The larger the horn the lower in frequency you can have directivity control. Add a cardioid mechanism and you can control directivity even lower in frequency.
That is why I brought up the Klipsch Jubilee. It has a giant 36" horn that gives horn loading and directivity control down to 300Hz or something.
I disagree that all home audio speakers are poorly engineered. Some companies produce speakers for home audio with astonishingly low distortion and near perfect directivity. They are the ones who know what they are doing. Revel for example produces speakers that measure better than anything from JBL in terms of directivity and pretty much match them or beat them in terms of distortion at lower levels. Directivity control doesn’t just mean horn loading to control directivity to a narrow pattern. It means engineering a speaker that performs well in every direction. Like I said pro audio and PA speakers disregard this because it’s not important for that application. It is very important for home audio and the science clearly shows that people can hear it. I can hear it.
I’m not an audiophile. You’re right about audiophiles. You go to one of their shows and it’s just a circus of old farts who have no idea what they are talking about. Outside of a few rooms like Magico everything sounds like shit.
But there is a segment of home audio that cares about performance and understands good sound and the engineering that goes into producing it. They aren’t audiophiles. They aren’t DIY people. They are way up there on the IQ bell curve, so there aren’t very many of them.
By your own admission the perfect speaker for your application doesn’t exist. That’s why you should design and build it yourself. You know how.
if you have to spend so much money to get directivity control to extend by half an octave lower perhaps your money would be better spent simply investing in acoustical room treatments …
yes we want to optimize directivity - but at what cost ? at some point it simply isn’t worth it anymore. if you have to double the size of the speaker it isn’t worth it. you can control those room reflections with Auralex foam etc.
in a typical recording studio there will probably be more money in acoustical treatments than in speakers, because they aren’t doing it for bragging rights - they care about results. acoustical treatments make a real difference. they are also expensive, which is why nobody uses them.
but if you’re going to blow thousands anyway i would rather spend it on Auralex foam than on some foolish horns, which may or may not actually be better than a cheaper speaker.
knowing what they’re doing isn’t the issue. JBL knows what they are doing, trust me - i read many of their research papers. the problem is giving a shit. Revel and B&W aren’t bad but in the end they both put style before performance.
i don’t know where you’re getting the idea that pro audio doesn’t care about off-axis response. i just told you that all serious pro audio speakers from JBL and RCF include directivity plots in their spec sheets while NO home audio speakers do, not Revel not B&W - NONE.
off-axis response is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT in pro-audio. more important than in home audio or even studio sound. because in pro audio THE ENTIRE VENUE is filled with people - not one location - but EVERY location. EVERY LOCATION must get good sound. there is no application in which off-axis response and directivity is more important than prosound.
however, as i also pointed out, in prosound the space is divided among many speakers so the goal is for each speaker to have even coverage over some area, and then the next speaker takes over for the next area. whereas in home and studio sound the speaker is optimized to deliver flat response at only a single location, but power response must be optimized too because that’s what drives the reverberant field of the room, which actually dominates the on-axis response in all but the largest rooms.
with enough room treatment though you could pad the reverberant field down and make on-axis response dominant, which i think would be a better use of money than building some horns from the 60s.
no matter how perfectly optimized the speaker if your room isn’t treated your signal is still going to get smeared in time and space as it bounces around. and if you treat the room adequately then perhaps at that point a good prosound speaker will perform as intended.
i never argued that it isn’t important. my argument is that it is equally if not more important in prosound because in prosound off-axis sound actually directly hits listeners who simply don’t happen to be right in front of the speaker. in home audio off-axis sound only hits walls, from which it is then reflected onto the speaker IF the walls aren’t treated with foam etc.
i already told you how.
