Question about Danley Sound Labs 50's or 60's

zbpt

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Oct 8, 2010
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I am a relative newbie to this forum but have been involved in high end audio since the mid 1980's. Has anyone here had experience in their residence with Danley's SH50's or SM60F's. I have been reading extensively about them and really like this aspect of single point source transmission that they purport. My main point of reference has been ATC 100's and re-worked by Wayne Piquet Quad ESL 57's.

I was able to recently obtain a demo of one of each SM60 and SH50 for my home (the rep only had one of each??!!), and they sound considerably different in the high end. I am wondering if there is something wrong with the 50 up high there. But what can you tell without having a stereo pair.

Any input?

Thanks

Roy C.
 
Hi
I saw your post and can comment if you don’t mind a train of thought explanation.

In a general way, most of our full range speakers sound very similar, they do follow the approach you mentioned where all the drivers combine acoustically and act as one which is not like most loudspeakers, instead they act more like a single full driver and in the ideal execution, they are indistinguishable from a single driver examining any of the acoustic measurements.

That being said, there are different drivers used in each cabinet and the physical dimensions, pattern angles and such are different and so, there are small differences.
If something sounded “wrong”, there was likely something wrong somewhere in the chain.

I would say there are several big audible differences in general between what one might be used to though.

These speakers are voiced to be nominally flat which “sounds normal” but in the home, Floyd Toole and others have found a more pleasing spectrum is one that tilts down at about -1dB per octave. As a result, these tend to sound a bit bright, not harsh or horn sounding but a bit bright.
In most commercial uses, the listeners are farther away than in the home and so the flat response is desirable given the absorption of hf sound over distance. Here the smaller SM-60 hf section has a slight edge in magazine spec’s as the hf driver goes well past 20KHz.

First would be vastly less room interaction, the directivity that is needed to produce high quality sound in a terrible large room also means at the Listening Position you hear much more direct sound.
The amount of sound radiated out of the pattern is much much lower than any hifi speakers I know of.
This means there is far less room interaction and so what arrives at the listening position is far less corrupted or in other words they have a large near field region where the direct sound dominates..
For example, in my room, I can measure a pair of decent cone /dome speakers and I get + - 10 or 15 dB swings at the Listening position. With an SH-50 in the same location, I get + - 4dB or less deviation. As a result of the radiation pattern being so well controlled and constant and unlike 99% of other speakers, one can place two SH-50’s or two SM-60’s with the angled sides touching and there is NO audible seam between them. That is useful in commercial use but not of obvious interest in the home.

In the home, that array ability isn’t needed but can be exploited in a different way.
A physical boundary is an acoustic mirror, something like a second source.
As a result, one can place an SH-50 or SM-60 against the wall ( which with the cabinet wall against the room wall, puts them toed in) and NOT have ANY reflections.
I did this in my old room which was long and narrow. Putting the speakers on the side walls this way eliminated the side wall reflections which destroy the stereo image and made the image subjectively larger / wider, a miracle!.
In commercial sound, often these speakers are mounted on a ceiling pointed down using this same boundary effect. The only “negative” (which isn’t) is that the lf and lower mid response is raised a few dB but can easily EQ fixing both magnitude and phase.
Second, a speaker like an SH-50 is far more accurate in time than most hifi speakers. By placing the drivers SO CLOSE that they couple coherently into a single source, cognizant of the wavelength involved, the radiation bubble has a simple shape and so the speaker radiates less identity.

By that I mean with your eyes closed, it is harder localize the distance the speaker is from you.
I posted a demo at the end that shows a larger Synergy horn but still radiates a simple bubble with little identity. The cool part is that means the sound has no comb filtering, no changes in spectrum with position or distance(just level) and unlike essentially all of our competitors in the stadium sized sound, the wind has very little effect. All you can hear is the directivity as he walks around, no swishing like a mic normally captures.

Speakers that radiate a strong identity of their own, cannot make a strong mono phantom image (key to good stereo), instead you hear a right and left source with the mono phantom image in the middle. These speakers singly are easy to localize the depth with your eyes closed because what reaches the right and left ears contains differences, clues that allow you to hear the distance.
AS the Synergy horns became more and more like a single source (it has taken 14 years to get them where they are now) , I noticed this weird effect, with a voice it got harder to hear exactly how far away it was.
With an SH-50 now, with the grill removed (speakers in my house don’t have grills), one can walk up and literally put your head in the horn and the voice always sounds like it’s floating somewhere in front of you, no trace of individual sources or mid.

Third, for a given size they offer dynamic performance no hifi speakers I know of allow.
For me, this is the biggest difference between them an my old electrostatic speakers. It is fun to have a home system that cannot be run out of gas or even sound strained for those times when the mood strikes. For example, the 1w1m sensitivity for an SH-50 is about 100dB and I have 1100 Watts available per speaker which is well within their ratings. If one were to horn load two 12 inch lf drivers, four 5 ¼ inch mid drivers and a one inch compression driver, it would require at least three separate horn enclosures, which due to that size, DO NOT combine into a one full range source.

