Random thoughts on our systems

[JimMeader]

I went to a Christmas Concert last night and the 100 piece plus orchestra was great as well as the sound system.

 

I started thinking about the concert hall and its setup. If you think of the last concert you went to and or even concert halls where was the sound coming from. Last night and most times the sound was coming from speakers located above the stage at or near the ceiling pointing down to the audience.

 

A lot of people are trying to replicate LIVE Music with our speakers yet we keep trying to do this with speakers sitting on stands or floor standing speakers. Why has no one used ceiling mounted speakers. To me Ceiling mounted speakers would have the best uninterrupted path to where we are sitting and listening. There would be no furniture in the way, nothing in the way of first reflection point etc.

 

I addition to this thought process what about putting a down firing sub woofer hung from the center of the ceiling. Think about it the sub sound waves are larger than the rest and would have the longest uninterrupted path if coming from the ceiling.

 

Your thoughts?????

Edited December 5, 2022 by JimMeader

[the real Duke Spinner]

5 minutes ago, JimMeader said:

I went to a Christmas Concert last night and the 100 piece plus orchestra was great as well as the sound system.

 

I started thinking about the concert hall and its setup. If you think of the last concert you went to and or even concert halls where was the sound coming from. Last night and most times the sound was coming from speakers located above the stage at or near the ceiling pointing down to the audience.

 

A lot of people are trying to replicate LIVE Music with our speakers yet we keep trying to do this with speakers sitting on stands or floor standing speakers. Why has no one used ceiling mounted speakers. To me Ceiling mounted speakers would have the best uninterrupted path to where we are sitting and listening. There would be no furniture in the way, nothing in the way of first reflection point etc.

 

I addition to this thought process what about putting a down firing sub woofer hung from the center of the ceiling. Think about it the sub sound waves are larger than the rest and would have the longest uninterrupted path if coming from the ceiling.

 

Your thoughts?????

Your crazy. 🙂

[JimMeader]

Yes, but still asking the question. if no one has done it how do we know it would not be better ???????

 

[Peter P.]

Hanging subwoofers in free space would require substantially increased power to reproduce low frequencies.

 

From an aesthetic perspective i.e., Wife Acceptance Factor, the concept would be a non-starter.

 

In most cases, listeners are interested in hearing sound direct from the performer i.e, nightclub or other small venue. Many performers' amps are at people height as well, as are most acoustic performances.

 

Your concept might have some merit if audio evolved into a multi-channel configuration like home theater. Also, your concept has merit because is shows that a lot of large venue amplified sound is coming from speakers in free space. Perhaps our audio systems' speakers should all be on stands away from walls for the best reproduction.

[Shakeydeal]

Don’t confuse sound reinforcement with sound reproduction. Two different animals……

[MeloManiac]

It's not a crazy thought. Back in the 70s and 80s, many people would hang their speakers against the ceiling. 

Of course, you can't do that with floorstanders...

[Khornukopia]

5 hours ago, JimMeader said:

I went to a Christmas Concert last night and the 100 piece plus orchestra was great as well as the sound system.

 

I started thinking about the concert hall and its setup. If you think of the last concert you went to and or even concert halls where was the sound coming from. Last night and most times the sound was coming from speakers located above the stage at or near the ceiling pointing down to the audience.

 

A lot of people are trying to replicate LIVE Music with our speakers yet we keep trying to do this with speakers sitting on stands or floor standing speakers ...

 

Your thoughts?????

 

Most of the music arriving at your ears should have been coming from the live orchestra on the stage (and the wall reflections).

 

A properly installed and adjusted sound reinforcement system should not overwhelm the "live" sound. Sometimes it depends a lot on your seating location in the concert hall.

 

Everyone should feel free to mount their home speakers wherever we want and/or can. Most people are just normally comfortable with their speakers at seated ear level.

 

[Islander]

I agree with the idea of having high-mounted speakers for similar reasons.  The oddly popular idea of having the tweeters at your ear level makes no sense to me.  I've tried it, and the effect it gives is that all the musicians are sitting down in front of you.  That's fine for acoustic folk music, or solo harp, or buskers, of course, but every other kind of music is performed on a stage, which is at a higher level   than you, so you're looking up at the players, unless you have box seats, naturally.

 

That's the reason that I put the K402/691 tweeters of my JubScala IIs on top of the complete LS2 cabinets.  This also locates them about even with the centreline of the 65" TV, which is a bit high, because it's sitting on a Belle Klipsch.  It makes a great combo centre-channel/TV stand.  The effect of this arrangement is that you look up, like you would in a cinema or music hall.  That more closely approaches the real thing.  It also approximates the height of the tweeter horns of actual Jubilees, which should be a good thing.  Besides, I have no room for the HF cabinets anywhere else, and JubScalas look really stubby with the huge horn on top of the roughly two foot/60 cm. tall bass horns.  There's a couple of pictures of that arrangement floating around, so you may have seen it.

