Do Big Speakers Actually SOUND Bigger?
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2024
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I don’t know of anyone else who is presenting this information, and I’m grateful for it. I appreciate the data, and I appreciate the explanations of why, and how, the things we (you) hear relate to the data that the measurements produce. I wish I would have had access to this kind and depth of information 20 years ago. Thank you.
Awesome! Thanks!
Certainly, presenting data is advantageous. In my opinion, this video would benefit from a part 2 that includes actual comparisons. This could involve contrasting a two-way concentric speaker (such as a Tannoy model) or even a two-way horn speaker (perhaps from Altec) with large drivers against any two-way design featuring smaller drivers that are being promoted by manufacturers today.
It's not how big they are, it's how you use them.
That's what all the guys who have little ones say 😂😂😂 lol
@@troyporter287 Not what she said
Size of boats.
Ghey
I recall something about it taking a hell of a long time to get to England in a row boat. 🤔
One thing I'm glad you covered is having the ability to place stand mount/bookshelf speakers at various heights to get on axis versus floor standers, which are usually in a fixed position. Definitely makes a huge difference in my room where I sit 6 feet away from my mains.
In Music Room we sit 16' away from bookshelf speakers that are wall mounted at 6'-9"high mated with dual subs optimized with minidsp&dirac. The sound/imaging/stage/ect... is WAY bigger than the floor standers in our family room. The 'Above' / 'big room'' sound from live performances(presented from a stage) and nighclubbing(overhead speakers) is what i crave so decided to setup the music room around that vibe.
Yes, there's never any one simple answer.. it's all about where your ears are relative to where (and what quality and level) the sound is emanating from in the room, and how the room plays into modifying that sound at your listening location, further complicated by the brain's preprocessed expectatation, including potentially unnoticed elements such as signal to noise ratio of the sound source, and/or the presence of ambient noise in the environment. There's no one single answer for any given comparison.
Less cerebral people have a tendency to overly complicate scenarios that are simple, or conversely, attempt to simplify scenarios that are complicated, hence,
why there is always dissensions and diatribes looming with regard to sound reproduction. I myself have just made an attempt to summarise a large subject into a single post..😵💫🤔I'm blaming the ☕️👍😂
Its Friday and Erins drops a new vid. Can´t be better! Wishing you a great weekend Erin!🌟
A treat before the weekend indeed! Thx Erin 😊
Erin, I just have to say I really enjoy watching your videos. They are so informative and you explain it in a way that is easily understandable. I am currently not in the process of purchasing a speaker but I still watch every one of your videos because I learn something new from each one of them. You kick ass in what you do.
Bob Carver’s “Sonic Holography” gave the best expansion of sounds beyond the boundaries of the speakers.
Is that a album or a speaker
I had his sonic holigraphy preamp back in the late '70s...loved it.
I have the sep unit, sounds great every so often. Crazy sounds!
I for some reason appreciate the sound of a wide baffled speaker like a CerwinVega! Or Klipsh heritage. There seems to be a certain sense of effervtlessnes to them that I like at medium to loud volumes
My aDs 910s have massive baffles, containing two 10.5" bass drivers diagonally mounted, with the dome tweeter/mid right next each other vertically. When they're on their 8" stands, the tweeters/mids are right at ear level. They might be my end-game loudspeakers.
I have a load of Bill Fitzmaurice speakers which probably sound like a less refined version of the Klipsch. That effortless detail in the horns (and the big bass reflex boxes) is satisfying to listen to.
One thing the wider baffle will have is a lower baffle step, meaning it can project sound towards the listening position down to lower frequencies before the speaker starts to radiate in all directions (I.e. it’s listening window is maintained down to a lower frequency than narrow speakers). That will impact how it sounds. Same thing with the radiation pattern. Speakers with a wide pattern will sound more spacious than those with a narrower pattern, and that is one disadvantage of a lot of coaxial speakers. They are usually quite a bit narrower than conventional dome tweeters on a baffle.
Sounding 'big' has much to do with bass. Take a small standmount speaker with little bass, add 2 well integrated subs and suddenly the whole soundstage seems larger. This is not larger as with phase phenomena in the sense of being wide but diffused, it just seems bigger. This is a psychoacoustic illusion it is not strictly a physics thing. Larger speakers generally (though not always) produce more bass than smaller speakers, at least as commercially implemented.
I'll add that the multiple small low-frequency drivers of a floor stander are typically no match for a subwoofer for multiple reasons including: Available Location, Size, Weight, & Amplification. That said, depending on the room and preferences floorstanders may be sufficient.
I recently sold my 5040 towers to get 5020 stand mounts. I now have better imgaing and more soundtage depth as they better match my sub and seem to improve more from placement than the towers did,
Big speakers (like, big drivers and wide baffles, not the "bunch of 8" woofers stacked" kind of big) tend to become directional lower. That combined with much lower compression at a given SPL makes them sound quite large in my book.
Yep, I covered that aspect as well. But because they become directional lower means that they typically will have a more narrow stage and tighter focus in small/medium rooms.
Yep, though paradoxically to me that makes them sound "bigger". Small speakers sound kinda muddled by comparison.
@@ErinsAudioCorner here is a question for you? Do you think dispersion effects detail?
I think dispersion hurts detail. Let me give you an example.
