Romy the Cat wrote:

For sure the tweeter do bring some own positive element to sound as well. It is hard to describe what they do. They for sure add transients, bite to HF, nice extension of MF overtones but the most important they produce the smooth and what I usually call “lubricated” enter and exit for mid range tones. The HF, if they compliment MF properly, do the same job – they create proper, more natural, more auditably-palatable entry and exit for MF into auditable space. They sort of the lubricate the MF and make MF it interact with room more naturally and more discriminatively.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I presume, in context of the conversion in this thread, you are not talking about switch off one of the Macondo’s stereo channels but rather switch off one of the Macondo’s HF channels.

haralanov wrote:

So the tweeter is always needed. The bad thing is it deforms (in 99,9999999999999999999% of the cases) the perfectly round audio window, formed by the midrange channel and "pull" some notes sometimes at its axis. These are often the notes that have their fundamentals at the upper working range of the midrange channel. The higher the midrange channel extends (but only if it has good tonal complexity in its upper range!!), the less prominent that effect is. Doing this, it deforms the coordinate system of the sound field and mainly affects its deepness and unlimited openness. It could be very easily detected by just listening only one of the channels of a given stereo system. But first of all, I have to note this cannot happen if the midrange/widerange channel is not able to project that coordinate system. Everything depends on it. In the world of direct radiators it is mainly a matter of size of the driver. 8” widerange could not even dream for open space presentation, despite the fact it can have mind boggling tone. …. Not even 10” – it could present the correct size of the images, but there is still a lack of the original space around these images. 12” – this is another world, but only if made properly. There are no 12” widerange drivers made commercially that can do this, so unfortunately no one can understand what I’m talking about. About the world of horns – I do not know – I just don’t have enough experience, but I suppose there is a minimum diameter of the horn’s throat (just like there is minimum size of the voice coil of direct radiators) in order to be able to project that space.

haralanov wrote:

No, no, I’m talking just about switching off one of the Macondo’s stereo channels – not the tweeter of one of the main channels. This is the only way to know the true capabilities of your driver’s setup and its absolute performance and it is the most difficult test for ANY system to pass. So what do you hear after you switch off one of the stereo channels? Do you feel any collapsing of sound and especially the scale of sound? Do you feel that the sound is pushed inside your midrange horn? Do you feel the size of the instruments has shrunk down? Does the sound still breathes freely in the air? Are you still able to feel the original acoustic atmosphere of the recordings or you now have the feeling that the sound is just in front of you inside your room?

Romy the Cat wrote:

I am not familiar with those types of drivers and with the results they are able to show.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I know that that there are some people (not in US) who tend to use open baffles and large light drivers with no suspension but I do not know what results they are getting from it.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Of cause I have “collapsing of sound and especially the scale of sound” but it only happened for my stereo listening position.  To use a single speaker and to get proper mono sound it requires having the speaker to be positioned in the room differently.

haralanov wrote:

Yes, but you are familiar with the compression driver and horns. How could somebody control the size of the audio window, formed by his midrange channel, using horns? If I remember correctly, you chose your Vitavox S2 driver because of its tone, so you deal with a fixed diameter of the horn’s throat (that means fixed size of the audio window, without option to be controlled). But is it optimal? How could one adjust it without changing the compression driver? I also remember you decided to load it in 440Hz horn based on the frequency range it will play after the high-passing. But is the size of that 440Hz horn enough to reveal the background of the sound? Yes, I realize the bigger the horn, the worse it plays in the upper part of its range, but how could one adjust all those contradicting variables by just using given compression driver in a given horn?

haralanov wrote:

It doesn’t have to happen, despite the current positioning of one of your stereo channels. Actually it doesn’t have to happen even if that channel is put in the corner. Do you think there is a position in your room where that channel will present the sound in a way that you won’t be able to feel any deficiency of the recreated space?