All or at least nearly all of the problems loudspeaker drivers have are related to producing sound that is not part of the signal (free sound) or not producing the signal as presented at the terminals. The non-linear stuff gets louder faster than the desired signal as the level is increased and so the only way to have very high linearity is to stay way below the range where nonlinearity growing fast. As they used to say and still should, “headroom is your friend”. I have listened to one of our larger systems (SH-96) that is used in some of the large IMAX theater conversions up close and while it is a bit more impressive I am not sure why as It wasn’t any louder (may be mouth size related).

A last possibly useful thing.
As a result of the radiation pattern being so well controlled and constant and unlike 99% of other speakers, one can place two SH-50’s or two SM-60’s with the sides touching and there is NO audible seam between them. That is useful in commercial use but not of interest in the home.
In the home, that array ability isn’t needed but can be exploited in a different way.
A physical boundary is an acoustic mirror, like a second source.
As a result, one can place an SH-50 or SM-60 against the wall on its angled side( which with the cabinet wall against the room wall, puts them toed in) and NOT have ANY reflections.
I did this in my old room which was long and narrow. Putting the speakers on the side walls this way eliminated the side wall reflections which destroy the stereo image and made the image subjectively larger / wider, wonderful !!


Anyway, while sound quality on a large scale was the concern and the home isn’t where these are aimed, some of them like the SH-50 were developed as part of my listening system and I believe offer a couple unique things for those who can tolerate the elegant cost was no object appearance (haha).


Here is a demo of a perfect “desk top” Synergy Horn stereo system (intended for stadiums etc).
This is the J-3, a Synergy horn that has a 48 inch by 30 inch wide horn mouth, a 40V by 60H pattern.
22 drivers combining into one single acoustic source, no comb filtering, constant directivity.

Try this with headphones, you can get the loudness in scale at 1:30 or so when he operator walks up and talks to the guy next to the camera guy. As this was for large scale sound, the attendees were out in a field on a ridge at 450 feet, at about 2:30 he pans out and shows the field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MOG_sPejGA

Anyway, see if the rep you talked to get a pair of either the SH-50’s or SM-60’s for you to listen to.
Tell him you were talking to a guy that "knows someone" at the company and he urged to ask.
I don’t keep on top of that stuff but I figure it couldn’t hurt. If that doesn’t work, maybe we can try something else.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs

http://www.facebook.com/DanleySoundLabs?ref=ts

our soon to be replaced website

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/

Saw this the other day, sm-60's in the home
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hug/messages/16/160296.html
 

fas42

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Jan 8, 2011
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AS the Synergy horns became more and more like a single source (it has taken 14 years to get them where they are now) , I noticed this weird effect, with a voice it got harder to hear exactly how far away it was.
With an SH-50 now, with the grill removed (speakers in my house don’t have grills), one can walk up and literally put your head in the horn and the voice always sounds like it’s floating somewhere in front of you, no trace of individual sources or mid.
I've already commented on you saying this once before, Tom, but it bears repeating. That is not a "weird" effect, that is actually the signature of a speaker, and system, working correctly, as in that the level of non-linear distortion is sufficiently low for the ear/brain not to be able to identify that the source of the sound is the driver, no matter how close you are to it. I've achieved that consistently with conventional 2 way speakers, but it requires a high degree of tweaking and optimising of the electronics, and everything else in the system to achieve. It's something very few have experienced, but is extremely worthwhile pursuing ...

Frank
 

TheLion

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Jan 3, 2012
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Sh-50 owner

Hi everybody!

I use 3 Danley SH-50 as front speakers and combine them with 4 Genelec 1037C as surrounds.

I report about my experiences (including comparing them to Genelecs and Seaton Catalysts) at AVSforum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1311387&highlight=danley

A few weeks ago I gave the following feedback:

"I have spent the last 8 months on doing my part to optimize the performance I am getting from the SH50s. I think I found the best placement (until I will finally put them into an baffle wall) confirmed by measurements, extensively treated my room with acoustic panels (based on professional analyses). For the last couple of months I tried a few "digital room correction" systems for response shaping and phase correction (although the SH-50 performance is really great in that regard). I settled for Acourate FIR filters. I also consulted advice from an acoustics expert.

As mentionend before I want to compare my SH-50 to my Genelec 1037C Studio Monitors and Mark Seaton's Catalyst speaker. I also have experience with Klipschhorns, JBL Synthesis and Wisdom Audio. Before writing publically about my thoughts please allow me to discuss a few questions regarding your product with you:

- In general I am really pleased with the sound I am getting with the SH50. It has at least the dynamic potential of the Catalyst combined with the clarity of the Genelecs. What I miss is (a touch) more "finesse" and micro-details that I get from alternatives like my Genelecs or DIY horn systems with very revealing/expensive drivers (TAD). E.g. the used BMS 4550 is a well known quality driver but probably not the most revealing and natural one.

- If there is one "issue" left with the SH50 it seems a little "shouty" at times and I perceive the horn introduced "artifacts" like micro-diffractions a little distracting.

