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"Loudspeaker-Room" Maximum Performance Acheived


mikebse2a3

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A question I believe everyone with this goal should ask themselves is how can I know when my " Loudspeaker/Room's Maximum Performance has been achieved " ...???

 

Of course the combination of acoustical test of the loudspeaker, listening room, and the integration of them can help to achieve our goal but the answers I would like to hear from others is based from where the rubber meets the road ie"The Listening Experience"

 

I believe at this time there is one listening indicator that is the best gauge to use to judge the performance of our systems and it is: Imaging

 

I see very little discussion of this aspect of sound reproduction on the forum but "Imaging" is where all aspect of reproduction combine to be experienced by us and it always reveals when something isn't performing at it's best.

 

So I am interested in others thoughts and what you use to gauge the performance of your system..???:emotion-21::):emotion-45:

 

 

miketn

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Imaging is important to me, as it can add to the realism. 

 

Much more important, though, is how the speakers make me feel. There are overly-accurate systems that can be boring and lifeless.

 

Music is an emotional experience and the speakers should be able to deliver that emotion. For me, the Altecs and Klipsch I have do that better than any other systems I have heard - including a $500,000 Magico system. 

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2 minutes ago, Grizzog said:

Imaging is important to me, as it can add to the realism. 

 

Much more important, though, is how the speakers make me feel. There are overly-accurate systems that can be boring and lifeless.

 

Music is an emotional experience and the speakers should be able to deliver that emotion. For me, the Altecs and Klipsch I have do that better than any other systems I have heard - including a $500,000 Magico system. 

Interesting.... I will say the better my system images the better the emotional connection... 

 

 "Sonny Boy Williamson" was in my room last night and we had an awesome time...:D

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Of all the anomalies that may be present in the gear and the room, I agree that imaging will be a primary attribute that suffers. Or to say it the other way around, imaging is a first victim of problems (or inadequacy) of the gear or room.

 

Imaging may be the best gauge, but it may not be the only canary in the mine... but perhaps it is... Imagery and dynamics are closely tied. If the imagery is correct I think that requires the dynamics be correct as well. Maybe inferior dynamics presents a "flatter" presentation of an otherwise well imaging system/room, whereas getting the dynamics better might present some depth and body to the objects of the imaging... more spatial presentation... advancing from a "movie" to a "play", from a 2d presentation to a 3d presentation.

 

So getting the dynamics right may not get best imaging, but when the imaging is right that implies that the dynamics (and a whole host of other things) are right.

 

So I think I agree that imaging quality is the key, and likely the last of a series of unlocking of the system/room potential.

 

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5 minutes ago, pauln said:

So getting the dynamics right may not get best imaging, but when the imaging is right that implies that the dynamics (and a whole host of other things) are right.

 

So I think I agree that imaging quality is the key, and likely the last of a series of unlocking of the system/room potential.

Exactly..!!! Imaging is the result of everything coming together right.

 

PWK worked very hard at documenting imaging performance for good reason. Accurate imaging is the result of superior loudspeaker performance and integration of a reproduction system.

 

 

miketn

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1 hour ago, Ski Bum said:

I'll post THIS link again since it's relevant to the topic of imaging/soundstage.  It's quite effective. 

Note that Bill Waslo is assuming in the extreme toe-in trick that the off-axis polars of the HF horns fall off fairly readily with increasing off-axis angle.  With the K-402, however, this trick doesn't work as well.  You'd have to get out to about 40 degrees from the centerline to see significant SPL fall-off.  I found this myself while measuring the off-axis polars with the multiple-entry K-402 horn design in my back yard.  I was somewhat amazed how far off-axis I had to go until I saw significant fall-off (note that the last trace is actually 70 degrees off-axis):

 

Multiple-Entry K-402 Off-Axis (0-60 degrees).png

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56 minutes ago, mikebse2a3 said:

PWK worked very hard at documenting imaging performance for good reason.

I'll agree to disagree a little on this one: the reason why I wrote this thread was that I had to find out a few things via trial-and-error in my own listening space...things that really weren't documented well...perhaps separately but not in an integrated way.  YMMV.

 

Chris

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18 minutes ago, Chris A said:

Note that Bill Waslo is assuming in the extreme toe-in trick that the off-axis polars of the HF horns fall off fairly readily with increasing off-axis angle.  With the K-402, however, this trick doesn't work as well. 

