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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo's Axioms: Horn-loaded acoustic systems
Post Subject: It is always the roomPosted by anthony on: 10/8/2021
Romy, yes it is an interesting subject and one that I have thought quite a bit about although not directly from the angle from which you are approaching it.
One of Macondos great strengths is narrow directivity from high frequencies all the way down to below the Schroeder frequency of even modest rooms. Its high sensitivity (110dB/w/m or so) is gained not only by using high sensitivity transducers, but also the tractrix horns and directional ribbon tweeter which effectively focus the sound waves forward and remove much of the reflection from within the room so that the listener, in near-field, hears a much higher ratio of direct sound compared to reflected sound. Due to the Macondo topology, which is the antithesis of a point-source, any room reflections are going to sound quite a bit different to the direct sound, hence it will work in envionments where the incidence of early reflected sound is low.
Think about your setup issues in the latest very large room. My recollection is that you started by attempting to spread the speakers wider and sit further away than in previous installations, but you ended up back in the near-field because they sounded better. My theory is that because Macondo is not a topology where you want to hear the room that you had to move back to a position where most of the room is removed from the sound (fewer early reflections).
Harmon did a whole bag of research into what makes good sound and basically what they found is that at least for wider directivity loudspeakers in non-ideal rooms where early reflections are an issue (i.e. most rooms), a point-source with a linear power response will generally win out. Of course there are a lot of other things to consider. For me narrow directivity wins hands down over normal or omni-directional, and having that directivity stay narrow down to below the rooms Schroeder Frequency is paramount. You now have a large room, perhaps too large, maybe Macondo gets omnidirectional before the room modes kick in and you need a larger mid-bass or upperbass horn to accommodate?
Where you ponder speaker sensitivity in the video above what I think about is not the 110db/w/m vs 100db/w/m per se, but the methods necessary to achieve that high sensitivity i.e. the width of directivity. Narrow directivity for the listener generally means much more direct sound compared to reflected sound which is a cleaner, more precise sound unburdened by what the early room reflections are telling you (the Macondo topology reflections come back to the ear sounding different to what came out of the loudspeaker). To me, loudspeakers that spray sound throughout the room (open baffle, omnidirectional, many box speakers) sound like what your mouth feels like if you don't brush your teeth for a week, but they do sound better if point-source with linear power response...just not as good as Macondo.
So after all this, what I posit is happening is that either you have tired of the direct sound of Macondo and yearn for a sound that involves more room reflection, or that Macondo is not suited for your new room perhaps due to directivity no longer being controlled below Schroeder. I also think that your preamp is holding back Macondo (at least it was holding back mine), but that is another subject. Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site