I have 18 7” monster bass traps from GIK acoustics in my room (ok that sounds silly to say out loud but stay with me…). I also have a large room 26’x30’x8’ full baseman. When I had the Revel 228be I boxed in my speakers with the bass traps about 3’ on 3 sides of the speakers in free space (speaker 7’+ off the walls. The idea was to catch the reflections before they could reflect in the room. The increase in detail was staggering compared no first reflection treatment (did A/B back and forth for a few days). From the mid bass up it was amazing BUT the sound stage really shrunk in size. It went from wall to wall to where those traps sat in sound stage width. So from 25’ to 16’.
Then the dilemma set in. I could not live with or without the traps. Without them the detail sucked, with them the soundstage sucked…. So I did what every good hobbiest does bought new speakers, a narrow dispersion 4367 lol. I find the first reflection points to almost not matter at all with these speakers and just leave the side walls bare. Now my traps are all on the back wall and corners….
A very good job of explaining this.
At a given SPL they won't sound any more or less compressed than another speaker operating well within its limits at the same SPL.
Great presentation well founded in physics. An often overlooked factor in imaging is sample to sample consistency in both frequency and time domains. Tight manufacturing tolerances are important! Also, when I refer to a speaker as sounding large, I am talking about lifelike dynamic range with no sense of strain all the way down into pretty deep bass territory. In this sense, a single speaker can sound large even though it's not projecting any sound stage at all.
I've heard big speakers sound small and small speakers sound big, just as I've heard big speakers sound big an small speakers sound small. Everything plays part in that dance. The room especially plays a big part in soundstage performance as well, a well-designed speaker in a well-treated room can do wonders with the soundstage, especially when it comes to presenting a sense of scale.
general conception is bookshelves have larger soundstage and floor standing sound fuller & taller presence. Soundstage has much to do with room treatment. So thoughs who dont have at least a basic treated room you are not hearing the speakers soundstage.
Great content Erin, I hope you keep making videos like this: sharing your education and experience without a specific product to cover.
You're right about Q Sound or SRS. That processing still exists but it's not necessarily marketed or mentioned in the recording. Some reviewers use recordings that use this sort of processing as reference recordings without even realizing it. The magnitude of these effects varies with listening distance and angle and radiation pattern. Reviewers that use these recordings attribute the 3D effects to the speaker's ability to create a 3 dimensional sound stage when these 3D effects can be achieved with all well matched speaker pairs
I’ve owned at least a couple exact models in floorstanding and bookshelf(Focal, B&W, etc). I prefer the bookshelf speaker every time I’ve heard them compared against each other. I currently now own 7 sets of high end speakers (all bookshelf)
Good explanation. Makes sense. We have what we call the Tardis. Its a small room system with 2 wall mount speakers high on the wall plus a sub. Sounds awesome and thanks to DSP you can't really tell where the sound is coming from, from the listening position. Neat trick.
i wanted to add that this a fascinating topic and Erin does such a wonderful job discusing all the aspects of sound propagation. The other aspect is of course, (and equaly fascinating) the way our brains process all this time and frequency information. (way above my paygrade)
Good content here Erin. I have been designing and building my own speakers for many years. My primary focus with design in the last few years has been on creating a realistic sound stage, well as realistic as I can make it. The one thing I have found that effects "how big a speaker sounds" is its ability to saturate the listening area @ high spl levels with minimal distortion. Not to say the imaging doesnt play a part in that, it does to an extent. However, in my listening experience once a very high spl is reached, if the speakers can handle the drive input (power) with minimal distortion then they will win the "big sound" competition. In my quest for this type of sound I have moved to large high effiency pro drivers in my designs. Faital Pro, B&C, SB Audience...you get the idea. This is not the only thing in this quest though. The passive crossovers can get complicated and in some cases very expensive. If close attention is not paid to this I just have a big blaring box. Simulate, measure, listen, adjust. Simulate, measure, listen, adjust. Over and over and over. When I get it right, the sound is nothing short of amazing....and big.
Feels like you read my mind with this post - I was just wondering about this. My experience matches your explanation. What made me think about this was another reviewer said they would be missing sound above their head by downsizing but later said the speakers being replaced had a tweeter on top.
Yeah, that’s what really matters, IMHO; the crossovers need to be good where there is no obvious handoff errors and you need to be able to sit on the design axis.
8:14 to about 9:00. I never had given thought to two identical woofers being crossed over at different points. I've always enjoyed learning this stuff, but at times, it can be overwhelming. This guy keeps it simple and fun.
Thank you for posting this. It's dense with knowledge bombs about speaker designs presented in a clear and easily digestible manner. Ps. That Madonna album is amazing.
Thanks for the feedback! And, yes, that album is indeed awesome!
I’ve been an audio engineer in all sorts of scenarios and enthusiast at home. I’d say a speaker that has high sensitivity, large spaced woofers, in addition to a bloated deep low end and even harmonic distortion clouding the mid bass can sound maybe big. I can’t say that’s what you want though. It’s really the opposite.
tell danny at gr research. i’m sure he’ll disagree! he has some ridiculous speakers / snake oil and so on lol
That Madonna album is crazy - always hear people talk about how tubes open up the sound stage in depth and width - maybe it’s something to do with distortion- idk ; I run solid state but I have noticed when running Audirvana and changing upsampling via r8brain and depending on using minimum phase or linear phase and or adjusting the bandwidth (% of nyquist) or stop band attenuation can change the way music is presented and sounds - I think it really depends on the equipment of course but haven’t seen anyone ever measure these things to show what each setting is actually doing to the sound. Image seems really tight and precise but a little thin with linear phase and high settings for each and with minimum phase and moderate settings a little more diffuse and fuller but a bit more natural sounding. I don’t understand exactly how it works and have yet to see anyone explain it in terms a layman (me) can understand. Would love your take on this.
