Pictures of your speaker system

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by Cspirou, Nov 6, 2015.

Tags:
  1. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    14,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    India
    Does that amp have a phono input? Don't know about audio, but that setup is visually incomplete without a deck!
     
  2. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    8,200
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Northwest France
    That's it. Checking out vintage 3-ways
     
  3. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    4,171
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    The Netherlands
    I have access to some old Technics SB-400's. Tried them a while back and they did sound interesting but a bit too forward for my tastes. Could only test them on a class d receiver so probably worth a revisit, acoustics were pretty shit as well.
     
  4. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

    Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2016
    Likes Received:
    6,940
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Hah, it's but one approach. My honest problem was that I was (and am) hopelessly in love with SET amplification. Searching for speakers that would mate well with a 2-4 wpc amp in a domestic environment is very much a challenge. It's compounded by the fact that I am a rare breed of SET aficionado who seems to listen to rock music rather than jazz and 80dB female vocals. I spent a lot of time barking up the wrong tree and put too much weight into the opinions of individuals on forums who were after different things than I was.

    Some rambling of what I learned about my own taste:

    I really despise polite sound. It's the antithesis of what I'm looking for. The most popular speakers in Canadian households are smaller British monitors and towers. Other than the commonwealth connection, this is because our modern floor plans are just not designed with two channel listening spaces in mind. The majority of fellow audiophiles I have visited seem to make do with a corner of the living room or basement. Very lucky few actually have spacious finished basements with acoustically elegant dimensions. So while I understand the attraction to small space saving speakers, it never ceases to amaze me how boring the vast majority of these British speakers are. They homogenize the differences between recordings and equipment (Spendor, Rogers, Harbeth). Those that are more revealing do so at great cost to other areas of listen-ability (ATC dryness).

    Speaking of polite sound, I hate soft/textile dome tweeters. These are prevalent in the aforementioned two-way monitors and skinny towers; as the crossover point dictates that these tweeters are responsible for a large frequency portion of the human voice and so high frequency extension and vibrancy are sacrificed so that the speaker never sounds 'bad' or 'harsh'. Moving to a three-way with a dedicated midrange dome we are free to use materials other than polypropylene and silk for actual high frequency air and transients. How is a cloth dome going to reproduce the harmonics from several pounds of hammered metal being smashed with sticks?

    I love a well behaved metal dome tweeter. I think metal domes get a bad rap with most serious audiophiles when they experience Focal (god awful) and stuff like certain JBL control monitors which are designed to make everything sound as unpleasant as possible. Aluminum and titanium domes can begin to reproduce the bright, raw sound one would naturally expect from overdriven guitar amps. Beryllium and magnesium have even better break-up characteristics further outside the audible region but they are $$$.

    Lastly, real woofers are required for me. My wizardry level is not high enough yet to entertain T/S parameters and the fine points of cabinet design but all of my experiences have led me to conclude bigger is better with regards to cone surface area and magnet size. Skinny towers with babydick 6.5" drivers cannot do bass. Trying to coax bass out of a small driver using a folded enclosure is even worse to my ears as I can hear the time delay between the low frequencies and the rest of the spectrum easily with the type of music I enjoy.

    Unfortunately integrating all of this comes at a cost, which is overall system efficiency relative to speaker size. At 92db-ish the Sony's are hardly SET friendly. I look forward to trying them with a good 20-30W push-pull amp but that's an adventure for another day. This traditional speaker approach dictates traditional amplification. For now I love what I got!
     
  5. Tobes

    Tobes Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2016
    Likes Received:
    82
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Not sure I agree with this.
    I've owned 3 different Harbeths models over more than 10 years. While they have brand 'signature', they were all rather good at showing differences in recordings - mainly due to a fundamental midrange neutrality. Actual midrange detail from the Harbeth 'Radial' mid/bass driver is also quite good (significantly better than, say, the Proac R2 mid driver which superficially can sound more 'exciting'). Driver to driver crossover and coherence was excellent. Dynamics was not their strong suit though, nor was strict bass neutrality and punch. The ATC's are far better in these regards.
    I've read in many places about ATC 'dryness', but admit to being baffled by this description. Maybe this is true of the older models (?), but I have no experience with them.

    What I do know is that I took my Benchmark AHB2 amp into a store to listen to the ATC SCM19's, kind of expecting them to be a bit hard and dry. The preamp was a Sugden model and the source was Tidal via a Naim streamer of some sort - an all solid state chain.
    I was blown away and sat transfixed for an hour and a half - at the end of which I had to buy them!
    They sounded even better at home.
     
