Gotta love an honest man . . .

[Deward Hastings]

In an ongoing discussion of a recent relatively minor change to the ORION crossover . . .

"I have no satisfactory explanation for the obvious change in sound . . ."

SL

http://orion.quicksytes.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1888

(just waiting for some know-it-all to claim it's all "obvious" from some chart or another . . .)

[Face]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

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...

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

In an ongoing discussion of a recent relatively minor change to the ORION crossover . . .

"I have no satisfactory explanation for the obvious change in sound . . ."

SL

http://orion.quicksytes.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1888

(just waiting for some know-it-all to claim it's all "obvious" from some chart or another . . .)

What about the know it all who claims that he's not hearing anything obvious since it's not showing up in measurements. (the obvious change being all in his head . . .)

[Deward Hastings]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

What about the know it all who claims that he's not hearing anything

It's hard to argue with that one . . . maybe he's not hearing what (you think) you're hearing. Or maybe he's "hearing" it, but describing it in different terms, and as a result not connecting with what you're saying. I'm more amused by the "reasons" that people come up with to "explain" things (which often end up with them "hearing" things ("caused" by those "reasons") that I can't hear . . .). Maybe if I just "believed" a little harder . . .

[Mark65]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

The change in groupdelay with the change in woofer-mid crossover frequency has also been my speculation. Floor reflection cannot be the reason for differences because the change is audible from all room locations.

Coincident microphones would seem technically more accurate, but the phantom source creation lacks the additional delay information of near-coincident mics, which we use in natural hearing. Pin-point stereo can be intriguing but is an artifact of two channel sound reproduction

SL

This is his one post, verbatim, in the link you posted. Am I missing something?


Mark

[m.a.c.]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

This is a link to the post that Deward was referring to: http://orion.quicksytes.com/viewtopi...&t=1931#p16580

[MSaturn]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

Okay, so reading that page makes it pretty obvious:

these are guys who think that .1uF is going to blow the lid off their piano recordings.

AKA, they're more about the "psycho" part of "psychoacoustics".

whoever tagged this "fishing" is brilliant. Obvious troll is obvious.

[Deward Hastings]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

these are guys who think that .1uF

You are missing, perhaps, that this is an active crossover, and that ".1uF" can result in a significant difference?

But the point that I was trying to make, which you clearly missed, is that no one expected a relatively minor change in the W/M crossover frequency to make even a minor change in the sound of the speaker.

But it does.

We could come up with all sorts of "explanations" for why changing the woofer driver would make a difference, or changing its mount from H frame to W frame, but apparently that's not what makes the difference in sound . . . because once the crossover frequency is lowered they do sound pretty much the same, regardless driver or mounting. But the crossover change makes a difference. More confounding still is that previous relatively small crossover changes (the results of which are easy to document, since this is, again, an active crossover) have also had somewhat surprising effect on the overall sound.

It certainly doesn't help that this is one of those situations where it is impossible to do "blind" A/B testing (an objection that I have raised at the OUG forum). Only a handful of owners have added the necessary external boards and switching to do a "quick change" (more than one component has been changed in each revision anyway), and I'm not aware of anyone who has two crossovers, let alone two complete systems. This is a "voicing" problem faced by every speaker designer . . . it takes time, and there is no "reference" handy.

And there is a lot about loudspeakers that is still not fully understood.

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

It doesn't surprise me in the least that changing the W/M XO point makes an audible difference. I experienced that myself when voicing the Byzantium and attempting to get the right sound in the lower mids/upper bass. Letting the woofer handle more of that range, instead of letting the mid do it, changed the perceived sound quite a bit. It think that just comes from the larger diaphragm doing a better job of exciting the air molecules for those frequencies.

At least that's my theory . . . ;)

[fntn]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

Okay, so reading that page makes it pretty obvious:

these are guys who think that .1uF is going to blow the lid off their piano recordings.

AKA, they're more about the "psycho" part of "psychoacoustics".

whoever tagged this "fishing" is brilliant. Obvious troll is obvious.

