best home theatre speaker from your comparison test

[Matthew J Poes]

Thank you guys for the explanation. I apologize for getting this post out of topic. I will do some research on MDAT files since I’m not familiar with those.
My Emotiva LPA-1 amp does have any issues driving my front speakers. I did used XT32 for calibration.

Sorry about that. I should have been more clear. Mdat is the file extension of a Room Eq Wizard session file.

 

[bkeeler10]

I agree. I went through 4 difference home theater set ups due to the front speakers being too bright for my liking for music. Our ears fatigued after a while. I ended up giving Arx (now Chane) a trial after Sonnie’s review. For the money, I don’t think you can get a better musical speaker than Chane. I’m only waiting for Chane to release the larger center channel so I can buy it. Now, would a larger center channel provide higher vocals? I’ve got to increase the center channel dBs to hear what the actors are saying, which is pretty annoying.

There is a lot to consider here, but I will say, bright tonal balance is one common way to make vocals more clear. The concept of clarity in acoustics is somewhat complex, especially in small room acoustics. We find voices more interpretable if the sound balance is pushed toward our area of greatest sensitivity and if other background noises are softer. We also find greater interpretability if the acoustics are minimally reflective, that there is very little dwell in the sound decay or any obvious echoes.

Before blaming the center (which may be a problem) I would look at acoustics of the space. If you have the capacity, take measurements of the Left, Right, and Center speaker separately. If you can send an MDAT file I can look at it for clues to clarity issues. Add in a description of the room and placement, even pictures are helpful. I suggest doing this in its own thread too. I've run into this problem with others and found it to be fixable with little tweaks. Even if it is not fixable with a tweak, I bet we can find out what is wrong.

I happen to think horizontal centers are a bad idea. They are a design mistake that came about due to aesthetics and packaging, not sound. Three identical speakers make more sense. If the drivers, crossover, and orientation are the same, then the dispersion and the tonal balance will be the same. If you have a TM L and R but a horizontal MTM center, they cannot and do not have the same dispersion and likely do not have the same tonal balance. In fact, a horizontal MTM is a fairly bad design as it has lobing (nulls) in the response to the sides, and not typically where the walls are where it would be ok, but where people are. Often the response changes drastically across the seating area with such design. Thankfully designers have become savvy to this and new centers are often better. Many are now 2.5 way or 3-way designs and provide a better response. I still do not feel that many of them provide the same response and many still have issues. Sticking drivers on the sides of a tweeter always affect its dispersion. Even if you have a vertical Tweeter and midrange array, the woofers on either side will affect its dispersion, it won't match the left and right speaker, and so this effectively changes the tonal balance at any position not on-axis.

If you have EQ in your processor or receiver, it is possible that the center can be EQed to match the L and R tonal balance better and/or improve its intelligibility. It is also possible that the center channel level wasn't right before. I've had a number of auto-EQ software packages mess up the levels. Sometimes they will get the levels off by a lot, as much as 6db's. If the response of the center doesn't match the L and R speaker at the point of the microphone, it is very common that the software will not get the levels right.

Sorry to dig up a month-old topic . . .

I've always found that a bright-leaning speaker can be exciting and very impressive on first listen. You get the feeling that you're hearing excellent sound, and I think dialogue intelligibility has something to do with it, as does the crisp sound and emphasized detail retrieval of a system like that. And in my limited experience, most systems with horn-loaded drivers (especially compression drivers) are tuned that way.

However, for me, the honeymoon phase for a speaker like that wears off quickly and the thing becomes a little grating and piercing and fatiguing. I was at a commercial A/V tradeshow last week (InfoComm) and among the demos I heard were speakers from Meyer Sound and Danley. These speaker systems are very impressive (Danley in particular) - completely effortless and crisp and clear. And you sit there and think how sweet it would be to own a system full of these. They can sound very good, and in a home theater they can chase you straight out with only a few watts of power. But ultimately I don't think I'd want them in my theater. It's just too much of a good thing IME. The effortless part is amazing, and maybe with judicious EQ they could be tuned to taste. I guess I won't get the opportunity, since speakers like that are impossibly expensive for me.