  6. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

    Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2016
    Likes Received:
    6,940
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Well, the fact that you can tolerate Benchmark gear should highlight the rapid divergence in our tastes and definitions of dryness 8)

    Yes, Harbeth are a little better than the rest and that's why they command a price premium. They are 'neutral' in the mids, except for the large depression in the presence region which is part of what gives them their polite character and hardly accurate for any genre of music using electric instruments. This is less of an issue in the .2 and 40th anniversary series.

    The other part of it is the lengths taken to add rigidity to their cones and optimize in the frequency domain has compromise in the time domain. They do not have the ability to reproduce lifelike transients especially between 2 - 4 kHz and will always come across as sluggish when faced with power chords and start/stop riffs.

    Lastly, the cabinets resonate and are ported to be able to even reach 50Hz on a graph. Individual notes in drum fills will turn into an episode of Will It Blend? All of this is what I mean by homogenization. No hate on anyone who owns them and enjoys the music they make. Just musings on why they are not for me.
     
  7. Tobes

    Tobes Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2016
    Likes Received:
    82
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Indeed. Sometimes extension and lack of harmonic distortion is mistaken for 'dryness'. Some other popular DAC's/amps just sound coloured to me.
    But we're all different, maybe my 50+yr old ears can accomodate it better?;)

    The Harbeth C7es2 was a bit laid back and the sound lacked presence. The C7es3 and M30.1 were pretty neutral in perspective.
    The presence region is typically 2560-5120Hz. Take a look at the frequency response graphs for the M30.1 - remarkably flat: "From 220Hz up to the graph limit of 10kHz, it’s within ±1.25dB."
    https://www.avhub.com.au/product-reviews/hi-fi/harbeth-monitor-301-loudspeakers-488463

    I used to play all sorts of music through the Harbeths, but definitely not at their best for Hip Hop, bass driven Rock etc.
    I'd imagine plenty of other speakers do this better - heck even my old Electrovoice Interface 2's, which were my first real speakers back in the 70's. But if I wanted natural voice reproduction, realistic piano tone etc - the Harbeth would slay the EV 2's.

    I don't fully disagree here. Dynamics are not IMO a strong suit with the Harbeths. They are what they are, essentially broadcast monitors. A lot of music lives in the mids though and their driver to driver coherence is formidable.

    This old chestnut - yes that's the BBC design on which they're based. It's really about trying to push resonance out of the mids to where it's less bothersome (to most). Some people hate the 'honky' 'cupped' or otherwise coloured mids caused by other, less considered, cabinet design - with certain genres this might not be an issue.
    Of course you can eliminate cabinet resonance completely with heroic cabinet design like Magico and Wilson, but look at the $'s needed for this approach. The BBC approach was one of practicality and cost effectiveness (government $'s) - it's stood the test of time.
    Obviously there are other companies achieving essential neutrality with fairly conventional MDF cabinets - e.g. ATC - and many of their models are quite accessible.
    In the end I agree, no hate on anyone liking a certain sound, horses for courses and all that.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2019
  8. DigitalMaven

    DigitalMaven Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Nov 13, 2016
    Likes Received:
    25
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Location:
    tucson
    I guess you don't have any experience in speaker building? The 6.5 inch sb acoustics paper or aluminum drivers go plenty deep as they're midbase drivers. Also I would think the many of the 6.5-7 inch drivers from scanspeak also go low. Sb acoustics and seas make fairly good metal dome tweeters too.
     
  9. Tobes

    Tobes Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2016
    Likes Received:
    82
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Something else I missed. I don't want to bang on about this and I don't really feel I need to defend Harbeth speakers, which I no longer own - so I guess I'm partially kind of in agreement with @k4rstar . ;)
    However it's worth noting that both the Harbeth C7es2 and es3 had aluminium tweeters. Harbeth crosses over their 200mm 'radial' bass/mid driver (used in both the above as well as the M30.1/30.2, SHL5, M40.2) at 3.5Khz. Quite high for a driver of this size and possible because of its rigidity and lack of breakup. This encompasses the full range of male voice and most of the female range. This is probably a primary reason for their famed vocal coherence. Actually a reason people tend to like Harbeth is their full bodied sound that doesn't emasculate the mids/lower mids.

    BTW, I agree that a big bass driver brings a sense of scale, fullness and airiness to entire soundscape that smaller drivers can't manage. This is one of the things that I really like about my big ATC's.
     
  10. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

    Pyrate BWC MZR
    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2015
    Likes Received:
    2,594
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    near Munich, Germany
    Going low =/= doing proper bass
    I've heard plenty of low efficiency designs with good bass extension from small drivers and cabinets and they're just never effortless, dynamic and low distortion. The SB paper driver design I heard was probably one of the closest, but also one of the larger ones. The Accutons have a different character that I know lots of people like.
    Still, I gotta admit that I'd rather have the extension than not. Tuning ports low also lowers group delay in the midbass, which I think is more important than group delay sub 35Hz. Eventually you just trade off max SPL capabilities, dynamics and resolution for size, with similar bass extension.
     