I have bought 3 SH-50 from you and I am running them together with my Genelecs in a 7.1 channel setup. I consider making that a full blown Danley setup, if...

Can you offer me a customized Synergy Horn based on the SH50? Regarding the "issues" mentioned above I would like to propose the following:

- a horn throat made of bamboo plywood or aluminium should result in better internal resonance dampening and therefor less "horn sound" (although the SH50 is good compared to other horns I have had in that regard).

- "higher end drivers" than the default SH50 drivers. I would especially like a much more extended high end. My SH50 steep HF rolloff starts at ~17khz and is one of the most significant differences compared to e.g. the Genelecs with a shallow rolloff. Especially with >= 88.2/96khz content that's a real perceived disadvantage of my SH50. It is much less "airy"sounding - something is missing. I would be happy to give up a little max. SPL for more revealing and natural sounding drivers.

- no passive crossovers! I want to use digital XOs (3 amps per speaker). I have access to professional measurement equipment and Acourate FIR filters to make that work."

This is my opinion as it stands today. If you have any specific questions don't hesitate to ask.
 
Last edited:
Hi Lion
Thanks for the feedback, I think I remember writing you or Ivan talking about your issues anyway.
I appreciate several of your points and can offer a couple comments.

If I were making a Synergy horn for the home, one thing I would do is not have the system voiced flat. While it goes against my grain, I have to agree with Floyd Tools survey that concluded a roll off was most preferred over flat with today’s recordings.
I have the first pair of SH-50’s myself and they are a bit bright on everything but records. In fooling around, to me, I like about a -1 dB per octave slope bottom to top. For the places most of the SH-50’s go, flat is what is expected and relative to the vast majority of compression drivers, the 4550 does go up pretty high. In the SH-50, I have put an ultrasonic low pass filter it the hf circuit because in commercial sound hf oscillation is not unheard of and it allows me to keep the sensitivity high out to the corner. When one has a horn with curved walls, it is possible to have a higher sensitivity but only on axis as the pattern narrows.
The idea here with all the Synergy horns are the entire pattern has essentially the same sound field and response (constant directivity) and acts like , measures like, sounds like there is only one driver and no crossovers.

I thought one of the guys doing a DIY version put it better than anyone so far;
“To me the Synergy does everything a single driver setup does, but with none of the weaknesses. The Synergy is actually more coherent than a single driver. In addition, it has high sensitivity, high power handling, high SPL capability, no hint of Doppler distortion, low harmonic distortion, and can pass a square wave over most of its bandwidth. No single driver can do those things.”

One HUGE difference though is the directivity, if you are having room issues consider the polar patterns for the SH-50 relative to your room walls. At say 90 degrees off axis or 180 degrees off axis (behind) these project far less sound than any hifi speaker, even at 300hz, the levels behind and 90 degrees off axis are about -10 dB relative to on axis and at 500Hz, about -18dB at 90 and 180.

As a result, one can position them to take best advantage of the reflection free zone or near field.

For example, if one has a narrow listening room which is normally a disaster so far as side reflections, one can place the SH-50’s ON the room walls with the angled side against or very close to the wall. Ideally, the speaker center point is aimed at the far seat (assuming it’s a couch) thus one may not necessarily have to put them in the room corners.
In a perfect world, what you don’t want is the horn wall angle to intersect your side wall anywhere before about 2/3 of the way to the couch. When you can do these things, what you measure at the listening position is very close to what you would measure outdoors with the exception that the low end below about 300Hz is gradually lifted because of boundary loading.

I don’t know if you have removed the grills (ALL loudspeakers in my house are naked) but if any of the directly aspect is a possibility, lay a meter stick (or yard stick here) against the horn walls and see where the sound is going with an idea of not hitting the walls much before the couch to optimize / maximize the near field.

I am not sure if you were one of the people I have spoken to about electronic correction or not but it is worth bringing up as it is relatively common place in commercial sound.
The up side is that once the measurements are taken, a perfect or near measurement perfect correction can be applied via convolution or DSP filters. IT is or can be perfect too, to the degree the data is valid.
Many of the measurement systems derive a speakers impulse response and base a magnitude and phase curve or derive the correction impulse for convolution.
When you have a system that measures he flaw and then applies a correction based on that and then re-measure the result, there is still the possibility the measuring didn’t include everything or included things not present.

For example, a common issue with the most popular approaches is they can have a limited signal to noise ratio. For example, when you examine the “high pass” corner of a speaker / driver, how far down relative to the knee does the response go? An obvious sign of a noise limited measurement here is that at say -20, -30dB the response stops falling normally, often has a notch and then mysterious free lf response (noise). Often, to reach -40dB (1% measurement noise, 99% real signal) one has to average a number of these measurements. Each time you double the number of measurements you average, you lower the noise floor corruption 3dB. Fwiw, although I have ARTA and several other measurement systems, I use the old time TEF-20 to take raw speaker measurements, it measures time first and can easily measure to -40dB or more down slope on one pass and when I really need “speaker only” data for lf crossovers I raise the speaker under test up on a tower.

