Active driven the sub woofers make a hack of a lot difference.
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Well, when considering how drivers integrate and their distance apart, you have to consider the wavelengths of sound they are reproducing. The actual crossover points are such that we are inside a quarter wavelength at the crossover and things integrate very well.
Take a look at KEF’s world-class Blade speakers. They use a similar approach with a similar crossover point between the midrange and woofer and similar distances involved and tout their integration and “single apparent source”.
Phase and and time alignment would be a good topic for a quite paper or youtube video. There is a lot misunderstood on this and also a lot of academic work regarding perception and our physiology. It is probably beyond the scope of a forum post but I can talk more about it, at some point.
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That’s for sure.
I went to a demo by Peter Thomas at which he played some files he’d recorded in the studio of uncompressed percussion. It was staggeringly real. He explained that some compression is usually applied simply because without many drivers could not cope with it and could be damaged.
This speaker looks F****** AWESOME!!!
That is Magico’s design philosophy as well, how the speaker is connected to the floor is contributory to the overall performance.
Do you think time alignment is essential for sound quality?
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I’d really like to know why some designers insist that physical instead of crossover time alignment as essential, as well as vertical direction to the sweet spot instead of flat speaker front…and others not.
I had a speaker with physical vertical alignment as well as physical time alignment (as Focal or bigger Wilson’s) in the past and thought they sound more focused therefore (vertical alignment) but thought the time alignment seems to work as well by crossover with other speakers.
The trade-offs with improving physical time alignment are big increases in intermodulation distortion, increased 2nd and 3rd order harmonic distortion, drivers firing asymmetrically at the listening position, etc, and given it has never been proven that time alignment is essential to sound quality, makes me wonder why some designers just don’t pass on time alignment effort.
Have you ever had Tannoy dual concentric drivers? I know a chap who has them and they are fantastically coherent. The KEF Uni-Q uses the same principle to good effect.
Yes, I am not a proponent of this in passive speakers and first-order / phase coherant designs because of all of the caveats you mentioned (and more).
There are some other designs with widely spaced adjustable drivers which does move around some of the lobes at the crossover but isn’t time-aligning per se (because of the phase rotation in the crossover), while also causing a bunch of diffraction issues. Some of it is a little non-intuitive but how things look isn’t always how it behaves.
The other challenge in explaining a design approach is that, of course I believe in ours or I would have done something differently. That isn’t to say that other approaches aren’t equally valid but everything has it’s own set of design trade-offs and we want to offer the most performance we can as it related to our stated design priorities which we try to tailor to benefit our customers as much as we can.
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Tannoy Westmisters with 15" dual concentric drivers are what I have had for for the last few months. I agree, they are very coherent and these are the best sounding speakers I have owned or heard (dealer show rooms and high-end audio shows) for under $100K (and plenty that are far more expensive). Anyway, not here to bore everyone with what speakers I own or love, but I do believe the coherency thing is a huge contributing factor to how real and proper a speaker sounds.
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My speakers use a dual diaphragm compression driver (mid/tweeter), time aligned via a charge coupled (27v) crossover. The sound is more coherent than most speakers I’ve listened to.
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It’s all a series of compromises. Every speaker is. It’s just a matter of the designer’s philosophy as to which compromises are worth more. Ultimately I expect Paul to be the final arbiter of when the speakers sound “right”. The question then becomes: will your sound preferences align with Paul & co’s.
Time and (especially) phase alignment create other issues…issues that most designers don’t consider to be worth it. It’s the reason very few are doing it that way - the most famous I can think of are Thiel and Vandersteen.
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And Dunlavy and Dahlquist come to mind.
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The rake, layout and lack of crossover use for the mids and highs in my Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference 3.1s make them awfully coherent in this regard, to my ears – if I understand the concept correctly. I think they sound terrific and punch way above their weight class. (Oh, and they have side firing “woofers”, by the way.) I love 'em (for 15+ years now). FWIW.
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This is really interesting. So far I got that many say, physical time alignment (setting drivers at different levels front/back depending on their range) adds more problems than benefits and that time alignment instead can be better achieved by crossover design.
I didn’t understand that someone says, time alignment is not necessary in general. This would be very surprising to me as coherence is probably the most important aspect for me by a speaker and so far I was convinced, this is mainly a matter of time alignment/phase coherence. Please correct me if wrong.
Directionality of drivers towards the listener (e.g. tilting the tweeter downwards) is another thing that in my experience enables a more focused sound. Do the experts say, this also introduces more problems than benefit? Ok it always goes ahead with a sort of physical time alignment.
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What exactly are they doing or not doing?
It seems like the 3.1’s address most, if not all of these considerations – strike all the right chords, if you will:
"In fact, the Gallo Reference 3.1s have virtually no crossover. Only the woofer, in a standard cylindrical enclosure requires a crossover, and only a low pass crossover at that. The midranges, in spherical enclosures, and the cylindrical tweeter, both require no crossover at all. The midrange and tweeter have had their bands defined only through careful mechanical and acoustical design, eliminating the need for an electronic crossover with their accompanying (and essentially unavoidable) time and phase errors…
…The Reference 3.1, an evolution of the original Reference 3, uses the spherical midrange enclosure and cylindrical tweeter for frequencies above 125 Hz, and a standard 10" moving coil driver with dual voice coils in a cylindrical enclosure for frequencies below 125 Hz. This design offers frequency extension down to 22 Hz with the optional Reference 3 S.A. amplifier, and makes for a smaller, simpler, less expensive speaker…
…Each driver is mounted in its own, independent enclosure. These enclosures are then co-mounted on a structure that forms the complete loudspeaker. This makes for a very unique looking loudspeaker, but also mostly eliminates interaction between drivers via the enclosure…"
See pictures and the rest of the review here: “Secrets” Review.
Stepping down off of my “Fanboy” soap box now…
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Yeah, baby! Thanks! We should be seeing the finished pieces assembled in our listening rooms soon enough. I fear these crude pictures just don’t do the speaker justice. Too much is left to the imagination. Better photos and a clearer idea of these sometime
later. I’ll keep you all informed.
I know it’s different. It’s always a challenge to take a different visual route, but don’t worry about performance. This speaker will be everything and more we could hope for.
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