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