Romy the Cat wrote:

With two channels on I feel that I have no problem with "recreated space deficiency"

Romy the Cat wrote:

my selection of 440Hz horn for S2 was because the S2 specifics not because my consideration of audio window. The term "audio window" - we need to define what it is as I think you and me use different definition what audio window is.

haralanov wrote:

Romy, I have never said you have to listen to only one channel during your regular listening sessions. I just mentioned it is the most difficult TEST to pass for any system, including your Macondo. Of course you will listen at both of your stereo channels. But their absolute performance strongly depends on the quality of your left and right channel alone.

haralanov wrote:

“Audio window” – that is property of sound that belongs entirely to the reproduced sound and it is strongly system related. It doesn’t exist in reality (when listening live music), because in reality it is totally unlimited in size. Despite the fact it is sound related, it directly affects the musicality. I’m not a good descriptor of sound in context of English language, so I should give you very simple example of that playback’s related phenomena, despite the fact I am perfectly sure you already understood what I’m talking about. Take any accidental midrange driver and let your amplifier to feed some signal to it. What you should hear is a sound pushed inside a very tiny spot – that’s what I call small “audio window”. As I already gave an association somewhere within your site – it is the same like watching a movie on the display of your mobile phone – you get the idea of the event, but it is totally artificial – you are completely disabled to feel the physical aspect of the event. So there is a critical size of that “window” and if it is not achieved, one can never have the physical aspect and the greatness of a given recorded musical event. The physical aspect makes the recreated event believable and real, so if the listener could not get in touch with it, he cannot feel that physical directness of the musical messages, because he rather feels the sound like a the memory of the music popping up from the "head" of his acoustic system, but not the super expressiveness of the music. So the system should be able to reproduce the music with the same amplitude as the originally performed music, in order to affect the listener in the same, and IF is possible – in even more influencing way. So with improving the quality of the system, the audio window should get larger and larger, until it lose its meaning as a sound related artifact (in the best case scenario with top level acoustic systems) – it should be completely transparent window of unlimited size, that allows you to be and to feel like a part of the original music event. In other words – there should be no window at all. So until that window is part of the system’s type of sound presentation, we are faced with something artificial, which makes the reality not so believable and not so physical. Too pity that almost no one cares about that…

haralanov wrote:

I have been thinking for the last few days that maybe my initial description carries a terrible mistake:  The Harmonizing effect comes before the Spherical soundstage, since this soundstage Sphere is a very important part of the Boilling effect. Romy, can I get some confirmation from you on this.

Jorge wrote:

some of the bigest strenghs of horns is indeed power and dynamics

Hiroyasi Kondo wrote:

Cone speakers have sometimes been characterised as "boneless sounding", but such disadvantaes were elliminated by these improvemnts, and more over, this cone type achieves an obedient sound that cannot be gained from horn type units.

Jorge wrote:

IMHO horns do have the ability to image better than direct radiators.

Jorge wrote:

you dont get highs or lows, just extended midrange.

Jorge wrote:

It is spherical because you feel like you could bend downwards and look infinitely beyond the sphere,  on bass,  and also lets say stand up and get a clear view on top,  like the "poles" of this sphere being highs and lows,  not evidently present but seemingly infinite in extension.  Hard to describe,  but clear if you have heard it before.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I am not sure why you associated it with MF and HF. From my point of view your definition of “Audio window” is more managed by upperbass and lower MF.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The presentational geometry is very important but only for audio not for listening to the message.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Sure, no one would argue and as I said when speaker is design, tested, calibrate or tuned then only one right or left channel is used.

haralanov wrote:

So if they do the things I already mentioned several times, the owner of these stereo channels will experience different, much more advanced type of recreated reality (which could NEVER be achieved if the channels have any deficiency of “space” when listened separately, no matter the room integration efforts and no matter if they are placed according to DPoLS rules)

haralanov wrote:

Yes, you are right. Power – you have almost unlimited power. Dynamics – you have as much dynamics as you want. But there are a lot of associated problems with that kind of dynamics. The following illustration is taken by Wolfgang Klippel’s technical paper "Loudspeaker Nonlinearities – Causes, Parameters, Symptoms":