On the other hand, PSA has a speaker lineup like this that have been very highly praised for both music and movies, including by our own Wayne (Audiocraver). If you're interested in that effortless sound and maybe a speaker with a slight emphasis in the upper octaves, at a price that won't totally destroy your budget, that is worth a look for sure. I've been mighty tempted to try them myself, but the set I would want for a full 7.1.4 layout is still a bit outside my budget.

I am glad that I will be able to use an acoustically transparent screen soon, and the center channel speaker will go behind it. Three Chane L7 across the front for me. Not only does it solve the lobing problems associated with horizontal centers that Matt alluded to, but dialogue sounds like it's actually coming from the mouths you see on the screen.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Sorry to dig up a month-old topic . . .

I've always found that a bright-leaning speaker can be exciting and very impressive on first listen. You get the feeling that you're hearing excellent sound, and I think dialogue intelligibility has something to do with it, as does the crisp sound and emphasized detail retrieval of a system like that. And in my limited experience, most systems with horn-loaded drivers (especially compression drivers) are tuned that way.

However, for me, the honeymoon phase for a speaker like that wears off quickly and the thing becomes a little grating and piercing and fatiguing. I was at a commercial A/V tradeshow last week (InfoComm) and among the demos I heard were speakers from Meyer Sound and Danley. These speaker systems are very impressive (Danley in particular) - completely effortless and crisp and clear. And you sit there and think how sweet it would be to own a system full of these. They can sound very good, and in a home theater they can chase you straight out with only a few watts of power. But ultimately I don't think I'd want them in my theater. It's just too much of a good thing IME. The effortless part is amazing, and maybe with judicious EQ they could be tuned to taste. I guess I won't get the opportunity, since speakers like that are impossibly expensive for me.

On the other hand, PSA has a speaker lineup like this that have been very highly praised for both music and movies, including by our own Wayne (Audiocraver). If you're interested in that effortless sound and maybe a speaker with a slight emphasis in the upper octaves, at a price that won't totally destroy your budget, that is worth a look for sure. I've been mighty tempted to try them myself, but the set I would want for a full 7.1.4 layout is still a bit outside my budget.

I am glad that I will be able to use an acoustically transparent screen soon, and the center channel speaker will go behind it. Three Chane L7 across the front for me. Not only does it solve the lobing problems associated with horizontal centers that Matt alluded to, but dialogue sounds like it's actually coming from the mouths you see on the screen.

Ok I have to give one quick defense to waveguides here. A great deal of research has gone into why horns and waveguide speakers can sound course and bright. It typically isn’t the tonal balance. As it turns out there are two other dominant factors. First is that most horns and waveguides rely on diffraction at the mouth or in the expansion to aid in the control of the very Hf directivity. Dr Geddes found that this caused higher order modes, which would in theory cause harshness. While Geddes couldn’t directly measure HOMs in reality and separate them from other sources of this kind of distortion, he was able to design a waveguide and filter that would eliminate the HOM’s and it did (under blinded conditions) sound smoother and less harsh. The diffraction also causes other distortions that are more widely considered today and this is why you see the major changes to modern waveguides from JBL and Klipsch. My opinion is that Klipsch still has it wrong but JBL has made great strides. While Danley and Meyer are amazing companies, they too aren’t really addressing this in an obvious way. I don’t think they have it right either.

The second reason for the brightness is actually the way that a waveguide controls dorectiifty relative to our hearing. If we speak of measurements instead of perceptions for a moment, direct radiation speakers typically beam more at HF’s, even though they have wider dispersion at the midrange frequencies. This greater rolloff causes less Hf energy to be emitted into the room and the reflections and even steady state response is more rolled off. This is why I and Geddes believe that a waveguide speaker of otherwise good design shouldn’t have a flat anechoic response on the listening axis. A tilt is preferable. This can be dialed in with eq.

The above issue is made worse in more reflective rooms too. It is partly why a room sounds warmer and smoother with a lot of absorption.

