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A Question About Time Alignment
I was reading a review of the Wilson Alex V on Stereophile recently. (Published just in time. I’m thinking about picking up a pair. Maybe a couple for the bedroom, too.) And it raised a long-standing question of mine, one that I hope the wiser minds on this site can answer.
Wilson’s big selling point is aligning the different frequencies so they all reach your ear simultaneously. As I understand it, that’s why they have minute adjustments among the various drivers. The woofers put out bass notes that move slowly thanks to their long sound waves while the tweeters are playing faster moving, high frequency notes with short waves. Wilson lets you make adjustments so that they all arrive at the ear at once.
It seems to me, however, that live music isn’t time aligned. Suppose I’m playing the piano and you’re sitting across the room. When I stretch out my left hand to hit the low notes, those notes travel along the same long, slow wavelengths as the notes from Wilson’s woofers. Similarly, the treble notes I play with my right hand move quickly through the short wavelengths. The notes from the piano are naturally out of alignment. If Wilson’s goal is to achieve a lifelike sound, aligning the frequencies doesn’t seem like the way to do it.
Wilson has been selling lots of zillion dollar speakers for lots of years and people continue to gobble ‘em up. Something must be wrong with my line of reasoning. Would someone please point out where I’ve gone wrong? Nicely?
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@kenjit LOL!!!!! How are you at fishing and baiting hooks? Makes you a what? Go stroke that ego. |
Lets get back to the OP’s question.
There is not “slow and quickly” happening as the frequency changes. If the woofer and the tweeter are both involved, with say a note in the middle of the cross over, then we want both of those to be launched so as to arrive at the ears in unison. One usually either steps the speakers spatially, or with a tilt, or uses a DSP to align them electrically. And each sample of a 44.1 kHz signal is roughly a 1/4” from the previous or next sample. |
@4krowme “Wow, just wow. I never would have dreamed that this topic could be so 'diverse'.”.
This is why I leave equipment design to the designers, ignore the marketing, and just use sound as a judgement on the equipment I buy. |
- 89 posts total