Erik,
I have been lately "seduced" by what seems to be a commonality among some wide-baffle speakers. I’m thinking mostly of Harbeth and Devore O series (may be missing some).
Both those speaker lines seem to produce a richer/fuller-than-usual sonic presentation, where instruments have more size and sense of body. And that addresses one of the main deficits I find in most sound systems (at least those speakers many of us can afford or end up with):Reproduced sound generally is reductive, thinner. Whenever I hear even a live solo violin I’m amazed at how "big" and rich even a single high note sounds in real life, where on most sound systems it would sound like a toy version, thin, wiry, distant, squeezed.
The sense of a full-sized acoustic guitar with an actual body projecting sound seems more fully realized, to my ears, on speakers like the Devore and Harbeth (though the Harbeth doesn’t go quite as far as the Devore).
Obviously there are other things that narrower baffle speaker designs do great (and I’ve just chosen one over the wide-baffle design).
And it doesn’t seem to me that in principle a narrower baffle-to-driver ratio entails thin sound. In fact, I had the Harbeth SuperHL5plus speakers for a while directly comparing them to my Thiel 3.7. The 3.7s put out at least as big and weighty sonic images as the Harbeth, despite being of the "reduce baffle size" school of design. I’m presuming among other things, the sheer cabinet size and larger drivers and lower frequency range figured in to that for the Thiels.
BUT...for their size...the Harbeths did tend to put out a richer, weightier image than other similar size/spec’d speakers.
Another factor to consider is that both the Harbeth and Devore O series ALSO come from the "let the cabinet vibrate" school of thought, which also could be adding richness.
I have been lately "seduced" by what seems to be a commonality among some wide-baffle speakers. I’m thinking mostly of Harbeth and Devore O series (may be missing some).
Both those speaker lines seem to produce a richer/fuller-than-usual sonic presentation, where instruments have more size and sense of body. And that addresses one of the main deficits I find in most sound systems (at least those speakers many of us can afford or end up with):Reproduced sound generally is reductive, thinner. Whenever I hear even a live solo violin I’m amazed at how "big" and rich even a single high note sounds in real life, where on most sound systems it would sound like a toy version, thin, wiry, distant, squeezed.
The sense of a full-sized acoustic guitar with an actual body projecting sound seems more fully realized, to my ears, on speakers like the Devore and Harbeth (though the Harbeth doesn’t go quite as far as the Devore).
Obviously there are other things that narrower baffle speaker designs do great (and I’ve just chosen one over the wide-baffle design).
And it doesn’t seem to me that in principle a narrower baffle-to-driver ratio entails thin sound. In fact, I had the Harbeth SuperHL5plus speakers for a while directly comparing them to my Thiel 3.7. The 3.7s put out at least as big and weighty sonic images as the Harbeth, despite being of the "reduce baffle size" school of design. I’m presuming among other things, the sheer cabinet size and larger drivers and lower frequency range figured in to that for the Thiels.
BUT...for their size...the Harbeths did tend to put out a richer, weightier image than other similar size/spec’d speakers.
Another factor to consider is that both the Harbeth and Devore O series ALSO come from the "let the cabinet vibrate" school of thought, which also could be adding richness.