Thanks Erin, great video on an interesting topic. How do you see line array type speakers fitting into this analysis? I have Magneplanar 1.7i speakers, which essentially have 5' tall tweeter, midrange, and woofer sections. I find when properly setup they provide very precise horizontal imaging, with the appropriate material but also excel at presenting "life size" images, which I interpret as being related to the physical size of the drivers. Or would you say their dipole nature, which minimizes side wall reflections (and in my setup front wall reflections are largely absorbed) just allows better extraction of the directional information from the recording?
I've always had an affinity for towers, but i think that's because I was so late to the subwoofer game.
That being said, I can't say I've ever noticed a huge difference in soundstage.
Now if by "big" you mean full, it's hard to argue about the benefits of size. And I think one of the things a lot of people probably associate with big speakers is their increased dynamic capabilities, letting them get louder with less effort. So I think getting loud without as much compression, especially in the bass region, is something thats now part of the "big sound".
So when people say a speaker "sounds big" they mean it is "loud and bassy".
In a blinded listening test, I'm convinced you couldn't pick out a well integrated bookshelf / sub combo from a great tower. In fact, I bet more people would pick the bookshelf / sub as the "big" speaker.
I could always tell when larger speakers were in the room as soon as I walked in, but it had nothing to do with soundstage. Mostly with full range speakers and it was a whole room effect instead of just a sweet spot one. Take a two-way stand mount, and add a 15" sub and you essentially have a larger speaker.
Multi-woofer tower speakers with smaller drivers are just different. Sealed, and TL designs tend to muddy this subject even further.
I have both larger and smaller speakers (10 pairs) and I prefer the larger. The big 15" 3-way full range speakers are the most noticeable standalone. The 12" I have are closer in presence to the bookshelf speakers with 6.5" or larger woofers until we start getting above about 70db. I would say that 15" woofer designs is where it becomes more apparent.
Right now I am using 8" 3-way full range monitors with a pair of 12" subs. They go plenty loud. I have my 12" two-ways in the same room. At some point, I will put the 8s away and plug the 12s and the presence differential is pretty noticeable. The 12s have three, 3" diameter ports, compared to two, 2" on the 8s. Smaller speakers mostly just don't have enough headroom and leave me hanging a lot without subs and bass management.
MTM speakers are my fav to emulate 1 point source, currently on Q Acoustics
Aye .. Now I've seen / heard all the factors ... Yes to all of them. Baffle size, driver diameter beaming,.. both will lead to how the sound pressure flows off the baffle width.
Personally.. The number one say to make the stage wider or larger sounding in my rooms .. is sitting closer or physically placing the speakers wider. Toeing out or straight into the room will affect how much of the energy is bounding off the walls..
I mean, .. how large or big do the speakers sound Anechoic? I think the word " bigger " is mostly riding the coat-tails in the pool of ALL the other subjective terms and descriptive adjectives that common people will use. " Wider " and acknowledging a speaker's dispersion pattern / Acoustic alignment, etc .. would be less subjective and more observation.
Good to detail .. I hope that people will take the details and re-evaluate how to describe the sound in room.
How do you feel about towers that don't have additional drivers over and above bookshelf? Sometimes we see this - towers that essentially look like a bookshelf as far as drivers are concerned, but with a larger box
They absolutely do but they need their proper room. I have paradigm 120 and they are pulled forward 4 feet from the back wall and 4 feet from side walls and they are 11 feet apart, they sound absolutely ridiculous! If I push them against the walls they sound tinny with some weird bass reinforcement. Also towers will usually sound bigger because bookshelf speakers are less sensitive than towers, but the best thing you can do is run your speakers without a subwoofer or crossover them correctly and get a sub that has low group delay especially for audio.
Should do a video on high efficiency vs low efficiency. High dynamic range efficiency really opened my eyes.
Perfect! A lot of people don't understand this.
I own transmission line floorstanders and transmission line bookshelf loudspeakers. Bass is better on floorstanders. Having two systems just gives me a different experience
an upright bass sounds bigger than a cello because it is and we can sense that scale, easily.More radiating surface (including and perhaps primarily, the cabinet) sounds "bigger" This mainly comes from bass presence and perhaps attack or the dynamic envelope. A crossover, good or bad, can effect this but seldom overcome our acute sensitivty to scale and attack. Its probably a survival thing.
And this is why I have Kef Q100 drivers in my open baffle with 15” drivers crossed at 300hz for the best of both worlds ;) plus a 15” sealed ultimax sub.
I do wonder if I would get better imaging and more disappearing of the speaker if I just went to a couple of 8" or 10" drivers with a much narrower baffle. I cross at 80hz to sub so the OB bass drivers don't need to play that low.
By designing many different speakers, I have learned that every listener is extremely influenced be the appearence of the speaker. Big speakers are expected to sound large and it is really hard to overcome this bias. In fact, it very much depends on the bass performance and the position of the speaker. A small speaker can sound big, when positioned in the correct hight and supported by a well aligned subwoofer going deep. And when you close your eyes or dimm the light - you forget about the size of the speaker and it will sound big. Well, small speakers with a good subwoofer it is not a small system any more.
One example of your explanation can be applied with some small speakers sounding like "big speakers" like the ilouds micro monitors or Vanatoos transparent zero, mosly because those speakers had wide radiation thanks to the use of small drivers and the directivity is fairly smooth
There is an axiom in speaker design: Small size, bass extension, efficiency, pick 2.
