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time-aligned speakers: stepped fronts vs. sloping fronts

Let me first say my understanding of these things is rudimentary.

But I was thinking about manufacturers who used stepped back fronts (several vertical planes) to achieve so-called time-alignment, vs. those who slope back the whole front baffle at a certain angle/rake.

Thinking about, for instance, the tweeter driver mounted on a sloped baffle, won't its axis of radiation be shooting at a corresponding angle upward, meaning that a listener located directly in front of the speaker and with ears at tweeter height would already be listening off-axis?  Or am I missing something?  Or is that the point?

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millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
No, you got it right. Which of course the effects of this radiation pattern is just another in a whole long list of things they try and use to get the sound they want.

The slope by the way is used so often because its a whole lot more cost-effective. Cabinetry already accounts for a large share of total speaker cost, and stepped-front is a lot more expensive to build than a single sloping baffle. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,795 posts
 

Watch the series of videos posted by Dannie Richie of GR Research on You Tube (actually, the videos are made by Danny and posted by Ron of New Record Day). Danny is a speaker designer who does a lot of cross-over work for other companies, and offers his own DIY speaker kits.

Anyway, on the videos Danny explains in great detail the questions involved in the arrival times from multiple drivers, how different x/o slopes are used to get the drivers in phase with each other (where their outputs combine, rather than cancel) over as wide a frequency range as possible. The off-axis response of each driver is a major consideration in all loudspeaker design. If the off-axis response of a speaker is significantly different from it’s on-axis response, the sidewall, ceiling, and floor reflections will sound like another, different sounding loudspeaker (one defined by the off-axis response) is playing along with the direct sound of the real one. Not good.

The idea that time aligned drivers and 1st-order crossovers automatically great a great loudspeaker, and that in and of itself is all that is required, is an over-simplification of a complex situation. Watch the videos; Danny explains it all in a way that technically-unschooled audiophiles/music lovers can easily understand

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
My speaker's have slopped front with speakers pointing a little higher than listening position.  I've read in one of the reviews that it was done to avoid "closed" sound - so called "cupped hands" effect.
andy2
1,551 posts
 
There are two ways to time align the drivers - sloping the baffle or stepped baffle : both achieve the same thing.  The advantage of sloping is to minimize diffraction caused by the stepped baffle.

Sloping baffle is also used in first order/time-phase coherence design to further adjust the phase of the tweeter and mid (among other things).  

As for listening off axis on a slope baffle, that is true but it gets complicated beyond this as there are other variables that come to play besides sloping baffle.  And everything besides sloping has to be considered on a case by case basis and difficult to make a general conclusion.  
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