When ever I talk to anyone who wants to use an automatic correction system on our speakers, I would urge them to do one set of correction measurements outdoors, up off the ground (NOTHING but the direct loudspeaker).
The driver’s in a Synergy horn couple together something more like signals adding through resistors and so a correction is global. Once you have a measurement in a room, you are adding things not originating with the speakers, sounds that are delayed and recombined.

Now, a correction based on this measurement is now conditional, move significantly and everything changes. When this magic is applied in a larger scale like live sound, one can have great sound and curves at the mixing board and lets say less than great sound everywhere else because that conditional correction is wrong everywhere but mix position. In the home, the possible listening positions are a lot smaller but the issue is still present.

So, like in good commercial room design, the starting place is minimizing room interaction with directivity and placement THEN fix what needs to be after.
Imagine your walls were mirrors, ideally, you should NOT see any horn throats.

So far as active vs passive, in the market these are sold in, there is a strong need for a passive speaker and part of the reason I worked so much on that was that with the delays offered by the driver spacing, it was possible to eliminate the large phase shifts the normal Butterworth, linkwitz and familiar names also offered.
My goal was to reach he condition Dick Heyser had described but to also eliminate the phase between drivers. I met him once when I was just getting into audio and his TEF machine and writings have been and inspiration, if only I could show him, he has been dead for 25 years now.

I figured if I made a multi way speaker with a passive crossover that could reproduce a square wave over a broad band, something that had been a “holy Grail” in the old hifi days, that this would be a plus in commercial sound. With the speakers adding together so strongly within the horn, having them act like one driver was driven by the design too.

If you want to try full active, they are your boxes, you can do that, you can even leave the passive xo’s in the box disconnected and temporarily run the wires out of the tapped ports if it’s an experiment.. As before, I would urge you to take a set of measurements outside etc.

A passive crossover is not a problem although the design has to include all of the relevant stray components, like how an inductor also has a DC resistance etc. The down side is that for each feature in the response you address, one pays for two or three more components. All of the crossover parts have a power limitation and here is where you may have a bit more capacity than you need. For example, if you use EIA spectrum pink noise and very slowly raise the level and watch the frequency response. At the point the anywhere the response shape changes 3dB relative to 1W, that is what the lab that measures them calls maximum usable output (not to be confused with how loud it can go) which for an SH-50 requires a 780 Watt amplifier just to reach.

Thus, these will go MUCH louder before dynamic non-linearity or distortion than the others you mentioned and you are using the SH-50’s far down from onset of dynamic compression even with a steady signal.
Be sure to have tried a large amplifier too if you have not, very short term clipping is inaudible except when you compare to unclipped which sounds more dynamic, you should never run out of headroom here.. To be clear, this peak clipping has no sound of it’s own like the more familiar gross clipping, it effects the dynamics.

I am slowly working on a home version of a Synergy horn too but it is not a major focus for the company right now. I am using an SM-60 horn assembly in it, while it also uses a BMS driver, it is one that goes well past 20K, something very very few horn drivers can do.

The crossover necessarily has more parts but this would be less price sensitive than the commercial market. My plan is a floor standing speaker that has a self powered low frequency section with an internal crossover so that the user has the high sensitivity of the SM-60 with a powerful low frequency section, using a phase correcting amplifier.
At some point, I might make something with a couple of the acuton drivers, I have measured a bunch of their drivers and what they do, they are very good at.
The hard part is since part of the Synergy design is very much based on what the sound does after leaving the driver, they have been harder to implement because of their shapes. Fwiw, I have a couple old Unity horns with Tad drivers on them, they are unusual drivers, they were easy to implement and have a higher than usual mass corner. In general though, I am reluctant to bend the design based on anything other than how the parts work.

On the horn throat, as long as the wood is sealed so it is a solid, there is no effect from various throat materials. An identical horn in cast artificial stone like a bathroom sink, while much heavier and harder to mount drivers to , measures the same. Open pores on the other hand can absorb very high frequencies.
Got to run, I don’t know if you have addressed optimizing the room placement relative to directivity but that is an area where you have more freedom than usual.
Best
Tom Danley
 

TheLion

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Jan 3, 2012
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Hello Tom,

thank you very much for your elaborate reply. Luckely I have already considered pretty much all your advice due to reading every post of yours I could find as well as discussing the SH-50 with you, Ian and Scott prior to my purchase.

In summary it is the most intriguing speaker for my needs. Seemingly unlimited dynamics, very clear and intelligible even with the most complex of material and always relaxed sounding. This makes it a very good choice especially for home theater. For music it is also very good but I miss a little bit "finesse" in that application.

Please allow for a couple of questions:

- I would love to experiment with active crossovers (using FIR based filter this would be a very interesting challenge). When I do that I would also like to try using other drivers. Which drivers would work with the SH-50 enclosures and which one would you recommend as "upgrade" (bass, mids and especially the hf driver)?

