$2000 or less set of towers

[Nuance AH]

There are definitely differing opinions on that subject. Definitely a "must hear for yourself" situation.

But you feel the SongTowers are better than the Philharmonic 2's? I thought it was the opposite.

Not at all. What lead you to believe that? I didn't hear a fully working pair, so...

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Not to say that people like Dr. Murphy can't get the best possible result such a configuration allows out of it, but ultimately it's still hamstrung by the basic physics of 180deg waveguides.

Furthermore, most people don't have a real basis for determining good sound, because they've never heard good reproduction of music. Most of the speakers sold to consumers are just risibly bad. From the low end to mid fi to high end and everything in between. And that's what most people are used to hearing, so they'll gravitate to similarly flawed speakers.[/QUOTE]

It may well be that controlled directivity speakers are best practice. As I've said before, I have a design project that involves this approach, but it's being held hostage to a woofer delivery by a notoriously late provider of great woofers. Where I part company form you is your automatic assumption that the ear weights all of those off-axis response curves equally. I just don't think that's a valid assumption. And I think I would recognize a colored midrange if I heard it. I've played in orchestras for 50 years, and I've heard some of the best speakers available, including some controlled directivity models. What I hear coming out of my designs is basically what I hear when I'm in an orchestra hall. Of course, it's possible that all of the halls I've played in have ..."a mushroom cloud of midrange energy from ~ 1-5 kHz." Could be. I'll report back when and if I ever get those woofers.

 

[sledhead1]

Well I could see if visions has q900's and have a listen to them too. The wife didnt like the looks of the phils. Im going to call about the sierra with center to see how much shipped, but the price is getting up there.

 

[Nuance AH]

Pay no attention to DS-21, Dennis; I've come to learn he's an egotistical forum troll. Judging speakers by simply looking at them? Hardly. I've seen him recommend flawed speakers numerous times (measurement wise), so...

Controlled directivity is one great practice, but it isn't the only one. He's not worth the time, Dennis.

 

[DS-21]

It may well be that controlled directivity speakers are best practice. As I've said before, I have a design project that involves this approach, but it's being held hostage to a woofer delivery by a notoriously late provider of great woofers.

Gee, I wonder who that could be!

Where I part company form you is your automatic assumption that the ear weights all of those off-axis response curves equally. I just don't think that's a valid assumption.

We don't in fact part company there, because I never made that assumption, automatic or otherwise. Furthermore, I know it's not true.

My only assumption (not so much "assumption" as "established fact") is that we don't just hear the direct field (i.e. design-axis response) but also the reverberant field.

From that foundation, my premise is nothing broader than the following:

"when the reverberant field is markedly different in its spectral content in the midrange, that colors the overall sound."

There are ways around that, such as lots of room treatments. I could never live with (or in) a heavily-treated room, but for others crappy speakers and lots of eyesore room treatments could be a valid path to high-fidelity reproduction.

I've played in orchestras for 50 years, and I've heard some of the best speakers available, including some controlled directivity models. What I hear coming out of my designs is basically what I hear when I'm in an orchestra hall.

Your scope shift there doesn't do you any favors, Dr. Murphy.

"I've played in orchestras for 50 years,"

"What I hear coming out of my designs is basically what I hear when I'm in an orchestra hall."

"Of course, it's possible that all of the halls I've played***"

(emph. added)

For the first and third phrases to have any meaningful relationship to the second phrase, one would have to assume that speakers are supposed to sound like what musicians hear on stage. Generally, that is false, because speakers are designed to reproduce recordings, which are typically designed to can what the audience would hear, not what the musicians would hear. Only the second of your three phrases could be construed as relating to that experience.

You're play violin or viola, right? You know, it IS entirely possible that your experience of sitting in an orchestra pit HAS conditioned you to expect more midrange energy from reproduction than would be heard by the audience.

So, in a perhaps counterintuitive sort of way, 50 years of playing in orchestras is a whole lot less meaningful a credential than 50 years of subscribing to an orchestra. Though I do presume you've attended plenty of concerts as well. Probably more than I have, given that you're likely more than double my age.

Of course, it's possible that all of the halls I've played in have ..."a mushroom cloud of midrange energy from ~ 1-5 kHz." Could be.

Please note that I made that comment about the Sierra Tower Bamboo Loudspeaker, and that comment is clearly accurate based on the manufacturer-provided measurements. Though I am assuming that speaker wasn't your design. Perhaps it was.