1 - get a good DSP based prosound speaker “top” ( speaker designed to sit on top of a sub )
2 - design large DIY subs for it using 18" or 21" push-pull drivers from JBL or Eighteen Sound Tetracoil
3 - treat the living shit out of the room using Auralex foam, use a thick carpet, bass traps etc.
i think you under-estimate the care that goes into optimizing off-axis response of prosound speakers. if you read papers by JBL and L-Acoustics that is pretty much the ONLY thing they care about ! that and distortion.
it’s ironic that these prosound companies keep churning out research papers on the very subjects you claim they do not care about.
i read like a 50 page long paper by JBL or L-Acoustics ( don’t remember ) about directivity of arrays that contained more information ( formulas, charts etc ) in it than everything ever published by all home-audio companies on all subjects combined … and it was on ONLY directivity …
i read a paper by Beyma on a form of distortion ( subharmonic distortion ) that no audiophile has ever even heard about … and Beyma ( a prosound company ) publishes research papers on how to control it …
Prosound is the way …
all knowledge in Audio starts with Prosound, specifically with arrays, and then trickles down to Studio Sound, then PA …
meanwhile home audio folks just listen to vinyl records using vacuum tube amplifiers and horn speakers and other 50 year old technology …
i know i mentioned that before, but felt like reminding you …
Directivity control is important for pro sound as it pertains to getting even sound coverage withing the region where the speaker has pattern control. In pro sound settings directivity outside that region isn’t important because like I said the system is outside and the sound energy outside of that region is just lost and doesn’t reflect back towards the listeners. Pro sound speakers use line arrays and cardioids to control directivity so that as much of the system’s output is focused on the audience as possible. In an indoor environment, the sound within the listening window dominates reflected sound enough that it isn’t important to control reflections beyond the extent to which they interfere with intelligibility.
Harman has published research on the importance of directivity just like pro audio companies publish their research on trasducer design and what not.
In the context of home audio, the directivity of the speaker in every direction is what is important. Speakers are placed in rooms where sound bounces off of walls and the listener hears the sound in a reflective environment. It’s not about pattern control for projecting sound to a large audience. It’s about the way we perceive sound as the sum of direct sound and reflected sound. That research produced the spinorama. When we talk about the directivity of a speaker in its spinorama we are talking the balance of direct to reflected sound in every direction.
Pro audio companies publish the directivity measurements for their speakers that matter for the intended use case, namely the -6dB point for every frequency horizontally and vertically. This tells you the pattern control of the speaker and allows you to choose the right speaker for the application.
Most of them don’t publish Spinorama measurements of their speakers. JBL doesn’t publish that information anymore. Most of them probably don’t even have the measurement to begin with because it’s not important.
Using acoustic treatment to fix all the directivity problems of these speakers in reflective spaces would not produce better sound. It’s not just a reflection here and there. The combined sound power response is too messy and would require absorption placed everywhere in the room and create an overdampened room. Such rooms don’t sound good.
Granted, most audiophile and home audio companies don’t publish directivity measurements or spinoramas either. Revel publishes spinorama measurements for their speakers. They don’t publish directivity measurements, however. KEF publishes everything, including their research on transducer design and speaker design in general. KEF speakers also have remarkably low distortion and basically perfect directivity measurements and spins. It’s a shame they don’t make active versions.
Most of the real research in audio goes into pro sound, yes. That’s where the money is. However, there is real research in home audio and good speakers designed for home will most definitely be better than pro sound speakers if the purpose is critical listening.
( these measurements are from AudioScienceReview which is another forum i was banned from. i saw this exact set of measurements there and talked about it previously - the dip at 600 hz and the horror above 9 khz )
so they measurements for most of the speakers that are of interest to me, and i haven’t seen most of these measurements before …
this will certainly be interesting to examine !
i will stop commenting now because this is actually important for me personally. i don’t wan’t to get carried away with an internet flame war and end up brainwashing myself into believing something that isn’t true. i need to take time to look at these measurements from the perspective of choosing a speaker for myself rather than from the perspective of winning online arguments, because one is more important than the other.
