Speaker Asylum

I look for them

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Jon L

In Reply to: RE: Why don't we see more these directivity plots? posted by E-Stat on September 05, 2024 at 08:16:01

in speaker reviews. Multiple reviewers do include directivity plots, but then again that's not the whole story, either, especially when actual room interaction is so influential on the final subjective sound.

Follow Ups:

RE: I look for them - Inmate51 08:05:02 09/09/24 (0)
Not only the subjective perception, but the sound arriving at a person's ears can also be objectively measured and analyzed via four-dimensional (up/down, left/right, front/back, time) measurement. Our brain processes the received sound, integrates some over very short time periods (milliseconds), and perceives later arriving sounds as separate and distinct. Both tonal quality and perception of detail are greatly affected by the room.
In the case of a hifi system, the loudspeaker, being the primary sound source, determines what sound gets "sent" to the various room surfaces (and the furnishings within it), and, in turn, the room surfaces (and furnishings within it) determine what happens to the impinging sound - how much is reflected and diffused, how much is abosrbed, and how much is transmitted through the surfaces. These characteristics vary dramatically at various frequencies.
This is why the directional characteristics of a loudspeaker are so very important when considering how "the system" will sound in any given room. As Kal Rubinson succinctly wrote (which is highly unusual for a reviewer!) in his recent reply, "room interaction is the reason that directivity is relevant".
But room acoustics and loudspeaker interaction aren't shiny cool objects to capture the mind of most people, including audiophiles. "Equipment" is much more fun to read about and "experiment" with and talk about. ;)
Here is a link to an acoustics analyzer which may interest some folks here. I first saw it at AES 2014 in L.A.. I was so excited about it because it was the realization of an idea I had back in the 1970s, but never had the resources to pursue. It's based on a tetrahedron array of microphones, so that directional information can be extracted from the four signals. Spectral information can subsequently be extracted from that. Yeehaa!! Although, I don't know what it's capabilities are in small-ish rooms, such as a home living room, because of the very short time differences involved. Maybe somebody here will look into that. (Disclaimer: Michael Gerzon developed the first tetrahedron mic array for audio recording. But I don't think he ever tried to use it for acoustical analysis.)

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Edits: 09/09/24
Room interaction is the reason that directivity is relevant. (NT) - Kal Rubinson 14:30:32 09/08/24 (0)

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