Looking For a Digital Coaxial and have ££ ?

Paul,

It comes down to whether you prefer narrow dispersion across the majority of the audio band, or wide dispersion. Subjectively it's up to you the listener, but objectively (and talking about faithfulness to the recording) there can only be one answer in most domestic settings.

Of course Quads offer a form of controlled dispersion (although forwards and backwards is a bit problematical and unecessary) but sadly I fail to see how a speaker incapable of realistic SPL's can be considered anything other than wrong.

 

Nothing normal about them. I thought they all looked too skinny.

 

OTOH it's certain that usage of 'realistic SPLs' is wrong.

A constraint of 'realistic SPL' eliminates almost every loudspeaker from consideration, including your old JBLs and probably your new assemblage. Fortunately it's not a necessary requirement for reproducing music at home. You'll be installing MF superchargers soon.

Paul

 

Realistic SPL is achievable for classical and acoustic music with many loudspeakers. Rock concerts are a different matter (for health reasons as much as anything) but I can certainly play at 115db without a problem or compression is neccessary. I don't - because dynamics are not really a hugely important part of live rock IME.

An orchestral crescendo will often reach 108db live in the auditorium. These dynamics are in contrast essential to the musical genre IMHO.

94db? That's well under half concert hall levels and robbing the recordings of a good percentage of their dynamic range. How can one possibly call that performance "reference"?

 

How loud a system needs to play to satisfy is a matter of taste, how hard it has to work to achieve that loudness is a matter of room size and nature. If you'd read more carefully,

So when he says '94dB' he actually means 104-109dB at a distance of nearly 3m. Spins it rather differently I think.

But apropos of the particular Murrayism, for example,

I think it is clear that Murray is somewhat eccentric on this point.

Paul

 

Ken Kessler said they were, 'the best speakers in the world'.

 

Paul, So when someone at Stereophile (Art Dudley for example, I know you are a fan) writes gushingly about the latest Nordost cable, you lap it all up do you?

"...it's my duty to say that there was an audible difference between the Valhalla and Heimdall speaker cables in the way that my system let me, er, hear into, um, things. Like stages. Only with the Valhalla speaker cables in place could I hear precisely what the horns and the back-row percussionists were doing in recordings..."

Stereophile said it, it must be true.

How many examples of such bollocks would I have to dig up?

I fundamentally disagree with them. The reproduction of timbre on the 989's (fine example btw) is actually very poor in my view. They sound very peculiar and most unlike a real event or even an accurate portrayal of a recording of one. However, you continue (as many people do) to listen with your eyes if that's what works best for you


Bub, I reckon you'll be in good company soon. Paul keeps blowing up his Quads.
I recommended he try ATC's.

 

Shhhh ...

 

Paul. He's wrong AFAIK. The RS Meter is -7db down at 20hz but pretty flat from 60hz to 8khz. Set to fast, there is no evidence of it under measuring peaks - maybe Art needed some way of apologising to Quad.

Hey if you think I'm wrong try getting those levels out of a panel. Is that how you blew yours up really?

 

Yes I have wondered about open baffles, I liked the look of some early Klangfilm, but the wife thought someone made them out of two table tops, another pair looked more suited to early cinema.

You need specific driver parameters do you not, I couldn't just for arguments sake take the 15" bass driver and 12" wok horn/treble driver out my CV's and put them in an open baffle?

 

I would quite like a pair of PMS Isobariks, late models however unfashionable, and in black, to add to my collection of not very impressive but enjoyable speakers. Interestingly, the wife would probably move out with the kids, giving me more room for them. Though still not enough room to experiment with BIG speakers again.

I also like the Kef B110 mid and its deriatives.

 

Well, Art likes SETs, so how does that damage your position?

Measurement contradicts you. My hypothesis is that you like a bit of colour or spice added to your music. Which is fine, but you seem to be confused about the relationship between taste and truth.

