- Posted by Music Man Bob (A) on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
Good afternoon all,
Back in the day, I worked as a salesperson at an audio salon in Washington DC on Sherman Ave. As far back as I can remember I loved great
sound. I could not stand listening to radios that was not tuned properly. Even when I want to visit friends. I found myself tuing their radios. People began not asking me back again. Later, I went to work selling audio equipment to include reel to reel tape recorders. What an exciting time for me. The salon was located on Sherman Ave in Washington DC.
We also sold various speaker systems to include, Electrovoice, Paul Klispch, Advent, Acoustic Research and a full line of KLH speakers.
I began building bass reflex and infinite baffle speakers as a hobby because I was never completely satisfied with what I heard from these speakers.
Here was/is the problem as exist today. Very few speakers are able to reproduce "Height". They can spread sound from behind and outside of speakers but have major problems with height.
I often wondered why, when I went to clubs to see some of my favorite jazz artist, all the musical ques were there. As I sat at a table mid-way the club I would look up at the Miles Davis, Billy Holiday, Clifford Brown or David (Fat Head) Newman on stage and enjoy. When I began playing records and CD's of these musicians I found myself looking down towards the floor at 3 feet images playing/singing hard but could not convince me I was listening to the real thing? I think the shortest musician I've seen was Art Blakey and he was over 3 feet tall (smile). At any rate, I wanted to be able to visualize the actual musician playing before m (as close as possible) in my living room.
By the way, I have a decent music system consisting of a Threshold amp, Classe pre-amp, Parasound Belt Drive CD Transport, DAC, Reel to Reel tape recorders, and a DIY turntable I built using the bearing and and 15Lb platter from my old (non-working) Elite Rock turntable, Benz cartridge and Mirage OM-9 speakers. Once I upgraded all the cables and interconnects I get a very satisfying sound.
As I began thinking about why I could not get the same sound staging I heard when I went to see a live classical or jazz music performance. I became more interested in hearing planar speakers. My friend Bhek took me to hear a set of Magnapan 1.6 speakers at a local salon. I was stunned at what I heard. I took a Billy Holiday recording with me. When we put that recording on it was as if the great lady was standing there in the room live. I looked at Bhek and said, Bhek, Billy Holiday sounds REAL! From then on I had to have a set of these speakers. I finally found a pair of MG-2's which Bhek and I delivered to Peter Gunn to Gunn.
I plan to post a review when I get them back and set up. Here is my question, why is it so difficult to get sound replete with depth, height and width from a set of good speakers? Don't beat me up too bad for asking this question and keep it as basic as you can please. I want to learn something from each post. Thanks much all.
Bob
An African American audio, classical & jazz music lover. I love all great jazz, classical and folk music.
Follow Ups:
- I was gonna suggest you get a pair of Magnepans... - Marc Bratton 20:51:55 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
...but you beat me to the punch. Maggies can do it! I think it's kinda absurd to think we're ever gonna get the sound of an orchestra or grand piano properly reproduced from a little wooden box stuffed with a six inch cone woofer and a 1 inch dome tweeter, regardless of their persuasion. The first time I ever heard a grand piano played thru a pair of Maggies, I knew why I was never convinced before.
- RE: I was gonna suggest you get a pair of Magnepans... - thedudeabides 14:35:07 07/18/10
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- In Reply to: RE: I was gonna suggest you get a pair of Magnepans... posted by Marc Bratton on July 17, 2010 at 20:51:55
Martin Logans pull off the same sense of image size, etc.
- RE: I was gonna suggest you get a pair of Magnepans... - thedudeabides 14:35:07 07/18/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Dawnrazor 17:37:41 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
Hey MMB,
I will be interested to see what you think of the image height on the magnestands. That is one of the 3 problems I had with them and for my biases, image height was the main factor in not going that route.
Hopefully yours will perform better than the ones I heard at PGs abode in that respect.
If they dont, I think I know how to fix them.
To your question all I can say is that for the most part the speakers that got image height right were all tall, and either dipole or bipole. Or like the Van L Speakerworks tweaked speakers had a tweeter that was bipole or dipole.
I for one agree with you and find it hard to listen to small sounding speakers. Sting is not 3ft tall!!!!
