new living voice prototype horns

Anu, I am pretty sure none of the people mentioned above would consider the 'airscouts' or 'air partners' anywhere near 'state of the art', but the best thing is to hear them for yourself, just remember that because something is the best that you have heard doesn't mean it is the best!

 

loudspeaker preference is too individual to really have any state of the art in my view.

There are aspects of an electrostatic speaker that no horn speaker can touch for example and vice versa. I'm not one to say that any approach is better than any other.

I can see Romy's point that understanding someone's loudspeaker preferences is key in understanding the type of sound they prefer.

For myself, I have too small a room to play with horn speakers - I've grudgingly admitted - so have compromised somewhat here.

 

Indeed. I long ago learned that constantly seeking out The Best is a fairly pointless endeavour, not least because there are aspects of many different loudspeaker approaches which have real merit, and no loudspeaker exists which doesn't exhibit some degree of compromise, either because of cost, or the room, or practical size, or whatever. Finding a pair of speakers you like enough to want to listen to them for long periods, and which enable you to maximise your enjoyment of your record collection, is about a good a result as can be had. Everything else is cloud-chasing. It's fun to listen to different loudspeakers, but ultimately you have to settle on a pair to use at home, accepting their compromises and enjoying their strengths.

-- Ian

 

In fact, it was absolutely not what I intended to say. You (in plural) recognize Sound as a substance that produced by audio affords and therefore you bind your understanding of Sound with characteristic attributes of a given audio topology. It is very contrary to what I feel or care. I care less about someone's preferences; in fact the preferences themselves exist only at a certain level of evolvement, not very high level. Eventually, if to look at the subject deeper enough then everyone comes eventually to a common denominator and there are not ambiguity about the methods and the results in the word of the ?abstract audio?. I would not explain it further but if you interested to think about it yourself then I would refer you to the following article:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=432

Anyhow, I would not accept your guys comments about the 'Airscouts' or 'Air Partners' as anything that push the ?State of the Art? status. There are many objective reasons for it, before even listening, and you feel free to educate yourself about the reasons. Surely, nobody is willing to ?knock? the Living Voice, as anything else in audio the Living Voice?s endeavor is an education for public and the public should listen the speaker and educate itself. Some of you might eventually recognize that ?an understanding of sound? does not come from listening abut from thinking about listening, something that unfortunately very few audio people practice in context of audio.

Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Return Of Premium Life Insurance Dicussion

 

Hi Romy

The 'air partner' is no longer in production, and the 'air scout' is rarely made these days.

The new living voice prototypes are in development and will (I believe, not know 100%) be a replacement for both speakers. It's early stages for these new speakers, and the designer (Kevin Scott) is at the stage of trying multiple permuations of different drive units (goto, vitavox, ale etc) and different horn profiles and many other permutations of course too.

I am trying not to ''review'' the prototype sonically, as it's not fair - it's not the finished article and indeed probably sounds different today (with different parts in place no doubt) than when I heard it a month ago.

It should be an exciting new speaker when finished, and I felt somewhat priveledged to listen in on a speaker in development in this way.

 

Well, bottleneck,

if you are closed to Kevin and if those speakers just at level of prototype then you then pitch to Kevin then his upperbass solution if very weak, in fact terminally weak. Since he uses 15? driver and the throat might be ~11-12? then his upperbass enclosure juts have not enough space to horn-loaded the channel. The delta between the mouth and throat for the given length is too suspicion for me. The mouth looks like can handle 75-80Hz but with even 10? throat it will not be loaded as a horn down to mouth?s rate. With this geometry it will be horn-loaded down to (approximately) 120-150Hz and everything below it will be acting as a direct radiator, shooting through all that resonant chambers of the curved horn. In odder to load the horn as horn, (ideally all the way down to the horn rate) and to mitigate the ugly HF harmonics of curbed design the horn should be loaded to external boundaries (to activate acoustic phase randominisation) or used with way smaller throat. The given prototype has no room in that box for a smaller throat (a smaller throat = longer horn), So. it basically ?look like? a horn design that sounds at it?s lower knee as ?mudded direct radiator?. BTW, I have seen people play with back chambers trying in THIS configuration to fix something but it unfortunately never works as those 15? drivers have too low resonance frequency, too heavy cone and too little ? throat reactance to play with it. So, before playing with Goto, Vitavox, Ale compression drivers I would address the upperbass horn. Actually the entire idea of going for exotic expensive MF drivers with inadequate MF horn sounds to me like violating the prospective customers as they will not get the MF they might get for the given investment?

