What is special about horn loaded drivers?

[highfigh]

Defcon, I wish what you say about pros not buying snake oil was true. It turns out that they are as susceptible to a good story line as consumers. After all recording engineers are "artists", not technical engineers - although a few are both. Over the years they have been sucked into silliness like the Auratone, NS-10, UREI 811,12,13 mediocrity, and some studios still proudly proclaim that these are still in use. You will find measurements on these and others in my book - Figure 2.6 and Chapter 18. Others follow the high-end audiophiles down the path of gloss and semi-science. B&W 800s are proudly shown in Abbey Road and the Lucasfilm scoring studio, and I have seen them in lot of other places. Many mastering engineers use consumer loudspeakers. Not all of these are state-of-the-art by any means. But now, the best pro loudspeakers sound like the best consumer loudspeakers - neutral - that is as it should be.

As I conclude in my McGill university lecture on YouTube, nowadays monitor loudspeakers must be neutral, so that they do not become part of the recorded art. I want a chance to hear what was created, not an adulterated version.

Wait- didn't Harmon/JBL own Urei?

I read an article about the NS-10. They didn't defend the sound, but said they were used so often because they were already in so many studios that it was unnecessary for people to drag their favorite monitors from place to place. They revealed problems with the recording and the person mixing had a good idea of what they would get when using them. Of the people polled, not many said they actually like those but they're not expensive and they're fairly consistent.

The wide range of sound quality in recordings makes me wish the monitor speakers were listed on the notes of the album/CD/DVD/BD. At least we'd have an idea of why some recordings sound the way they do. I was in a local studio when a friend was recording the basic tracks for one of his CDs and they had B&W 801 or 802. Could have been because of where I was sitting, but they sounded really unimpressive- almost compressed in the upper mids/highs. They moved, the studio is under new management and they now have Genelec monitors, which sounded pretty accurate.

 

[Floyd Toole]

highfigh; Yes Harman (with an "a") bought UREI and immediately discontinued the loudspeakers - showing very good taste.

NS-10 - the devil you know philosophy. But is doesn't wash because it has been demonstrated that mixers do different mixes with different sounding monitors. The NS-10 has the same spectral balance/directivity as the Auratone, but it plays louder and has a bit more bass - see figure 18.23 in my book. The UREI was a large monitor with similar spectrum/directivity. All of it began with the Auratone which was a $3 speaker in a $4 box designed to imitate the normal crappy speakers used in TVs of the day. TVs of today sound much better than that! Mixers got used to the sound and the beat goes on, and on . . .

If everyone used neutral monitors nobody would need to drag speakers around. But for some reason many engineers can't break their habits and keep choosing loudspeakers that flatter their old recordings, meaning that no progress is possible.

At the NRCC we did a monster evaluation of monitor loudspeakers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They wanted small, medium and large monitors for their nationwide network. A big deal. We did measurements, set up double-blind listening tests, and set about evaluating the submissions that came from everywhere. There were over 40 to begin with, but that list quickly got shaved down and the finalists got a lot of serious listening by producers and engineers from the organization. Just for the hell of it, I introduced some good consumer loudspeakers into the mix.

The upshot was that one of the favored pro monitors, the UREI as it turns out, got the lowest score of any speaker we had tested up to that point. The highest scoring loudspeaker was a consumer product, and all of the consumer speakers did well, but could not qualify for high power applications. When the results were revealed, there was disbelief. So, we had to repeat some tests with the engineers bringing their own master tapes. Same result. They were stunned, and one of them had the confidence to say that he had never heard such good sound in his life.

We also discovered that a high proportion of the pros had hearing loss - it is an occupational hazard especially for those who played in bands. It was discovered because their opinions were so erratic, changing in repeated tests.

 

[Floyd Toole]

I forgot to add that a lot of studios employ room EQ, so the "native" sound of the loudspeaker may or may not be what the mixer hears. It is a mess.

We need technical engineers to set up the loudspeakers and rooms to be neutral so that the artistic engineers can get on with their jobs, and have some assurance that customers will hear predictable sound. These days even cheap loudspeakers, and some TVs, are better than NS-10s and the like. Car audio has greatly improved. The old days are gone, so should the old speakers be gone.

 

[highfigh]

I forgot to add that a lot of studios employ room EQ, so the "native" sound of the loudspeaker may or may not be what the mixer hears. It is a mess.

We need technical engineers to set up the loudspeakers and rooms to be neutral so that the artistic engineers can get on with their jobs, and have some assurance that customers will hear predictable sound. These days even cheap loudspeakers, and some TVs, are better than NS-10s and the like. Car audio has greatly improved. The old days are gone, so should the old speakers be gone.

I guess, if all studios were built and "voiced" the same, they wouldn't have a sound of their own and that might not be a good thing but it would be more convenient for people who need to record in short order because they may not want/be able to travel quickly enough to capture their ideas. Then, there's the issue of what they needed to do to achieve that room curve and whether it's outside of the comfort zone of the speakers or who is operating/maintaining the studio. As an example, I was asked to bring an RTA to a small studio in the late-'80s and before it was set up, someone played some music. I had become accustomed to the sound of drivers with reversed polarity over the years and immediately had the sensation that one of theirs was reversed. I asked if one of the horns had been repaired and upon checking the RTA, it had the deep trough from phase cancellation in the crossover region- I was told that a diaphragm had been replaced not long before. They had NS-10 on the desk and that was my first exposure to them. Not great.

I remember reading interviews with recording engineers and producers over the years (Mix Magazine, etc) and they said they used small shoe box tape recorders, boom boxes and basic cassette players in cars because to get an idea of how their mix sounded because that's how people listened, not always on a massive system with large woofers & wide frequency range. Considering the way a lot of '70s rock recordings sound, I find that interesting. By my logic, if they have monitors that produce boom/crash sound without adding to those frequencies, what should come out
from a truly full range system with flatt-ish (maybe with a downward tilt)/smooth response will sound like the bass and treble are lacking and if their monitors are lacking in the extremes, the music will have stronger bass and treble, if they didn't EQ for flat response.

That's what I hear from my system, anyway- the sound of various recordings is all over the map, with some OK, some pretty bad and many sounding very good. Some sound excellent and for those, I'd like to find the info about what they're using. The recordings from people who actually care about sound quality produce deep, even bass, extended highs and smooth sound through the range, regardless of when the recordings were made. I didn't build my speakers for high power handling (I don't listen at extremely high SPL but I did want smooth sound without the need to do a lot of processing or EQ) and messing with the signal (and I don't want to have a $200K system). One of the goals was to reproduce human voice realistically, without strange-sounding emphasis- it's a bit startling when I hear the voice of someone I know over the radio and it sounds like they're in the room.

WRT hearing damage, the worst part is that it's not always their fault. When someone makes sounds without caring that anyone else is there and the SPL at some frequency is excessive, there's not much they can do because they don't expect it. I did live sound for a while and gave up because some people just don't know how to reduce their stage level- I refuse to let someone else damage my hearing and it's the reason I ALWAYS carry hearing protection.