 

However, having speakers all the way up at the ceiling is overdoing it.  This is because an actual music hall is far larger than most living rooms.  The ceiling-mounted speakers at a music hall are above the orchestra, but still as far away from you as the musicians.  Ceiling-mounted speakers in most living rooms would require people to crane their necks back if they want to look at the speakers.  Think about the difference in angles between PA/sound reinforcement speakers and you'll see that you'd probably need a 30 foot/9 meter long room to get it right.  As well, modern pro sound systems are line arrays, which have a very long vertical dimension, unlike a typical home speaker.  The pro speakers give you the sound from several heights, for consistent sound level at various distances from the stage.  The ideal in home speakers, on the other hand, is a point source of sound, not at all what a line array does.  As well, in a home situation there is generally just one row of listeners, once again different from a concert hall situation and its special audio system needs.

 

The idea of the ceiling-mounted subwoofer would be a non-starter in most homes.  After you'd bopped your head on it a few times, you'd bring it down.  Besides, the idea that a room has to be big enough to allow for the very long bass sound waves is easily disproven by checking out some high end headphones, which can produce plenty of deep bass.  It makes no sense to me either.  How can a 30-foot long bass sound wave fit inside a headphone ear cup?  And yet it does.

 

Besides, bass is not some abstract substance that exists apart form the orchestra or band.  It comes from bass instruments, so the sound should at least appear to come from their direction.  In my system, the subwoofers sit on small tables on thick Neoprene pads, which does two things:  first, it reduces the floor bounce/early reflections that you tend to get with floor-mounted subs, and second, it isolates the subs from the floor which should reduce the thudding bass that could keep my neighbours awake, since I live in an apartment.

 

So those are my thoughts about those ideas.

[Islander]

10 hours ago, Peter P. said:

Your concept might have some merit if audio evolved into a multi-channel configuration like home theater. Also, your concept has merit because is shows that a lot of large venue amplified sound is coming from speakers in free space. Perhaps our audio systems' speakers should all be on stands away from walls for the best reproduction.

 

Some speakers are designed to be placed at some distance from walls and floors, but Klipsch speakers, especially the Heritage Series models, are designed to use the walls to improve the bass response.  The prime example is the Klipschorn, of course, but all of them should be located near walls and corners, except for the Cornwall, which can be placed in a corner or along a wall., because that's how they're designed.

[Peter P.]

This conversation reminded me: I worked in a large stockroom with tall ceilings. After enduring a cheap radio for music in the room, I told my co-workers I would bring in a "real" stereo.

 

I brought in an old Pioneer receiver, and two cheap, single driver speakers. I hung the speakers from the overhead girders, strung roughly ten feet off the floor.

The sound was airy, spacious, with not a hint of reverb. Yeah, bass was not powerful but overall I would consider the sound "full range" for what it was.

 

I think speaker location in this case was the secret sauce.

[KT88]

11 hours ago, Shakeydeal said:

Don’t confuse sound reinforcement with sound reproduction. Two different animals……

Yes, I agree.

Apart from the optical and technical realisation of mounting the speakers on the ceiling at home, it would irritate me if the sound always (only) came from above. With my Underground Jubilees, the K402 horn is quite high above the ears when sitting, and I'm glad that the sound doesn't seem to come from above.

On a big stage, the conditions are different than at home. Most of the time, the sound of the mids and highs doesn't just come from above, but there are line arrays today many metres high that start a short distance from the stage floor and which nowadays can be digitally controlled in their dispersion behaviour and their target areas. When I was a stage hand 40 years ago, besides my studies, we set up PA systems that were not yet line arrays but still had a very good sound. These PAs were also "flown" next to the stage with chains attached to the ceiling. They were a transition between the very old school, where there were towers on the right and left, with bass, middle horns and tweeters, and today's line array systems. These Turbo Sound, Clare brothers and other branded systems of the 80's were many boxes on the left and right for the complete frequency range from about 80? hertz consisting of conventional basses with mid and high frequency horns. They also were „flown“ and I remember that the individual boxes were marked and carefully arranged. They all looked the same but there were boxes with different horns...with wide dispersion for the near audience and with narrow dispersion with only about 40 degrees for far away audience...and with dispersion for in between. 

So "mechanically by hand" one had rearranged for every other hall what today can be digitally aligned with regard to radiation.

