Good secondhand speakers for £6-700... suggestions?

Go and ring up alan shaw of harbeth...he knows all about this stuff...he reckons he can idenitfy the cone material simply by listening to it.

I am not sure what he means by this, I can hear a slight tubbyness on polypropylene woofers on drums, makes them sound like tupperware is being struck...but as to others? which instruments, what colourations...

he reckons its the molecular structure or going back further into the union of buddhism and fundamental physics, the vibrations of the individual particles

it may be just possible to do it now with mathematical modelling, but I doubt it would be quite the same....you take into account each and every factor affecting a speaker...box, fill, woofer, magnet, voice coil, crossover, everything, simulate it mathematically, and then use a DSP to reproduce the emulation on demand. actually, alesis tried with one of their speakers, dunno how successful it was....bit more simple tho' just the frequency response

 

It can't be done because emulating the frequency response of a loudspeaker will not tell its whole story.

Each drive unit has its own timbre, distortions, dispersion characteristics, etc. The crossovers impose their own phase and amplitude issues on the signal and even the combinations of driver and crossovers have their own sonic signatures.

Enclosures, whether they're sealed, ported, TLs, horns, open baffles or panels each impose their character on the sound and each interacts in a different way with the listening room. If an enclosure has a resonance caused by an internal standing wave at say, 1kHz, this could reveal itself by a dip in the frequency response. You could mimic this electronically but keen listening would reveal differences.

Each different enclosure/driver combination has different diffraction step characteristics, often leading to combing effects throughout the spectrum. Mimic the diffraction and you'd either be able to come up with a similar nearfield response or in-room energy levels but not both - and that's assuming that the device you're using as an emulator has no diffraction characteristics of its own.

I could go on but I'm sure that you get my general point. You may be falling into the same trap as many amplifier manufacturers did in the 1970s (mostly but not exclusively Japanese). In those days, amps were generally judged solely by their harmonic and intermodulation distortion content. By using enough negative feedback in the circuitry, many manufacturers reduced harmonic and IM distortion to .001% (for x watts at 1kHz). They sounded like shit though. As W-M said "they spit out a lovely non involving stream of notes". It ain't music.

I'm not saying that it will never be possible. After all, cd technology which was launched as "perfect sound forever" has now reached a stage where it is at least listenable. I'm just saying that at this stage in the game we don't even know enough about the types of distortion out there and their effects on the musical illusion. The technology of measurement hasn't yet reached the stage where measurements can tell us everything about the sound of a loudspeaker as it's perceived by a human listener.

We can't emulate what we haven't yet discovered.

 

Get down shep perfectly feesable Steve, Datty boy, back to studio and av land for you, and more studio please, poor effort 3/10 must try harder

 

so erm....... how's the speaker search coming along then Duncan

 

Henry, "let no one else's work evade your eyes"...

I thought it was worth repeating because it is true.

One other thing which seems to be a constant refrain in Hi-Fi-Gamma-Minus is the good old 'music' vs 'hi-fi' thing. This concept that a good hi-fi might not sound musical has caught on on this (and other) internet chat rooms, too. That's really my definition of a bad hi-fi, and culprits that come to mind include (continued page 94)

If you can't understand that a good hi-fi will sound realistically like real music, i.e. it will have great 'musicality', then I'll go and get me coat.

 

I think I've missed something. Who said that a good hi-fi might not sound musical?

 

Well, I don't know how you've missed it 7V, but people are saying things like:

'it sounded good in a hi-fi sort of way, but it wasn't musical '

...and other such guff.

 

Bub

You are a Hifi first type of person. Nothing wrong in that but you just need to recognise that Hifi and musicality are two different animals.

Regards

Mick

 

actually, I am not sure he is...its all about words and understandings...I know what sort of sound i am after, I can't really articulate it easily, but I know now what ISN'T that when I hear it.
His definiition of accuracy may not be what that brings to your mind...

 

I suspected that many people might have a different (even inaccurate ) interpretation of the word accurate.