I love big speakers. My present big speakers are rated down to 20hz, my previous big speakers were rated to 10Hz.
Big speakers - at high volume they take over the air in the room, at low volume they still put out deep bass.
As far as sound stage - I have heard and build some bookshelf speakers that have fantastic sound stage and imaging, big speakers add scale and height. I have never heard a small speaker give height or scale in the sound stage.
In big speakers you have large drivers that can reproduce bass with less distortion and higher efficiency.
Big speakers have the room to be configured as a point source, which is very coherent, both in frequency and time, you can't do that in a small box.
Before you buy, listen to both big and small speakers, they both have advantages and disadvantages.
I give up space for sound quality.
What speakers do you have that reach 20hz and 10hz?
@@chrislesnar Have Tekton Moabs rated 20Hz-30kHz Had Polk SRS 1.2TL rated 10Hz-26kHz (-3db 27Hz - 25kHz).
Yet another great one! Glad to see new content Bro. Fun stuff!
What’s up, brother!?
@@ErinsAudioCorner killing myself in a new job. Situation normal somewhat. Been really digging the little CSS 1TDX’s I built through a Node X and Schiit Vidar 2. The civic is finally gone. I see it around town every now and then.
When it comes to speakers, I’ve always found it bigger is usually better within the same speaker series. My advice is to get the biggest floorstanding speakers that are the highest quality that you can afford 😅
Totally random thought, but I think it would be cool to get an average Joe to compare speakers with you. Not on a regular basis but if you do a $200 vs $2,000 speaker just because we know what you will say and you have an amazing ability to decipher very specific sound characteristics. I just wonder how that would compare to a non-audio-enthusiasts opinion.
A good explanation, as always, Erin - Thanks.
If I chose to pick any nits, it would be that you don't talk about room placement until late in the video. I'd contend that in many (most?) setups, the speaker placement (and room treatment) has far more effect on soundstage than does the placement of drivers on the baffle board. I've seen photos of even reviewer's rooms where one speaker is hard in a corner while the other is adjacent to an open doorway to another room! This affects imaging not just more but FAR more than the speaker characteristics themselves. I've also seen setups where one speaker has heavy drapes behind it while the other is in front of a bare window or sheetrock wall...
You're right about the effects of Q-sound. In my room, Madonna's Immaculate Collection throws images that seem to come literally from BEHIND the listener! I fail to understand why more recordings don't use Q-sound.
I've had HUGE speakers in my room (Tekton Pendragons, for one example) and point-source speakers (KEF LS-50s for example). The differences in sound stage are significantly less than might be expected. I'm currently using some Klipsch RP-600m speakers that can throw a HUGE sound stage with excellent width and depth. So my answer to your video title, "Do Big Speakers Actually SOUND Bigger?" would be a firm (but qualified) "No."
Cordially - Glenn Young
My friends Magnepan 3.7i speakers make a vocalist sound ridiculously large in his listening room. His room is maybe not super large, so we were 8 to 10 feet from the speakers. I assume this is in part due to the 9" wide woofer panels that are crossed over at 450 Hz with first order crossovers. At the time it felt like the room was approaching acting like a gigantic set of headphones. I've also heard the large Genesis Technologies speakers and very large electrostatic speakers. In a smaller room there is this effect. I assume if the speaker is so large that you are listening in the near field, this "headphone" effect comes into play. I have found that working on crossovers, a single three way speaker sounds large with first order crossovers but tends to shrink to a point with high order crossovers. With 4th order digital crossovers the Magnepan 3.7i looses some of that horizontally split soundstage effect for sure. For sure first order crossovers result in weird directivity patterns and overlap in the drivers at the two crossover points. Testing a speaker with different order crossovers is pretty interesting. It's a fun experiment to do, and it's easy to setup if you have an active digital crossover at hand like a miniDSP. I think this may be why many people are so impressed by speakers with first order crossovers, because the single speaker creates a sort of simulated stereo effect local to that one speaker.
Line-source speakers, like Magnepans, Infinity IRS-V or Genesis 1 towers often tend to make vocalists sound unnaturally large especially when compared to similarly sized point-source designs.
You know, Erin, all this talk about baffle size and point-source and imaging makes me realize, I don't think I've ever heard you talk about electrostatic speakers. Is that because you don't have much experience with them, or because you don't like the very narrow, bipolar radiation pattern?
My small Micca rb42 speakers sound bigger than they look. They are also warmer/less detail sounding than my Klipsch rp600m.
Totally agree with ya!
Not sure if you were referring to my comments or somebody else, but it sure sounds like me. I do often say big speakers move more air and little speakers only move a little air. If you want that presence, you've gotta move the air. Big speakers sound big and little speakers sound little. I say all of this various ways and I do say it often.
What I mean specifically is air volume and frequency response. An 8" woofer can physically move more air than a little baby 3" driver. It will also handle low frequencies that a 3" driver cannot. So it will sound bigger, fuller, because of the amount of air it can move and the frequency range that it can safely operate. Sound is mechanical, it's all about pressure waves. A large speaker can produce a large pressure wave, it can create a greater sense of presence due to both the amount of air it can move and the frequency range it can cover.
But presence is not to be confused with sound stage. When I say presence, I'm talking about realism. How real a thing sounds. Like the difference between talking to a person in person verses talking to a person over the phone. One sounds really real, the other does not. That little baby speaker in your phone sounds exactly like a little baby speaker, right!?
