Does it mean that Atrium works best with active crossover?
Roy Gregory Names Clarisys Atrium/VAC System Best in Show
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
Clarisys Audio Atrium System Insights.
Q: Why is it multiple panels and would you do something different on the next version?
A: All our speakers use very high powered Neodymium N52s; the panels move so much air and have such a high excursion (technical x-max is 1.6cm (0.8cm back and 0.8cm forward) that even with the aluminium structure, bass vibrations do get through to the midrange and trebble. Physical isolation is the best way to achieve a undistorted response. Our speakers in general have the highest stiffness of any panel speaker available; and we still ideally like to seperate all the elements. In an Atrium V2; i would even seperate the midrange and trebble ribbons.
Q: What is truly unique to the Clarisys Audio Midrange and Trebble ribbons?
A: They are Bi-Polar; as opposed to everyone else; which are dipols. The advantage is a more uniform field of dispersion across the horizontal axis. You also get twice the output and twice the impedance. Our ribbons are now, also pure aluminium and therefore extremely light and fast. They are actually way lighter and faster then any other mylar or kapton based units. The downside is the crippling low impedance; which we counter by using custom Transformers made by Lundahl which have no audible or response impact we can hear or meassure.
Q: Are active crossovers the way to go with Clarisys Audio speakers?
A: If you have the money and space and desire to squeze the last bit of performance from the speakers; and to adjust the system to your room, yes, yes it is. Now; we do provide 1st order crossovers on all models starting from Q2 2024 which sound very good indeed. On a Piccolo or a Minuet; there is no technical possibility to run them active without some modifications. We have passive and active Studio Plus and Auditorium customers; and they all enjoy their systems. The primary advantage of active is: less loss of power; more dynamic headroom with sharper slopes; phase and time alignement of the drivers as well as room adaption in 0.1db steps. It is a very powerful tool if used right! The downside is price. On the Atrium System; we do prvide a passive crossover as standard with the following slopes and values. Infrabass is DC to 40Hz (6db slope); midbass is 25Hz to 550Hz (6db slope); midrange is 550Hz to open end (naturally drops above 7KHz off axis); trebble starts at 7KHz and plays open end. When running active there are several options. In Munich we ran 6db filters and used DC to 40Hz; midbass was 25Hz to 440Hz; midrange was 440Hz to 5000Hz and trebble was 5000Hz to open end. We used the time alignement function as well.
Q: Why where the panels spaced so far apart?
A: To make a wider off axis sweet spot to account for 50 chairs in the room. The time alignement was made for the 2nd row center chair. The entire concept of the Atrium is to place each module where it has the best power response in the room; and then to use the time alignement function to ensure a perfect integration. And we proved that by having about a dozen people ask us what module was actually playing; not knowing that all of them are playing at the same time.
Q: Why not stick all panels together and align them to the listener?
A: Each driver interferes with the other driver but more importantly because a staggered dipole horizontally cannot work. The tweeter and midrange element cannot unfold its dipole or bipole radiation pattern because it bounces of the woofer face; causing ripples and uneven responses. The best spot for the midrange or trebble module is very unlikely the best preassure point for low bass.
Q: What adjustments are possible on the Atrium System?
A: The bass, midrange and trebble tension. The horizontal and vertical aligement of the drivers. The module positions; the slope; the gain; the phase. In other words; we can tune it to your tastes. We dont have to conform to a "standard" taste. In my room for example i run 24db on low-low and low; but 18db from low to mid-low and 6db on mid to high. The character can be whatever i want it to be.
Q: You claim 101db per watt; why wont a 3 watt tube amp work?
A: Because the industry standard measurement is pointless. Nobody listens to a 1KHz sinewave and most energy is in the bass section. On the Clarisys speakers; we publicly state that a good solid 100 watts per channel is our recommendation and we stick by it. But it depends on your taste, your room, your listening levels and musical material.
