Do not pick a speaker based on crossover slope, sloped baffle or not, type of driver, or any other feature or set of features. There are plusses and minuses of every design under the sun. Don't even be influenced by things such as this. Pick a speaker based on your ears. |
It's not crystal clear to me that Hales really said that, from how it is written. It does not appear to be a quote.
But it would be so very refreshing to hear that honesty from a designer. |
There are time and phase coherent speakers that are
wonderful and there are those that are lackluster or worse.
There are speakers that are not both time and phase coherent
but are wonderful, and those that are lackluster or worse.
Time and phase coherency are two out of many attributes that
would be goals in designing a loudspeaker. But not having
it does not mean the speaker is not great, and having it
does not mean the speaker is great.
You have to listen.
Of my favorite speakers, one is and some others are not. It
does not bother me that some are not. I cannot detect the
effects of the lack of time and phase coherency of those
that are not. None of this means that it is not a valid
design goal, but it is only one of a very large number of
valid design goals. |
I would have to see the detailed measurements to accept the, IMO, unlikely results claimed by this manufacturer. |
Bandying about technical claims by manufacturers and trying to determine how it affects the final product, whether it be a car, motorcycle, amplifier, airplane, or missile is almost totally useless. Investing hours in driving to dealers, or flying, asking manufacturers to let you hear them, flying to audio shows, those are all much better ways to make an educated guess about how you will react to the sound in your home. |
TAD and Tannoy are not time coherent. The little KEF 50 with the coincident driver is not.
What does this mean to the listener? Without a listen, it means little. The TAD Reference represent some of the best speakers at any price. That little KEF is great. The Tannoy are some of the most loved speakers, and have had a very long life as a studio speaker, with uncountable numbers of musicians hearing themselves on them after playing. Would anyone postulate that these musicians don't know how they themselves sound?
Again, this would be a nice thing to have, as perfect radiation patterns, perfect frequency response, perfectly inert cabinets, zero harmonic distortion, zero intermodulation distortion, and zero driver resonances would be nice things to have. No speaker has it all, so the sonic result of the compromises chosen is the real key.
Again, listen. Do not fixate on any one or two features, that will lead you nowhere in your quest for a speaker that sounds most like real music to you. |
Remember, all these are opinions of folks based on their perceptions, with most of them marketing something (though Geddes does not sell subs). You were not there for the experiments. It is all self-reporting. So time aligned, phase aligned, time and phase coherent, one sub, two subs, many subs....take it all for what it is: "Self-reported" opinions based on experiments where the experimenter was the only one observing.
You have to try the products yourself, or hear them in a good setup, to form your own conclusions. And still you won't know if it is the "main feature" the manufacturer is touting that is dominating the sound, or other details of the product.
Remember, we listen to music, not features.
Sometimes I feel that in audio, buyers and enthusiasts would rather talk features than simply sit and listen to see if it sounds like music. |
Remember, that long post is essentially a non-scientific, non-specific, biased piece of salesmanship by a guy who builds products that allegedly conform to this behavior.
I have no horse in the race. But I do like some speakers in each camp...those that conform (proven by measurements) and those that don't. I have to submit that time coherence is not the driving factor in speaker sound.
Put another way: an absolutely horrible, highly distorted speaker that is time coherent could easily be made, and great ones that are not are also made.
Again: listen with your own ears. |
You may feel insulted....but that does not mean I'm intending to insult you.
I can reprint papers on mixture flow in internal combuston engines, but that does not mean the heads I flow are perfect. It only means I can write theory. Self-published graphs and dyno runs done by me don't prove that they were the runs for that motor, and that the science I can read, then write papers about, ensured that my engine is the best.
I would love for your speakers to be the best, that would represent an improvement. Which upcoming show will you be playing them at? Which top electronics manufacturers are using them? Surely they must be making a splash in the industry if they are that great. I simply can't wait to hear them. Tell me where.
