What's best in highly sensitive/efficient speakers.

[morricab]

I would assume that there would be a huge difference between a small port opening downward and a 15" horn-loaded driver pointing straight down to the floor.

Well, Odeons vent design is not a standard ported box. I think it is a quite large slot more like a transmission line opening than a port. Maybe Christoph knows more...

FWIW, my La Bohemes are down firing horns and I don’t get complaints. There is far less THUD with a horn than a vented box...perhaps it has something to do with air velocity?

 

[Ron Resnick]

I actually used Mastersound 300B monoblocks on those speakers for a while!

Did the vocals coming out of the speakers sound like you were playing Mickey Mouse even if you were playing Frank Sinatra?

 

[Ron Resnick]

It goes to my point about my personal preference when it comes to amplifcation. With the MBLs I started with Class D amps, then some huge Hovland SS amps, Manley 250s, Atmasphere MA-2 OTLs, Mastersound 845 (borrowed, not owned), and finally the least appropriate of all: Mastersound 300B. Once I heard 300Bs, even on those ridiculous speakers, there was no going back. The one pair of amps that I kind of regret selling are the Manley 250s. Run in triode mode those EL34s really did sound pretty good to my ears -- like the modest EL34 integrated amp I heard in the system with the Odeons and Cube Audio Nenuphars this past weekend.

By the way VTL makes a current production EL34 amp you can set to triode mode.

 

[Exlibris]

Did the vocals coming out of the speakers sound like you were playing Mickey Mouse even if you were playing Frank Sinatra?

It was actually the vocals that connected me to the 300Bs. But ya, totally wrong amp for those speakers and I knew it from day one. Then again, totally wrong speakers for me. Live and learn.

 

[Exlibris]

Well, Odeons vent design is not a standard ported box. I think it is a quite large slot more like a transmission line opening than a port. Maybe Christoph knows more...

FWIW, my La Bohemes are down firing horns and I don’t get complaints. There is far less THUD with a horn than a vented box...perhaps it has something to do with air velocity?

It was actually Christoph's much earlier post that put me on to Odeon. I had previously ruled out Odeon because I thought they were down-firing. Who knows, maybe the Odeons and the Animas aren't that different in this respect after all?

 

[the sound of Tao]

I tried Manley 250 monos on my Maggie 20.7s when I was trying to find an amp to drive the panels that would then work to match with a mosfet powered Wilson Benesch Torus sub and that was really a nice outcome in an EL34 kind of way. I ended up not going with the Manley or the sub for other reasons (a choice ultimately about coherence) but the EL34s run in triode mode had a lot going for it musically.

 

[Exlibris]

I tried Manley 250 monos on my Maggie 20.7s when I was trying to find an amp to drive the panels that would then work to match with a mosfet powered Wilson Benesch Torus sub and that was really a nice outcome in an EL34 kind of way. I ended up not going with the Manley or the sub for other reasons (a choice ultimately about coherence) but the EL34s run in triode mode had a lot going for it musically.

That was my first introduction to anything triode. I think I ran them in pentode for about 6 months before even thinking to flip the switch. I could feel the slight loss of power/drive but, for me, there was no going back and I left them in triode after that. That same thing happened when chose 300Bs over both 845s and 211s, and then 45s over both 2A3s and 300Bs. I really don't want to hear anything less powerful than the 45 because I'd likely get hooked on it!

 

[KeithR]

I'd love to see some Odeon measurements to help make amp matching easier. The only ones out there I could find were on the older La Traviata:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/odeon-la-traviata-loudspeaker-measurements

 

[morricab]

I'd love to see some Odeon measurements to help make amp matching easier. The only ones out there I could find were on the older La Traviata:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/odeon-la-traviata-loudspeaker-measurements

There is a review in German if you google for Odeon Nr. 26, the predecessor of the 28.

 

[Exlibris]

There is a review in German if you google for Odeon Nr. 26, the predecessor of the 28.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAMegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw01zukDZJXFjHeK-XS8RNLh

 

[morricab]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAMegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw01zukDZJXFjHeK-XS8RNLh

Yep that one

 

[pdubya]

Exlibris --
Vis the Cube Nenuphar: what size room did you hear them in? Did the sound change drastically if you stood up, moved around the room, or were otherwise not sitting in the sweet spot?

Tao -- same questions to you vis your PAPs -- what size room, does the soundfield cohere adequately when moving around the room/not in the sweet spot?

Looking for speakers to suit a large, multipurpose room. There is a seat in the sweet spot but won't always be in it.
Thanks
Parker

 

[Exlibris]

Exlibris --
Vis the Cube Nenuphar: what size room did you hear them in? Did the sound change drastically if you stood up, moved around the room, or were otherwise not sitting in the sweet spot?