if i keep debating this it will cloud my judgement resulting in me making a mistake i will have to live with for many years.
i am suspending judgement until i have had ample time to study and understand all the data on that spinorama aggregator.
feel free to post links to spinorama measurements of any speakers that you find interesting just like i posted the links to the speakers on there that i find interesting above.
basically i need to stop talking now because there is too much data to process and if i rush with judgement then i will feel the pressure to not contradict what i said earlier and then i will end up like all the other idiots who believe in nonsense.
i need to give the information time to naturally percolate through the brain without forcing it so that any ideas i may get in the process are authentic and not a product of external pressure or mistakes made in a hurry …
the reason i was able to post so much text in a short span of time earlier in this thread is because i was expressing opinions that i already had formed previously over the course of decades …
but now that new information has come to light it is time to pause and reflect, which means stop typing …
you can continue, specifically maybe you know some back story about how all this spinorama came about to be, but i am reserving all further judgement until i had time to look at all the information and i’m not going to press myself to do so in a hurry because then i am just going to fill my mind with garbage rushed judgements and i am not into that sort of thing …
all my thoughts must be pure and on the highest level and thus they cannot be rushed …
it seems to me that Spinorama is simply a website that aggregates measurements found elsewhere on the internet, but that is irrelevant. it clearly states who produced the measurements ( are they manufacturer’s own measurements or 3rd party measurements ) which is great. the measurements are obviously not all taken in exactly identical conditions but there is enough similarity in measurement conditions to be able to extract some meaningful information from comparisons.
well yeah they post measurements that simplify the installer’s job. the technician / engineer needs to know the coverage angle to know how many speakers must be placed where. the crowd is fairly good at absorbing sound so if the place is packed it will be in effect acoustically treated as well as a recording studio.
it doesn’t seem like there is any such thing as “spinorama measurements” but i understand what you’re saying. the types of measurements that spinorama likes to aggregate. typically the more high-end the prosound speakers the more measurements they will have, as they are targeting more highly professional installers and have to justify the higher price somehow and in the prosound world unlike in audiophool world you can’t justify the price with just marketing BS. in prosound you’re basically paying for directivity.
by law in many parts of developed world you now can’t exceed 100db(A) at a concert AT ANY POINT in the audience. which means that getting loud isn’t about having louder speakers anymore ( as they can easily hit much higher than 100 db ) but about having the most precise directivity control that can eliminate illegally loud hot spots. i am told modern setups achieve remarkably even coverage in the quest to get the average level as close to 100 db as possibly without blowing by 100 db in the hot spots.
the level of engineering that goes into this is far beyond anything found in any home speaker, but i understand your argument that these aren’t the same goals. that for home use it is the POWER RESPONSE that matters, not even coverage. i accept that argument.
i keep hearing this argument that overdampened rooms don’t sound good - but i never heard of anybody actually trying it - how do they know ?
i never ever seen an audophile do proper room treatment - instead they simply state that it would only make things worse.
i can definitely think of ways a room treatment could make things worse though … when you have a speaker with barely any high frequency off-axis energy and then you plaster the walls with wafer thin foam that only absorbs high frequencies you are just going to exacerbate the problem of power response already lacking in high frequencies …
you would instead have to be intelligent … you would have to perhaps pick a speaker with a healthy amount of high frequencies in power response and then instead of using large surface area of thin foam use thick blocks of foam in the corners that will absorb less but do so over a wide and even range of frequencies …
or maybe you can go further and actually shape room response by choosing where to put the foam by studying the polar plots and identifying problem areas and applying solutions only where necessary …
you OWN the room - its YOURS - you can do anything you want. some poor guy installing an array rig in a sports stadium has no control over the venue. your problem is easier not harder. you can control where your listening position is, what acoustical treatments are placed where …
i don’t buy the argument that room treatment will just make things worse. nobody even tried, let alone has done so intelligently. they just say it won’t work because they don’t want to spend money and effort because they know the bragging rights come from silver cables not acoustical treatments. because silver is expensive and foam isn’t and audiophools want to signal that they’re rich so obviously silver > foam. duh.