Sound stage can easily be faked in post production, so I don't mention it often. But I do frequently talk about presence which I hope I've explained. But my JBL 590's for example, they play wide, their sound stage just sounds wide in my very narrow room. They fake it with their giant megaphone style wave guides. In my 9' 8" wide room it's very beneficial, but may not be for everyone. Because room size makes such a difference, it's kinda hard to talk about sound stage. I only mention it here in example because these 590's sound so much wider in the same room when compared to my previous towers. It's quite an unmistakable difference. But again, sound stage is not presence.
Anyway, I don't know if you were referring to my comments or not, but I do hope that I've successfully explained myself regardless.
Cheers man 🍻
No, it wasn’t you. I had a patron messaged me about a review that somebody posted yesterday and sent me the link and asked me what I thought about the comments. It wasn’t you. So no worries about explaining yourself.👍
If they are using quality drivers then a 10" woofer is going to sound a lot bigger and hit you much harder than even a 8" . I have 10" woofers in my reference pair of high end diy speakers that I designed and built and I have big mtms that have some really stout 6.5 that I built and they have a lot of drive and SPL bass everything but they don't hit or sound like the 10" drivers. You can grab a pair of crappy old speakers at the thrift stores with small magnets that look impressive that sounds boxy and thin. But if you have some high end drivers they punch you in the face. I was just listening to Metallica sad but true and Nirvana something in the way and I couldn't believe how full they sound and the impact of the kick drum. Bookshelves aren't going to give you that. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble. But try to find a really high end speaker with a 10" woofer and using a good source and then something with a smaller driver. It's not going to hit the same.
Awesome video full of great explanations!
Lots of times, I feel we listen with our eyes. We see a bigger speaker and WE WANT it to sound bigger because it has lots of woofers.
Then, we crank the volume way past the volume at what we played the bookshelfs...
Psychology and speaker efficiency play a big role in that impression I think 😅
Rifght bang on with Q-Sound! - I've been familiar with it since it first came out (~1990).
Not sure why Q-Sound doesn't get much use these days - the nice thing is that it is system independant. Granted, Atmos makes it a bit of a moot point. 🙂 - Cheers.
In my limeted experience building speakers, I found that big woofers simply don't image as well as smaller ones. This gives the illusion that the sound stage is bigger but also les precise. When it comes to the big sound. I would say that higher sensitivity speakers have an edge to sounding powerfull. Your amp has a way easier time with the load. Therefor they can sound more " dynamic". If you want sensitive speakers and play anything below 80Hz you need a pretty big speaker already because math and science reasons.
Used to have an Arcam A/R receiver. It always sounded out of phase, but created a huge sound stage. Also had horrid dialog. I would say a large speaker loads up a room differently. Also as you stated a large speaker can play at a higher volume. What I find is that a 2 way doesn't have the impact / clarity when you have a lot of mids and bass hitting at once.
I built some speakers last year that use a little 3" driver to cover ~200-7000hz. The bottom is picked up by Dayton Epique driver and the top end a little dayton flush mount job.... The result is a "big" sounding speaker, because the bulk of the energy is coming from a very small driver, so has a very wide dispersion through the most critical of the listening range. By the time it starts to tighten up over 5khz you can't really hear the diff anyway because our ears aren't very good up there. These things play the disappearing act very well.
Erin,
I was waiting for you to mention the KEF Blades in this analysis (?)
I split the field with 2 systems/rooms:
2.2 KEF LS50/REL &
2.2 Magnepan LRS/REL
While not "accurate" or as tightly focused, the Maggies are addictively spacious in their presentation.
Why is that?
😅
Great topic Erin. One question that wasn't asked is do you really want a huge sound stage? Many years ago I auditioned a pair of speakers that the salesman claimed was the best he'd ever heard (and sold of course). Not naming names because this is a very popular, high-end speaker company but this was 20+ years ago and they had a 5 figure MSRP. I listened for well over an hour and the one thing that turned me off was that the sound stage was so large that it was not at all realistic. For instance, the female vocalist threw an audio image that made her seem 10 feet tall with a 2 foot wide mouth and was playing a 20 ft grand piano. The trap set was 30 feet across. With that large of a soundstage, imaging was not great either. It just wasn't my cup of tea. I prefer a realistic sound stage, true to the performance, with imaging that is properly locates the instruments.
I do sometimes miss my cheap BIC America DV-84s for tye dual 8" woofers and passive radiators in each tower. It really helped the midbass slap in my room. Though the Monitor Audio bookshelves are superior in every other way.
Love your your man!Traditional woofer/tweeter designs suffer a lot of issues that you are addressing here.Personally,i'm good with a pair of KALI Audio IN5's and another pair of SONODYNE SRP 600 powered monitors downstairs,and contemplating the addition of a RHYTHMIK F12G servo sub.Have you heard of Alsyvox's ribbon full range speakers?They claim to solve all of the problems associaciated with traditional designs,including the efficiency factor.The guy makes every unit himself!
I'd be very interested in a deeper dive into QSound from your perspective. Very interested in the science and data behind that tech. Seems like it lived a short life, but the tracks that leverage it are really fun to listen to.
That would be fun. it would be like a research project for me if I did it though. I used to follow a thread about it on one of the mastering forums, but that’s been probably a decade or more at this point.
@@ErinsAudioCorner the modern version of Qsound is called BACCH and is a very advanced form of crosstalk cancellation. It runs on an outboard processor. The effect is quite amazing and improves stereo imaging significantly.