No one here remembers the bending of our minds
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 12:53:31 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
Ouch, you've asked one of the most complicated questions in audio! I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do a very good job of answering because this is a large topic and I really should be upstairs caulking the sink, but --
The brain localizes sound in two main ways. For left-right localization, it can use the difference in arrival time and intensity between sounds that arrive at the left and right ears. Forex, a sound that comes from right in front of you reaches both ears by an identical path whereas a sound to the left of you reaches the left ear directly and then has to go around the head to reach the right ear, which takes something like a thousandth of a second. So it's delayed and its level is attenuated by the shadow of the head. Two channel stereo handles this left-right timing and intensity stuff pretty well, in fact, you don't even need the timing info, just a shift in level between left and right will result in the sound seeming to move from one speaker to the other.
However, there's another aspect of localization. We only have two ears, so how can we determine distance, height, and front-back position? The reason we and chimpanzees have such funny looking ears is to help us locate a sound in 3 space by position and frequency dependent amplitude and phase changes. This was necessary because our ancestors lived in trees and had to know whether a leopard was growling above or below them -- you'll notice that animals that don't climb trees like dogs and cats have simpler ears which are optimized for locating sounds in a plane rather than a volume.
Anyway, the way our peculiarly shaped ears (and the head and the body) change the sound as a function of position is called the "head related transfer function" or HRTF. But the HRTF isn't for the most part picked up by conventional microphones and this deprives the brain of much of the information it uses for localization. It also makes it very difficult to use more than two channels to provide that information. For example, while with two speakers you can move the sound from left to right between them by changing amplitude and phase, if you try to record height information with two microphones, one above the other, and play it back with two speakers, one above the other, it doesn't work very well. The sound doesn't pan smoothly between the upper and lower speaker: in effect, you perceive height from only the actual locations of the speakers, rather than the space in-between them.
Because stereo doesn't record much by way of height information and arguably couldn't do a very good job of it even if you added two more speakers, height has to be faked. The first step is to put the speaker at the desired height of the performers -- generally about your own ear height or a bit above. A surprising number of speakers don't do that, and it always sounds funny to me. Then, you have to provide some kind of illusion of height, so that the sound doesn't seem to be emanating from a plane. To some extent, room acoustics help with this, the sound from box speakers in an anechoic chamber sounds like it's coming from a line in front of you. The room's reflections help provide some illusion of height, though it's really pretty random. Planar speakers do a better job of providing that illusion, perhaps because they're line sources and the brain receives cues that tell it that they have height, rather than being point sources. This can however produce some unfortunate effects, e.g., 8' tall mouths. And it's a sort of pseudo-height effect, it can't tell you for example that a sound is coming off the proscenium arch, an effect I've sometimes heard in concert halls when I closed my eyes. Still, on balance, I think line sources provide a more convincing illusion of height than boxes.
Depth seems to be judged largely on the basis of reverberant information. Why this is more apparent on some speakers than others is a matter of debate, but it seems to require amplitude and phase consistency between the two channels, physical symmetry, and also a fairly wide polar response so that reflections off the walls have a similar frequency characteristic to the direct sound. Also, it seems that those reflections have to be delayed by a few milliseconds to get past what's called the fusion range. Within the fusion range, the reflected sound -- reverberation -- is perceived as part of the original sound, but outside of the fusion range, it's perceived as reverberation and the brain uses it to extract depth cues. But the brain won't interpret it as reverberation if it emanates directly from the speakers! Hence the observation that if you set up dipoles outside, where there's nothing to reflect the sound, they lose most of their depth.
This is one of the main reasons why Maggies (and also boxes) should be set up at least 3' from the speaker wall and 2' from the side wall. More if possible. If too close, the sound will blur because the reflections will be within the fusion range. As the speakers get farther out, the brain starts interpreting the reflections as reverberation, and uses the reverb to recover depth cues and create a spacious soundstage. On a good recording, those depth cues aren't all simulated as some believe -- if you listen for example to the Stereophile test disk where a guy walks around the stage you can sense his distance.
Edits: 07/17/10
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 07:58:35 07/20/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
I play a bit with angling my panels in the vertical and find the effect on image height amazingly enlightening. When I shift the speakers, I realign them in the horizontal plane and then nudge them forward or backwards with shims to get a perfect vertical or very near that. Usually I allow a little forward lean so long as the image of a mono recording has no sense of dimensionality but is located smack in the middle of the speaker plane. That spot happens to be exactly on the CD player/transport control area. Normally it is 3-4 inches round. That indicates to me that everything is set evenly. All the drivers are aligned into the same focal spot in height and in horizontal placement.
