Flat Response

[Zilch]

Re: Flat Response

p.s. ask Dano if it wasn't the student build/Orion3 threads, that spawned this one....

Let's get to the bottom line of it, then.

Would someone post or link to the definitive Orion axial response curve, please?

[Guest]

Re: Flat Response

Here's the kicker: I've heard the Salon 2s in apurpose built listening room: I liked them and found them accurate. Throws a wrench in your theory that this is all about my preference.

Actually, what that does, is remove any doubt whatsoever, that linear, "flat" on axis response of the acoustic source, is bright/harsh or otherwise inaccurate or undesirable. That responsibility for all those things, lies elsewhere (spin the wheel, take your pick - subjective choice, off axis, sound power, room, positioning, reviewer biases, etc, etc. - any one of them is fine with me ;)).
Case closed. Thanks.

[DDF]

Re: Flat Response

Actually, what that does, is remove any doubt whatsoever, that linear, "flat" on axis response of the acoustic source, is bright/harsh or otherwise inaccurate or undesirable. That responsibility for all those things, lies elsewhere (spin the wheel, take your pick - subjective choice, off axis, sound power, room, positioning, reviewer biases, etc, etc. - any one of them is fine with me ;)).
Case closed. Thanks.

I said the Salon2s were in a treated room. In an untreated room, they could very well have been bright. My speakers are in an untreated room at home. Flat, they're aggresive.

Why do you bother withthese conversations if your only goal is to argue without listening?

[Guest]

Re: Flat Response

I said the Salon2s were in a treated room.

Which affects the on axis how?

[Deward Hastings]

Re: Flat Response

I said the Salon2s were in a treated room.

It's another way of dealing with the "flat response" problem. I've heard a lot of "treated" rooms, in homes and at dealers . . . they have had two things in common: they were *not* anechoic, and absorption increased with frequency. That is to say, the room "treatment" produced a falloff in "power response", and overall a rolled off high end for the listener. It's an ideal circumstance for demonstrating a speaker that's "flat on axis", because what the listener actually hears is *not* flat.

In a more live room you'd have to correct the excessive highs some other way . . .

[ligs]

Re: Flat Response

Maybe it is just my ears. I prefer rising highend with certain tweeters such as bohlender graebener neo3 pdr and the Infinity Perfect 6.1 tweeter. In many Stereophile speaker reviews there are rising tweeter responses. Here is an example:

http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/308revel/index4.html

[DDF]

Re: Flat Response

Which affects the on axis how?

It affects the tonal response perceived in room. Put this speaker in a livelier room and it sounds brighter. One way to make a bright speaker sound less bright is to reduce the treble.

[DDF]

Re: Flat Response

It's another way of dealing with the "flat response" problem. I've heard a lot of "treated" rooms, in homes and at dealers . . . they have had two things in common: they were *not* anechoic, and absorption increased with frequency. That is to say, the room "treatment" produced a falloff in "power response", and overall a rolled off high end for the listener. It's an ideal circumstance for demonstrating a speaker that's "flat on axis", because what the listener actually hears is *not* flat.

In a more live room you'd have to correct the excessive highs some other way . . .

Of course, I agree. I guess I just assumed this was obvious to us all here.

[Guest]

Re: Flat Response

Would someone post or link to the definitive Orion axial response curve, please?

Like the ones Deward auditioned, bought and owns?
Sure:


http://theaudiocritic.com/plog/index...Id=33&blogId=1

In room:


http://orion.quicksytes.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1224

Of course we all know how bright and harsh the Orions were for the first few years.....
Who would think about buying something like that?:D

[DDF]

Re: Flat Response

Of course we all know how bright and harsh the Orions were for the first few years.....
Who would think about buying something like that?:D

The average in-room response above 1 khz is ~ 3 db less than below 1 khz.