This would also be most useful information if I ever need to exchange drivers due to a defect. I am from Austria and sending it to back to you for service is not an option ;-)

With your active option you are using digital XOs. Could you please provide me with the filter configuration of the DSP in that case - as baseline for my own attempts? I am thinking of using 2nd order linphase Neville-Thiele crossovers.

- I ordered my SH-50 without grill mounts so rest assured they are "naked". Problem is that I fear with time quite some dust collects inside the horn, bandpass and drivers. How would you suggest I clean the drivers?

Thank you very much, Tom. I hope your Synergy Horn design gets all the recognition it deserves! Thank for making it possible for me to enjoy very special performance at a rather ordinary price paid!

Best regards
Walter
 
Hi Walter
I have been thinking about your issues and I think I have a suggested route.

Driver non-linearity’s are nearly all level dependent and the drivers have a large headroom past where you will be using them and so, I would suggest the first thing not be to change the drivers and to set up the active crossover approach.

With the drivers all within the horn and all within a quarter wavelength or less where they interact, the sum is essentially all addressable electronically (minimum phase).
Also, I have anechoic measurements of that speaker model / drivers already as well as a simple active alignment worked out for the powered versions.

If you had one of our processors, I could work up a new alignment along the lines I mentioned earlier and send you the file to load / try. If you have a good quality speaker controller and can measure, I can send you the transfer function curves that you would need to match with the processor. If you can apply a correction in time (as in a convolution impulse correction), I can send you a mag and phase plot to apply from BUT that would be a step after having had the more straight forward approach. You could compare that alignment to one generated at the LP etc.

The complication here is that when you measure what DSP units do after specifying filter X and eq Y, they are nearly all somewhat different and so specifying the filter type, frequency and slope etc are actually the least reliable way of programming one, measuring the output the most..

I have the opportunity to use FIR filters but if you’re applying them as normal filters etc, I have not found them to be automatically a better solution than time delays with modified Bessel or other not names shapes which accommodate the phase requirements between the ranges.

Remember just as listening to a speaker first hand and listening to it through a measurement microphone and headphones do not sound the same, neither does the simulation of loudspeaker phase shift and hearing that effect caused by two sources in two different places / times.

If you make the source at the origin as good as you can, then any further correction made globally (such as based on measurements at the listening location) will apply over a large area. Not doing that, one can arrive at a similar / identical behavior with correction, but it only applies in the location the microphone was.
I will be off line until Wednesday when the new system is up but in the mean time ponder this as a first step. If you’re willing to do most of the work, I’ll give you a hand with the alignment etc.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
 

amirm

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Tom, I wanted to compliment you on your willingness to both share data and help your customers. We used to carry a very high end brand of speakers which after installing in our showroom reference theater, they would simply not perform. I spent a year trying to get their crossover characteristics so that we could do our own using our own processor. They refused to give it to us. So at the end we broke the relationship and ripped out the speakers. Yes, there is concern that someone could damage the units but they knew we had sufficient skill inn this area but still wouldn't give the curves to us.
 

TheLion

New Member
Jan 3, 2012
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Dear Tom,

your support is more than I can ever ask for - thank you so much. I have a lot of thinking and preperation to do on my part before I can advance with the active crossover approach. I need to get suitable amps and DACs for the additional channels first. Right now I am running the SH50 with Parasound JC-1 monoblocks which are rated 800W RMS @ 4 Ohm. Is this too much power driving just the 2 12" bass drivers without passive crossover? Which max. amp specs would you recommend for the mid and hf sections when driven directly - in order to max. the potential of the drivers but not potentially fry them?

As I am running my whole system with an HTPC setup as source I enjoy much flexibilty when it comes to filters to use. My DAC is a Prism Sound Orpheus sound interface whcih also acts as "professional quality" pre-amp. Measurements are done with an calibrated pro level microphone. So I have this base covered quite well. I use the application Acourate to generate FIR based linear phase filters. This is doing a "time domain/group delay correction" as well. Alternatively I can use Audiolense which follows a simular approach. I have been discussing the interaction of the semi-automatic Audiolense correction with the SH-50 with its developer - and I know Bernt contacted you about that some time ago. I have switched to Acourate since then which gives me way better results.

Tom, would you say the potential performance gains by using active crossovers are significant with a design like the SH-50? Thank you for all your efforts!
 

TheLion

New Member
Jan 3, 2012
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Tom, I wanted to compliment you on your willingness to both share data and help your customers. We used to carry a very high end brand of speakers which after installing in our showroom reference theater, they would simply not perform. I spent a year trying to get their crossover characteristics so that we could do our own using our own processor. They refused to give it to us. So at the end we broke the relationship and ripped out the speakers. Yes, there is concern that someone could damage the units but they knew we had sufficient skill inn this area but still wouldn't give the curves to us.


Amir,

I couldn't agree more. Tom is a class act and dealing with Danley Sound Labs as a company was a real pleasure. I highly recommend giving their products a try - they have very special performance attributes that are not for everyone. But to some this is the holy grail of dynamic home theater sound.

