Image Density, High Efficiency, Flea Power, Room Acoustics

The closer you can get to your speakers, the better the image will be from the amount of direct sound increasing and reflected sound decreasing. This is why nearfield monitors and bookshelves used as nearfields took over even in purpose built studios (the huge soffit mounted monitors are mostly useless and for show. It doesn’t matter how nice the branding is or how good you think they sound) and now computer speakers but acoustic considerations still apply.

a coaxial point source speaker, speakers with first order crossovers, and active crossovers with phase compensation will have more accurate stereo imaging but chances are the record was not mixed on anything that special

 

Thanks for sharing this man, I love these articles, they are very inspiring. I have read Jeffrey Jackson’s write-up of this very ETF meet on his blog, hifiheroin.com.

Yea, it was a good reminder on the importance of phase coherence and the the quality/nature of individual components in the chain.

@Boops @AdvanTech , thanks gents. Yea I too think horns might be my ticket.

@purr1n , didn’t realize plaster walls are just as bad. Assumed they were much better than brick boxes.

@Psalmanazar my other set of speakers are a pair of Tannoy Gold 7s, which is a class A/B powered, coaxial design that I use in nearfield. While it does decent imaging for a speaker of that price, it hardly does density.

 

I run Omega RS5 single driver speakers (4.5in) with an EC Af plus stereo subs below 100hz. I'm sure the larger 8in omega alnico drivers would image more densely but even the RS5 throw what to me is a really solid and stable image.

My room is brick walls, horsehair plaster ceiling and suspended wooden floors, you could say worst of all worlds. But with some work it sounds pretty good. Firstly it is small, only 8.5x9ft, so listening is by default nearfield. I agree this helps a lot and in a larger room a nearfield setup or horns makes sense. Secondly I have trapped it quite a bit, about 8sqm of trapping on walls and ceiling. It's impossible to remove or even alter substantially the room modes but quite easy to cut the reverb time noticeably. Doing this in the lows is super important for imaging.

However I don't think it's true that having only direct sound will give dense images. Some of my traps are foam with Perspex inserts that turn them from absorption to diffusion. Without the inserts the room is totally dead and the imaging while super precise is thin as all balls. In a larger room I think it would be harder to over-damp like this but in general some diffusion seems to be needed to get the solidity and density of the image.

One other super important aspect is vibration control in the speakers. Mine are bookshelf and coupling to a heavy stand gives much more solid imaging.

Talking final 2% here, but it's also true that my current copper ribbon cables have a less diffuse, more stable image than the silver/copper litz I used previously. This is a much lower order effect though.

 

@Garns , thank you! This is pretty much the kind of info I was looking for. Btw when you moved from the Yggdrasil to the WD, did you gain density?

I need to read more about the acoustic behavior of horns. Coz they do seem to have this ability to pull off density relatively easier than non-horn counterparts. So I’m curious what other aspects might be in play other than directivity.

 

Those are Behringer monitors...

 

I'm slightly loath to claim too much about density per se because my system is designed around speed and transients which I think tends in a different direction, and has very little room between the speakers which I think makes these things harder to assess. But definitely the imaging is a lot more solid/stable/palpable with the WD than previously with the Yggdrasil. Upgrading to the vcaps and TKD pot was the other non-acoustic thing that helped.

 

I just put up some of the prime day cheapo foam acoustic panels at the only major reflection point in the room and the stereo image is greatly improved. More stable/solid, tiny changes in head position no longer greatly change the sound. Pretty cheap for the amount of sq improvement, about $30 for that section. I would describe the sound as dense. These are Altec 604E drivers in ~9 cubic foot enclosures driven with a 7189 pp amp at about 20 watts per channel. I do have the bass turned up a bit with the tone controls to get closer to flat until I build new enclosures. I think the 604-8G will go lower in the same size enclosures, but these were a good deal locally and the last model to feature alnico magnets. I don't know if alnico vs ferrite really matters but I like how they sound aside from the non-eq'd low frequency response and have no qualms about using EQ.