[dantheman]

Re: Flat Response

This:

Doesn't sound bright at all to me and my hearing is pretty good until 15k as of 9months ago. Our perception of that top octave is not as good as most people think even if we can hear that high. The amount of weight that content carries in our perception/interpretation is pretty small in general. Without it being there though, it is missed.
This:

Sounds brighter and more detailed/spacious, etc..., but not at all harsh.
This:

Doesn't sound harsh(bright in a bad way) until you compare it to the other 2.
Even this:

Still sounds a bit harsh compared to the others above.

Dan

Look at the AVG responses of the above graphs:
not harsh in any room treated or not (titanium dome):

Not harsh in any room either (soft dome):

Slightly harsh when compared to others in untreated room or treated room though less so in a treated room(titanium dome):

Still slightly harsh in an untreated room, but less so than its unmodified buddy shown above. I hear next to no harshness in a moderately treated live end/dead end room. These sit in the dead end.


The issue is not so simple as to just on axis response or even power or polar response, but treating a room can help with harshness as can EQ I bet. To me, the majority of the harshness issue is probably diffraction and reflections like slap echo. The 2 that never sound harsh have nice sculpted baffles and low diffraction. The one that does sound a bit harsh has ports on either side of the tweeter, less round over (barely any) and a measurably rougher off axis response.

Deward, your room observations sound just like mine--I mean that not only in my room, but in other treated rooms as well. Here's some of my recent RT60 graphs:

Bass absorption isn't simple. It takes a lot of well placed treatment that can tricky to place as it can destroy your image stability.
If I remove one of my bass traps, I get this:

If I move one sub:

Here's with all treatment removed:


Dan

[Guest]

Re: Flat Response

The average in-room response above 1 khz is ~ 3 db less than below 1 khz.

Read the thread

[MSaturn]

Re: Flat Response

It would seem audio engineers are well aware of this preference, at least the ones at lexicon: my DC-1 (which was built long before the orions, for instance) has a 'tilt' function that basically raises everything below 1Khz (the 'fulcrum') slightly, while rolling off the high end.

EDIT: Wow, linkwitz uses a DC-2. I have a sneaking suspicion he tried out the tilt function and liked what he heard.

[Zilch]

Re: Flat Response

O.K., thank you for the curves.

I'm a bit confused, because according to this page, frequencies between 500 Hz and 10 kHz were downward tilted 1.8 dB in the original, increased to 4.0 dB two weeks ago, and that backed off to 3.2 dB two days ago with version 3.2:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion-rev3.htm

Those are transfer function EQ settings. Interestingly, the original shelving filter does not evidence a prominent feature in the measured response.

I assume he's talking axial anechoic here, because his own in-room measurements deviate substantially from those measured by others:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/AES-Chile%2709/Chile-stereo%20challenge-final.pdf

His room being more reflective, apparently.

[Zilch]

Re: Flat Response

Turning now to Allison & Berkovitz (1970):

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/library/acoustic_research/special_sections/additional_ar_documents/the_sound_field_in_home_lis/

Here is the AR3a anechoic axial response (5dB/major division), measured in the Harvard chamber with mid and high level controls set to max:




Allison and Berkovitz took 22 1/3-octave RTA measurements in 16 AR3a owner listening rooms and averaged them for this composite in-room response, also with mid and high level controls at max:



[Gratuitous editorial comment: HALLO Siegfried! ]


They then compared this result to an average of 6 concert halls taken at the "good" seats (details in text):




Here is the conclusion of their study:




The answer to OP's question is program genre preference. "Concert hall realism" enthusiasts, a diminishing demographic now comprising less than 5% of the marketplace, prefer a rendering characterized by artificially enhanced spaciousness and diffuse imaging from wide-dispersion controlled directivity in a reflective listening space, in combination with significantly rolled-off high-frequency response reminiscent of the live (acoustic) concert hall experience.

Once the "gold standard" of high fidelity, live concert realism is now generally regarded as no less inaccurate and colored than its antitheses....