Topic: More watts aren't necessarily better

[Tim]

But horns are anything but musical..

No offense but, have you ever heard a real pair of high-end horns playing in a high end system?

[Jimna]

horns are like every speaker, some are the shit and some a shitty. 

Church is speaking from a sound guy/live sound reinforcement POV, we are audiophiles at home.   that is like comparing apples to cinder blocks.

[mfrench]

shhhhh,..... I listen with my speaker grilles on in front of my tweeters. ::sneaks away::

[mfrench]

oh yeah,....
Presently spinning Dawg music through a mono amp, with a speaker thats buried behind a craftsman style obstruction, grass cloth, and mounted fully 2" inside the cabinet. Hell its not even sealed around the speaker, and its way back in the cabinet.
Its sucking pretty hard here right now, I tell ya.

[Tim]

horns are like every speaker, some are the shit and some a shitty. 

Church is speaking from a sound guy/live sound reinforcement POV, we are audiophiles at home.   that is like comparing apples to cinder blocks.

I know, that's why I am asking. We may have very different frames of reference.

[Gutbucket]

How many beautiful old objects of audio art came from the early era?
big wooden flowers for horns; sculpted features that were never intended to be seen; Gussets that look like doilies, but can hold up machinery. Thats the art in science and engineering that is sadly lost.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

As I see it, the science part should have nothing to do with art or craftsmanship.  It is about understanding and quantifying the underlying principles of the physics and the of human physiology and perception of sound.  It's better when that part clearly delineated and not fogged with art and craft.

But once we understand those principles and can design for them, we can choose to implement them in hand tooled brass and exotic hardwoods.. or in cheap robot injected plastics.  The science and the craft can go together if we want them to.  We don't have to choose one over the other going ahead (except for the cost problem), but those choices are made for us looking back.

It's legitimate to choose beautiful old world craftsmanship over new technological understanding, depending on what you value more. But it doesn't have to be a choice at all.  It's harder if DIY'ing old classic stuff, but knowing the importance of the new still helps to choose what you build, restore or modify, and what you do to it.  In my mind a superior combination is modifying classic well crafted stuff, armed with new technical knowledge that wasn’t available back then.  The best of both worlds.

It all comes down to what you value most.  Horns are very efficient, and for along time were the only practical answer in engineering terms.  They still are pretty much the only practical answer for very high output PA systems.  But if the goal is truly accurate reproduction, they have very difficult to solve technical problems. If you are interested in the technicalities of horns and the modern efforts to understand them and engineer them to a higher standard of reproduction, check out the work of Earl Geddes an his papers on Acoustic Waveguide Theory (horns).  His wave guides may not look like classic old Altecs and such, but he is addressing the problems that horns have always had, that are a big reason they’ve fallen out of favor for most everything except systems requiring very high SPL (PAs) or very high sensitivity (the mini-watt tube guys).   That doesn't mean they can't sound good, fantastic even in audiophile systems.  But they usually usually aren't technically acurate reproducers, and they have significant problems in real world systems.

Nostalgia for cool old things is one thing, truly accurate reproduction is another, musical enjoyment is still another. They are all separate, but one can inform the other.

[Gutbucket]

oh yeah,....
Presently spinning Dawg music through a mono amp, with a speaker thats buried behind a craftsman style obstruction, grass cloth, and mounted fully 2" inside the cabinet. Hell its not even sealed around the speaker, and its way back in the cabinet.
Its sucking pretty hard here right now, I tell ya.

I bet it sounds great! (Love the Dawg stuff.. & really looking forwared to Mark O'Conner and Frank Vignola playing Django/Grapelli Dawgish gypsy jazz here next month) But I mean that in an emotional, soul-satisfaction, it sounds good to me kind of way.  Not in a technically acturate reproduction way.

I always loved the warm resonant heavy bass tone and crackle of an old mono 45 jukebox in a bar I used to frequent years ago.. and I love playing back my surround recordings as acurately and cleanly as I know how, marveling at how close it is to sounding like I'm back there again, in the actual space with the audience around me.  Both completely valid forms of musical enjoyment, but totally different.

[mfrench]

What is accurate reproduction?