  11. Priidik

    Priidik MOT: Estelon

    Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    2,153
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Estonia
    It's likely more about well damped cone (polyprop with mineral fill is good for that) than lack of breakup.
    Until there is an impedance graph to show, it's speculation.
     
  12. Tobes

    Tobes Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2016
    Likes Received:
    82
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Yeah, don't know. The Harbeth Radial material is not a polyprop but a proprietary plastic with tiny glass spheres infused. Its very rigid compared to polyprop - think I've seen someone stand on a upended cone - also had some sort of pronounced flare happening. All these things probably contribute to it's excellent behaviour over a wide range.
     
  13. Tobes

    Tobes Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2016
    Likes Received:
    82
    Trophy Points:
    18
    .....having said the above, I tend to think ATC's bass/mid driver from the scm19 is even more impressive. That uses some type of doped paper cone - and has the 75mm ATC mid dome grafted into centre driven by a 75mm voice coil. The driver weighs 9Kg and makes most similar diameter drivers look like toys.
    [​IMG]
    ATC 150mm 'Super Linear' mid/bass driver (used in the SCM19 and SCM20 variants)
    [​IMG]
    the slightly larger 200mm Harbeth RADIAL mid/bass driver (C7, M30, SHL5, M40) for comparison:
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2019
  14. DigitalMaven

    DigitalMaven Acquaintance

    Joined:
    Nov 13, 2016
    Likes Received:
    25
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Location:
    tucson
    ATC Has a nuce woofer...I think the entire speaker is 85 db and requires at least a 150 watt amp to sound its best. Nothing wrong with any tweeter if it's well designed and engineered.
     
  15. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2015
    Likes Received:
    4,276
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Does it really decouple from the woofer at higher frequencies? I've always seen it as a fancy dustcap.
     
  16. GoodEnoughGear

    GoodEnoughGear Evil Dr. Shultz‎

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Oct 25, 2015
    Likes Received:
    3,070
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Cape Town, South Africa
    They do claim so:

    "In all cases you mention, the soft domes are fixed to the edge of the voice coil. Both the SCM7 and the SCM11 use a 45mm voice coil, so the dome is quite small. On these two models the dome performs the role of a simple dust cap and the high dome profile is designed to break up any cross diaphragm sound pressure waves. The SCM19 is different. In this case the voice coil is 75mm (3”) in diameter, so the dome is larger; in fact the dome grafted to the former is the same as that used in our mid-range dome. The dome is designed to decouple from the cone at higher frequencies where it performs the role of the primary acoustic radiator."

    http://www.acousticfrontiers.com/atc-speakers-technology/
     
  17. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2015
    Likes Received:
    4,276
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Indeed they do! Interesting, to say the least. I wonder what's the behavior of the rest of the cone during these higher frequency excursions.
     
  18. Forza AudioWorks

    Forza AudioWorks MOT: Forza AudioWorks

    Joined:
    Jun 20, 2017
    Likes Received:
    384
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Poland
    Yup, Harbeths. I've heard so much good about their 40.1 and one of the most important local journos has been rolling with this one for years. He matched hi 40.1 to... Soulution.
     
  19. murphythecat

    murphythecat GRU-powered uniformed trumpkin

    Pyrate Banned
    Joined:
    Apr 4, 2016
    Likes Received:
    1,201
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I think the Harbeth radial driver is really well behaved, with excellent detail and tone. Comparing SCM19 vs SHL5, or SCM7v3 vs P3ESR, its interesting to hear the difference in terms of presentation. ATC is more dynamic, but less involving. However, the Radial do seem to homogenize sound. ATC mids are more live sounding and raw, harbeth more "beautiful". its a trade off. I dont see ATC as being better, having own both P3 and SCM7, and comparing at length SCM19 vs SHL5.

    I do think that the BBC cabs compromise the bass and make the bass sound coloured, and that their biggest flaw.

    This talk about soft dome vs metal tweeter is interesting. I always prefer soft dome vs metal tweeter. I find metal driver more extended and detailed, but fatiguing and irritating compared to a good soft dome.
     
  20. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    5,345
    Trophy Points:
    113
    The ATCs are a bit long in the tooth and way overpriced. There's this disconnect between the drivers. The woofers are cleanish but the bass sucks; it is boomy and poorly extended thus the thinness. Then there's the crossover issues or strategic dips upper mids whatever that may be. The mid domes and volume they can put out are dope but the entire package is pretty middling and way overpriced for what you're getting. Sure it sounds better than Harbeth, JBLs, and most things at speaker shows but what doesn't? ATCs have the detail but that's it; they're unimpressive as a whole.
     

Share This Page