@david_ten wrote: " Duke, thank you so much for your detailed posts. Very helpful!"
Thank you David, my nerdy tangents aren’t always welcome, very glad to hear you found these helpful!
@mijostyn wrote: "This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match."
Imo line source dipoles have many things in their favor, and minimizing early reflections is certainly one of them. Imo their backwave energy is also uniquely beneficial.
First off, the backwave of a dipole is spectrally correct, which is a really good start. Then assuming the speakers are fairly far out into the room, the backwave can actually REDUCE the small-room signature I alluded to earlier! Let me explain:
The ear/brain system judges the size of a room by the time delay between the first-arrival sound and the "center of gravity" of the reflections. When we have a significant path-length-induced time delay on the arrival of the backwave energy, the ear/brain system interprets that as "we’re in a pretty big room". So less "small room signature" is super-imposed on the soundstage in the recording! Imo this is an example of "reflections done right".
(The highly counter-intuitive implication here is that MORE reflections [in this case the backwave energy], done "right", actually result in hearing LESS of the room you are in and MORE of the soundscape on the recording!)
Mijostyn again: "Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity."
Yes! Horns can definitely reduce the amount of energy in the early reflections AND generate a spectrally-correct reverberant field, through uniform pattern control. (Imo gotta use the right kind of horn the right way to avoid audible colorations.)
I really like the liveliness of good horns but probably like the timbral richness and sense of immersion in the recording’s soundscape from a good dipole speaker even more. So my best horn systems have a rear-firing array dedicated to generating a spectrally-correct, relatively late-onset approximation of the backwave of a dipole speaker. There are still things that a good line-source dipole does better, but imo the additional "backwave" energy tightens the race in some areas.
Duke
Thank you David, my nerdy tangents aren’t always welcome, very glad to hear you found these helpful!
@mijostyn wrote: "This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match."
Imo line source dipoles have many things in their favor, and minimizing early reflections is certainly one of them. Imo their backwave energy is also uniquely beneficial.
First off, the backwave of a dipole is spectrally correct, which is a really good start. Then assuming the speakers are fairly far out into the room, the backwave can actually REDUCE the small-room signature I alluded to earlier! Let me explain:
The ear/brain system judges the size of a room by the time delay between the first-arrival sound and the "center of gravity" of the reflections. When we have a significant path-length-induced time delay on the arrival of the backwave energy, the ear/brain system interprets that as "we’re in a pretty big room". So less "small room signature" is super-imposed on the soundstage in the recording! Imo this is an example of "reflections done right".
(The highly counter-intuitive implication here is that MORE reflections [in this case the backwave energy], done "right", actually result in hearing LESS of the room you are in and MORE of the soundscape on the recording!)
Mijostyn again: "Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity."
Yes! Horns can definitely reduce the amount of energy in the early reflections AND generate a spectrally-correct reverberant field, through uniform pattern control. (Imo gotta use the right kind of horn the right way to avoid audible colorations.)
I really like the liveliness of good horns but probably like the timbral richness and sense of immersion in the recording’s soundscape from a good dipole speaker even more. So my best horn systems have a rear-firing array dedicated to generating a spectrally-correct, relatively late-onset approximation of the backwave of a dipole speaker. There are still things that a good line-source dipole does better, but imo the additional "backwave" energy tightens the race in some areas.
Duke