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Diffraction be gone

Let me say up front that I am not much of a tweeker to start. I will play with cables, power conditioners that sort of thing, but by and large I like to leave well enough alone. I have an older house in the NE and over the last couple years due to power upgrades, re wire of the house and related domestic issues, my space for equipment and placement choices have been limited. More over, while I have tried to treat my rooms, lets just say that most room treatments do not have a high acceptance factor.

I found Diffraction be gone through steromojo. The review is from my experiance spot on. I picked up a pair of pads from Diffractionbegone for my ATC 20-2 ASLT's and have to say I was somewhat shocked at the overall improvement. Cleaned up some of the image problems I was having and tends to allow what is on the recording to come through. (My best guess is that some of the high end related artifacts are absorbed by the pads allowing me to hear more from my listening position) but that is more or less a guess. On the other end of the spectrum I noticed a tightning of the mid bass. Odd as I had not expected it. Needless to say for less then 100 bucks it was an upgrade well worth the investment, for my monitors.

My question for the form has anyone else tried these, and if so what have you found? Mini monitors would seem to be ideal, but I am wondering if anyone has given these a shot on larger speakers?
atkatana

Showing 4 responses by dazone

dazone
57 posts
 
Most people think of diffraction as simply having a small effect on the frequency response, but that is incorrect. Because diffraction is time delayed from the original sound it can be highly audible even if it only has a small measureable effect. The ear masks well in frequency but very poorly in time. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to say that diffraction audiblity increase with SPL - think about the implications of that!

Earl Geddes
dazone
57 posts
 
Atkatana- The quote from Dr. Geddes was imported from another discussion elsewhere for it's relevance to the discussion here and to what you're getting less of now, timing and phase error. Regards frequency response, one learned fellow said above that baffle reinforcement could be down 3db and while that may be true in some cases, in real in room measurements made by Danny Richie of GR Research on his production two way standmounts and a fellow in Australia using DEQX on the output of his tweeters (Dynaudio Special 25's), a smoothing of peaks and valleys from 2k to 5kHz can be seen from 1 to 3db resulting in a much flatter response curve. You shouldn't want waveforms loading to your baffles, IMO. More than one thing goes wrong. You want waveforms arriving as they are propogated without early interference.
dazone
57 posts
 
Damn good post, Shad. Using the pads described above, off axis energy above the crossover also measured appreciably down in level (-4db) and therefore side wall and room reflection is made a little more benign. Audibly, I would hope. Guys with small rooms can use all the help they can get. Those measurements referred to above using the pads are on axis. A flatter on axis curve is audible I do believe in tonality and, I’ll go out on a limb here, the perception of space. Then, there is the time thing Dr. Geddes was referring to. That may be where the greatest benefit is derived. It matters not only to imaging specificity in my experience but I believe to the entire soundscape in the listening room. That's the way it seems where I sit. Literally. Cheers.
dazone
57 posts
 
"And it's old, but it's good". NY
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