@@TheAmplifierfire what's the difference between this and Apple's spatial audio?
Very interesting information. This may explain why my Monitor Audio Silver 200s (shorter and smaller drivers) sounds better to me than my MA Silver 500s (taller and larger drivers) when listening to most music tracts. Huh!😮
Thanks Erin!
Hi Eric, interesting video, I have a rectangular room, the speakers are positioned on the long side and it makes a lot of difference where I place my listening chair for optimal bass and spatial sound. My speakers are the Sonus Faber Lumina V and it took quite a while. to find the optimal sound for me that I am satisfied with
Greetings from the Netherlands
I guess my definition is a bit different. If I have a recording of a piano with solo voice, we have a huge difference in "instrument" size - even at a live concert. So size is not just the size of the soundstage.
Bigger speakers have woofers often close to the floor - that increases the LF output dramatically when compared to a bookshelf speaker on a stand, even if the anechoic spec is almost the same. There is a floor and ceiling reflection that will often cause a midbass dip when a speaker is on a stand moving it close to listening height. That makes it sound "smaller".
I believe that bigger speakers generally sound bigger (bigger not always being better). That is due to less distortion and better bass (better coupling to the room). I do agree that size has to be coupled with proper development of the crossover and cabinet as well as setup.
Adjusting the acoustic tweeter height is usually accomplished by tilting the large speaker slightly backwards. This can be accomplishes with blocks or spikes but many speakers have a method built in!
Properly integrated subwoofers can help regardless!
Do larger drivers or more drivers with more surface area inherently cause more room interaction due to taking up more physical space in a room or is that practically irrelevant? I could swear when I reviewed that KEF KC62, it interacted with my room less than the Monolith THX 10" placed in the same location.
It is a wash. Work = force x distance so pressure = surface area x distance. At the same frequency/output the work is technically the same, though the required power to achieve that work could be different.
Maybe it had more to do with wavelength and boundary. The KC62 sound would come from the center of the two drivers and the thx would come from the driver face, so maybe they were not at the “same” spot due to different acoustic centers.
Maybe it was the KC62 limiter kicking in lol… oh how I hate tiny subs lol.
I think it's more related to the acoustic centers. I might be thinking about this wrong, but I would imagine that a 21" woofer is going to be closer to nearby walls and the ceiling than a 6.5" woofer, and therefore will have different room interaction. I wondered if that's why people think that smaller woofers = "tighter bass" because they're actually hearing less room interaction, whereas the larger driver couples to the room more. I could be way off. I've yet to read this Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, but I'm sure the answer is in there somewhere.@@JamesWilliams-gf8gm
Want to know how wide your "soundstage" is?
Get some music playing at roughly conversational levels (70 to 75 dba) now ramp up your shoulders and with your eyes closed try to point at your speakers. When you think you've got them bulls-eyed, open your eyes. With proper placement you should be pointing well outside the width between your speakers.
This happens because your hands and arms will cause a diffraction effect localized near your ears that will stop when you get beyond the direct radiation area of your speakers.
Your thought process is lacking full transparency and is Completely devoid of the multiple comb influences of room interactions even at lower listening levels
@@davidcross890
Nope. It takes advantage of that, giving you a way to detect the outer edge of the speaker's direct radiation area.
Try it and come back and *honestly* tell me it doesn't work...
@@Douglas_Blake_579 why would any decent person be anything other than honest?
@@Douglas_Blake_579 I seem to get a repeated impressions that you may be talking for lack of better words carriage and buggy techniques and technology implementation and quite frankly I am interested in creating the bleeding edge repeatable developmental performance level without regard to cost
@@davidcross890
Well lets start by noticing that in all of your comments on this thread you've been claiming to have designed and invented super high end speakers but your rebuttals are not technical or insightful... you're just hurling insults at a total stranger.
Thus I conclude that you are not a decent person.
all good points, may i add physicality to the mix?
a speaker sound larger if it has physical impact, and if you add subwoofer to a small speakers you might not get the impact and large sound just above the subwoofer crossover point.
80hz to 200hz is important to me to feel the music and have a large scale or sound big.
I love your science approach to speakers. Have you thought about designing and selling speakers or speaker kits?
Very good one Erin.
thank you very much.
in most cases by bigger they usally mean taller = tall singer etc.
manufacturer "do" that by locating the tweeter/mid units higher than ear level . (acoustic center)
some of them allow you to tilt and adjust the units (than you are actually "adding difreaction)
and i not talking about 500 usd floorstander.
These comapnies usually dont aim for ideal measurments and science based audio - its a diifernt market based on.....
People might also be surprised how many speaker cabinets are actually too large for the drivers used in them. This is probably an offset of "bigger sells" but it also will provide an increase in bass output. But it's rubbery bass, because the woofer cone is not well damped and ringing and doubling effects do occur, making it all seem a little bigger than life.
Very true.
@@ErinsAudioCorner
My current speakers are a pair of modified Pioneer SP-FS52s. That's a 1" tweeter and 3 5 1/4s ... These are shipped as a single chamber speaker and of course there's the issue of cancellation because with the crossover, you have two speakers in the same chamber, but doing different things. It also means the chamber is way too large for either set of speakers.
So what I did was to add a baffle between the top mid-bass driver and the two lower bass drivers, splitting the sound chamber in two so that neither chamber is too large. Essentially the isolation made them into a 2 way sitting on top of a subwoofer.
The improvement is not trivial. It is measurable and people have even commented on it.
