So what speaker do you prefer for music? That doesnt have mushroom cloud midrange?
My long-time reference speakers (sadly, they just won't work out in my new loft - too damn wide) were Tannoy System 12 DMT II drivers in bespoke low-diffraction cabinets, under a Geddes-style multisub system using Aurasound underhung drivers. Now, I'm in a state of flux. Currently, I've rigged up KEF Q100's up front. They sound much better than one would expect $500 speakers to sound at low volumes but don't have enough meat on the lower mids (just not enough cone area) and don't look appropriate for my home because of their cheap cabinetry. I'm going to have the Soundfield Audio Monitor 1's in my home sometime in September, and they're a real option. Another option is to commission new cabinets for Tannoy System 8 NFM II drivers, though that would likely end up being a lot more expensive than AJ's speakers.
Quad's ESL-63 and their later electrostats are also wonderful, if one doesn't need loud and can put them way out into the room.
ds-21 is famous around here for only preferring a limited kind of speaker (nothing wrong with that, you like what you like). i imagine he has a whole big pile of kef's in his house.
Sadly, had you written mean KEFs and Tannoys, you would've nailed it.
In the back corner of my highly in-flux new living room right now, there literally is a pile of KEFs and Tannoys: three Tannoy System 8 NFM II's atop a KEF KHT-3005SE set box and three boxes of KEF KHT-3005SE floor stands.
funny thing is, no matter how hard i try, i am failing to hear the mushroom cloud. or the canned music.
That's probably because you've yet to hear anything properly designed. Most "high end" audio speakers are poor designs.
I have no idea what DS-21 would say, but for me, it would be speakers that are carefully designed so that directivity where driver's output overlap matches up as closely as possible, with very uniform power response. Flush mounted drivers make such directivity matching difficult to impossible, but the use of a waveguide to constrain the tweeters dispersion in the crossover frequencies will allow this. Attention to this aspect of the design results in much more room-friendly speakers, as their off axis response (which accounts for a huge amount of what hits your ears in a typical domestic sized listening room) does not detract from the overall sonic picture.
That is all
exactly what I'd say!
A wide-dispersion example would be the Revel Salon2. JBL LSR6332 would also be in this class.
An example of a narrower dispersion take on this would be AJ's Soundfield monitors. Their power response is a bit more constrained than the Salon, but about as uniform as can be within it's window.
All three excellent loudspeakers, though I'm not sure the SAM1's are actually that much narrower in pattern than the Revels or JBL monitors. The concentric driver's waveguide/cone is quite shallow, and the current Uni-Q's do the "image outside the speakers" thing that other wide-but-uniform directivity speakers do. (Narrow directivity speakers don't tend to image outside their boundaries.)
Even the Q900 throws a pretty wide pattern. The midwoofer cone is quite shallow, effectively a ~120deg waveguide. That's similar to the Harman (JBL, Revel) EOS waveguide's directivity.
OK, can some explain to me what "midrange mushroom" is?
A point source should have smoothly and progressively declining frequency response as one moves off-axis. (A line source should have the same, in the direction normal to the line.)
"Midrange mushroom cloud" is my term for an excess of midrange energy thrown out into the room by the loudspeaker, due to incompetent loudspeaker design and/or parts selection.
A a competently-designed speaker does not exhibit the midrange mushroom cloud:
KEF Ref 201/2
But an incompetently-designed one does.
Usher Tiny Dancer
(Both from Stereophile)
(Incidentally, I picked the Tiny Dancer for this illustration because of what I heard during a
blind test that had these in with some competently-designed speakers.
There are four main ways of which I know to competently design a loudspeaker:
1) A waveguide on the tweeter, chosen such that it matches the directivity of the next driver down in the desired crossover region. This results in a choice of pattern. This is what Revel, JBL, Behringer, Mackie, GedLee, David Smith-era Snell, and some others do. (Yes, the $300/pair Behringer B2031p is a better speaker than most $20,000 "high end" speakers.)
2) A concentric driver, using the cone as a waveguide to set the tweeter's pattern. Tannoy, KEF, GedLee, Soundfield Audio, and others use this approach. The Danley Synergy horn is a riff on this approach, too, that has some very interesting advantages compared to a moving-cone waveguide.
Note that not all concentrics work. Some are just generally unsuitable for music reproduction, such as the awful-sounding flat Thiel diffraction generator in the 3.7. (Anyone who thinks the Q900 sounds fatiguing over time - I'm one of 'em, mind - should try out the Thiel CS 3.7 to
really hear fatiguing!) Some don't use a tweeter stout enough to play down to the frequencies needed to match directivity and thus negate most of the benefits of concentric tweeter mounting, such as the previous-generation KEF xQ/iQ speakers.
3) A very small midrange and a crossover low enough such that they're both more-or-less hemisphere radiators in the crossover region. This results in uniform, but very broad, coverage. Great for an absorptive room, not so good for a live room. Good commercial examples of this approach are the Philharmonic Audio 3-ways, the NaO Note, and some NHT's. The Linkwitz Orion is also mostly in this category, due to the very very low crossover between tweeter and midwoofer.
4) An electrostat with concentric delay rings such that the speaker radiates like a section of a sphere. Quad is the only one using this approach to my knowledge. The ESL-63 and successors are outstanding speakers, if you can live with wide panels well out into the room and a narrow listening area due to the very narrow treble dispersion.
Note also that using one of these four approaches far from guarantees a good loudspeaker. Think "necessity" not "sufficiency." Furthermore, something that passes the "eyeball test" may in fact not meet the criteria. The previous-generation iQ/xQ KEF's are a good example of that.
For example if I'm listening to Dire Straits Brothers in Arms DVD audio, how will I know if I'm experiencing "midrange mushroom"?
Listen for unnatural spittiness in the lower treble of live and unamplified music, that one simply wouldn't hear in a live performance. Preferably using an A/B comparison with a known competently-designed speaker and an incompetently-designed speaker. That's the easiest giveaway. The Brothers-in-Arms DVD-A isn't necessarily the best choice, because the unnecessary mixing of instruments into the surrounds is quite distracting. It's one of those disks I'm more likely to listen to in 2-channel-expanded-to-surround-via-DPL2 than discrete multichannel.