When the speakers are leaning forward, the soundstage is lifted and the performers are elevated above me. When the speakers are tilted back, the soundstage shortens and the perspective becomes of a lower soundstage and somewhat further out sound.
When I used Vandersteen 2C, which are time aligned. I used to tune them so that the test signals on all frequencies aligned in the exact middle between them. On mono recordings, the image had height and depth but no real width - It seemed to be inside a narrow receding space, like the vanishing point on a classic painting's perspective. Low notes were stacked low and high notes were stacked somewhat higher. This produced walk through images. where you can listen at the "perfect" seat and then move about most of the room and even behind the speakers, and stand "inside" the images; like "being the cello".
Now I want to add to Josh's explanation the part where point source dynamic driver systems and planars differ as regards this. First we should think of a simple two mike recording in stereo. As we know, the height cues are in the frequency domain and timing. The microphones are placed at a substantial height (no body ever places them on the floor) where they can capture a natural or an exaggerated height signature in the FR balance of the recorded event, and capture the timing cues from floor reflections vs. direct sound. The height dimension information CAN be captured by the recording.
Here is the difference between a stack of point sources and the planar speakers. When a point sources produce their output of the FR and timing cues contained in the recording, they have a powerful directional element since they are being generated at a particular height. The superimposed height dimension cues from the point source's own height, proportionate the original cues on the recording to within the speakers height. On top of this, the speaker's structure as a stack of drivers with highs on top and lows on the bottom makes the violinist stand up and the contrabass lay down on the floor.
I have heard D'Appolito speakers do better on the height dimension, but they had to be mounted fairly tall.
When we produce the same signals out from a line source speaker, the one thing the speaker does NOT produce is its own height signature. Though there are floor and ceiling reflections, they are roughly symmetrical (unless you have very tall ceilings) in the height dimension. Thus the entirety of the FR and timing related height cues in the recording can reach the listener unadulterated. And voila...Natural height.
In the time aligned speakers, you get some height effect, but the violinist is always standing up.
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 10:25:31 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Satie on July 20, 2010 at 07:58:35
I've noticed a similar image shift phenomenon when the speakers are repositioned laterally. The ear seems to create a virtual speaker at an angle intermediate to the first speaker wall reflection and the loudspeakers. I suspect that this effect will diminish as the speakers are moved further from the speaker wall and out of the fusion range.
From a geometric perspective, an infinite line source should reproduce a source at an infinite distance or of infinite height. In practice, of course, the line sources don't extend all the way from the floor to the ceiling, and floor and ceiling reflections fall off. Still, I think the absence of a clear speaker height signature is an interesting and plausible explanation for the superior ability of line sources to reproduce height. Standard microphones don't capture the frequency-dependent HRTF cues (a sliding notch filter in the highs will move perceived height up and down as you raise and lower the center frequency), but they can certainly capture the floor reflections that are instrumental in allowing the ear to gauge height by detecting path length difference, as well as the other response differences to which you referred. Unfortunately, microphones are typically flown above the front of the stage precisely to avoid the floor reflection. In my experience, this results in a skewed perspective that makes aural sense only if you pretend that you're standing with Socrates in a basket above the stage, where the microphones are.
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 10:43:12 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 21, 2010 at 10:25:31
I thought that too, that the high up mics will not capture the floor reflections, but that is exactly what they do. That is what the Decca recording engineers said, ca 1979.
They catch the first reflection from the stage/studio floor and avoid reflections from the hall seating area - which is empty during most recordings. When the hall is packed with people, the seating area does not have any floor reflections because we as concert goers are very good diffusers and absorbers. Unfortunately, you can't lower the mics then because then you capture audience noise.
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 11:14:42 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Satie on July 21, 2010 at 10:43:12
I hadn't thought of that, but it makes perfect sense. So you'd still capture the path length difference, albeit from the imaginary balcony perspective.