Even on bookshelf or stand mount two ways adding an internal baffle, usually on about a 45 degree angle between bottom and back under the woofer will tighten up and clarify the bass considerably.
Note... a baffle is not a brace, it is a full width air tight surface.
That depends on the driver and port tuning, but yeah - often times they're too big.
Brilliant video, real information that benefits and educates the user. Im so sick of the audio industry and all the bull. So refeshing to have found your channel Thank you
If I send you some older Boston Acoustics CR85's from the late 90's / early 00's will you test and review them? Of course these are not high-end speakers nor new, but they're pretty highly regarded and these old BAs have a loyal fan base. Might be fun just for the heck of it. I think you might be surprised at how much interest that video gets.
As motor enthusiasts used to say... There is no replacement for displacement. LOL Good tower speakers should cost much more than good bookshelves, otherwise, one knows they are giving up driver and crossover quality in floor standers in many cases. In many smaller rooms, a well-built 2-way speaker can be almost perfect but if there is room for additional costs for a well built and designed tower, that is my personal preference.
In the spirit of going big, I plan on getting the JTR Noesis 215RT someday, when budget permits. Im curious if youve ever heard of these speakers / have an opinion on them.
I like big speakers. I could not afford a set of 20 thousand dollar speakers so I built a pair. I picked out 15 inch drivers a mid that is used by my favorite sounding speakers and the most expensive tweeter on Madisound. The build actually came out sounding amazing. Cost came in at under 5 grand. They sound big. Certain songs that are blah songs on my stand mounts sound like the voice of God on my big speakers. They opened up a batch of music that I otherwise wouldn't even listen to. For a 60 year old dude who was getting burned out on the top 1000 rock albums over and over and the new music not hitting quite right i appreciate a speaker that delivered new music that I didn't know sounded so good played right. Sound stage, nope. But they will pressurize the room and won't hurt your ears. totally different type of emersion you feel in your liver
Most 2-ways have inherent flaw because of the Doppler effect. Standard tweeter can't play very low which means that bass must play up to 2, 3 or even 4kHz. Which means that bass is now 2 speakers in one: low frequency one moves with high amplitude and then middle frequency driver basically moves in space at that low bass frequency, so important freqs at 2-3kHz start to rapidly change their pitch. The only solution is to have big bass like 12" or 15" playing no higher than 1000Hz and then a compression driver which is able to play down to 1000Hz without too much distortion.
And the second problem with bass playing high is that crossover frequency at 2 or 3kHz is right in the middle of the very important range where our ears are quite sensitive.
So no, 2-ways are not good and out of choice.
I’m with you on Doppler being a real thing. But the levels at which it is audible is a different matter.
Crossing a 12 or 15-inch driver at or even near 1kHz is a really bad idea. Unless you have a very good design, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a significant directivity issue that is going to be more audible than IMD effects will be (at least, unless you’re trying to fill a venue with sound).
Super sound stage is all about having equal, Left and Right. From your source, amp, wire and room....
Personally Ive always a nice 2-channel stand-mount with properly blended subwoofer has always sounded biggest to me.
Great stuff as usual Erin
I love big speakers but can appreciate all the bonuses of a small more accurate speaker.
I have custom built 3 ways in my living room with a 12" woofer. I can feel the bass in any room of the house if i want that or i can listen quietly while sitting on the couch with no lack of bass. Movies on the same speakers are a blast.
But when I'm at my desk i would not want anything near that large because it wouldnt be able to do its job in that kind of space.
A 2,5 way with big woofers, (properly executed) will have a less complex crossover, will have higher sensitivity, and a point source sound in that, there will be no detectable separation between the drivers, In other words, they're very coherent.
Interestingly, enough, one of the speakers the “split stage” issue was most evident on was a 2.5 way speaker. JBL HDI-3600. I I discussed this in that review a few years back.
Look at how recording studios set up microphones. Where they set them and what speakers the record from on guitar for instance. Just look.
Yep. And then we have to consider what the mixing process is. People take mono sources and do wild stuff to them to get very odd results. But that’s the fun stuff.
Very good reasoned argument Erin. thanks for sharing yr experience
Thanks.
So, are the companies that put the woofers on the sides of the cabinet doing that mainly to keep the front baffle narrow to enhance the radiation pattern of the speaker?
We definitely more informative video's like this, Audiophile Myth Buster's. Great job Erin one of your best 🤔 Another way to test image height, is to buy a Stereo Demo CD, some have a test with a sound like someone sanding wood. Anyway the sound is recorded vertically over several feet, anyway tried it with Magnepan 3.6's which have a 55" tall tweeter, I never got the impression the image moved vertically at all. It just stayed dead center the whole time.
It's absolutely possible that it was sighted bias, but when I heard the FR30s at PS Audio, I was struck by how much *height* the sonic image had. In the grand scheme of things, those aren't even particularly large or tall speakers, but I do believe they're the largest hifi speakers I've ever heard. Nevertheless, I do think a "tall" image makes sense, given the vertical distances between the different drivers/groups of drivers.
Just discovered your channel! Love this video sir.
Some people believe that if you listen to mono music on two speakers, it becomes stereo.
I'm thinking a bigger speaker would have a bigger area of wall reflection, which, with speaker height, might sound "bigger" It might just be a physiological thing.
