An interesting read about Active Speakers: Has their time come

Robh3606

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logically active speakers once they are faced with the needs of high-end sound will also break.

Hello Micro

Why?? What's so destructive about High End Sound?? I can't make heads or tails of what you are try to say. As written it makes no sense at all.

Can you clarify.

They are just like any other speakers, abuse them and they will break other than that??

Thanks

Rob:)
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Tim ,

I am no way making any comparison between reliability of professional gear or consumer gear - you are doing it and putting them in my mouth. I simply stated that professional gear can break and logically active speakers once they are faced with the needs of high-end sound will also break.

Anyway I have now contributed enough to this thread. None of the more significant concerns I exposed have been addressed, only my style and attitude problems seem to be noted. Please go on glorifying the faultless active speaker - it seems the purpose of this thread.

I took the following to mean that a comparison of the reliability of pro vs. high end gear was exactly what you intended and that, in fact, you were implying that high end would be the more reliable of the two:

One distributor of high-end in my country also distributes and services professional equipment. He has told me once that he wins more money servicing professional equipment than selling high-end. I have met a few people who own studios and repairs are part of their life.

My apologies if I misunderstood you.

Tim
 

microstrip

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Hello Micro

Why?? What's so destructive about High End Sound?? I can't make heads or tails of what you are try to say. As written it makes no sense at all.

Can you clarify.

They are just like any other speakers, abuse them and they will break other than that??

Thanks

Rob:)

Rob,

In their search for optimum sound, many designers do not include in their circuits sections than are typically used for protection.
A few examples - current limiting circuits that protect semiconductors, serial relays or fuses.

Every circuit has a transitory regimen during turn-in and turn-out - if they are connected directly to the coils of loudspeakers, they can damage the speaker.

Surely all these aspects can be avoided with different topologies - but this must be properly studied!

Inquire your distributor about his statistic of service of electronics and passive loudspeakers - I think the answer will be clear.
 

Groucho

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In their search for optimum sound, many designers do not include in their circuits sections than are typically used for protection.
A few examples - current limiting circuits that protect semiconductors, serial relays or fuses.

That may be true, but it doesn't mean that their omission actually makes any difference to the sound.
 

KlausR.

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Dec 13, 2010
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Ignoring all the vast empirical knowledge that was acquired in sighted conditions and could not be proved or confirmed in blind tests can be essential for audio science, but is a minus in high-end speaker design. Personally I doubt that high-end loudspeaker design has reached a point in which it can be totally scientific and rely exclusively on measurements and decisions taken in fully controlled conditions. IMHO the possible controlled conditions are too restrictive to reproduce audiophile conditions, and will compromise the final result.

The target for loudspeaker design is actually simple: flat response on axis, smooth response off-axis, zero group delay, zero distortion. One could go one step further and determine perceptual thresholds for all those parameters, after all, it doesn’t make sense to lower distortion by another order of magnitude when the state of the art is inaudible already.

As far as loudspeaker design is concerned, if you look at how real sources like musical instruments radiate sound you see at a single glance that a front radiating directional loudspeaker is not capable of reproducing that instrument faithfully, and yes, there is also evidence for a perceptual difference. And no amount of R&D is able to change that. One way of reproducing the directional pattern of real sources is a dodecahedron loudspeaker array with independent excitation of each transducer, which means heavy DSP, and it works:

* Caussé et al., “Radiation of musical instruments and improvement of the sound diffusion technique for synthesized, recorded or amplified sounds”, ICMC Proceedings 1995, p.359

For radiation patterns of real sources see for instance

http://www.acoustics.org/press/152nd/behler.html

http://www.cjchome.com/myelvis/text/04_10_15_TMT-DirectivityPaper.pdf

http://www.wokustik.de/Richtcharakteristik-Trompete-Posaune-Tuba.pdf


So in a way traditional loudspeaker design is on a dead-end road.

As far as controlled listening conditions are concerned, it’s not about the gear, it’s about those parameters which have the potential to influence the results:

* Zielinski et al., “On Some Biases Encountered in Modern Audio Quality Listening Tests—A Review”, JAES 2008, p.427.

Such conditions are restrictive, yes, but only when you apply solid controls you can be sure that a perceived difference is generated by the component itself.

Klaus
 

andromedaaudio

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Interesting stuff thats more or less also the way i look at it , tonally a loudspeaker can be quit accurate , for example +- 1 db over a large part of the audioband is possible , the way it energizes the air around it is quite different though from the real event
Thats one of the reasons i m designing a loudspeaker with a lot of membrane surface, another thing to do/try is to have multiple units sideways firing or in the case of the latest sonus faber speakers backwards firing .
Imitating the radiaton pattern of real musical instruments .
What also matters quite a bit is the material used as LS unit material , "the perfect piston " technology , accuton for example / hard surface didnt sound the most natural to me in the end
I prefered a certain paper composite material in the end and either ringradiator soft domes or soft domes for highs , they too energize the air different



Also .....,the sound is recorded via very small membrane microphones , maybe it would be a good idea to also increase the diagphram surface of recording mikes :confused: to capture more on tape

