introduction to Dynaudio.
Why else would you tolerate the design compromises? Unless playing loud is the end goal
There are many MANY excellent speakers that are not high sensitivity, so I agree with Shultz.
But as I stated earlier, it does have to match your electronics. If your preference is SET you will need high sensitivity, if you’re running a high-power system with a lot of idle noise you will need lower sensitivity, etc.
Just one of many specs that needs to be matched to the listener and his situation.
Yes. If SET, then high sensitivity is a requirement. If your electronics are noisy, check wiring runs or fix the electronics.
The SET crowd is a tiny population. The LOUD crowd is exponentially larger.
I've been putting systems together for over 40 years, SETs, PP, low power SS to high power SS. As Sgt Schultz stated, power is pretty cheap anymore. People choose SETs because they like them, certainly not to save money. It's a preference. We are all different, it's just that far too many don't understand that there even are compromises and never move away from their college proclivities thinking they are getting something for free
GD70
Lunatic Member
Has dimensionality, great wide sound stage, crisp highs but not harsh or fatiguing, punchy deep bass that's not boomy. This is of course with my amps, and listening environment. Results will be very different in a different listening space, amplification sources, and most important, the listeners ears. Some like very forward in your face mids and highs, while others like a natural, warmer presentation.
DeadRock
Ideas Guy
j!m
Super Member
If a system can suspend your disbelief there is a band in the room, you're onto something...
Music needs to sound like music. Performed by musicians.
If you are in another room of the house and you SWEAR the band is rehearsing in the other room, you win. Otherwise, something (or things) is/are not right.
Music needs to sound like music. Performed by musicians.
If you are in another room of the house and you SWEAR the band is rehearsing in the other room, you win. Otherwise, something (or things) is/are not right.
I have actually diagnosed a speaker with a production error that way- by listening to it at different angles.
Had one audio show- we couldn't get the speakers to sound alike, or to get a stable image.
We first thought we had room issues- tried moving the speakers around, trying them with and without spikes, and such No luck there. In fact, the speakers actually sounded BETTER when they were asymmetric in the room.
I finally started to wonder if something was out of phase in one of them. Not the woofers, because the bass was strong and even pretty much everywhere- but maybe one of the mids or tweeters.
It wasn't until I walked right up to them, bent down and listened to them at the height of the tweeter, then squatted down to where I was next to the floor- and finally, stood up to where I was directly overhead of the front of the speaker, that I got an inkling what was wrong. One of them had strong midrange out the FRONT, and the other had WEAK midrange in the front- but STRONG, in the UPWARD direction.
I mentioned that it appeared that one of the speakers seemed to have lobing behavior (the zones/directions where sounds are the loudest, are also known as lobes in the dispersion curve), different than the other- and would it be worth checking to make sure driver polarity was correct?
After a bit of checking by others- we collectively decided to pull out the mids on the speaker with the weird lobing. Found that one of the two mids WAS out of polarity with the other!
Once that was corrected- the speakers did indeed sound identical to each other!!
Regards,
Gordon.
I'll never forget recently visiting a pal whom I'd given 2 pair of Large Advents. He had them stacked, and I walked in, within 20 seconds, and stated "They're out of phase".
"No way, dude, I swear!"
We rotated them, looked at the terminals, then the back of the receiver.
I was right. It so properly cheezed my friend off, I had a hard time getting him to talk about anything else the rest of the afternoon, lol.
I don’t think anyone believes that SET is cheap, it can be quite expensive just like any other topology.
I brought up noise, because amplifier specs are often as incomplete as speaker specs. Many of us know what the noise level or %THD is at rated output, that’s on the brochure, but few of us know what the THD is at 25mW because few amplifier manufacturers will publish that. If you have a high-power amplifier that has 10%THD at 25mW you will have a mess listening at low levels on highly sensitive speakers, ... but it’ll sound great when turned up. This is common I believe especially in vintage transistor sets. For these highly-collected vintage SS sets a lower sensitivity will help to hide the non-linearity of their early semiconductors at low saturation levels.
JMO.
A good friend of mine has Focal Grande Utopias, driven by VAC electronics. Yes, a system to die for.
The speakers are in the living room- and I swear, when there's a piano piece playing- from the kitchen, it literally sounds like there is a pianist and a piano in the other room. Uncanny.
Regards,
Gordon.
Being effectively a "human phase detector" has its disadvantages.
I've been in stores, where there was a ceiling speaker out of phase- and it was so distracting to me, I had to go elsewhere in the store.
The worst case was in a record store in Las Vegas, that we went to during CES one year- they had four JBL L96s or L112s, I think. One of them was out of phase. It was so distracting and annoying, I actually went back outside and waited by the car. At a freakin' RECORD STORE.
Regards,
Gordon.
kevintomb
Well-Known Member
Everyone that says measurements and specs do not matter......
Do you not care about accuracy in any way at all?
Over the years I have had several friends say the same thing, and after hearing their systems, they all were VERY colored and lacking in accuracy in very noticeable ways.
Do you not care about accuracy in any way at all?
Over the years I have had several friends say the same thing, and after hearing their systems, they all were VERY colored and lacking in accuracy in very noticeable ways.
What I'm about to state, please, nobody get ill at me.
I can go back and set my receivers (what few I still have) like I once did, and marvel how I EVER thought that sounded good.
Loudness button is just a big hell no to my ears now. Any eq is used to sculpt away, NEVER to add (and I don't use eq's, anyway).
Putting giant monkey coffins against the wall. UGH!
God lives in the midrange, so that's where I'm focused. However, this is after 50 years of this stuff.
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