With JBL and Wisdom Audio you are offering alternatives I also considered before choosing Danley. Have you had the opportunity to compare these with each other?
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
We had to drop Wisdom. We could not get it to perform. We have actually sold and installed Danley subs at one of our local art-house theaters. They replaced fours subs with just two Danley's and the performance was far better. I did not get to go to the opening but my crew did and they said they were losing pieces of the ceiling during action scenes!

We hope to sell a few more in another project we are working on.
 
Hi Walter, amirm
I’m back !
Walter let me know when you getting ready to proceed.

The key thing I would say is whatever you use, do at least one set of good measurements outdoors and when you’re at that point I’ll convert the TEF measurements into a compatible format.
I don’t remember which program I used but I have one which could convert them for display in that S-transform program he has which I assume are the format Acourate uses,.

The wonderful thing about the electronic approach is it’s easy (compared to building a new passive crossover) to try different alignments.

What I would suggest is that you use a target which generally slopes down at -1db per octave as well as a flat one. Floyd Toole as well as others listening tests show generically people prefer a sloping down response with today’s recordings. it's a simple thing but i like it as well personally so try it once. Also, with a passive crossover, there is a practical limit to how many of the response features you can address, each usually requires 3 passive parts, all sized for stability up to high power operation.

In the development of the Synergy horns, there were many small steps before they measured / acted like they only had a single driver in them. Often there were times I heard it changing but little of it was what I was expecting. As they got closer, the sound got simpler, plainer if that makes sense but also sounding more real. With a voice on one speaker, it got harder to hear how far away the speaker was when your eyes were closed. You could clearly hear the direction, but less able to localize the physical depth of the actual source.
We hear (to a degree) when a loudspeaker radiates an interference pattern, that makes them easy to identify in depth with the eyes close. This is no problem with one source unless you playing a voice with reverberation (a voice off at a distance) but in stereo, playing a mono signal, one finds the mono phantom image as one should have and in the worst cases, a right and left source as well.

The remaining correction I could not execute with passive components and the physical / acoustic arrangement of the drivers is one more step in this direction. I have an external DSP correction using one of our processors on my passive SH-50’s which does this last part but it applies to the entire 50 by 50 degree pattern.

This might be something to try before going active as the correction you’re talking about can correct the entire output IF your measurements are ONLY of the speaker (and no room or reflected sound).
As before, the program material and recording quality is even more revealed which can be good or bad depending, an icky recording, very well produced is only hi rez audio feces.

Hi amirm
Hey thanks for trying our subs! Ah yes falling stuff and ceiling “tile snow” is an indicator of “enough energy” in the room but it really tickles the fight or flight adrenalin nerve and can make the sound very large. Fun stuff. Hey if you need something in particular, drop me a line, I can’t promise anything but at least I know someone at the company haha.
Best,
Tom Danley
 

zydeco

Well-Known Member
Oct 16, 2010
59
0
311
WA, Australia
Synergy Horns in Home Rooms

In the home, that array ability isn’t needed but can be exploited in a different way. A physical boundary is an acoustic mirror, something like a second source. As a result, one can place an SH-50 or SM-60 against the wall (which with the cabinet wall against the room wall, puts them toed in) and NOT have ANY reflections. I did this in my old room which was long and narrow. Putting the speakers on the side walls this way eliminated the side wall reflections which destroy the stereo image and made the image subjectively larger / wider, a miracle!

Is this, to be clear, speakers sitting against the short or long wall of your long and narrow room?

By that I mean with your eyes closed, it is harder localize the distance the speaker is from you.
I posted a demo at the end that shows a larger Synergy horn but still radiates a simple bubble with little identity. The cool part is that means the sound has no comb filtering, no changes in spectrum with position or distance (just level) and unlike essentially all of our competitors in the stadium sized sound, the wind has very little effect. All you can hear is the directivity as he walks around, no swishing like a mic normally captures.

Yes, this is an amazing trick. I've got an old pair of Unity Horns and it amazes me how difficult it is to isolate sound to the physical speaker even when close to the speaker.

As I am running my whole system with an HTPC setup as source I enjoy much flexibilty when it comes to filters to use. My DAC is a Prism Sound Orpheus sound interface whcih also acts as "professional quality" pre-amp. Measurements are done with an calibrated pro level microphone. So I have this base covered quite well. I use the application Acourate to generate FIR based linear phase filters. This is doing a "time domain/group delay correction" as well. Alternatively I can use Audiolense which follows a simular approach. I have been discussing the interaction of the semi-automatic Audiolense correction with the SH-50 with its developer - and I know Bernt contacted you about that some time ago. I have switched to Acourate since then which gives me way better results. Tom, would you say the potential performance gains by using active crossovers are significant with a design like the SH-50? Thank you for all your efforts!

My set-up is similar but with Unity Horns and the active limited to the low-/high-pass between the horn and mid-/bass driver (I'm keeping the horn's passive x/o in place). The x/o is managed via convolution within JRMC of filters developed in Accourate. The issue, for me, is to get mid-bass/bass that matches horn. Good luck.

