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Is harmonic accuracy and timbre important at all?

Disclaimer: I am not Richard Hardesty in disguise. But I have reached similar ground after many years of listening and equipment swapping and upgrading and would enjoy discourse from a position that is simply not discussed enough here.

I feel a strong need to get on a soap box here, albeit friendly, and I don't mind a rigorous discussion on this topic. My hope is that, increasingly, manufacturers will take notice of this important aspect of music reproduction. I also know that it takes time, talent, money and dedication to accomplish accuracy of timbre in speaker design and that "shamanism" and "snake oil," along with major bux spent on fine cabinetry that may do little to improve the sound, exists everywhere in this industry.

I fully acknowledge that Dunlavy and Meadowlark, a least for now, are gone, and that only Vandersteen and Thiel survive amidst a sea of harmonically inaccurate, and frequently far more expensive, speakers.

Can you help me understand why anyone would want to hear timbre and harmonic content that is anything but as accurate as possible upon transducing the signal fed by the partnering amplifier? It seems to me if you skew the sonic results in any direction away from the goal of timbral accuracy, then you add, or even subtract, any number of poorly understood and potentially chaotic independent and uncontrollable variables to listening enjoyment.

I mean, why would you want to hear only some of the harmonic content of a clarinet or any other instrument that is contained on the recording? Why would you not want the speaker, which we all agree is the critical motor that conveys the musical content at the final stage of music reproduction, to provide you with as much as possible by minimizing harmonic conent loss due to phase errors, intentionally imparted by the speaker designer?

Why anyone would choose a speaker that does this intentionally, by design, and that is the key issue here, is something I simply cannot fathom, unless most simply do not understand what they're missing.

By intentional, I mean inverting the midrange or other drivers in phase in an ill-fated attempt to counter the deleterious effects that inexpensive, high-order crossovers impart upon the harmonic content of timbre. This simply removes harmonic content. None of these manufacurers has ever had the cojones to say that Jim Thiel, Richard Vandersteen or John Dunlavy were wrong about this fundamental design goal. And none of them ever tries to counter the fact that they intentionally manufacture speakers they know, by their own hand, are sonically inaccurate, while all the all the same in many cases charging unsuspecting so-called audiophiles outlandish summs of money.

Also, the use of multiple drivers assigned identical function which has clearly been shown to smear phase and creates lobing, destroying essentially the point source nature of instruments played in space that give spatial, time and phasing so important to timbre rendering.

I truly belive that as we all get better at listening and enjoying all the music there is on recordings, both digital and analog, of both good and bad recording quality, these things become ever more important. If you learn to hear them, they certainly do matter. But to be fair, this also requires spending time with speakers that, by design, demonstrably present as much harmonic phase accuracy that timbre is built upon, at the current level of the state of the art.

Why would anyone want a speaker to alter that signal coming from the amp by removing some harmonics while retaining or even augmenting others?

And just why in heck does JMLab, Wilson, Pipedreams and many others have to charge such large $um$ at the top of their product lines (cabinetry with Ferrari paint jobs?) to not even care to address nor even attempt to achieve this? So, in the end I have to conclude that extremely expensive, inaccurate timbre is preferred by some hobbyists called audiophiles? I find that simply fascinating. Perhaps the process of accurate timbre appreciation is just a matter of time...but in the end, more will find, as I did, that it does matter.
stevecham

Showing 4 responses by shadorne

shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
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Bigtee and Unsound

I agree that Vandersteens and Dunlavys are great speakers but I think they are good for many more reasons than flat frequency response.

Fairly flat frequency response is desirable but, like phase linearity, by itself this specification alone does not guarentee a great sounding speaker.
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shadorne
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Opalchip,

Well said.

Stevecham,

I don't think it is as grim a picture as you paint. Speaker design is necessarily an exercise in compromise. Phase alignement should be critical in producing a speaker that gives accurate timbre. I agree that this is necessarily compromised in many passive speaker designs (meaning that certain instruments may not sound quite right). However dynamic range, sensitivity, bandwidth, frequency linearity to name a few are also important. In achieveing a balance, a speaker designer will compromise in some areas to gain in others.

Active speakers, for example, should have much better phase characteristics simply because each driver is paired with active filters including phase adjustment. Therefore active speakers should have a better timbral response....well not necessarily as this link below shows that professionals in a shootout were divided on which speaker they preferred and most found the timbre of the Dunlavys (except in the LF) to be preferred. In the end, classical listeners preferred the Dunlavys and meanwhile "rockers" preferred ATC's.

http://bg.mixonline.com/ar/audio_highend_studio_monitor/

Considering that the Dunlavys also use multiple cones for mid range and that this is known to increase phase issues (a design no no), the conclusion seems surprising. Until you realize that the perception of timbre is also closely linked to harmonics, perhaps Dunlavy makes up for phase issues in other ways (harmonics) to eventually score higher than ATC's in the timbre category.

So speaker design is all about balance and not a single pursuit of only one or two factors.

In the end, two vastly different engineering approaches (ATC vs Dunlavy) have produced two great speakers.

...maybe there is more then one way to skin a cat.
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
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Stevecham,

I agree with you. A phase irregularity or sharp slope on the phase vs frequency plot is very likely to end up with something that is very wrong; but all I am saying is that even if wrong, it may sound pleasant.

Nothing could create sharper phase irregularities than having two cones side by side producing the same output (since the cones will never match perfectly...just like a singer can never sound exactly the same every time they are asked to repeat something)

The case of the Dunlavy's dual mid ranges having a preferred timbral response, by audio professionals, over what in theory should be a superior design (ATC) demonstrates that some phase misalignment may be preferred by some listeners!!! (see my previous post in this thread with a link)

How can this be? How can worse or wrong sound better?

I suspect that having two mid ranges is akin to the often used "voice-over" in the recording studio => the result is that the voice sounds thicker and more resonant due to very slight but sharp phase misalignments (it is a bit like having more vocal chords). This effect will also tend to give an orchestra a bigger and richer sound by "virtualy" doubling the number of instruments playing, hence classical listeners liked the Dunlavy's more.

Bose used this same technique of multiple drivers in 901's and other designs to produce a sound that many liked and was called "spacious" ( phase misalignments from many multiple cones ouputing the same frequencies might indeed be expected to sound spacious )

All of which suggests that there are two extremes to making speakers;

1) making accurate speakers
2) speakers that sound pleasant,

and this is why I liked Opalchip's comments. Of course, manufacturers will most often position themselves somewhere in between the two extremes. ATC is closer to 1) than Dunlavy but not by much. Wilson I believe is slightly closer to 2) than 1). Bose 901 might be very close to the extreme of 2).

This is not to say that 1) is better than 2) or 2) is better than 1). There are advantages and disadvantages to speakers that give a rich pleasant sound. There are advantages and disadvantages to speakers that are highly accurate. It is nice that we have a choice!
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shadorne
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Unsound,

Ooops.... Please don't get me wrong...I used the Dunlavy as an example simply because they are well known as a really great speaker.

You will notice that in my first post that I state they are "great speakers".

My point was that two divergent approaches one by ATC and one by Dunlavy both yielded some of the finest high-end speakers to be well appreciated by pro studios and even the subject of a "monitor shootout" in a pro magazine a few years ago (see link).

Ultimately my point was that speaker design is about compromises. Even a better design in terms of phase linearity (ATC actives) did not produce what listeners felt was a better timbre than a speaker with less phase linearity (the Dunlavy passives with multiple mid ranges)....which implies that phase linearity is not the only factor when it comes to how listeners judge a good speaker sound.
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