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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Re: Out of curiosity posted by AJinFLA on February 27, 2007 at 17:56:46:
Hi AJ,First, I have made no claim that the Creek or Arcam integrated amplifiers, which I recently heard, sound like a tube amplifier. I said they sounded good.
I have not heard the Lavardin amplifier (one of my friends is their Swedish distributor and speaks highly of it), and I mentioned it for the purpose to serve as an example of people trying to find alternative measurements (like their memory distortion test) which might better correlate with people's listening findings of different amplifiers.
In my experience amplifiers and passive speakers need to be selected as a set. Some pairings offer excellent "synergy" while others do not. SET amplifiers being of lower power and high output impedance, in my opinion, require extra attention to their speaking pairing, together with room size and listening level preference. Certainly someone trying to reproduce full orchestra levels will not get far with a 8W amplifier and 82dB sensitive speakers!
I listen at lower volume levels. This has always been my style. I designed my first higher efficiency (93dB/ 8 ohms) speaker in 1998 which was a full-range, wide baffle floorstander with my quad midrange/tweeter array, like on my Sequence speakers, but with 6.5" woofers. Because of my listening level preference and the efficiency of the speakers, I can easily evaluate any amplifier regardless of power, know that it is outputing low power and is no where near clipping, and hear how it sounds. Realizing that tube amplifiers, especially SET's, have high output impedances (2 ohms average on the 8 ohm tap for a SET) compared to their solid-state cousins (<0.2 ohms typically), I designed separate crossovers to take this loading into account to achieve the same, net frequency response.
Some tube amps sound soft and slow while others are fast, dynamic, detailed. It depends on the topology and construction.
I don't know all the details of your speakers, but if you like to listen at higher levels than I do, perhaps a SET might not be the best match for them.
A panel listening to a single speaker in mono in only one room position in an overly damped room does provide some useful data but has its limitations: Image width, depth, and focus, for example requires two speakers in stereo for judgment.
I do agree, there are bigger acoustical problems at hand in every room that simply cannot be cured by "magic dots". But do also keep in mind, music is an emotional experience, not analytical, and emotional experiences are processed in a different section the brain than analytical ones.
When I was at Boston Acoustics in 1995, they were planning and designing the building for their new (now current) location in Peabody, MA. I made the suggestion to have 2 demo/listening rooms side-by-side for performing live-feed evaluations (like we did at Caltech). You can learn a lot about the speaker by hearing someone live talk or play an instrument or make sounds and then walk next door and hear it through a speaker. This suggestion fell on deaf ears and was quickly dismissed.
I have heard the Infinity and Revel speakers and personally don't like them. I have spent particular time listening to the Revel Gem, Studio, and Salon. To me these speakers sound unnatural, amusical, and mechanical (especially the Studio and Salon). I attribute this to their use of metal cone midranges, high-order crossover slopes (which cause energy storage albeit brief and a lot of group delay particularly on woofer-midrange crossovers), and ported cabinets (high group delay in the tens of milliseconds and poor damping).
I worked in the Harman Multimedia group as a speaker engineer. Across from me sat a colleague who was also a speaker engineer and electronic designer. He was working on a new 3-piece desktop speaker system and in the final tuning stages. In his work area was also the system it was replacing. One day Floyd was walking through our area and my colleague asked if he'd like to hear the new system. Floyd sat down and listened to both the old and new systems. Afterwards when asked, he said he liked the older system of the two because "it sounded fuller". That was the extent of his description and apparently basis for decision. My colleague and I had both heard and compared these two systems. The older system did have a bit more low frequency extension than the new one, however it had poor sounding midrange and treble, sounding veiled, not clear or detailed, vague imaging, and shut-in. In comparison the new system sounded much more clear, intelligible, focused imaging, and spacious in the midrange and treble. Myself, my colleague, and others I know in the group preferred the sound of the new system. To me it was no comparison, the new system was clearly better.
You will have to go to the newsstand or bookstore and buy the magazine Hi-Fi Choice. They don't in every issue describe their test methodology, so you will have to follow them for a while or contact them directly
Continuing with my previous comments, particularly in this era of multi-channel, surround sound amplifiers and receivers, do you realize how many companies especially mass-market ones today don't design their products in-house and farm them out to OEM factories? They simply send these OEM's a feature set list, rated specifications (frequency response, power output, THD, S/N), and a drawing or rendering of the front of the unit!
Why does it worry you about the validity of Hi-Fi Choice's test methods if products from mass-market, mainstream brands receive less frequently "recommended" or "best buy" ratings than those which happen to be from smaller, specialist companies? If they genuinely are performing blind tests with a panel, then shouldn't the results be valid? It seems to me, you reap what you sow. I can assure you, the sound and performance we achieve in an AuraSound speaker driver, is not by accident or chance.
Donald North
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Follow Ups
- Re: Out of curiosity - Donald North 23:24:27 02/27/07 (2)
- Re: Out of curiosity - AJinFLA 15:28:58 03/01/07 (0)
- Re: Out of curiosity - thomdp 19:00:59 02/28/07 (0)
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