pound of feathers vs pound of lead.
what idiot would spend $10,000 on foam impressing nobody ( it’s just foam, duh ! ) when you can spend $1,000 on silver and impress everybody ( wow silver so fancy wow ). it’s just a bad deal for them from perspective of bragging rights to do room treatment so they simply make up the BS excuse that it wouldn’t work …
SOUR GRAPES
yeah KEF, Neumann and Genelec measurements look good but they are small and expensive.
Romy the Cat referred to this as “oscilloscope like listening” …
you are supposed to enjoy music not analyze it …
accuracy isn’t everything. dynamics and loud bass are far more important for ENJOYMENT of music than accuracy is. accuracy is important for MIXING / MASTERING tracks, which is why Neumann is a studio monitor not a speaker designed for clubs where people go to have a good time.
studio monitors are tools for ANALYZING recordings.
home speakers are tools for MAKING ONESELEF APPEAR HIGH CLASS.
PA / Prosound speakers are tools for making people HAVE THE TIME OF THEIR LIFE.
just why would anybody do critical listening at home ?
even a bona-fide autist like me has grown out of that phase where i used to use studio monitors at home because i wanted the most accurate sound reproduction.
critical listening should be done on studio monitors in the actual studio, not at home. and it should be done by people who are getting paid to do it. you should literally be paid to listen to sterile and brittle studio monitors that measure perfectly flat from every angle but don’t have the rich fullness of audiophile speakers let alone bass you can feel in your stomach as with prosound speakers.
home speakers are basically just fancy furniture that signal your taste and sophistication and can act as conversation starters.
PA / Prosound speakers are the ONLY speakers designed for actually ENJOYING music, which is why they are the only speakers that interest me.
that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a glitch in the matrix and somebody who didn’t get the memo doesn’t accidentally produce an actually good speaker for home. it can certainly happen. he will be out of business within 5 years tops though.
i think your problem is that you’re over-analyzing the technical aspects of speaker design and under-estimating the effects of marketing forces. a home speaker is 5% engineering and 95% marketing. you’re focusing on the 5% and ignoring the 95%. a prosound speaker is 80% engineering and 20% marketing and you’re complaining that this engineering is for a slightly different application than yours.
yes that is true, of that 80% of engineering only about half applies to your application. that’s still 40%. on the other hand if the home speaker is 100% targeted at home use it is still only at 5% because the other 95% was eaten by marketing.
you must be thinking - but what if a home speaker was designed with performance in mind rather than marketing ? well who exactly would buy this speaker ? EVEN I WOULD NOT BUY IT. because there is something called ECONOMIES OF SCALE. the number of people like me who demand a properly engineered speaker at home is so low that we can never support the development costs of such a speaker. i would much rather buy a Prosound speaker from a big player like JBL that i know will not go belly up the next year when i need replacement parts. not to mention i can always sell that JBL speaker because there is an actual market for it whereas you would never be able to either fix or sell your unicorn speaker that was designed for critical listening at home.
you can’t just build a great product and expect people to magically appreciate it. the world doesn’t appreciate the best people - it appreciates the biggest frauds and murderers. same with speakers.
the speaker you’re waiting for would be like the second coming of Jesus if it happened. it might happen but it’s highly unlikely.
on other hand speakers like Yamaha DZR 315 you can buy from Amazon or anywhere else without any problem and when paired with some good subs and room treatment 9 out of 10 people will tell you they sound better than what anybody needs.
yes you can nit pick and find flaws in the performance and maybe you can even train yourself to hear those flaws - but what for ? to impress deaf audiophiles on the internet ?
only teenagers and people on drugs even enjoy music in the first place, and they care far more about loudness and bass than measurements. if you’re not building a system that is going to be ENJOYED you’re wasting money IMO.