Q: Why is it multiple panels and would you do something different on the next version?
A: All our speakers use very high powered Neodymium N52s; the panels move so much air and have such a high excursion (technical x-max is 1.6cm (0.8cm back and 0.8cm forward) that even with the aluminium structure, bass vibrations do get through to the midrange and trebble. Physical isolation is the best way to achieve a undistorted response. Our speakers in general have the highest stiffness of any panel speaker available; and we still ideally like to seperate all the elements. In an Atrium V2; i would even seperate the midrange and trebble ribbons.
Q: What is truly unique to the Clarisys Audio Midrange and Trebble ribbons?
A: They are Bi-Polar; as opposed to everyone else; which are dipols. The advantage is a more uniform field of dispersion across the horizontal axis. You also get twice the output and twice the impedance. Our ribbons are now, also pure aluminium and therefore extremely light and fast. They are actually way lighter and faster then any other mylar or kapton based units. The downside is the crippling low impedance; which we counter by using custom Transformers made by Lundahl which have no audible or response impact we can hear or meassure.
Q: Are active crossovers the way to go with Clarisys Audio speakers?
A: If you have the money and space and desire to squeze the last bit of performance from the speakers; and to adjust the system to your room, yes, yes it is. Now; we do provide 1st order crossovers on all models starting from Q2 2024 which sound very good indeed. On a Piccolo or a Minuet; there is no technical possibility to run them active without some modifications. We have passive and active Studio Plus and Auditorium customers; and they all enjoy their systems. The primary advantage of active is: less loss of power; more dynamic headroom with sharper slopes; phase and time alignement of the drivers as well as room adaption in 0.1db steps. It is a very powerful tool if used right! The downside is price. On the Atrium System; we do prvide a passive crossover as standard with the following slopes and values. Infrabass is DC to 40Hz (6db slope); midbass is 25Hz to 550Hz (6db slope); midrange is 550Hz to open end (naturally drops above 7KHz off axis); trebble starts at 7KHz and plays open end. When running active there are several options. In Munich we ran 6db filters and used DC to 40Hz; midbass was 25Hz to 440Hz; midrange was 440Hz to 5000Hz and trebble was 5000Hz to open end. We used the time alignement function as well.
Q: Why where the panels spaced so far apart?
A: To make a wider off axis sweet spot to account for 50 chairs in the room. The time alignement was made for the 2nd row center chair. The entire concept of the Atrium is to place each module where it has the best power response in the room; and then to use the time alignement function to ensure a perfect integration. And we proved that by having about a dozen people ask us what module was actually playing; not knowing that all of them are playing at the same time.
Q: Why not stick all panels together and align them to the listener?
A: Each driver interferes with the other driver but more importantly because a staggered dipole horizontally cannot work. The tweeter and midrange element cannot unfold its dipole or bipole radiation pattern because it bounces of the woofer face; causing ripples and uneven responses. The best spot for the midrange or trebble module is very unlikely the best preassure point for low bass.
Q: What adjustments are possible on the Atrium System?
A: The bass, midrange and trebble tension. The horizontal and vertical aligement of the drivers. The module positions; the slope; the gain; the phase. In other words; we can tune it to your tastes. We dont have to conform to a "standard" taste. In my room for example i run 24db on low-low and low; but 18db from low to mid-low and 6db on mid to high. The character can be whatever i want it to be.
Q: You claim 101db per watt; why wont a 3 watt tube amp work?
A: Because the industry standard measurement is pointless. Nobody listens to a 1KHz sinewave and most energy is in the bass section. On the Clarisys speakers; we publicly state that a good solid 100 watts per channel is our recommendation and we stick by it. But it depends on your taste, your room, your listening levels and musical material.
Yes but not in the conventional sense with two or more stages…the two elements working together as a single compound element that is a single gain stage.
Thanks for the clear answers.