The next time what you ?have a priveledge? to listen the prototype ask to disconnect all channels and let the upperbass horn to run alone without any crossovers and try also to listen the ?raw? upperbass driver mount in a small baffle. You might discover quite a lot from it.

Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Chris Hi you will have to come and listen to my speakers at some point,
Be interested to hear your thoughts, regards Keith.

 

I wonder what in this speaker produces the ?fundamentals frequencies?,- the direct radiator, back-loaded(?) bass driver? I would have a lot of doubts that it might be done properly, at least no one was lucky to do it successfully so far. I think their larger speakers, where they have a dedicated upper bass channels are way more serious.

The caT
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MAZDA CX-7 SPECIFICATIONS

 

Romy Hi I will get there, UK houses just aren't that big! I told you I heard Ralph's big system a couple of month's back, that was super, you sit very near to your horns don't you? Ralph sits about 6 or seven metres from his, any problems with horns integrating sitting so close?
I am sure Kevin is aware of the limitations of his 'folded horn', have you heard the 'lab sub' bass units he is using? Regards Keith.

 

Romy, the bass on the Alpha is a back loaded horn design,Keith.

 

ooooo, i just did a ickle dribble........

 

I think Romy's point is that it isn't. Well it isn't below around 125 hz anyway.

I actually would say that Kevin Scott's system is state of the art in terms of musical appreciation. Loudspeaker designers are unbelievably dogmatic, and quite unwilling to accept the compromises of their own designs. Romy for instance, must have horrendous diffraction issues ans poor time alignment in the bass. Theory says so. I wouldn't dream of criticising his speakers though as I've not heard them, and there are certain aspects of the design which no doubt have merit.

At the end of the day, the dogmatic behavior is rather boring. Do what it takes to get the results that sound good to your ears. Provided you have a level of experience, you will know what sounds right - Floyd Toole and Harman have proved this. There is no one right way to build a loudspeaker at the moment. Hopefully one day there will be.

 

Let leave this perspective aside. I am very comfortable to talk about ?musical appreciation? but I tend do not do in audio forums: have my reasons ? have seen to many audio people and able to feel ?when? and ?why? they suddenly dive into ?musical appreciation? literature while they should stay in line with pure audio subjects.

Nope, it is not the Theory says but you say so. Where did you see the ?horrendous diffractions? in Macondo? The tweeter is line-array 20cm by .7cm, with this geometry it has 20 degree measured vertical angle. The poor time alignment in bass? Is anything can substantiate your claim? I very open for critics of Macondo but I would like people do not throw the empty bumper-sticker phrases. Sure Macondo has own problem but not the one that you alleged and I have my arrogant suspicions that you would not be able to mention the real Macondo?s shortcoming.

Actually you are wrong. There is dogmatic behavior and there are patterns that people developed based upon colorations of own tangible practice, including the applications of proper subjective evaluation techniques. For some people other?s decisions are outcome of dogmas. There are also people for whom decisions are a logical continuation of previous actions and own explorations of the subjects. No one who even know me ever accused me in dogmatism and one of the reasons is because I do not know the rules and do not have any special knowledge about audio and acoustics. Whatever I do or say was discovered by myself and if it correlates with any formerly existing ?book? knowledge then? good for them. Yes, there is no right way to build loudspeakers but there are wrong ways. To declare something that has some easy correctable flow as ?state of the art? does not do any good for your education, unless you wiling to substitute Reality with audio religion and fanatical worshiping.

The caT
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MAGIC FLIGHT LAUNCH BOX

 

OK just so that others know what we are talking about, here are some pictures.





Now before I start I am in no way criticising your loudspeakers, merely pointing out that all designs are a collection of compromises.