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 11:42:50 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 21, 2010 at 11:14:42
Yup, but you don't really get that perspective on panel speakers, you do get that perspective (very strongly) on minimonitors and associated mini on top of woofer box speakers like the WATT/Puppy. Squished images as viewed from the balcony, like so many sub midgets.
When altering the vertical orientation of the panels backwards to get an above stage perspective, you do not get a balcony seat, it just seems like you took the orchestra's picture from an upfront and slightly elevated perspective and just look at the picture from above. The depth vector simply moves with the speaker angle and you do not get the lifting of back of the orchestra instruments but instead they shift down along with the front instruments (soloist in particular).
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 11:42:50 07/21/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 11:14:42 07/21/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 10:43:12 07/21/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 10:25:31 07/21/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Music Man Bob 06:30:38 07/20/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
Hello Josh,
Thank you so much for this excellent explanation regarding how we hear. It is a clear piece that gives me much to ponder regarding this area. I appreciate you taking the time to put this together. You and all the others here is why I enjoy (most of the time) coming to this forum for what I want to know about Magnapan speakers.
Bob
An African American audio, classical & jazz music lover. I love all great jazz, classical and folk music.
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 09:51:23 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 20, 2010 at 06:30:38
As I said, definitely more fun to write this than caulking my sink. :-) Which however I had to do in the end . . .
- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - josh358 09:51:23 07/21/10
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- Remember the Snell loudspeaker with the floor mounted - gymwear5@hotmail.com 15:01:10 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
tweeter and the reflective "chin" it had. Think it was a model 1 but my mind wanders... What I do remember in a head to head with Vandersteen 2C's at havens and Hardesty in Huntington Beach, CA was they both presented an image that was high... 2C's I understand - a tall speaker - but the Snells, only 32 inches high or so and the tweeter on the Floor!
Edits: 07/19/10
- RE: Remember the Snell loudspeaker with the floor mounted - josh358 09:31:14 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Remember the Snell loudspeaker with the floor mounted posted by gymwear5@hotmail.com on July 19, 2010 at 15:01:10
Truly weird! Sort of pressure zone approach, and I gather the panel in front is a wedge-shaped reflector. How that would fool the brain into misgauging the height I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with suppression of the normal floor reflection, which apparently plays a role in establishing the height of a source.
- image - gymwear5@hotmail.com 15:12:50 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Remember the Snell loudspeaker with the floor mounted posted by gymwear5@hotmail.com on July 19, 2010 at 15:01:10
Snell Type 1
- RE: Remember the Snell loudspeaker with the floor mounted - josh358 09:31:14 07/21/10
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- RE: Excellent post. /nt/ - powermatic 20:56:10 07/18/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
.
"dammit"
- RE: Excellent post. /nt/ - josh358 09:49:53 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Excellent post. /nt/ posted by powermatic on July 18, 2010 at 20:56:10
Thanks, it's amazing what you find the time to do when you're trying to avoid caulking the sink. :-)
- RE: Excellent post. /nt/ - josh358 09:49:53 07/19/10
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- the angle of the funnel - wazoo 20:20:39 07/18/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
Those auricles of ours help us train our eyes on the source of a sound in three dimensional space. Of course, we can articulate our heads with speed and precision - good thing too, since our more complex ears are stationary buggers. My point is that many ground dwelling organisms have just as acute a need for knowing the vertical origin of a sound as an arboreal creature does. Those same leapords also pounce onto ground traversing prey from those trees (or a big rock, or...).
Have you ever watched a dog or a cat track a fly? It's quite remarkable - I sure as hell can't do it. It's not the result of visual superiority - I guarantee you that. If I pay attention to one of my dogs, I can catch a glimpse of the damn fly every once in a while and follow it briefly. Then I have to look at that dog again - her ears will be pointed right at it. If it whizzes right past my head, I can hear it. When she loses its position (because it flew out of range), her ears pitch rapidly to and fro while she adjusts the angle of her head - and she locates it again (in three dimensional space).
---
Otherwise, that was one hell of an awesome post - well reasoned and informative.