Tao -- same questions to you vis your PAPs -- what size room, does the soundfield cohere adequately when moving around the room/not in the sweet spot?

Looking for speakers to suit a large, multipurpose room. There is a seat in the sweet spot but won't always be in it.
Thanks
Parker

The room was about 15' wide and 30' long. The speakers were along the short wall. I sat about 10' from the speakers but never listened while I was standing or walking around.

 

[pdubya]

The room was about 15' wide and 30' long. The speakers were along the short wall. I sat about 10' from the speakers but never listened while I was standing or walking around.

Thanks, that's helpful as those are pretty close to my dimensions. At least that tells me a room this size shouldn't swallow up the single drivers.

I demo'd some electrostats once where walking behind the centered couch was literally like walking by an open window about 4'wide by 3' high. Talk about a defined sweet spot.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Exlibris --
Vis the Cube Nenuphar: what size room did you hear them in? Did the sound change drastically if you stood up, moved around the room, or were otherwise not sitting in the sweet spot?

Tao -- same questions to you vis your PAPs -- what size room, does the soundfield cohere adequately when moving around the room/not in the sweet spot?

Looking for speakers to suit a large, multipurpose room. There is a seat in the sweet spot but won't always be in it.
Thanks
Parker

Hi Parker, the room I have the Pap horns in is 2.4 x 5.2 x 7.6 metres (8 x 17 x 25 feet) and until I renovate I’m alternating every other week between using the Pap horns or the Harbeth 40.2s and it’s a good size room for both.

I’m sure that the Pap horns could however scale up to a larger room again with ease.

As far as sweet spot listening I’d say they are not laser locked listening at all and have a reasonably large music enjoyment zone, but that listening to horns is for me 100 per cent engaging so I never find myself using them for any secondary listening and so I naturally gravitate to the seat in the middle and just listen and enjoy.

On the other hand the Harbeth 40.2s are the best speaker I’ve heard at being either primary or you can just be wandering around doing other things or working and still they have this great knack of connecting you with the music. In my last home I had the Harbeth 30.1s in a large open plan space where we ate and they are ideal at playing music while dining and chatting and still the conversation can just as easily turn towards the music or away again.

In the room I have the 40.2s a 50 watt SET amp drives them perfectly but any larger room and I’d be throwing a bigger amp to keep them playing and energising the room.

With the Pap horns however the 50 watt SET barely gets out of its early watts and always keeps the musical flow with ease. The capacity to do small mods easily with them is great fun and the sonic and musical returns are even greater still.

 

[pdubya]

Hi Parker, the room I have the Pap horns in is 2.4 x 5.2 x 7.6 metres (8 x 17 x 25 feet) and until I renovate I’m alternating every other week between using the Pap horns or the Harbeth 40.2s and it’s a good size room for both.

I’m sure that the Pap horns could however scale up to a larger room again with ease.

As far as sweet spot listening I’d say they are not laser locked listening at all and have a reasonably large music enjoyment zone, but that listening to horns is for me 100 per cent engaging so I never find myself using them for any secondary listening and so I naturally gravitate to the seat in the middle and just listen and enjoy.

On the other hand the Harbeth 40.2s are the best speaker I’ve heard at being either primary or you can just be wandering around doing other things or working and still they have this great knack of connecting you with the music. In my last home I had the Harbeth 30.1s in a large open plan space where we ate and they are ideal at playing music while dining and chatting and still the conversation can just as easily turn towards the music or away again.

In the room I have the 40.2s a 50 watt SET amp drives them perfectly but any larger room and I’d be throwing a bigger amp to keep them playing and energising the room.

With the Pap horns however the 50 watt SET barely gets out of its early watts and always keeps the musical flow with ease. The capacity to do small mods easily with them is great fun and the sonic and musical returns are even greater still.

Very informative Tao, thanks. I had understood the Harbs to have a limited dispersion in the vertical plane, but I guess in a larger room, given the speaker's tilt, a that window would expand into the back of the room. So something else to consider (again, actually). But I do kinda like the looks of the new pret-a-ecoute PAP intro'd at Axpona. And their in-home auditions.
Parker

 

[Exlibris]

I demoed the Odeon 28 again -- this time with my 2w 45 amp. Unfortunately, it didn't drive the speakers nearly as well as the 30w EL34 amp at the dealers.

 

[morricab]

I demoed the Odeon 28 again -- this time with my 2w 45 amp. Unfortunately, it didn't drive the speakers nearly as well as the 30w EL34 amp at the dealers.