Zydeco
 

Ettepet

New Member
Mar 12, 2012
2
0
0
Is this, to be clear, speakers sitting against the short or long wall of your long and narrow room?
Against the long wall. I haven't tried this really neat trick with my Danley SM60F's yet, seeing my current listening room is square.
 
Hi zydeco, all
“Is this, to be clear, speakers sitting against the short or long wall of your long and narrow room?”
Well let me back up a little bit. Before the idea for the Unity and then later Synergy horns came to me, I used to build multiway speakers with cones and domes and the last few of those were quasi-time corrected although not to the degree the horns are.

I also used to set up the stereo in the backyard and listen while having a BBQ / picnic which I loved because there were NO room effects. While the bass was anemic not having the room gain, the stereo imaging was superb, very real. Each time I moved it back into my long skinny listening room, the stereo image was drastically inferior. At some point I experimented with some auralex panels on the side walls which made a huge improvement in the image, making the sound somewhere between untreated and outdoors (semi anechoic).

The biggest improvement came from killing the specular reflections. Here, if one imagines the walls are a huge mirror, the ideal place for the absorption is on the wall where the image of the speakers tweeter and mid range speakers would be seen from the listening position (where the incoming and outgoing angles relative to the wall are identical).

In commercial sound, it is very clear that the larger the room is, the more difficult it is to have good sound. Here the goal of Stereo is the exception, instead understanding all the words is the goal. Unlike measuring the preservation of a stereo image, it is easy to measure intelligibility by a group of listeners hearing a large list of test words.

From that, it was clear that directivity is the best way of all to have the greatest intelligibility, by that, what arrives at the listener is ideally dominated by the direct sound and reflections being far below in level. Ideally to understand all the words, one wants the direct sound to be at least 10dB louder than the reflected spectrum.

After the first space shuttle exploded, the NASA contractor I worked for had the contract for the space station hardware put on hold and eventually the company went under. I had started a small subwoofer division based around the Servomotor driven subwoofers I had developed on the side. While go to be somewhat popular in large scale sound (concerts, special effects, Disney etc) the cost of the motors had skyrocketed.

Faced with starting over yet again in life and finally free to pursue my love (loudspeakers and sound) full time, I tried to think of what product would be ideal for commercial sound, what could give us a sonic advantage that would allow a startup to get traction and NOT based on a big marketing budget. Obviously controlling “where the sound goes” is a key.
If one measures what happens when you have two or more acoustic sources, one sees that unless the two sources are very close together, they do not combine into one source, they radiate as two sources and produce an interference pattern which is identified by a pattern of lobes and nulls where the sources add and cancel depending on location.

I remembered a Synaudcon class in the late 80’s where Don Davis talked about the various horn shapes. I was not interested in that back then as I was a subwoofer guy interested in concert sound. He had explained that the conical horn had the up side of nearly constant directivity above the pattern loss frequency BUT It had inferior low frequency response. Fast forward to the mid 90’s starting over and the “why” of the inferior loading dawned on me.
The impedance transformation part of a horns operation has a ‘high pass” filter effect which is governed by the rate of the expansion. For example, a 30Hz horn can double it’s cross sectional area no faster than every 24 inches while a 300Hz horn doubles every 2.4 inches and so on.

The light went on when I realized the rate of area expansion in a conical horn is initially very fast and so provides poor low f loading BUT further away from the apex, the rate has slowed to that of a mid range or farther away a low frequency horn. I mapped out a simple concial horn, figured what a good mid horn driver would be and where to tap into the horn and that prototype ld to the Unity horn, which led to the current Synergy horn.
Fast forward through about 15 years of development and here we are today where all of the drivers combine into one source with no interference pattern and act / measure / sound like there is only one driver even in a three or four way system.

A conical horn radiates a simple pattern, part of a sphere, a point source at the apex with directivity.
In commercial sound very often more than one loudspeaker cabinet is used, but even with so called arayable loudspeakers, even two close together normally makes a very audible seam between them or beyond due to the interference pattern they produce. In large systems, the get around that to a degree by vertical stacking the ubiquitous “line array” and here it is much harder to move up and down so the interference pattern is less audible (unless the wind blows or you measure the response which is different everywhere you go).
There is an article that touches on this and uses one of old Unity designs as an example and page one picture.

Fig9, fig 10.

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/...olutions_in_solving_horizontal_coverag_probl/

Now, if one imagines that you have the non-interfering case, one can place a physical boundary where the acoustic mirror image is from an adjacent speaker.

In my old listening room, switching to the horns did improve the imaging a bunch but when I placed the speakers hard against the side walls the effect was dramatic, very much like being outside now, no side wall absorption needed. In my case due to the room shape, the speakers were about 2/3 of the way away from the couch (1/3 of the way to the rear wall). That was based on the optimum toe in which produces the widest sweet spot.
How is that? We tend to think of a point source as having a sound level that falls with the inverse square law (-6dB every doubling of distance) and they do. A point source may radiate like ripples in a pond, but it can also have a high degree of directionality and to the degree that directionality does not change with changing frequency, it is said to have “constant directivity”.