I am not sure that I agree with Wolfgang Klippel. Yes, I heard that at high amplitude sound theoretically propagates faster, so at different temperature, pressure and horn geometry. However, how much practical significant it has I do not know. In the Wolfgang Klippel illustration the waves that are coming from compression driver are some kind of perfect waves that then get deform into changing geometry of the horn. I am sorry but it is ridicules. The deformation of the waves in a compression driver and in the phase plug is order of magnitude higher than anything that might take place in the horn. Also, the change of sound speed at high amplitude happens only at the highest amplitude. Perhaps this is why the high compression driver are not sound good. If a driver has 100% efficiency then 1W of electrical power is converted to 111dB of acoustic power. Yes, because of that or because other reasons (I believe into other reasons) the compression driver that do 111dB sensitively sound very bad. The drivers with moderate compression and with moderate acoustic pressure are way more “human” in my estimation. JBL/Altec/Vitavox and many other drivers do max 108-110db loaded and from there you need to take 6-8dB of horn gain. So, the moderate compression drivers are not at the max compression and max amplitude. There are inhalations that are made to archive 130db-150dB and in there the problem with high amplitude might take place but no one think to pay attention to sound at those systems. So, I do not feel that at moderate pressure that we use in home system the effects that Wolfgang Klippel describes is so significant or even meaningful.

haralanov wrote:

As Paul perfectly put it in words – “trombone dynamics”! So that inherent steepening of the reproduced signal makes your brain to believe the sound is very dynamic. And it really happens! BUT – you have that kind of very dynamic behavior even when you play music where that dynamics are originally not there (!!)

I disagree with Paul definition of “trombone dynamics” and I disagree with idea of contrived dynamics. Even the most dynamic playback the one can imagine no where even close to the dynamics that need to be accomplished.  Even with the best compression drivers we are nowhere near the dynamics of live sound.

haralanov wrote:

So how could this topology pass the musical messages in completely transparent way without affecting their original meaning? Yes, you already guessed – it cannot. You can also read Kondo’s observations on the subject:  Hiroyasi Kondo wrote: Cone speakers have sometimes been characterised as "boneless sounding", but such disadvantaes were elliminated by these improvemnts, and more over, this cone type achieves an obedient sound that cannot be gained from horn type units.

I do not know what kind improvements Hiroyasi Kondo implies. Worn you that he was in the business of selling audio and he made all possible claim that not necessary had factual value. I do not recognize this argument as some kind of war between direct radiators and horns. I have seen the properly made direct radiators that had dynamics greater then horns and I have seen horns that were absolutely dead. If I use horns it does not mean that I advocate horns but since I know horn I would defend horns from the criticism that I feel is unreasonable.  I think the Haralanov/ Kondo attempts to find a justification of alternation of musical messages and the affect to original meaning of the musical messages coming from loudspeaker topology is a bit too marketing-like. I think it is not topology that deforms musical messages but an implementation of a given topology. I am sure that would it be horns, direct radiator, electrostats or anything ease – if they done sensibly the they would do the identical “deformation of musical messages”. The musical messages are being corrupted not by loudspeakers but by the people who makes loudspeakers and teacher loudspeakers to sound.
 

haralanov wrote:

Tone? Where is the tone of the compression drivers/ horn combos? If there is no tone deficiency, then why one needs injection channels?

Good question. I would like to have compression drivers/ horn combo with predictable tonal characteristics but do not forget that in the world of comprehension drivers we deal with EXISTING drivers. It is much easier to deal with direct radiator as it is easy to make your own driver. Suspend any material with VC between magnets and you have a driver. To make compression drives is much more complex  and much less predictable and therefore practically no one experiment with them

haralanov wrote:

Of course (!!) it is managed mainly by the upperbass and lower midrange, but it is deformed (the “space” is deformed, not the geometrical properties of the audio window; audio window is just responsible for the feeling of space to happen in the listener’s mind) by the tweeter (not by the HFs, but by the tweeter as a separate sound source). That’s the only reason why I put an accent on the tweeters and their integration. It is so important!

I do not share or do not understand your statement that “space is deformed”. Theoretically with horns you shall have more uniformed “space” as horns do less “beaming” then largest single cone direct radiators drivers. The radiation surface from horn is also much larger and horns produce more “clouds” of sound then the “source of sound”. Again, you are talking about “deformation of space” and Ima not sure that I understand it or at least talk about the same things.

haralanov wrote:

The musical message is also affected, because its authentic value and magnitude of it expressiveness is also a function of the audio message. If it is not audio related, then all of the existing systems would be musical to the same amplitude as if the listener is listening live music, but unfortunately it is not the case...