On the floor, there used to be, and still are, the low bass systems in addition.
A good PA system does not sound "from everywhere" but the sound builds up and the aim is to achieve coherence in many places in a venue.
So it is a completely different objective to "generate" the sound as best as possible for a live concert or to reproduce it as best as possible at home. In a very simplified way, it seems to me that live with PAs, many sound origination points are put together to create a homogeneous sound impression where the distance is of help, and that at home (with stereo), ideally only one sound point is used on the left and right in order to simulate the fullness of the sound impression.

 

 

[michaelwjones]

6 hours ago, MeloManiac said:

Of course, you can't do that with floorstanders...

 

I think you'll find a fair number of photos showing Heresys and LaScalas hanging by chains, decorative or otherwise. In some of the larger Chipotles restaurants built in the mid teens, you’ll discover Heresy IIIs behind the wood panels in the drop valence. I kick myself for missing the raw birch, no risers, no grills deals on the surplus IIIs a dealer I know offered: $1000/pair.

 

And besides, we have direct/reflected sound provided by Bose 901s to replicate the sound of live music... did I just type that?

 

 

24 minutes ago, KT88 said:

A good PA system does not sound "from everywhere" but the sound builds up and the aim is to achieve coherence in many places in a venue.
 

 

Well put. Thanks.

[Racer X]

Music from the ceiling is department store sound and unnatural. 

 

I prefer my music to originate from in front of me.  Believe we are programmed to look towards the sound source for localization. 

[JimMeader]

Thank You all for the discussion.

 

I have 1987 La Scala's ( updated all 3  drivers and crossovers ) in a 17x20 room with 10 ft walls and then another 4 ft in a rounded ceiling on the 20 length .

 

The rounded ceiling has a significant impact on how the room is sounded as well as my MLP is 14 ft from the speakers with a 72 inch TV in between, and 10 ft wall to wall heavy curtains behind the speakers

 

Currently my La Scala's are 8 feet apart and sitting on a 12 inch risers, this location provides a very enjoyable room filling sound with a slightly elevated sound stage. A old Velodyne UDL 15 fills in the base.

 

This arrangement has come after months of trying to get the room effect to meet my needs.  I am a firm believer that your room is a major portion of the sound you hear.   BTW ,sounded terrible along the long wall due to the rounded ceiling. Also the the wall to wall curtain wall sounds better than the opposite bare wall

 

Once again Thanks for all your comments

[babadono]

Soffit mounted up and above the MLP?...yea nobody does that, its impossible, we'll all be killed..

[Marvel]

36 minutes ago, babadono said:

its impossible, we'll all be killed..

 

Only when they fall out onto the console. I'm pretty sure it cost more than my house.

[JimMeader]

@Babadono

 

I noticed you have brick in the lower half of your back wall, it seems that would cause hard surface bounce for a sound room ??????

[richieb]

Just last night we attended a jazz show in one of the smaller halls at the local junior college. Smaller compared to others in the complex but huge compared to home settings. I am constantly comparing my modest Jube rig to these live settings. It is an impossibility to replicate these enormous interior volumes to normal rooms, don’t care how they are “treated”. Ceilings of 40-50 feet, a 200 head capacity - its apples to watermelons. I do find the Jubes do remarkably well with un-amplified jazz quartets - sax/trumpet, upright bass, drums, piano. 
 

— Let me add that in hoping to replicate live sound at home I think if you can replicate the nuance of tone from individual instruments from your rig you’re getting to the heart of it. I’ve read and believe if you can closely replicate live acoustic, non-amplified,  piano you’re getting there. Upright bass and sticks striking drum heads are another. You are at the mercy of volumetric acoustics when hoping to replicate concert hall space. 

[MeloManiac]

9 hours ago, michaelwjones said:

In some of the larger Chipotles restaurants built in the mid teens, you’ll discover Heresy IIIs behind the wood panels in the drop valence

I read that article in the Klipsch blog a while ago. As far as I remember, these were no standard Heresy speakers, and they hung upside down, I mean with the woofer closest to the ceiling, which makes sense. 

 

[Tom05]

It’s really difficult to get  good sound in very large venues, home sized rooms pose relatively few problems for good sound . But in huge buildings intelligibility and clarity become a prime concern,  in very large  building venues you do not want concert sound unnecessarily bouncing around the building, instead you want the audience to hear as much direct sound as possible , so to help accomplish this , line arrays are frequently used . The line array will focus concert sound effectively at the audience, and away from reflective walls and ceilings , it will focus most of its energy into a  form  with enough width and depth to cover the audience . This arrangement will provide a high percentage of direct sound in relation to reflected sound, giving good clarity and intelligibility. There are other benefits, such as keeping the speakers a distance away from the closest seating .A line array will also project its output   to a  greater distance  . At home it shouldn’t be necessary to hang speakers from the rafters,as the concerns  listed above are absent, but some may like the effect . Big venues inside and outside, require specialized engineering and equipment for the  best sound .