Kiddman |
Bombaywalla, you've never designed anything, have you, or you would know what I said is true. A very poor speaker can be made that is still time coherent, and if you can't get that far in your brain you have little experience and education. |
I don't doubt his sincerity and efforts either. Some great products are made by such sincere guys making large efforts. And many more lousy ones are.
I'm going to seek them out for a listen. |
For a ubitiquous speaker that shows good time alignment, look no further than Vandersteen Model 2. A fair speaker for the price, but a hooded, somewhat grainy sound in the mids and highs with bass that sounds like a cardboard box. So time alignment it has. OK sound for the price. But nothing more than OK. If time alignment were so important, how can this speaker sound so ordinary, so mediocre?
Because extension matters, driver resonance matters, driver distortion matters, driver symmetry of motion matters, overall harmonic distortion matters, intermodulation distortion matters, box colorations matter......and we can go on and on.
So there you have a great example: a manufacturer that makes a barely passable (to my standards) time coherent speaker that I would never own, and he makes a fantastic, state of the art speaker that I would be happy to own. Any more demonstration needed that time coherence is not the most driving factor in the sound? |
Bombaywanker, the Vandersteen 2 are time and phase conherent.
And that surely does not make it a state of the art speaker, like it makes no speaker state of the art.
Yes, I do doubt your experience and you sure sound like a guy with no technical education and little technical aptitude. Anyone who is fixated on one aspect of design and thinks it guarantees something is usually one who has little technical experience or knowledge. Someone who has experience and physics and engineering in his background always knows designs never hinge on one parameter or feature.
Usermanual and some others have it right, they recognize that this thread is only talking about one aspect of speaker design. |
Lewinskih01, your plan is great. There is so much info about making speakers in real texts, you will be surprised that it is not magic. First thing, yes, use the best drivers you can. Check out Audio Technology, they are some of the absolute best.
And sure, the prices are low compared to finished speakers.
Cabinets are time consuming, finishing is time consuming, this labor has to be accounted for to the tune of $100 per hour or so, all parts have to have markups, there is dealer markup. Without any gouging, prices escalate quickly.
You will learn so much in a diy endeavor, and you will end up with a good set of speakers if you research and execute well.
Start reading the DIY forum. You will find a number of folks who really know what they are talking about. Fewer "know it alls", But lots of guys who really do things. |
Proving that even those who totally believe in time and phase correct speakers can love a non-coherent speaker, read the following.
The Tannoys are not time and phase coherent. The higher order crossover prevents phase coherency, and that they are not time correct shows in every review where there is an impulse test, such as the review that these comments by John Atkinson were in:
"In the time domain, the Tannoy's impulse response (fig.6) looks typical of a design that uses a high-order crossover. Indeed, the step response (fig.7) confirms my suspicion from the impulse response that the Churchill is not time-coherent, despite its use of a coaxial drive-unit that places the tweeter diaphragm close to the acoustic center of the woofer. The tweeter output arrives at the measuring microphone first, followed by the woofer output."
Note that guy who argues heavily for time and phase correctness, Lewinskih, previously wrote, on this forum:
" the Tannoy studio monitors sound simply superb. They sound cohesive like the sound is cut from a single piece of cloth. The concentric horn-loaded tweeter is superbly integrated with regular cone woofer. The sound is very real. I've paired it with a tube amp & this combination seems to be a winner to my ears. The dispersion pattern of the speaker is 90 degrees the way the woofer is made & because of the horn loaded tweeter. Hence these speaker care much less whether they are mounted high up or sitting on the floor. I've actually tested this when they sat on the floor - the images were all up at my seated ear level!
I've tried these speakers with my s.s amp as well & they sound very good there as well. Realistic sound, excellent imaging, extended highs"
Since he waxes poetic about a design that has never time nor phase alignment / coherency, one can only conclude that these characteristics are not the "be all, end all" that many espouse. |