As an analogy PAL TV uses defined colours for red green and blue. A studio monitor is accurate in a very measurable way and has to be viewed in subdued lighting. Domestic sets generally use different phosphors that are brighter and allow use with the curtains open. Domestic sets (prior to Plasma and LCD types...) also throw away much broadcast resolution in exchange for light output. So we have three groups of viewers, the purists happy to use a broadcast monitor with the curtains drawn, the realists who accept the inaccuracy for what it is in exchange for practicality, and the surrealists who believe that reality is more vivid and much brighter than it actually is.

This outs you as a surrealist...

Paul

 

I think the RS analogue meter under-reads peaks regardless, this based on some playing with another sort of meter with a digital readout, and the thought that it is not expensive enough to have a proper peak hold circuit.

It wasn't Art.

Paul

 

Difficult one Paul. Having lived with both, it's very clear that Stats and any kind of horn are diametrically opposed sonically.

Quads really don't measure at all well but then neither do many horn speakers. There's certainly no evidence of superiority in any set of measurements ever taken, and indeed the Quad's midrange is quite seriously recessed (which will contribute to the sense of depth). In short, the figures do not explain why they sound so appealing to some ears.

The biggest difference to me is not in the response of the different speakers, but the way they project that response into the room which leads to the very different presentations. Which is correct? I don't know. But the (good) horn allows a flatter response, less room interaction,easier amplifier load and a vastly more realistic dynamic range. None of that is going to matter though if you personally listen at low levels and like a floating and ethereal presentation.

I admire a lot of what good panels can do. Having owned Quads then having moved to large Logans in an attempt to get more realistic dynamics, I've always sought to retain what I heard as good points in both of those, speed, clarity, lack of overt colouration, whilst improving on their failings - they don't play Live in Japan for instance.

My feeling is that what you perceive as resolution is a byproduct of the dipole dispersion pattern. Have you ever tried other dipoles?

 

Any links to back that up? It would be worrying don't you think as 10db is perceived as being twice as loud and many people could be seriously damaging their hearing without knowing it. One would imagine this would be an issue in the land of litigation.

 

Nope. But peaks don't do your hearing like averages do, and I think the RS SPM is in the ball park there.

FWIW I never shut down my Quads and they were loud enough for most purposes, I do wonder about Larry Archibald.... I have one CD track that would sustain 100dBA average on an RS SPM at 7 or 8 feet, which was 'realistic' enough for me (I reckon two and a bit minutes every few years is probably within OSHA guidelines?)

Paul

 

How about

Expensive Digital IC

 

I think there are some bad measurements about. Measuring speakers is difficult. Look at the original 'up a pole' measurements at http://www.euronet.nl/users/temagm/audio/textplots.htm for example. I think the essence is low distortion and lack of crossover artifacts. The lack of distortion is most audibly obvious in the bass, play something electronic with a low bass line in the rolloff zone. The level of the notes varies with pitch. Try the same with most box speakers and this variation vanishes whatever their actual low frequency capability.

Paul

 

It doesn't at all. I don't have a high regard for probably 95% of commercially available SET amplifiers. If anything it reinforces my opinion of him & his ilk.

But you seem happy to selectively quote him when his beliefs happen to coincide with yours. How do you square that with his fondness for SETs? I think it does more damage to your position than mine!

Evidence of the mysterious 'majority' who prefer Quads has also still failed to materialise in any form. I somehow didn't think it would!

Calling me an eccentric or a surrealist. Dear oh dear.
Name calling. Well, that's forums I suppose.

 

Hmm, the distortion measurements are interesting but what might have been impressive a quarter of a century ago is not nowadays.

Here is the same for the JBL - again with distortion components raised 20db.



You'll note that both 2nd and 3rd harmonic are lower than the Quad. If you look at the servo units that Meyer Sound and others use, they are even more impressive. Sad but true. The crossover thing is funny as most Quad owners think the 57 was the best model ever. Doesn't it have an 800hz crossover? Just like most large format monitors.

With regards to the level of the notes varying with pitch, that will tend to happen when the back wave causes out of phase cancellation effects all across the bass region. Surely that's a problem rather than a virtue? Unless of course you stick them 7 metres up a pole outside in the garden.