It’s my opinion that the rap of waveguide speakers being bright is really old thinking based on old design choices and poor setup. When designed and setup based on the most recent thinking, they are very warm and smooth. People who have heard my system typically tell me my speakers don’t sound like any horn they have heard before. A lot of people liken the highs to silk dome tweeters.

 

[bkeeler10]

Hmm, that's very interesting about high order modes potentially causing distortions that may be subjectively described as bright-sounding or harsh. Perhaps this also explains why my coworkers at the show thought they were hearing a bit of distortion on occasion at those demos. I mean, the rooms were not that big and we were not far away from speakers with sensitivities of 105+ dB. I didn't hear it because I was plugging my ears by then (too loud), but I couldn't imagine it being caused by the speaker being pushed to its limits. Maybe it was these high-order modes that register subjectively as distortion of some sort.

I used to think that horn-loaded speakers were bright by nature. More recently I have thought that it was a deliberate tuning decision. But perhaps it's a combination, with poor horn designs contributing distortions and an incorrect assumption that all speakers, regardless of dispersion characteristics, should be anechoically flat on-axis.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Hmm, that's very interesting about high order modes potentially causing distortions that may be subjectively described as bright-sounding or harsh. Perhaps this also explains why my coworkers at the show thought they were hearing a bit of distortion on occasion at those demos. I mean, the rooms were not that big and we were not far away from speakers with sensitivities of 105+ dB. I didn't hear it because I was plugging my ears by then (too loud), but I couldn't imagine it being caused by the speaker being pushed to its limits. Maybe it was these high-order modes that register subjectively as distortion of some sort.

I used to think that horn-loaded speakers were bright by nature. More recently I have thought that it was a deliberate tuning decision. But perhaps it's a combination, with poor horn designs contributing distortions and an incorrect assumption that all speakers, regardless of dispersion characteristics, should be anechoically flat on-axis.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Here are two sources from Geddes on the topic and why I say this causes a perception of distortion. There is some real non-linear distortion produced but actually a linear distortion that is perceived as non-linear as well.

And it’s not just an issue in the speaker design either. Room setup contributes to this. We all are used to seeing speakers, subs, and TV’s nestled together against a wall. This is a problem because the the surfaces around the speaker cause irregular early reflections.

http://www.gedlee.com/Papers/Philosophy.pdf

And

http://www.gedlee.com/Papers/AES06Gedlee_ll.pdf

I’m actually working in a measurement approach using a Binaural dummy head and while I’m not quite there yet, the measurements of the amplitude and phase between ears can be compared. Some of this problem becomes evident. You can see when comparing measurements of speaker types that when the total HF energy over time is examined in room, the Gedlee speakers have more HF energy, even though both of the speakers being tested had a similar flat axial response. Given that this is minimum phase, removing the downward tilt in the Geddes speaker exacerbated the problem a lot.

I can’t say for sure what you guys heard since I wasn’t there, but if you thought you heard distortion, you may have. It could be real non-linear distortion, it could be group delay distortion, diffraction colorations, or it could be another source of distortion. While I would hope these companies get this right, I’ve heard demos with clipping amps. If a speaker has a sensitivity of 105dB, I would doubt that to be the case.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Actually here is another way to look at this point. Comparing a traditional direct radiating speakers front horizontal directivity map to that of a really good CD speaker. You can see the CD speaker, which uses a waveguide, has a higher maximum energy area.

Traditional Dynaudio 2-way


And Genelec CD speaker with waveguide


Note how far out in angle the red and orange area (-3dB and -6dB) are for the waveguide speaker. That means across the horizontal plane the waveguide speaker is putting more Hf energy into the room. The responses are similarly flat.

While the vertical plane doesn’t look as good, there is a similar difference with more red and orange area over more of the treble than with the Dynaudio. This is what I mean when I say more HF energy. It is also why I take such issue with eqing a speaker based on a single point measurement. Worse yet doing so in room. Depending on the speakers directivity, you can make a single point flat but the overall response far less smooth and goof up the response of the reflections.