Is it possible to really know what you're doing?

Grammy-nominated recordings typically reflect the highest standards of recording engineering and fidelity.  In Grammy-nominated or Grammy-winning recordings, the recording engineering approach is almost always multi-microphone technique, not One Mic.  Multi-mic tech. enables precise control over indi. instruments, vocals, room acoustics, direct sound, image, SS depth, etc. We are talking about reference / standard here in lieu of something based on someone's ad hoc opinion.

Swapping, mixing and matching high fidelity components and cables is a long cherished audiophile activity which undoubtedly has produced countless hours of audio enjoyment.

The drawback to this process is the amount of time and expense that it consumes. Today with digital signal processing (DSP) you can tune and optimize your system real time.

First start by combining excellent speakers, modern power amplifiers with a digital source which will leverage Dirac or other DSP System / Room correction algorithms

Once you have your speakers positioned, the next  step is to optimize your system using tools like REW and Dirac Live room correction. Now you can make adjustments,  listen to the results and measure the results rapidly. It’s enlightening to be able to make adjustments to your system and measure them in real time.

https://deercreekaudio.com/tech-blog

Here are some examples of Dirac Live correction 

But you missed a very important consideration - are they designed to emulate a point source of sound?

@richardbrand 

You’re absolutely correct. It’s interesting that MBL’s founder was motivated by the desire to move about the listening room without loss of sound quality. 

I completely empathize with that approach. I find the idea of sitting at length in a single chair in a windowless, mausoleum-like room triangulated as if by a land surveyor, unappealing.

I can move around my room, including in the 15 ft-deep space behind my speakers, without experiencing a major deterioration in sound quality. Which actually makes sense, since they have 3 open-baffle mids, arranged in a modest line array; front- and rear-firing ribbon tweeters; and two 10" woofers in sealed, divided enclosures.

I wish I could say that extensive research and countless auditions led me to a speaker architecture that works in my room and is right for me, but I got them off craigslist because they were cheap and they looked good. They were intended as interim speakers while I looked for my "real" speakers, but a funny thing happened: I grew to really like them.

I say this as someone who’s always loved the transparency and speed of planar speakers. I was this close to buying a set of Sanders 10e, but merely standing up from your chair felt as if someone had put a motorcycle helmet over your ears. They are amazing-sounding speakers that I warmly recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind their beaminess, but at the end of the day I’m glad I didn’t buy them.

Answering this simple question can eliminate 99% of speakers!  Not to mention, antagonising the 99% of audiophiles who own those speakers.

Worthwhile outcomes both! 😂

@lanx0003 

In Grammy-nominated or Grammy-winning recordings, the recording engineering approach is almost always multi-microphone technique, not One Mic.  Multi-mic tech. enables precise control over indi. instruments, vocals, room acoustics, direct sound, image, SS depth, etc. We are talking about reference / standard here in lieu of something based on someone's ad hoc opinion

My favourite Grammy recordings are by the Norwegian label 2L - see 2L - the Nordic Sound.  They are not just multi-microphone, they are multi-channel delivered on SACD, Blu-ray and Dolby Atmos.  Many are of classical music and get rave reviews from, for example, the Gramophone magazine, which has been going for over 100 years.  In my opinion, for classical music, Gramophone carries more weight than a Grammy committee.

Note that 2L recordings do however follow the principle of 'one microphone' to capture the original performance in its recording space.  So the 'one microphone' becomes a central, fixed microphone 'tree'.  My understanding is that, apart from mixing down, for example to reduce the number of channels for SACD and vinyl, no further processing is performed.  These days 2L uses DSD files sampled at a very high frequency for archiving.  All lesser digital formats can be precisely computed from the archive data.

The producer Morten Lindberg also turns the question of microphone positioning on its head.  Instead of "where should the microphones be placed?" he asks "where should the players be?".  His rather surprising answer is in an approximate circle around the microphones, but away from the walls of the venue.  He believes all recordings are an illusion and his illusions are better than most!

Admittedly he tends to record with smaller forces than a full symphony orchestra of over 100 instruments!  Despite that, one of his towering achievements, in my opinion, is his recording of Grieg's Piano Concerto.  The pianist is the Australian Percy Grainger who was born in 1882 and would be 143 if alive today, so obviously there is some trickery!

Percy made piano roll recordings in 1921 and here they are replayed on a modern Steinway piano with the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in full multichannel.  Simply stunning!

@devinplombier 

I say this as someone who’s always loved the transparency and speed of planar speakers. I was this close to buying a set of Sanders 10e, but merely standing up from your chair felt as if someone had put a motorcycle helmet over your ears. They are amazing-sounding speakers that I warmly recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind their beaminess, but at the end of the day I’m glad I didn’t buy them

For forty years or so I have listened to Quad electrostatic ’planar’ loudspeakers, the ESL-63 and ESL 2905 to be precise, backed by subwoofers from Duntech and then Velodyne.

In my opinion, these electrostatics are amongst the most misunderstood designs of all time (ha, back on topic!).

Peter Walker, the designer, certainly knew about the ’beaminess’ issue displayed by almost all planar designs.  He also knew from his original electrostatics, now known as the 57, about cross-over issues with multiple drivers.

The overarching brilliance of his design was to make a planar panel behave like a virtual point source of sound.  The point source is about a foot (30 cms) behind the diaphragm.  You can envisage the sound waves radiating in spherical wavefronts from the point source.  When these imaginary waves reach the panel, the first bit to move is the centre.  Then the wavefront expands outwards in a circle.

Peter emulated this behaviour by arranging eight annular rings to be fed the signal with increasing delay towards the outside.  Note that the delay need only factor in the speed of sound from the virtual point source.

When you add in the lack of cabinet colouration (there isn’t one) and the speed of a diaphragm almost as light as air, y0u can see why the Gramophone equipped its main reviewers with ESL-63 speakers.  I found I could walk round my FREDs (Full Range Electrostatic Dipoles) and the sound was consistent even in the plane of the panel, where there should be no output at all!  I put that down to coherent wall reflections and the ear-brain’s ability.

Alas, nothing is perfect and the protection circuits in the ESLs are more easily triggered by the peaks in digital source material - like Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.

These days I mainly use another speaker designed to emulate a point source, the KEF Reference 1.  Like you, I bought a pair secondhand as stop gaps while repairing my Quads.  The KEFs play so much louder!