And why do you feel that the affecting of the musical message is the subject of ONLY topology of acoustic system. When you change topology of acoustic system you along with it change many other characteristics of your playback to accommodate the new topology. So, it might not be ONLY the direct radiator vs. horns deliberation. I juts would like you to understand it.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Yes, I heard that at high amplitude sound theoretically propagates faster, so at different temperature

Romy the Cat wrote:

I do not know. In the Wolfgang Klippel illustration the waves that are coming from compression driver are some kind of perfect waves

Romy the Cat wrote:

The deformation of the waves in a compression driver and in the phase plug is order of magnitude higher than anything that might take place in the horn.

Romy the Cat wrote:

the compression driver that do 111dB sensitively sound very bad. The drivers with moderate compression and with moderate acoustic pressure are way more "human" in my estimation.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I disagree with Paul definition of "trombone dynamics" and I disagree with idea of contrived dynamics. Even the most dynamic playback the one can imagine no where even close to the dynamics that need to be accomplished. Even with the best compression drivers we are nowhere near the dynamics of live sound.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I have seen the properly made direct radiators that had dynamics greater then horns and I have seen horns that were absolutely dead.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I think the Haralanov/ Kondo attempts to find a justification of alternation of musical messages and the affect to original meaning of the musical messages coming from loudspeaker topology is a bit too marketing-like.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I think it is not topology that deforms musical messages but an implementation of a given topology.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The musical messages are being corrupted not by loudspeakers but by the people who makes loudspeakers and teacher loudspeakers to sound.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I would like to have compression drivers/ horn combo with predictable tonal characteristics but do not forget that in the world of comprehension drivers we deal with EXISTING drivers.

Romy the Cat wrote:

It is much easier to deal with direct radiator as it is easy to make your own driver. Suspend any material with VC between magnets and you have a driver.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The radiation surface from horn is also much larger and horns produce more "clouds" of sound then the "source of sound".

Romy the Cat wrote:

And why do you feel that the affecting of the musical message is the subject of ONLY topology of acoustic system.

haralanov wrote:

I think you wanted to say reflection surface, not radiation surface, right? Radiation surface is the surface that is directly attached to the vibration creating element (the voice coil). So the radiation surface of the horns using compression drivers is equal to the surface of the dome of that compression driver. All the rest is reflecting surface.

haralanov wrote:

I’m not looking for a justification of alternation of musical messages and the affect to original meaning of the musical messages coming from horn topology – I only mentioned that all of the horns I have ever heard do affect the musical messages, making them too horny every single time. I will be glad somebody to demonstrate me proper horn implementation (because everybody knows most of the horn implementations sound like crap) that is free from those artifacts.

Romy the Cat wrote:

What does it mean “horny”?

haralanov wrote:

Notice how Vengerov starts to play at 0:25-0:40: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk6tqaPLp5M&feature=relmfu  "You start being heroic - which is unnecessary" - he said :-))

Romy the Cat wrote:

do you mean that they had honk?

Romy the Cat wrote:

It is incorrect. There is no reflection surfaces.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Of cause in case of horns mouths are the active transducers…

haralanov wrote:

Take a look at the video:

haralanov wrote:

To have a situation where there are no reflection surfaces, the compression driver must be radiating directly in the air. Loading it with a horn is equivalent of placing reflective surfaces around the exit of that driver.

Sorry to disappoint you but you are absolutely wrong about it. Loading a driver to a horn does introduce a front contras peruse that is not linear and that has a well designated name – throat reactance. One of the definitions of compression driver is that the driver is designed to deal with throat reactance and can’t work without it properly. The throat reactance is NOT a reflection but permanent force that participates in balancing of diaphragm damping. If driver feel an actula reflection from horn then it is juts shitty horn design and shall not be used.

haralanov wrote:

That’s because the wave cannot escape until it reaches the mount of the horn – it is surrounded by all sides. But that happens only at the lower working range of the horn. When you play some HF tones in let say 440Hz MF horn, the wavelength of these HF is small in comparison to the horn’s diameter and you have a lot of random uncontrolled reflections. If you don’t want to have reflections in the upper part of the working range, then you have to eliminate the horn surface, which means to eliminate the entire horn or to use it no wider that 1 octave.