My interest in mono isn't based in nostalgia. I didn't live the era, and don't have that reference to wax nostalgic in.
I do enjoy the music of the era. But that's no different than my enjoyment of any number of other genre.
What attracted me to mono can be appreciated in any musical genre, a diffuse room filling high fidelity sound - diffuse referring to a sound source that is not entirely place-able, unless you're right on top of the source. I realized this by listening to a single Bogen speaker in a clamshell box, that was essentially a free speaker that came as a part of a kit with a turntable that I was after. I ran my Hafler amp, with preamp in mono mode, and found it to be really nice variation to stereo hifi. It taught me just how nice "lofi" can be.
Its no less high fidelity than an excruciatingly precise stereo system, and is actually easier in casual listening. But the aural reproduction spectrum in no less accurate, unless you're sitting intently trying to envision a moment captured in stereo, and trying to realize a holographic soundstage imaging, and precise placement.

Is digital more accurate?
Its a format that never sat well with me; but in an odd conundrum, is the format that I record to, based on being pretty much forced to conform to a changing, decreasing media availability. With as complex as its become, I find my enjoyment in recording has steeply dropped the more complex it became, to a point where I don't have any desire to continue with it. Too much processing, even in simple two channel stereo recordings.
I've never cared for the digital sound either. I quit buying music when CD's came out, and only have a handful of commercial cd's.  I bought my commercial music in the vinyl heydays, and never really moved away from it, except in my recording,.. so its not so much nostalgic for me.
I have a favorite musical analogy that made sense to me when I first heard it:
Analog is like watching your kid slide down a long rolling slide.
Digital is like kicking your kid down a steep staircase.

To me, digital, with its scalped 20k response isn't accurate, as analog life extends beyond that, and the old school engineers managed to capture that in analog (pre loudness wars).
So, what is accurate?

[Gutbucket]

What is accurate reproduction?

We could devise a list of things, and rank them in importance.
We might have very different lists and rankings, but we could probably agree on many things.

For me the most objective measure is trying to get as close as possible to the sonic experience of a live event.  If we take that as an objective reference, then we could agree on alot more things in that list.  Here's a short list off the top of my head of what I consider important stuff, with that goal in mind:

Timbre (accurate reproduction of frequency spectrum)
Dynamics (accurate reproduction of the loudness range)
Imaging (accurate reproduction of the location origins of specific sounds)
Space (accurate reproduction of the enveloping acoustics and feel of the space)

Of course, the elephant in the room is that the goal of most music isn't accurately reproducing the reality of an event, it is creating it's own reality, an artform in itself.  That's what most of the world cares about, and what I think you are getting at.

Great albums aren't reproductions, they're totally new experiences in themselves and in that sense there is nothing concrete to compare them with other than the subjective experience one expects, or the subjective experience of other albums that are art in themselves.

You aren’t concerned with accuracy.. and that’s perfectly fine.  There are many other ways of enjoying music, thank goodness! But those are subjective measures of enjoyment which differ from person to person.  We can use a live event as a measure for accuracy, but how can we all agree if your room filling mono speaker is ‘better’ than the boombox of the neighbor? Which is more enjoyable, a Lowther or Fostex single driver speaker in your open baffle DIY speaker? This or that tube? There is no objective answers to those questions and so we get audiophiles chasing their own sonic bliss.. which is fine, but there is no agreed goal among them, only a personal subjective target.

As for digital audio, it is essentially just a container, everything you hear is analog.  Like any new technology, digital had growing pains and problems as a new technology 25 years ago, but it is now pretty much mature.  But again, it is only a container.  In that sense it's essentially different from LPs in the same way analog tape is different from 45's.. or CDs are form 8-track tapes.. or wax cylinders are from celluloid optical film tracks. All of those media have qualities we can measure objectively against a list of things we consider important (or find are important given the way humans hear).  Digital of sufficient quality measures far better than most if not all of them, though the content and how it is produced has also changed over time and is usually a far, far bigger factor than the qualities of the container itself.

As for the 20kHz thing, do you think any of that classic analog gear is actually reproducing much of anything above about 15kHz?  If it could do you think you could hear it?

[mfrench]

I'm very much into fidelity and reproduction. I just find it ridiculous that so much huffing and puffing and terse words can be spoken over something like 3/8" of an inch, and laugh at the ridiculousness of it. And tat I can be labeled as not into accuracy because of it.
That sound is coming out of that speaker and enclosure and saturating the room regardless of that 3/8" of additional baffle that it has to overcome (that poor little frequency pulse).