Given my experience with these speakers this is not surprising outcome. Try them with 30+ watt SET.

 

[Duke LeJeune]

Did the sound change drastically if you stood up, moved around the room, or were otherwise not sitting in the sweet spot?

...does the soundfield cohere adequately when moving around the room/not in the sweet spot?

Looking for speakers to suit a large, multipurpose room. There is a seat in the sweet spot but won't always be in it.

Some high-efficiency speakers excel in providing a wide sweet spot, with proper set-up.

The speakers need to have approximately constant-directivity across an arc perhaps 90 degrees wide (-6 dB at 45 degrees off-axis), ideally from about 700 Hz on up. The JBL M2 is a fairly well-known example of this sort of radiation pattern, though its efficiency isn't super-high.

Next, the speakers need to be toed-in aggressively, such that their axes criss-cross in front of the "sweet spot". Yeah I know, this looks weird, but stick with me at least to the end of this post. But first, time for a quick psychoacoustics tangent, and then we'll come back to our weird speaker setup:

The ear/brain system localizes sound by two mechanisms: Arrival time, and intensity. Suppose we have speakers set up like in your avatar picture, pointing straight ahead, or close to it. In the central sweet spot, naturally arrival time and intensity are the same for both speakers, so we get a good soundstage with a strong center image. But if we move off to one side a bit, the near speaker obviously "wins" arrival time, and it also "wins" intensity, mainly because we are now nearly on-axis of the near speaker and pretty far off-axis of the far speaker. As a result, the center image moves even more than we do; if we move two feet to the left, the center image may well move four feet to the left. If we move far enough to the left, the voices and instruments all cluster at the left speaker.

Now let's go back to our constant-directivity speakers with their extreme toe-in. For off-centerline listeners, the near speaker obviously "wins" arrival time. But the FAR SPEAKER "wins" intensity! This is because we are now on-axis (or nearly so) of the far speaker, but very far off-axis of the near speaker! Our two psychoacoustic localization mechanisms balance one another out to a certain extent, and we still get a decent center image and a decent spread of instruments. No it's not as good as back in the sweet spot, but at least it's enjoyable, instead of the instruments all being distractingly clustered at the nearest speaker.

A second advantage of constant-directivity speakers is, their spectrally-correct off-axis sound results in a smooth power response. The tonal balance holds up well throughout the room (even if the soundstage doesn't quite manage to do so). Also, a spectrally-correct reverberant field is, imo, conducive to long-term fatigue-free listening.

The secret to this configuration working well is, the output of that near speaker must fall off SMOOTHLY and RAPIDLY as we move off-axis. The "smoothly" insures that the tonal balance doesn't change significantly as we move to the side, and the "rapidly" keeps the near speaker from totally dominating the image localization cues.

(Note that this kind of speaker, with this kind of set-up, is even better than an omnidirectional when it comes to sweet spot width, because with omnis the near speaker still "wins" intensity, albeit by a small margin, due to the shorter path length. )

At audio shows, I try to deliberately set up one chair along a sidewall, way to the side of the normal listening area. Whenever the room is so full that someone has to take this obviously third-rate seat, at the next pause between songs I ask them how it sounds from there, and whether they can still hear a soundstage. They are invariably pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it is from such a seemingly poor location, and they always say they can still hear a soundstage.

Over the next few weeks I plan to experiment with a constant-directivity radiation pattern which is narrower than 90 degrees, as there are arguably advantages to using an even narrower pattern. I can explain if you would like.

Anyway imo you can have a wide sweet spot AND high efficiency, but your audiophile buddies will think they are being helpful when they see what you have done and offer to "fix" your speaker positioning. At audio shows, it is not uncommon for me to get offers to "fix" my speaker positioning from well-intentioned audiophiles when they first walk into the room, before they've had a chance to listen to what it does.

 

[Legolas]

Given my experience with these speakers this is not surprising outcome. Try them with 30+ watt SET.

The Odeons are 93dB so no where near enough for realistic dynamics with 2W. You need higher powered SETs as Morricab says. My Zingalis are 95dB but still need current to control and drive them correctly, as they have 12 inch bass drivers. The Odeons have 26cm I think? Probably similar situation.

After trying a range of 300B SETs, 211s and then the Aries Cerat 813 Genus, I would say big bottle high current tubes is the way to go in none active speakers setups (bass active), unless you go super high efficiency horns at 99dB or more. That is to get decent volume and real world dynamics. 300Bs into the Audio Note AN-Es never did it for me, even stuffed in the corners of a room. They never sounded full range and uncoloured, and soon got flabby when pushed. All IMO.