Yes, ideally a horn shall have 1 octave bandwidth and optimal horn rate is a single point not a wide bandwidth, very similar to optimal ani-scatting for tonearm – it is perfect only for one single point on the record surface. Still, there is reality of practical implantations and those realities do allow to use slightly wider bandwidth by losing horns equalization. Still, in case of too HF loaded into to too large horn the problem that you will not will be NOT “random uncontrolled reflections” but absolutely different problems. Again, forget about random uncontrolled reflections in the horn (with exception of reentry in LF horns). They do not exists. The HF propagates as light – where do you see light get reflected back from the horn?

Jorge wrote:

Romy said "I think importance is not in sequencing but in relationship between listening practice and sound presentational geometry. The presentational geometry is very important but only for audio not for listening to the message." We have been talking about this "mechanical" or Geometrical audio effects, but have not looked at the ….

It was not what I was talking about. Let me give you a clue. The simple audio term “soundstage” has a number of levels of understanding.

At first level person recognizes soundstage as a geometrical virtualization of performing space. Most of the people are there

At second level person recognizes soundstage as a geometrical virtualization of own perception to performing events. Not a lot of people get there.

At the third level person recognizes soundstage as a melt, sort of alloy between virtualization of playback imaging and own perception. Think about conductor positioning his musicians in accordance to his interpretive objectives. Very very few people in audio get there.

The forth the level give a person a freedom to have any soundstage and by the force of own mind and creativity to override it in own perception to whatever she/he wants it to be. I know just 2 people who are able to do it in audio.

The last fifth level is the level of ultimate peace and maturity with soundstage where the perception of first level with the geometrical virtualization returns back but this time a person knows where, how and how much reconstructive powers she/she willing to dedicate of it his perception and how much he is willing to get sound presentation as is. Mitigating in his/her mind the force of own observation the person might deal with absolutely any soundstage results.

This illustrative above is given as a pattern to understand my quote above.

Romy the Cat wrote:

It is quite banal things and those infomercials of Vengerov educating in front of camera the sentimental girls how do not play overly arousing of overly patriotic have become the annoying stamp of his marketing of himself.  Look for Menuhis teaching his master classed how do not play Paganini overly “heroic” and listen him to play Paganini’s concertos – you will hardly will enable to tolerate his attitude.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Sorry to disappoint you but you are absolutely wrong about it.

Romy the Cat wrote:

One of the definitions of compression driver is that the driver is designed to deal with throat reactance and can't work without it properly.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The throat reactance is NOT a reflection but permanent force that participates in balancing of diaphragm damping.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The HF propagates as light - where do you see light get reflected back from the horn?

Jorge wrote:

I would say tone and texture some of the most important aspects of an organic playback.

haralanov wrote:

Your response is a very good illustration of how you redirect attention away from the actual discussing subject and point it to a completely different direction that has absolutely no relation to that subject. You asked me what I mean by saying “horny” and I just gave you an example – nothing more, nothing less. The video link is not there to illustrate what Vengerov or Menuhin do, but to show you how I feel the horns sound like (!) – they always push the sound with unnecessary force.

haralanov wrote:

That’s why I am interested only in drivers which don’t need any throat reactance in order to work properly. But I will trash my drivers and replace them with compression ones in the moment when somebody demonstrates me really worthy horn loaded drivers. I do not belong to the group of people who are slaves to a given speaker topology and I can instantaneously change my concepts IF there is something that is going to provide better results in terms of sound.

haralanov wrote:

>

haralanov wrote:

This is the third you put words in my mount, words that were never told by me. Where did you read I have written that the sound is reflected back in the horn? I said it is being reflected inside the horn, not back in the horn.

haralanov wrote:

Now the owner of the injected S2s listen to this concerto, but is he able to hear the real colors of that violin, despite he feels his system has super tonal complexity? The answer is NO. I will tell you why. It is because the sound is now polluted by the algorithm that makes the injection channel to be saturated by colorations. That algorithm affects the sound always in the same way, because the injection channel does not have own intelligence to decide how to color the sound of the different instruments. It colors their sound with the same intentions every single time and that is the real problem. The sound of every note has the taste of that channel.