To me, an "accurate" system accurately reproduces the music on the recording - the essence of high fidelity, being faithfulness to the original sound (whether that's a live event or a studio master tape).

If a system doesn't sound musical (whatever that means) or doesn't sound anything like the original musical event then it cannot possibly be accurate.

As for speakers, I don't really care what they speaker like. It may well be flat from 20Hz to 20kHz but if it isn't giving me a faithful represenation of the original musical event (rest of the system notwithstanding) then it simply is not accurate.

Michael.

 

Even the magazines are doing it now

Michael.

 

Why don't we then start our own magazine, and write the articles? we have loads of knowledge between us, and it looks like we are ahead already of the mags. in that respect...a lot of them are just professional journalists...at least we are enthustasts

 

Splendid Idea Ian , and when you wnat a total contradictory lab report, that says it's fab, but sounds shite, we'll only be too please help

 

Ridiculous Idea I'm afraid. Just imagine the cost of Proofing WM's colourful if illegible prose.

 

Re: Bub

You see, this is exactly what I mean. Honestly Mick you should be ashamed of that, and Hi-Fi+ should be ashamed of their scribblings on this subject. I agree entirely with what Michael wrote about accuracy, this is what hi-fi should be all about rather than ramblings about the mythical concept of 'musicality'.

A flat response is the way to start, on top of that you need good timing, realistic dynamics and lack of overhang, distortion or coloration. That's it, there's nothing else. If you have all those things, believe me Mick et al., it will sound like music.

 

Re: Re: Bub

Sadly oh Satanic one, there is no speaker available that doesn't suffer from frequency abherrations, cone distortion, material colouration to some degree or other. So your vision of sonic utopia might well be delightful but it is unattainable.

To give you an idea, one of the reasons for the BBC dip is that many cone materials exhibit audible distortion around 3khz, where the ear is most sensitive. So everything is a compromise, and IMO low distortion and excellent performance in the time domain are at least as important as the frequency response in music replay.

Do remember that you are not listening to the original recording, even with your ATC Uberlautschpekers. You are listening to a set of distortions and aberrations tuned by ear to make a pleasent sound.

 

Re: Re: Bub

To which I would add that dispersion characteristics are important, particularly when moving from driver to driver over the crossover points. In addition, the diffraction and edge effect steps are also pertinent. Personally, I believe that there's much to be said for using drive units with similar characteristics.

My take on this debate is that clearly accuracy is crucial to good hi-fi and musicality. If we're not searching for 'the truth' then we're playing the wrong game.

I believe that when people talk about a hi-fi sound they are often referring to manufacturers who cobble together a diverse set of drivers in order to get a flat frequency response over the full range. This can often lead to a loss of coherence in the speaker and result in the classic hi-fi 'boom & tizz'. That's why there's such a following for single driver systems which are often badly compromised when it comes to the frequency extremes. Some people still think that their presentation is accurate as they are often less compromised in other areas. Many people appreciate the natural sound that can come from old drive units (often the alnico magnet types), even though these can roll off badly at high frequencies.

Accurate reproduction of the recording is essential. Sometimes however, accuracy is in the ear of the beholder.

 

Re: Re: Re: Bub

I know, I was talking about an ideal world, not really the one we live in. I take 7V's point about dispersion characteristics for speakers, etc, too. But for Chris Thomas to write what he did [about speaker manufacturers having given up on accuracy] in a hi-fi magazine defies belief. The editor must have read it too, and then decided it was OK to print!

 

I like HiFi +! It's fun. Sure they talk bollox a lot of the time, and you only have to see some of the reviewers' systems to realise that they have a distinctly skewed view of the audio world.

But hey, they don't even pretend to be anything other than enthusiastic amateurs so where's the harm in letting them have a few minutes in the spotlight.

 

Hi-Fi+ irritates the wotsits off of me. The prose style is full of dreadful cliches, particularly Roy Gregory's use of the word 'think'. It's also spawned numerous imitators like toy/stallion who write in the same laboured manner.

Having said that, I heard that JH is a nice chap.