The elephant in the room - why did you choose to use a digital crossover using ADCs, DACs and DSP in the large VAC system? Did you use the time alignments facilities of the crossover?
Great you are so clear. I have been writing it since long - the industry standard measurement only addresses point like speakers in anechoic conditions. Surely not panels in real listening rooms.
Because of the time alignment function and frankly, its a great sounding unit
I am not a big Accuphase fan, but it works, sounds great, is highly flexible and does what i need. I tried Trinnov, Direc, CSPort and othersPlus there is no point using a 1KHz test tone as you will not listen to that ever.
Usually pink noise is used, but there are three weighting possibilities - it is why sometimes we get three different values!
Normal free-air measurement or an anechoic chamber with pink noise to eliminate room influences. In normal rooms, windowed measurements take 250 Hz to 20 kHz, as the bass can never be accurately represented.
Stereophile exsample
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Yes but we are talking about published efficiency numbers per 1 Watt input. There the standard is just useless for the general audiophile.
Yes, exactly, a 1 kHz signal is pointless even with an amplifier. Any reasonably well-designed amplifier for €100 will produce a clean signal with little distortion. Things get interesting at both ends of the hearing frequency spectrum.
I thought that they changed it to dB/M at 2.88v?
So the 1, 2, 4 ohm speakers get more output than the ol 8 ohm ones.
Yes, it is the official sensitivity definition at 8 ohms. It aims at solid state amplifiers with low output impedance that behave like voltage sources with good current ability. The figure must be corrected to get the efficiency number. See Stereophile John Atkinson on the subject at :
https://www.stereophile.com/content/measuring-loudspeakers-part-one-page-3
Yeah no… *1
That article was dated Nov 1998, so firmly in the last millenium,
They changes spec sometime in the 90’s I suspect, but it is no longer /1W it’s at 2.88v.
The “@ 1W” is a sensitivity rating versus a specified power.
The “@ 1v” is a sensitivity rating versus a voltage, and the power could be anything within reason… or sometime outside of reason.
1) https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/253822/is-yeah-nah-a-uniquely-australian-idiom
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Ohm 's law - 2.83V in 8 0hm resistive is 1 Watt - nothing really changed. It seems thay just made it more clear for people who could take it wrongly as "efficiency".
The same way 0dB can be defined as 1 mW in 600 ohm ... (0.775V)
If you plug 2.83 volts into a 4 ohm speaker, measure it at 1.6 watts. A 4 ohm speaker measures 2.0 volts if you want to be accurate. People tend to cheat a bit here results in 3db more efficiency.
Please also dont forget that especially dynamic speakers; and some panel speakers (not Clarisys Audio or Apogees) have a lot of variance in the impedance across freqencies (which is why i show real life impedance over frequency domain on youtube videos). So even if the speaker where to be 4 or 8 ohm under 1KHz; when playing music the impedance is quite different depending on frequencies. Its not a complex topic, but the indication of "efficiency" of a speaker really means nothing real life use cases; and the value is used a lot by Audio Friends to interpret some acoustic property.
I’ve heard of ohms law, but You’re missing the point as the 4ohm speakers are also measured with the same 2.83v… Hence twice the power.
Secondly that 4ohms may be at 1kHz and might go up or down across the frequencies.
so with 1w it’s the same power at the frequencies… and at 2.83v it can be different across the frequencies.
And surely get a wrong number for efficiency ... The fact that people do not know the standards properly or how to use them does not make them wrong. The "old" standard stated 8 ohm clearly.
Yes. But as far as I have seen since long manufacturers use pink noise for the sensitivity measurements - although they sometimes wrongly call it efficiency!
Nouvelle Revue du Son measures the and publishes the complete EPDR curve for speakers - a much more meaningful specification to be coupled with sensitivity. See https://www.stereophile.com/content...tnote 6 D.," Electronics World, November 1997.
The fact is that what seems a simple affair to many people is a complex matter and the specification in general has little meaning and can be very misleading.
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