There seems to be a never ending supply of non sense coming from the Linkwitz sales team. :rolleyes:

.4 db of gain or cut at 100hz will get washed out with the utmost of ease when moving about the average listening space. Anyone who's bothered to take actual response measurements at various points in a typical listening environment has seen proof that room interaction causes amplitude variations an order of magnitude greater than the claimed difference of .4db. Suggesting that such a difference is "obvious" throughout a listening space makes it pretty clear that the person doing the asserting has more pretense and ego than brains.

This is yet another trolling exercise and advertising stunt for an old and tired design that has been surpassed by a cheaper and higher performing competitor.


Edit:

And yes, the alzheimers, fishing, and man love tags are totally accurate and appropriate. : )

[Deward Hastings]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

Letting the woofer handle more of that range, instead of letting the mid do it, changed the perceived sound quite a bit.

That's what one might expect. In the ORION case the crossover point is much lower than in your Byzantium, and yet the improvement came from lowering it even further. That's part of why the change in overall sound is so surprising. It was unexpected, and remains unexplained.

[m.a.c.]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

This is yet another trolling exercise and advertising stunt for an old and tired design that has been surpassed by a cheaper and higher performing competitor.

Despite your obvious TROLL, please enlighten me which design you are referring to/shilling for. Please also confirm that you have actually listened to the Orion in its latest form.

P.S. John Atkinson thought highly enough of the Orion to recently single them out as one of the best sounding speakers he's ever heard - and I assume he's heard quite a few. http://www.stereophile.com/content/linkwitz-lab-orion-4. Also, at the recent BAAS meeting, where the Orion 4 was demo'd, they received very high praise. Not too bad for an expensive, tired design. :rolleyes:

[MSaturn]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

There are simple reasons the Orion sounds good.

A. It wasn't designed by an idiot, and was indeed designed by one of the pre-eminent minds in loudspeaker math/design
B. It's dipole
C. It's active
D. It uses ultra-premium drivers

... Even disregarding "A", no one with the time and money invested in the Orion's life cycle should be producing something unimpressive. Still, I think a great many of the superlatives are based on the massive amount of hype the speakers get. Even before hearing one, a person is probably thinking of them as legendary. Always helps.

[fntn]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

Despite your obvious TROLL, please enlighten me which design you are referring to/shilling for. Please also confirm that you have actually listened to the Orion in its latest form.

P.S. John Atkinson thought highly enough of the Orion to recently single them out as one of the best sounding speakers he's ever heard - and I assume he's heard quite a few. http://www.stereophile.com/content/linkwitz-lab-orion-4. Also, at the recent BAAS meeting, where the Orion 4 was demo'd, they received very high praise. Not too bad for an expensive, tired design. :rolleyes:

The last Orion I heard was at this year's RMAF. And with its single 8 inch modest sensitivity woofer (from 100hz to 500hz), it didn't compare to Dannie Ritchie's open baffle coaxial (a couple floors up at the same event) in terms of liveliness and dynamics. It's easy to actively amplify speakers to overcome shortcomings. Unfortunately, this does nothing to improve dynamic sensitivity or range. Proper active equalization is low hanging fruit that's easy to achieve if you can measure a speaker and twirl a few knobs. Creating a well balanced speaker that exhibits minimal dynamic compression takes skill and effort. And the Orion is clearly lacking in this respect especially when compared to the world's best sounding speakers. Moreover, the link you provided quoted Atkinson as saying the Orion was one of "the two best sounds at Axpona" - not "the best sounding speakers he's ever heard".

Although it's built with quality drivers, the Orion is far from the best sounding loudspeaker to my ears. And it IS a dated design. The hype Linkwitz owners give it in this and other forums is not in keeping with the experiences I've had listening to them over the years. And the continuous stream of threads that noodle over Orion minutiae are annoying. They really are more appropriate for the Linkwitz users blog the OP linked to than this forum, IMO.;)

[dantheman]

Re: Gotta love an honest man . . .

Interesting that he uses the same toe in I used with my dipoles of similar polar pattern:


Dan