You are saying that there is no issue with diffraction regardless of the position of the ribbon (possible) and the horn covering the upper mids (the one peaking out from behind the upper bass horn)?

With regards to time alignment, what's the distance to the voice coil of all your bass drivers from the listening position? All of them the same?

If you could answer those that would be great , but in reality, musical appreciation is all that matters to me in all honesty - I own a hifi to enjoy as much varied music as possible. Any other barometer is totally pointless.

 

Why not criticizing? I have no problems with someone criticizing Macondo. In fact I found it educational even for me.

You would be surprised but there are not. The image below is taken from ~6? below the reference listening position and even then you might see that MF horn dos not ?peaking out from behind the upper bass horn?. In fact the bottom of MF horn is 2.5? from the top of the upperbass. Do not forget that wide angle lenses screw ups perceive. There is a region behind the upperbass horn that looks like it is vulnerable for MF reflections. Over the years I staffed that place with all imaginable filling, including superbly effective diffusers and sound absorber constructions I was not able to detect that those absorbers affect sound in positive way (tone, dissipation patters, imaging, noise etc?). So, taking about the dogmas? BTW, be advised that all Macondo horns are painted with very heavy textured paint and external surfaces are painted with the textured paint of extra large grain? The very same is applicable for tweeter. The tweeter is 120 by 20 degree, second order at 12.5K with very sharp natural decay (it is not a regular ribbon but optimized for HF only driver with no back chamber). The refractive noise that the tweeter radiates is not susceptible to any influence of sound that I was able to detect. Do not forget that the reflected sound from this tweeter has minus 3dB in relation to direst sound (if it were a regular driver) and the reflective Sound do not follow the line-source rules.

Of course not!

Rgs, Romy the caT
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Starcraft ii replays

 

Well with regards to the bass, notes arrive at the listening position at varying intervals - the bass information being smeared in comparison with the use of a larger single cone. This is just one compromise I would consider unacceptable.

With regards to time alignment, have you taken measurements with some evaluation software to match up the acoustic centres of the various drive units above the bass? You seem to have made attempts to correct for time alignment, but how seriously did you take these issues?

 

What do you mean? A single cone is absolutely different application with absolutely different meanse and objectives. I am not quite sure what you want to say.

If you mean the curved line-arrays? Nope, I did not take it there as I see no benefits in the geometry of my room (V vs L of the array) I have in the past the towers angered forward but I did not detect that it has any impact. In fact, leaving aside the lost of sensitivity via curving of the line-array I would propose that a very minute (!!!) time deviation at LF might have some benefits as by softener the wave front it create also a subjective perception of extension of reverberation time at a given frequency. I am not sure that it is correct by my many experiments with dedicated delay channels do suggest it.

The caT
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Xxx tube

 

One assumes the primary objective is to cover the bottom 3 octaves with the least amount of compromise.

No Romy, I mean the main speaker. - How did you ensure time alignment there?

I'd tend to agree that with large scale classical works, a little delay can give the impression of a larger acoustic. But this is a colouration at the end of the day. A distortion. A compromise. If you are familiar with the Nestarovic System 16, you will know that the bottom three octaves are reproduced by bass units firing into concrete walls to ensure an accurate wavefront and these units are used in conjunction with satellites featuring an all pass filter. This is inherently a more accurate way of launching the wave, yet will lay bare the recorded acoustic rather than embellishing it.

Of course the compromise here in most rooms is uneven bass response. But the point here is that all these systems as implemented are one person's vision of the state of the art, yet all feature very real compromises that ensure that they have failings.

 

The time alignment between the horns, are you kidding? Why would I even need such a foolish thing?

Absolutely not. I did detect in the Tannoy thread that you have issues with definition of ?coloration? and that was why I proposed to define it for yourself. If you do then you might differentiate between ?colouration? and compromise.

The caT
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TC305

 

Then why arrange them is such a foolish way risking appalling diffraction?

The only issue I have with the definition of colouration is your indesipherable argument against common knowledge. Any one else have any luck? English anyone?

Romy, if you don't understand then I can't help I'm afraid. Ask 100 people for a definition of speaker colouration and 99 will give you the same response I did. The other one will be you.