About the speakers you sell under your own line, i.e. Philharmonic Audio, I noted that you seemed to have made directivity matching between midrange and tweeter a fairly high priority, given that you have (a) a fairly narrow midrange, and (b) a rather low mid-tweet crossover.

 

[Nuance AH]

Well I could see if visions has q900's and have a listen to them too. The wife didnt like the looks of the phils. Im going to call about the sierra with center to see how much shipped, but the price is getting up there.

Q900 measurements:

 

[zieglj01]

Some dome tweeter speakers tend to be flawed???

Interesting measurement, of a controlled directivity design.
The purple line is interesting.

 

[FirstReflection]

Pay no attention to DS-21, Dennis; I've come to learn he's an egotistical forum troll. Judging speakers by simply looking at them? Hardly. I've seen him recommend flawed speakers numerous times (measurement wise), so...

Controlled directivity is one great practice, but it isn't the only one. He's not worth the time, Dennis.

Hahaha, I didn't want to be the first to say it, so thank you, Nuance. I just want the OP to be aware of ol' DS-21 here so as not to let his technical-sounding proclamation muddy the waters of what should be an enjoyable discussion and purchasing experience.

I choose not to engage DS-21 directly since no good can come from feeding the trolls. My only concern is for the folks who come here looking for advice. It's tough to try and give helpful advice while avoiding the unnecessary and unwanted conflict.

In any case, the OP is on the right track here by arranging to hear a good sampling of the suggested speakers for himself. No replacement for firsthand listening, so I'm very encouraged by that and I trust it will lead the OP to a set of speakers that satisfy his needs and wants.

As for the subject of directivity, there's no "right" or "wrong" in the sense that there is no industry standard. Some speakers cast out very narrow dispersion, resulting in much more direct sound than reflected sound, but also creating a very small "sweet spot" as a result. On the complete opposite end, there are "omnidirectional" speakers that cast a nearly spherical or cylindrical field of uniform sound, resulting in a huge amount of reflections and a very wide sweet spot, but much less focus. Most people tend to prefer something that falls in between. Reflections give us audio cues that we use to get a sense of our surroundings. Reflections "bring the instruments into the room". Meanwhile, there can be audio cues mixed into the recording itself. Those cues will make it seem like we are someplace else and "transport" us to a different place. So a speaker that produces a fair amount of reflections tends to work well for close-mic'd instruments and studio recordings where there aren't many audio cues about the acoustic environment mixed into the recording itself. Having only the direct sound of the instruments plus the reflections in your listening room will make it seem as though the musicians are right there in your room, giving you a private performance! On the other hand, movies and live concert recordings tend to have a ton of audio cues mixed into the recording itself. Those cues allow a movie's sound to "transport you" to another world and for it to seem as though you are at that live concert, rather than sitting in your listening room. So for those recordings, fewer reflections are preferable. You don't want the audio cues in the room telling you one thing while the reflections tell you something different. That's just confusing to our little brains

So for a movie-centric system, what should we do? We want more direct sound than reflected so that the movie's soundtrack can "transport" us to the location shown on screen, but we also want a wide sweet spot so that more than just one person can enjoy the best sound! For a one-person theater, very narrow dispersion is fine, although it can get to the point of sounding like headphones. But for most homes, we want to enjoy a movie with friends or family, so we want a whole seating area to be covered.

So we're back to an "in between" solution. Something with fairly wide dispersion, but not so wide as to create reflections that are almost as strong as the direct sound. With fairly wide dispersion, there's no escaping reflections, so we treat our walls, floor and sometimes even ceiling with either absorption to reduce the reflections, or diffusion to scatter the reflections. Such treatments do not have to be ugly at all! In fact, with the printed and framed panels that are available from places like Acoustimac and GiK Acoustics, acoustic treatments can easily replace posters, wall hangings or works of art. Many people like to decorate their rooms with some sort of art on the walls. Why not kill two birds with one stone and make those decorations acoustic panels that serve a double purpose?

My point is, there isn't just one acceptable preference or solution and no industry standard or "right" or "wrong" for audio. Listen, compare, but perhaps most importantly, realize that the room is a full 50% of any audio system, so its impact on the sound cannot be overstated. That's why auditioning speakers in your home is absolutely the best way to audition. But if you discover that nothing quite floats your boat, even all of these very good speakers that have been suggested, just keep in mind that your room's acoustics are also playing a huge role. So don't be afraid to discuss what you hear, and for your own sake, learn to weed out the people who claim that there's only one way that any given speaker can possibly sound. That just isn't the case in reality. There are too many variables and no "right" or "wrong". So experience actually listening is key, but being aware that there's more going on than just the speakers is important to keep in mind as well

 

[PENG]

when I'm in an orchestra hall.