True, but how many of us are using such large horns?  Bill's trick may work much better on an old pair of Heritage speakers.  The tractrix mids in the forte II, Chorus II, for example, are quite a bit hot on axis compared to a K-402.  In those cases, it does indeed work.

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2 hours ago, Grizzog said:

Imaging is important to me, as it can add to the realism. 

 

Much more important, though, is how the speakers make me feel. There are overly-accurate systems that can be boring and lifeless.

 

Music is an emotional experience and the speakers should be able to deliver that emotion. For me, the Altecs and Klipsch I have do that better than any other systems I have heard - including a $500,000 Magico system. 

Excuse me for saying so,with all do respect,how can you compare a 500.000 dollar magico system with klipsch.

I.m from Europe and it's proven that we listen different than the Americans.but this is comparing a beetle with a ferrari,complete nonsese i.m.o

Magico is almost the ferarri under the speaker systems and if you really listens good there is no comparison i.m.o

I.ve heard the magico on a show in holland with Mcintosh,and Klipsch is not in any way better than you tell us here.

So i'm sorry but i must reply to your post,and i don't wanna hurt your feelings and with all respect to you,i can't see your opinion.

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2 hours ago, mikebse2a3 said:

but the answers I would like to hear from others is based from where the rubber meets the road ie"The Listening Experience"...I believe at this time there is one listening indicator that is the best gauge to use to judge the performance of our systems and it is: Imaging

Once the imaging problems are fixed, I find other capabilities begin to become factors:

 

1) Smooth coverage from wall to wall without a prominent "sweet spot", and without loss of low frequencies below ~50 Hz as you move laterally.

 

2) Good performance at the back of the room (40 feet back) and up to within a metre/yard of the front face of the speakers without loss of timbre and imaging.

 

3) Good room reverberation/specular decay performance without slaps from boundary reflections.  This is a function of the size of the room and the acoustic treatments as well as coupling the loudspeakers to the room without midbass suck-outs due to front and side wall cancellations, i.e., pulling the loudspeakers significantly away from the front or side walls that introduce the "Allison effect" (...actually, it's more like the Paul Klipsch effect since he wrote about it almost 20 years before Allison).

 

Chris

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Excuse me for saying so,with all do respect,how can you compare a 500.000 dollar magico system with klipsch.









I.m from Europe and it's proven that we listen different than the Americans.but this is comparing a beetle with a ferrari,complete nonsese i.m.o









Magico is almost the ferarri under the speaker systems and if you really listens good there is no comparison i.m.o









I.ve heard the magico on a show in holland with Mcintosh,and Klipsch is not in any way better than you tell us here.









So i'm sorry but i must reply to your post,and i don't wanna hurt your feelings and with all respect to you,i can't see your opinion.






My Altec 19 system, for me, beats the Magicos. The Magicos have more detail without a doubt. My system has more feeling. My wife agreed as well, nothing has touched the 19s. Price does not mean performance. Magicos are amazing speakers, but I prefer mine.

I use my ears to compare speakers and the ones that please my ears win.


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When listening to speaker, alot of what you hear is the room.  Imaging is very important to me as well, but perfection here only applies to sweet spot, which is small in most homes when you are only 8-15 feet from the speakers.  I heard a friend once say he liked Klipsch because, hey, "a car door shutting, sounds just like a real car door shutting, and when a cell phone goes off in the movie I am reaching for my phone."  So supreme dynamics (and low distortion) are also important, especially for movie sound tracks and the room plays a role here as well.  Good and controlled directivity is essential.  Klipsch cares about all these factors, especially in their three-way designs.  Klipsch 3-way designs are all I am interested in.  Glad I finally go my Palladiums before they are gone.  

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A large part of imaging has to do with speaker setup.  Next is the room and distance from the speaker.  Gear follows these two thing.  Where the rubber meets the road is how far are you willing to go gear wise and room Tx wise.  I am the first to say my room is not optimal.  I sit 20 ft. back and the room influence is definitely a factor.  I also refuse to splash wall Tx's up all over the place.  With these limitation, I have found a happy compromise.

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3 hours ago, rgdawsonco said:

When listening to speaker, alot of what you hear is the room ...  I heard a friend once say he liked Klipsch because, hey, "a car door shutting, sounds just like a real car door shutting, and when a cell phone goes off in the movie I am reaching for my phone."  So supreme dynamics (and low distortion) are also important, especially for movie sound tracks and the room plays a role here as well.  Good and controlled directivity is essential.  Klipsch cares about all these factors, especially in their three-way designs.  Klipsch 3-way designs are all I am interested in.  Glad I finally go my Palladiums before they are gone.  