The biggest benefit of a stand mount speaker is the ease of integration and positioning within a room. It is also easier to make a small speaker cheaply that has attributes of a higher end large speaker in terms of sound staging and imaging. In today's world where style is more important than sound quality people want small and easily integrated speakers so small speakers, especially stand mounts, are the most popular. Even then they are almost never positioned optimally because that gets in the way of aesthetics, don't you know. However, if you have the space and the will to implement a large and or tall floor standing speaker correctly and that speaker was designed and constructed properly then it will do the same disappearing act and sound stage magic a smaller speaker can do with the added benefit of increased scale, bass extension, realistic dynamics and more realistic spatial cues. Everyone likes to think adding a sub to a small speaker gives the same effect but it's actually not even close though it does help. But dedicating a space to such large and expensive speakers and the associated electronics is something that not even most who can afford to do so want to spend their money on. That sort of audio addiction is a niche market to say the least. So, if you want the most bang for your buck a larger stand mount with confident output down to 50 or 60 hertz and a sub or two will do it. But if you're just going to shove them against the wall or actually put them on a bookshelf then buy anything you fancy under $500 because you're wasting your money on anything higher end due to placement issues. Heck, a good pair of in walls and a sub might be preferable if you have to go the "on the bookshelf" route.
All I know is that my Revel m126bes crossed over at 80hz seem to have waay less bass (oomph?) than my Dynaudio X34s crossed over at 80hz, using the same sub in the same room calibrated to the same curve. I've swapped them in and out several times thinking it must just be in my head, but I really don't think it is.
What about a full range speaker like the Zu? Would it not closer to a point source?
Ok its a very complicated thing
Been building my own speakers for about 5 years now i have made two-way bookshelves three-way bookshelves and towers
The speakers i use in my living room are my first experience at a hybrid design sealed woofers(2-8") in each open on top side by side( 2-8") plannars mids and beside them open (4-3") plannar tweeters open in the back
I made a few mistakes but overall fantastic speakers (a tinybit foward but will be corrected later )
I never heard dipole speakers before so this blew me away at the soundstage of these absolutely amazing the depth and precision of them is crazy
The bookshelves i made were good and i can tune them much easier but the big dipole floor standing are definitely better for big sound
Problem with the big ones is you need space lots of it 8 to 10 feet apart is best put them 6' apart everything seems to get smashed into the middle of the soundstage too much and i suppose alot of people do this put big speakers too close together
But just my opinion others will definitely differ with me
Have a wonderful day 😊
So many thoughts and comments on this topic ... first being; that Madonna release CD came with a scented liner notes insert.
Last I checked, the scent was still intact!
What?! That’s crazy (for you). (Catch the pun?)
@@ErinsAudioCorner
Surely others remember the patchouli dominant scent, ... uh right? Any help here?
Seems like a clear solution is to buy a good point source speaker…coaxial design
The total cross sectional area of all moving membranes must be an influence of things sounding "big" ... e.g. you cannot escape the sound of an Infinity IRS Beta ... big speakers with lots of membranes correct the room acoustic damage by brute force.
Hi Erin, do you have an opinion of open baffle speakers and would you consider reviewing a pair if given the chance?
I do. I would. 😉
@@ErinsAudioCorner i am curious too. Open baffle is claimed to be more open and musical, natural
Caladans
For example: The Steinway-Lyngdorf Model S with two boundray woofers really sounds large, although the satellites are pretty small.
I've owned huge speakers, small speakers and a few in between. In my experience there's no correlation between size and performance.
Passive speakers with multiple woofers require a more complex crossover and I agree with Fincham, Geddes et al in believing the weakest point of passive speakers is the crossover.
Active speakers are the best current and Future-Fi.
Great content. I just bought some small speakers for a small home theater setup, pairing them with the SVS 3000 micro... aaand.... they sound small lol. They are going back. I'm starting to regroup around "there's no replacement for displacement"
Haha. That’s definitely true to an extent.
I've been rocking a Parasound preamp and 2 channel Parasound amp in stereo for my home theater/music setup. Have loved it. My kids are getting older and more into movies, so I thought ok let's get back into multi channel.
Just bought a bunch of small Cambridge MINX speakers to work as an Atmos setup and hooked them into a Marantz 7.1 receiver. Sounded like garbage.
I literally had a much bigger sound stage and every other buzz word from my stereo setup. I literally stopped the movie and put the 2 channel back into play.
There's definitely some voodoo going on with high end audio and I hate that I'm hooked.
I'm going to focus on bigger replacements for my main LR (with a duplicate as a center) and clone my Parasound amp into two monos and go from there.
What a hobby.
I just got some larger speakers. They're pretty good for the price I paid for them but honestly not that impressed by them. Yamaha NS-777. The mid/tweeters sound quite beaming sometimes. I find it all sounds more cohesive when I experiment with different filters on my DAC though. I ended up running a second set of speakers to fill out the sound, using a 10 inch active sub with them too. All in all I'm pretty happy with the end result but didn't like them on their own.
erin you said if the floow speaker the tweeter is above your head thats where its at unless you take a chainsaw to the speaker. putting your seating on blocks would probably be a better plan ;)
Sure. But scorched earth on the speakers is way more fun. 😂
My inclination is to characterize soundstage size and/or sound image size in terms of "spatial quality", rather than in terms of "how big the speaker sounds". And I readily acknowledge the imprecision in my use of terms.
In my little pea-brain vocabulary a speaker "sounding big" correlates with (but is not solely determined by) its dynamic contrast. Going way way out on a subjective/speculative limb here, imo it seems to be related to how well the leading edge of the waveform stands out from everything else that's going on.
You missed a couple of good questions in the Greg Timbers interviews. That said, how do you explain JBL L5 and L7s (tower speakers) playing down to 34Hz?