"Jazz is not dead - it just smells funny" FZ
Edits: 07/19/10
- RE: the angle of the funnel - josh358 09:47:02 07/21/10
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- In Reply to: RE: the angle of the funnel posted by wazoo on July 18, 2010 at 20:20:39
I've read that that's why dogs tilt their heads when they're puzzled -- to gauge the height of the sound. (I assume it would do the same thing for vision.) And of course cats and dogs have, besides interaural time and frequency differences, the ability to home in on and amplify a sound by swiveling their ears. Whereas as you point out higher primates have to move their entire heads to improve localization. I'm guessing that the higher primate arrangement is better at providing an ongoing 3D image in the cacaphony of the forest, while the more conventional mammalian arrangement is better at amplifying the sounds of distant or quiet prey. It also seems that lemurs and some monkeys retain pointed ears, while other monkeys have ears that are intermediate. Perhaps interpretation of the more complex HRTF requires a larger brain?
- RE: the angle of the funnel - josh358 09:47:02 07/21/10
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- What he said... - slapshot 13:53:34 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by josh358 on July 17, 2010 at 12:53:31
...well said, but I would like an update on the sink! :)
- RE: What he said... - josh358 14:31:25 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: What he said... posted by slapshot on July 17, 2010 at 13:53:34
Currently, I'm transitioning from finding excuses to put off caulking the sink to deciding it's too late in the evening to caulk the sink. :-\
- RE: What he said... - josh358 14:31:25 07/17/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - Satie 07:58:35 07/20/10
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- RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music - DrChaos 11:11:52 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
"Here is my question, why is it so difficult to get sound replete with depth, height and width from a set of good speakers."
Maybe the answer is simple: most of them aren't high enough. :) :) :) :)
- RF noise is part of the problem. - Al Sekela 09:56:40 07/17/10
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- In Reply to: RE: Height Ques When Listening To Music posted by Music Man Bob on July 17, 2010 at 09:13:12
I don't know why, but RF noise pollution on the AC ground tends to cause a lowered sound image.
- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - Music Man Bob 10:47:35 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: RF noise is part of the problem. posted by Al Sekela on July 17, 2010 at 09:56:40
Good Monday morning all,
I want to thank each of you for taking the time to help me understand this area. During my time as a salesperson I got use to accepting short musicians, big bands, major classical music artists while demoing our book shelf speakers. Even when I was blessed to get a pair of Infinity RS2B's the musicians grew a bit but were not as represented at one of the many concerts or jazz shows around the Washington DC area. In the early days (1970's to early 1980's... I left to go to Germany in 1982)several HI-FI shows came to the Washington DC area. Attending some of these shows I was fortunate enough to hear the early Acoustats, Dalquist DQ-10, Magnapan MG-1, Magneplanar Tympani 1, the early Dayton Wrights, Beveridge 25's and the Infinity Servo-Static. I must say, I was able to hear images more closely related to actualy size as the speakers got larger and taller. Maybe my problem over the years was, I related image size to speaker size? Thanks again all for your responses.
Bob
Bob
An African American audio, classical & jazz music lover. I love all great jazz, classical and folk music.
- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - josh358 10:49:50 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: RF noise is part of the problem. posted by Music Man Bob on July 19, 2010 at 10:47:35
I don't remember hearing the RS2B's, but I had a friend with a pair of RS1B's and they had the annoying characteristic that the higher the frequency, the higher the image! I remember finding the effect very disturbing.
- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - Music Man Bob 15:57:45 07/19/10
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- In Reply to: RE: RF noise is part of the problem. posted by josh358 on July 19, 2010 at 10:49:50
Hello Josh,
I took the RS2B's over to Germany with me and was fairly happy with them. Actually, there were some some problem with discontinuity between drivers (not too much) and rotting surrounds of the woofers. I've heard some old KLH 6's and AR-3's that did not have that problem. By the time I returned to the USA in 1987 both speakers required extensive work. I decided not to bother and trashed them. I then purchased the Mirage OM-9's and have lived with them until I heard the SMG's and 1.6 Maggies. I also briefly heard a pair of 2.6's and was floored by the sound. That's why I had to have a pair of Maggies. I loved their expansive sound field to include the correct height of the musicians. Even when I am sitting, the height of the musicians did not change. What a speaker!!! Thanks for your comments sir.
Bob
An African American audio, classical & jazz music lover. I love all great jazz, classical and folk music.
- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - Music Man Bob 15:57:45 07/19/10
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- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - josh358 10:49:50 07/19/10
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- RE: RF noise is part of the problem. - Music Man Bob 10:47:35 07/19/10
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