I assume you meant sitting as an audience. I too, base on my experience as an audience in an orchestra hall, albeit by memory like most people have to do, I expect my speakers to reproduce sound as close to that I experienced in the hall. If people choose to prejudge a speaker just by looking at some published graphs showing a couple of dB variations here and there compared to the one they built, it is their prerogative but I hope most people don't fall for that..

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I hope most people are able to audition a variety of speakers - KEF, Revel, B&W, etc, and choose the speakers that sound the best to them.

 

[DS-21]

Hmm. Do you even know what you're posting?

So others aren't deceived by your intellectual dishonestly, here is the context of the above graph.

"Fig.5 KEF Q900, effect of grille on anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50" (2dB/vertical div.)." (emph. added)

You'll see similar results for most speakers.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Gee, I wonder who that could be!



"What I hear coming out of my designs is basically what I hear when I'm in .

You're play violin or viola, right? You know, it IS entirely possible that your experience of sitting in an orchestra pit HAS conditioned you to expect more midrange energy from reproduction than would be heard by the audience.

So, in a perhaps counterintuitive sort of way, 50 years of playing in orchestras is a whole lot less meaningful a credential than 50 years of subscribing to an orchestra. Though I do presume you've attended plenty of concerts as well. Probably more than I have, given that you're likely more than double my age.



Please note that I made that comment about the Sierra Tower Bamboo Loudspeaker, and that comment is clearly accurate based on the manufacturer-provided measurements. Though I am assuming that speaker wasn't your design. Perhaps it was.

About the speakers you sell under your own line, i.e. Philharmonic Audio, I noted that you seemed to have made directivity matching between midrange and tweeter a fairly high priority, given that you have (a) a fairly narrow midrange, and (b) a rather low mid-tweet crossover.

You raise a serious point when you emphasize controlled directivity as a positive design goal. Your other points aren't so serious. I've heard many more orchestras than I've played in. I know what orchestras sound like on stage, and from just about every location in a hall. Besides, what you hear on a recording is a mixture of the two--there are spot mics all over the place, together with hall mics. You really have to go back to the very early stereo recordings in the 50's to hear a sound that approximates what an audience hears. But my main problem with your posts is that you emphasize controlled directly above just about every other design goal. The graph of that Nuance posted points this out (and I'm talking about the first graph, not the second one showing the grill effects). In addition to the excess energy at 2 kHz, which is about the most sensitive area for human heariong, the KEF crossover clearly isn't suppressing the woofer breakup mode at 8 kHz sufficiently. Those defects could easily overwhelm any advantages from the controlled directivity design. I haven't heard the speaker, so I don't know how it all comes out in the wash. But that's the point--you can't weight pros and cons in speaker performance unless you listen. Finally, of course I've tried to do the best I could to control directivity in the Philharmonics without greatly complicating the design. I stated consistently that I agree with you about the advantage of this approach. But it's only one element of speaker design. Oh--I've never designed nuttin' for Ascend. Dave doesn't need any help in that department.

 

[Nuance AH]

Hmm. Do you even know what you're posting?

So others aren't deceived by your intellectual dishonestly, here is the context of the above graph.

"Fig.5 KEF Q900, effect of grille on anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50" (2dB/vertical div.)." (emph. added)

You'll see similar results for most speakers.

Yes I know what I'm posting, you toilet bug. I found it interesting so I posted it. You don't like it, go somewhere else.

 

[sledhead1]

Well I finally had some time to go listen to some speakers. I was not impressed with the monitor 11 or the rf-82. I did like the studio 100 better but the price tag was too much, especially if I add the matching center. Listened to the kef's but try as i might I didn't like them either. I was really starting to lean toward the Sierra Towers but the price was getting up there. Got an email from emotia that they where having a sale, so I ordered up their ert8.3 that are on clearance for $799 a pair and a center. At that price I figured what the hell, if i don't like them I could sell them to my parents or throw them in the paper or something. Im waiting to see their new line of amp coming out next month or I would have ordered one of them too. Price is right, I just hope the sound impresses me now!

 

[GranteedEV]

Check out the Philharmonic 1 towers.