If one can make a wide band constant directivity source with high directivity, one can do things like place one over a score board aimed at the far seats and produce an SPL that only varies 4 dB from the closest seat to farthest seat (subjectivity the same everywhere). The people sitting under the speaker are well out of the pattern and are not roasted like they would be form conventional loudspeakers.
You can hear that effect in a video some guy took who attended one of our outdoor demos in December. This is a large hifi speaker for stadium sized use and has a horn that is 4 feet tall and 30 inches wide (a 60h by 40V pattern). AS the camera guy walks under the speaker the sound from it all but disappears (and his mic can’t handle the subwoofer).
This was also reasonably loud, you can adjust the headphone volume to proper scale at about 1:30 when the operator walks up and speaks to the guy next to the camera guy. At about 2:30 he pans out to the field where the stadium and sound people were listening (at about 450 feet).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MOG_sPejGA&feature=related
In the home, what you can do is use the front shape of the radiation pattern instead of the bottom of the lobe as in a large use. This makes the variation in SPL less as from either speaker as you move left to right, maximizing the sweet spot. Assuming one has a couch, one places the speaker hard against the wall (makes the horn wall and boundary parallel) aims the center of the left speaker at the listening position kitty corner to it, same for the right speaker. This alignment will dictate where the optimum wall position is front to back. One does not have to worry very much about radiation to the rear or outside of the pattern as compared to conventional designs there is a tiny fraction of the energy radiated outside the intended pattern (see polar plots or balloon plots in the CLF data files for which ever model).

One last aside, the boundary complaint mounting also means one can put them on the ceiling or floor the same way (in commercial sound, the ceiling mounting is often used for “down fill” use) and like making a strong mono phantom image in stereo , this can be done with one speaker above and one below the screen to make a phantom aligned with the screen (the distance to each speaker from the LP is the same or adjusted with time delay).
Have fun. experiment!
Best,
Tom Danley
 

bwaslo

New Member
Apr 9, 2012
2
0
1
Where to hear SH90 or SH60 near SW Ohio?

Hi Tom,

I've been told by an English friend, whose hearing I trust a lot, that some Synergy horns he heard recently are by far the best setup he's heard to date. No small recommendation, as this friend Tony has been around a lot of gear and has built a lot of his own as well, and is not easily impressed. Anyway, I've been reading up on the technology and I think I probably ought to hear these things, too (I'm currently a big wavguide fan of the Geddes/Econowave/Parham philosophy, so your controlled directivity characteristic is of a lot of interest). Is there anywhere near Southwest Ohio where I might be able to hear some of these? (The dealer look-up on your web site didn't help for my location).

I should in fairness mention that I'm not a likely customer, being a DIYer myself, though with a professional hand in audio measurements. I'm already started on an attempt to homebrew some Unity/Synergy type horns, though I'm told that my likelihood of first-time success isn't very high. (My friend, Tony, though, IS saving up for some SH90s, I hear). From all I hear, you should be looking into an entry into the home audio business....

Best,
Bill
 

zbpt

Well-Known Member
Oct 8, 2010
4
0
306
New Paltz, NY
Well, sir Tom and All...

I had not checked in here but for a brief time just after I posted my initial query. I must say thanks to all and especially Tom for a hugely stimulating discussion. Tom you are very generous with your knowledge and passion!
I have yet to hear a pair of SH50's or SM60F's as the dealer/guys didn't have a loaner pair. The rep did have one of each ('guess sound reinforcement decorum is different from home audio...'you don't have a pair'?) The dealer did have a pair of SH100's which I auditioned and they were clear and coherent, and, especially with a sub they were a treat. What I noticed the most that as the sound level increased, they did not become harsh at all. I have become somewhat intolerant of those non linearities of late.
So, just this week, I decided to take a leap and order a pair of the 60's. However, there was some difficulty with my local (very small) dealer's relationship with the company (PM me if you would like details, Tom) and so have to wait until that is sorted out. Bummer. I will speak with the rep again and mention your missives as I'd still like to audition a stereo pair before purchase.

Best

Roy Capellaro
 
Last edited:

avnutz

New Member
Aug 3, 2010
25
0
0
Status of Synergy SM-60 home version with LF section?

I am slowly working on a home version of a Synergy horn too but it is not a major focus for the company right now. I am using an SM-60 horn assembly in it, while it also uses a BMS driver, it is one that goes well past 20K, something very very few horn drivers can do.

The crossover necessarily has more parts but this would be less price sensitive than the commercial market. My plan is a floor standing speaker that has a self powered low frequency section with an internal crossover so that the user has the high sensitivity of the SM-60 with a powerful low frequency section, using a phase correcting amplifier.

Tom, if this thread is still alive and you still happen to be monitoring it, may I ask if you have made any progress with the SM-60 home version with integrated LF section? I would be very, very interested in purchasing such a speaker. If you haven't then I am still equally interested in purchasing SM-60's and appropriate subwoofer's for a home media/music room.
 

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