In a month time i ll be listening to ed / tony s tapes recorded via studer a 80 tape recorder which is quite neutral over the audioband , i know my speakers are , my amps have deviations in the order of only 0. something , dont know about the recording mikes used ,cause a lot of mikes have difficulties catching the bass frequencies ( seen from freq response specs )


PS ,...Yes i do know freq response is only a part of the reproduction quality , it is one that is controllable though ;)

hj
 
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Phelonious Ponk

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Interesting stuff thats more or less also the way i look at it , tonally a loudspeaker can be quit accurate , for example +- 1 db over a large part of the audioband is possible , the way it energizes the air around it is quite different though from the real event
Thats one of the reasons i m designing a loudspeaker with a lot of membrane surface, another thing to do/try is to have multiple units sideways firing or in the case of the latest sonus faber speakers backwards firing .
Imitating the radiaton pattern of real musical instruments .
What also matters quite a bit is the material used as LS unit material , "the perfect piston " technology , accuton for example / hard surface didnt sound the most natural to me in the end
I prefered a certain paper composite material in the end and either ringradiator soft domes or soft domes for highs , they too energize the air different



Also .....,the sound is recorded via very small membrane microphones , maybe it would be a good idea to also increase the diagphram surface of recording mikes :confused: to capture more on tape

In a month time i ll be listening to ed / tony s tapes recorded via studer a 80 tape recorder which is quite neutral over the audioband , i know my speakers are , my amps have deviations in the order of only 0. something , dont know about the recording mikes used ,cause a lot of mikes have difficulties catching the bass frequencies ( seen from freq response specs )


PS ,...Yes i do know freq response is only a part of the reproduction quality , it is one that is controllable though ;)

hj

Which real musical instruments? The trouble is, they all radiate differently.

Tim
 

Phelonious Ponk

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maybe MBL radialstrahler owners can answer that question

I don't see how the question is relevant to any specific design. A trumpet puts out a completely different pattern from a harp. Even if the speaker were capable of altering it's dispersion, and none are, how would it know which instrument to play?

Tim
 

andromedaaudio

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Sure , but i am not talking about a " perfect design "
in the graphs posted by klaus , one can see an instrument radiates to all sides , although differently.
I was just suggesting a MBL might do a better job than a regular front firing one
 

Phelonious Ponk

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I get that. I still think you'll be picking your compromises, though. I like some bipole/dipole/omni designs, but there are things they do really well and things conventional speakers do better, IMO. And at this juncture, neither one images like real musical instruments.

Tim
 

JackD201

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Probably because real instruments don't image at all, they project ;)
 

Glory

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Even though my last speakers had an active bottom end, I still couldn't integrate them well in my room.... even with all the variable settings. Maybe it was too complex for the end user. Dealer setup would have been nice....

What were your last speakers.?

Coming to Seattle this week hope to maybe hook up with you Yes? Meeting John Tucker also.
 

Bruce B

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What were your last speakers.?

Coming to Seattle this webek hope to maybe hook up with you Yes? Meeting John Tucker also.

Certainly , would welcome the visit!

Last spreaders were Evolution Acoustics MM3
 

cjfrbw

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Probably because real instruments don't image at all, they project ;)

Psychiatrist to instrument: "You're projecting again, try imaging instead."
 

microstrip

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Groucho

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Some comments on actives by Doug Schneider:
Interesting.

The concept of DSP-based actives with ADCs at the input doesn't seem like a winner to me. I can't imagine that a person who is open to the idea of DSP wouldn't want the system digital all the way. And the person who loves his analog sources would have a hard time getting over the psychological hurdle of digital audio.
 

KlausR.

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Groucho said:
The concept of DSP-based actives with ADCs at the input doesn't seem like a winner to me. I can't imagine that a person who is open to the idea of DSP wouldn't want the system digital all the way. And the person who loves his analog sources would have a hard time getting over the psychological hurdle of digital audio.

You need ADCs at the input for non-digital sources, otherwise no one would buy such speakers. However, you also need digital inputs. My speakers have both.

I for one am open to DSP, and I am using both inputs (SP/DIF for CD, XLR for vinyl). Is there a difference due to the extra ADC in the chain? To my ears there isn’t.

As far as love for analog and the hurdle of digital is concerned, many seem to be ignorant of the fact that “the recording industry has been using digital equipment extensively since 1980 for disk mastering”. In doing that the signal coming from the recording console is converted into digital and back into analog just before the cutter amps.

Ballou, “Handbook for sound engineers”, SAMS 1991, Chapter 25: Disk recording and playback

Klaus
 

microstrip

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(...) As far as love for analog and the hurdle of digital is concerned, many seem to be ignorant of the fact that “the recording industry has been using digital equipment extensively since 1980 for disk mastering”. In doing that the signal coming from the recording console is converted into digital and back into analog just before the cutter amps.

Ballou, “Handbook for sound engineers”, SAMS 1991, Chapter 25: Disk recording and playback

Klaus

Most do not ignore it - it is why LP pressings pre-80's are most of the time much more expensive than modern ones at eBay or used LP shops, and some people producing high quality LP recordings operate their proprietary cutters or small firms using analog only machinery, with a considerable increase in cost.
 

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