[Gutbucket]

Alot of this stuff isn't very obvious. If it was it would have been figured out years ago, when non-scientific garage level engineering like we do prevailed.  Yet, over time we've discovered that seemingly insignificant things such as this do matter and are measurable.

3/8" equals a quarter of a wavelength at 9kHz and half a wavelength at 18kHz. Half wavelengths cancel completely in the electronic realm, and fractional wavelenghts interefere in wild moire patterns in acoustic space.  It is real, just not obvious.

I don't mean to huff and puff, and I think others jumped on that driver mounted behind the baffle aspect because it was pretty well established as making a significant and measurable audible difference by speaker manufactures decades ago.

Sure, the sound is still coming out and illuminating the room. But it is probably not be doing so evenly or optimally.  Again, that doesn't mean it can't sound 'good'..

[it-goes-to-eleven]

To me, that makes natural sense, and is a first thought with damn near everything I buy it seems; but then I look at everything for ways to tweak it (or fuck it up).

And the crowd shouted.... DREMEL!!!

I don't mean to huff and puff, and I think others jumped on that driver mounted behind the baffle aspect because it was pretty well established as making a significant and measurable audible difference by speaker manufactures decades ago.

That is exactly it.  I don't know much about speaker design, but that aspect is something that I think has long been accepted as important.   And if the designer shortcut something that fundamental, visible, and obvious, it causes me to question his design.

[Church-Audio]

horns are like every speaker, some are the shit and some a shitty. 

Church is speaking from a sound guy/live sound reinforcement POV, we are audiophiles at home.   that is like comparing apples to cinder blocks.

I know, that's why I am asking. We may have very different frames of reference.

No I am talking about SOUND... It applies to all sound coming from a PA or a pair of stereo speakers.. Using horns when you dont have too is silly.. They cause more problems then they solve. There are very few designs that offer distortion free performance. Compared to a non horn tweeter. Its a fact when you put something in front of a driver to control dispersion you are also causing distortion. And what I am saying is in a living room having a horn loaded tweeter is pointless. A wave guide on the other hand is a different story. Most home speakers use wave guides not horns. Its funny how you assume just because I am a live sound engineer that I can only talk about PA cabinets.. I have worked for both sound companies that make PA cabinets and for Audiophile speaker companies making home audio products.

[Church-Audio]

I'm very much into fidelity and reproduction. I just find it ridiculous that so much huffing and puffing and terse words can be spoken over something like 3/8" of an inch, and laugh at the ridiculousness of it. And tat I can be labeled as not into accuracy because of it.
That sound is coming out of that speaker and enclosure and saturating the room regardless of that 3/8" of additional baffle that it has to overcome (that poor little frequency pulse).

My whole point is this.. When you are selling speakers and you dont know about the effects of a baffle on a tweeter... You need to rethink your career path.. Not you but the company that is  selling this kit should do its homework if they really want to make a great speaker. If not they should stand aside and let companies that actually do know the difference about baffle issues. Its a pretty simple thing. If you are trying to go "oldschool" you are better off with a single full range speaker because back in the day... Tweeters were never part most stereo systems and even studio monitors in the 30/40's And when they were they are more often than not coaxial. Thats why old Tannoy gold speakers are still selling for $1600 per driver all day long.

[mfrench]

In a large number of my posts, I've suggested that I'm likely going to a single driver open baffle.

Is this tweeter offset the only thing that you guys don't like?
The designer has suggested that the cabinets holes were designed so that they're plenty big to mount the speakers on either side of the hole.
The speaker drivers themselves have a rubber isolating grommet that the original Saba engineers built into them to give them isolation from the cabinet face.
The people that have built the kits are the ones that have decided to leave the speakers within the cabinets as that's the way that they were originally designed to be mounted. The cabinet can go either way, but, the owners have decided that the original Saba design is good enough, and have chosen to mount them inside the cabs.  With as many kits as I've seen built, and the people that are building them,... there is something about the rightness, as these guys won't be fooled - there are too many that have played this game for far too long (its not a bunch of 20/30-somethings that like rad loud music, rather, its a bunch of 40 to 60-somethings with life long audio addictions).