Sonics of Soundlabs

Thanks for all of your posts so far........ 76doublebass, I am only thinking of trying something new (always on the lookout for the holygrail so to speak). It is probably too early to really judge the Soundlabs but, I am thinking you are right; my Prodigy's sound pretty darn good (if not great!) to my ears. After trying Maggies, Dynaudio, etc. etc. the ony speakers that I have heard that I like better are the WP7's and they're out of reach money wise. Again it does all come down to personal preferences......... Still I'm pretty curious about these SL monsters after all of the good things I've heard.

If it's not too late...Suggest you listen to Eminent Technology LFT-8A's. If you like the way one pair sounds, you could do as I did - run them "stacked" or twin pairs, all biamped. Phenomenal soundstage, detail, slam, you name it...

Boy you really don't get it!!!!! There are no standing waves below the lowest nodal frequency. Period, it doesn't matter what type of tranducer you are using. Also, you don't measure the diagonal of the room, you measure the longest distance between two walls. Nodes and suckout are caused by reflections of parallel walls, one reason you will see that studios use stacked or even angled walls is to spread out these modal frequencies.

Read and re-read the quote you posted (as apparently you know believe in room gain since Linquist addresses the subject). It clearly states "Room modes cannot exist when 1/2 of a sound wavelength exceeds the longest room dimension." No ifs ands or buts. Below this frequency you may or may not have gain depending on the type of radiator used, but you will not have room related roll off or standing waves.

You are correct on one point (so apparently you did read the article, even if you choose to only accept parts of it). Below the lowest modal frequency a dipolar may or may not cause room gain. This is because room gain is triggered by pressurazation, which a dipolar does not normally cause.

Hi Cmo,

Something definitely was not right with that single speaker setup you heard. Hard to say from here, but it could have been a problem elsewhere in the signal path, or it could have been improperly set bias. I remember once for some reason I had the bias set way, way too low, and on loud passages there was a horrible "crunch" that terrified me until I figured it out. Maybe what you heard was amplifier clipping as you suspected - note that a second speaker + amp would add 6 dB more headroom, so if he was trying to replicate two-speaker SPL's with a single speaker then he'd be asking the amp to deliver four times as much power output as normal.

Time for my 2 cents again:

Never attempt to audition a Sound Lab with transistor amps! You will come away with the mistaken impression that the speaker is harsh and has no bass. This is not the fault of the amplifier so much as it is bad physics to put a transistor amp on ESLs. Here is why:

Most transistor amps (like a Crown or Krell for example) will double power when going from an 8 ohm load down to four, and double again from 4 to 2 ohms. Conversely, the power is cut in half going the other way.

Now the maximum impedance of most of the newer Sound Labs is about 16 ohms in the bass region. Guess what? You have no power to make bass and about *8* times more power to make the highs. Yes, the feedback in the amp helps reduce some of this (adding to loudness cues along the way due to the nature of negative feedback), but: in a nutshell, harsh sound. ESLs in general require the amplifier to maintain constant power regardless of load, not constant voltage which is how most transistor amplifiers work.

Tube amplifiers, especially those with little or no feedback, provide this constant power characteristic. Insist on it if you want to hear the speaker perform properly. Otherwise it is a good idea to refrain from making an opinion of the speaker!