 

Heyser said the same thing about car doors slamming in his review of the Klipschorn.

 

To me the most import qualities in a speaker are low distortion, dynamics, powerfully stirring the listeners' emotions (in a good way), and instruments sounding like themselves.  Next in importance, but lower, would be frequency response and imaging, IMO..   Back when I bought my Khorns, I listened to speakers in every store in the S.F. Bay Area.  Several speakers that cost quite a bit more, including a B&W in a same room comparison, were inferior to the Khorn in the first 4 factors listed above.  Since then I go to audio stores (the few that still exist) once in a while, and I haven't heard the equal of a Khorn yet, although I suspect that if I heard a Jubilee, my mind would change.

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3 hours ago, garyrc said:

To me the most import qualities in a speaker are low distortion, dynamics, powerfully stirring the listeners' emotions (in a good way), and instruments sounding like themselves.  Next in importance, but lower, would be frequency response and imaging, IMO..

This indicates to me that you consider imaging a subset like distortion, dynamics...etc...... and I believe they are all different perspectives of the listening experience which culminate to produce the imaging we perceive from a multi-channel reproduction system and I suggest the more accurate each of these perspectives are reproduced the more accurate the imaging from a system will be experienced.

 

As Heyser discusses in many of his papers distortion, dynamics, frequency response are all interrelated and are perceived aspects of a common event. For example if you limit the reproduced frequency response ( in the humans perceivable range) of an instrument there could also be a loss in perceivable dynamic accuracy of the reproduced instrument.

 

Mono can reproduce low distortion, dynamics, powerfully stirring the listeners' emotions but this also leads to a distortion of how we perceive most events in real life. Even though using multi-channel reproduction system (and the imaging resulting from that system is a distorted version of a real event as well) it is still perceived closer to reality in our minds and in the majority of cases I suggest it leads to a more complete illusion/reproduction for the human listener to experience.

 

miketn

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7 hours ago, mikebse2a3 said:

Mono can reproduce low distortion, dynamics, powerfully stirring the listeners' emotions but this also leads to a distortion of how we perceive most events in real life...

 

...Even though using [a] multi-channel reproduction system (and the imaging resulting from that system is a distorted version of a real event as well), it is still perceived closer to reality in our minds and in the majority of cases I suggest leads to a more complete illusion/reproduction for the human listener to experience.

 

When I hear recordings in mono, what I hear is a sound that is immediately perceived as flat and dull in comparison to a good stereo recording.  This includes mono recordings that have been impressed onto two tracks (i.e., "stereo", but actually still mono played through stereo loudspeakers).  What I do hear on mono, much more clearly, is loudspeaker reproduction flaws.  If you want to hear the issues, play each loudspeaker one at a time. 

 

I'm curious to know your description of what you hear using mono sources.  For me, stereo is much more engaging/realistic...and good multichannel recordings--even more so. 

 

This is especially so for those recordings where the listener is "in the ensemble" surrounded by equal channels of sounds, i.e., no echo surround channels, but rather those extra channels are carrying full instrumentation/timbre and dynamics, i.e., "on stage" vs. "in the audience" as we've discussed.  The difference and engagement versus even very good stereo recordings is quite startling in my experience.

 

Chris

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16 hours ago, TheHummer said:

Excuse me for saying so,with all do respect,how can you compare a 500.000 dollar magico system with klipsch.

I.m from Europe and it's proven that we listen different than the Americans.but this is comparing a beetle with a ferrari,complete nonsese i.m.o

Magico is almost the ferarri under the speaker systems and if you really listens good there is no comparison i.m.o

I.ve heard the magico on a show in holland with Mcintosh,and Klipsch is not in any way better than you tell us here.

So i'm sorry but i must reply to your post,and i don't wanna hurt your feelings and with all respect to you,i can't see your opinion.

 

It is very difficult to compare two large loudspeaker systems to each other unless they are in the same acoustic space, playing identical music, and both properly set up. The Magico Ultimate is very expensive and will come up short in a direct comparison with Klipsch Jubilees, should such a comparison ever occur. The Magico Ultimate is a boutique loudspeaker designed to appeal to gear snobs who buy on price - the higher the price the better the sound, or so they say.

 

To go along with the automotive analogy, the Magico may well be considered the Ferrari of loudspeakers, based on price, while the Klipsch is more like a Z06 Corvette - much less expensive, with better performance than Ferrari in nearly every area.

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