Space - the final frontier
default -- Thu, 05/07/2009 - 22:41
In his editorial this month, Alan Taffel hits a strong point on how the two-channel listening experience is woefully inadequate in giving us a realistic soundscape. This situation could be *greatly helped* if speaker makers stopped boxing their (box) speaker designs and opened them up. Sigfried Linkwitz has been saying this for years...and it's high time that more started doing it.
Four big questions loudspeaker designers should have asked, then tried to answer:
1. Do recordings capture space ?
2. Are drive units natural dipoles ?
3. Why don't speakers sound good in a (direct-sound only) anechoic chamber ?
4. What's the time arrival of live sound vs. that from a boxed radiator ? (hint: the box is MUCH faster)
Once we answer these (simple) questions, then we see how wrong most speakers are at sound radiation in a room. Apparently, realism wasn't a priority - building a better box was.
The argument that open-baffle speakers "need a lot of space" doesn't take away the point that many audiophiles have dedicated rooms that can easily harbor dipole radiation. Plus, dipoles don't have a deep box in the first place !!
I think it's time we started thinking "outside the box" with dynamic-dipole radiators and rear-firing tweeters........
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It's me, JR-1 above. I missed typing it in !!
Great idea !! I asked Siegfried a few years ago about the rear firing tweeter and his reply was that they are not necessary. I forget the rest of his reply or the reason why admittedly. I design speakers as a hobby for something neat to do in Autocad and Solidworks now a little bit. The last several of my ideas were all open baffle (no box as you might say) and they use aircraft aluminum (not MDF as so many do). I agree with your comments, questions, and that at least some peoples' rooms could be done right for dipoles. Like you, I too like dynamic dipoles. I submitted one of my designs a few years ago to Mark Gilmore of Gilmore Audio. He said that he liked them and commented in other aspects in a favorable manner. He also told me what he had learned to focus on and how he dedicated his research in the dipole arena. Have fun with it.
Tom