OT - Help me understand Hi-Fi speakers

[thermite]

Do not buy speakers you have not heard in a similar environment and setup

Pigeon Fudge. Planning to rent each of a dozen types for a week and move placement around twice a day?

It's a working shop.

Two, four at most, (L/R, Frt/Rear) reasonably sanely placed "in ceiling"" or 'hung" infinite-baffle "bookshelf" critters...and that's about all the goodness one can expect from that environment. Go and get wireless, oversized and comfy gel-pad HEADPHONES (and NOT "earbuds") if you need better.

Sight unseen.

All the f**king about you have time for won't make a shop into a living room, let alone an audio studio.

Freakin' all-weather "boom box" my carpenter/framer/roofer/remodeler travels with is good enough, actually.

It's the environment, Pilgrims.

The magical Denon ''Mothership" may as well be an electric space-heater as far as "shop" goes for a listening zone..

Funniest story about acoustical "resonance" in which nobody had to die:

Belgian-American Leo Goosens had gotten around marginal materials as barrier to high RPM IC engine design by making connecting rods unusually long. This kerbed the force generated by angular acceleration at the crank pin as applied to piston and gudgeon pin.

His Sampson-Schroeder powered midget race car was one of the earlier motors to hit 8,000 RPM and hold it without grenading.

Soo.. it is doing a wonderful job at a very old converted horse racing track.. when the spectating crowd go into a panic and began to FLEE the viewing stands!

Wha hoppen?

Resonance. Each time the valiant four banger screamed orgiastically down the straight in front of the viewing stands?

A hundred years accumulation of ancient feathers, bits of straw and petrified pigeon shit was being shaken onto the heads of the crowd ..out of the ancient wooden trusses as held up the roof!

Resonance applies to shops, too!

The over-age-in-grade pigeon shit?

No fear.

We at least try to keep THAT stuff ....to online forums?

 

[DDoug]

The latest fad in shops seems to be lining the walls & ceilings with screwed on roofing tin.....ugh.

 

[dcsipo]

and if you do any welding in that building... good luck with sensitive materials.

Uhm...yeah, Welding, you may want to re-think putting that Dennon on the same main panel without heavy-duty surge protection. IIRC that sucker still has an analog PS and amps with sensitive digital stuff sparkled all over in it.

 

[thermite]

The latest fad in shops seems to be lining the walls & ceilings with screwed on roofing tin.....ugh.

Well .. yeah.. not as nice as heart Chestnut, no.. but just price it.

More necessity than "fad".

Materials - plus installation labour - cost the very EARTH, long since (and getting worser by the week..) when one has substantial area to treat.

At least it goes up fast and inexpensively, is usually pre-finished with sore durable coatings, dirties-up slowly... plus one can CLEAN it better, faster, and at less cost than OSB or cinderblock.

Mate of mine, Hong Kong based, was a legendary acoustics Engineer/Architect specialist, His considerable wealth? Generated from flying all over the rich-folk world doing high-end nightclubs!

And ribbed steel WAS one of the tools in his arsenal! See "Lan Kwai Fong" to London, to Moscow, to Paris.. and not-only.

You want great room acoustics?

Our suite at the Metropole, one Christmas eve 'installment plan honeymoon" on a canal in Venetzia, had heavy natural WOOL FABRIC as elegantly framed wall covering over the ancient stone. Fixed. Foam back of it. I checked. AND NOT just pichur-framed.

Warm, cozy, overall lovely ambiance!

The nightly room-rate, for those who might have to CARE, might make your eyes bleed? Even we didn't care for the HIGHER priced spreads! (Gritti Palace?)

But even if one can piss the money away... imagine trying to keep that CLEAN in a working shop?

Horses for courses. Pigeon-shit, cobwebs, housefly and spider-poop, swarf & coolant optional.

 

[CarbideBob]

When doing A/B comparisons most will pick the more efficient speaker since louder sounds better even if not as clean.
Pure manufacture ratings of db and frequency response are so hard to compare as there are no real standards for measuring.
It takes 10 times the power to get twice as loud and one needs "amplifier headroom" for transients.
LaScalas have a real decent punch down low and do thud the chest but roll off very fast below 44hz yet reasonable flat from there up.
Also very efficient. I used to hook mine up to a Sony Walkman to show them off. Try that with a 84-88 db speaker.
Many do not like horn loaded or even ported box designs. First for size and phasing the second for "breathing" or response peaks.
Also beware any amp output claims of RMS vs Peak and distortion level but that not a worry at all with your Dennon.

When I bought my set of EV Interface A's with the addon eq I thought these the best in the world. Bought some BICs V6 and sold them to mom and dad.
It is a mess and very confusing which leads to I love this or that. Most will be so very loyal to whatever they own now.
The high dollar stuff is good or they would not survive in the marketplace. There is also so much in the mid to lower price that is very good.
Want go crazy world...roll your own, how hard it be in this day of 1000 different free design, modelling and testing software.

How much HIFi does a shop really need? They tell me I have much hearing loss yet I am picky about the soundfield during work.
Across classical to what my wife calls devil music. The nuances and changes in county music.
Bob

 

[thermite]

When doing A/B comparisons most will pick the more efficient speaker since louder sounds better even if not as clean.
Pure manufacture ratings of db and frequency response are so hard to compare as there are no real standards for measuring.
It takes 10 times the power to get twice as loud and one needs "amplifier headroom" for transients.
LaScalas have a real decent punch down low and do thud the chest but roll off very fast below 44hz yet reasonable flat from there up.
Also very efficient. I used to hook mine up to a Sony Walkman to show them off. Try that with a 84-88 db speaker.
Many do not like horn loaded or even ported box designs. First for size and phasing the second for "breathing" or response peaks.
Also beware any amp output claims of RMS vs Peak and distortion level but that not a worry at all with your Dennon.

When I bought my set of EV Interface A's with the addon eq I thought these the best in the world. Bought some BICs V6 and sold them to mom and dad.
It is a mess and very confusing which leads to I love this or that. Most will be so very loyal to whatever they own now.
The high dollar stuff is good or they would not survive in the marketplace. There is also so much in the mid to lower price that is very good.
Bob

LOL!

Long ago.. but not far way... we poor folk were doing cheap-ass magic - or so we THOUGHT it was - with a rig called the "Sweet Sixteen".

One bought sixteen (per channel) El Cheapo dome-centered 4 or 5 inch mass market 4 Ohm or 8 Ohm speakers. The "usual suspects" had 'em surplus from discontinued auto or table-radio model lines. Some were only a dollar or three each.

Took a hole-saw to a sheet of heavy plywood. and mounted them four high and four wide, ELSE eight high and two wide.

Wired them series AND parallel to match the Acrosound TO-330 screen-grid class output transformer's impedance.

- Total "pumping" area made a right decent Woofer.

- Low mass per-each made "fair" tweeters.

- Mid-range was their meat, and where most of our alleged "music' lived, regardless.

Annnnnd . no NEED of a costly "crossover network" nor "Ell" nor "Tee" pads to adjust stuff, either!

Near-infinite number of ways to skin this cat.

Cat figures ever' damned one of 'em hostile, but there you have it.

Personal Bias!

Advising some other Bloke as to what speakers he should buy?

Pilgrim? You might run less risk of BLAME for the disappointment in it off trying to arrange his MARRIAGE!

 

[GregSY]

Well...the welding issue is a good one...I've had a Denon and Onkyo and one other over the years and never had any issue. But those were less-fancy receiver so who knows?

So here's my screwed-on tin ceiling (which I did 20 years ago before the fad). The shop itself is a wood framed building with sheetrock walls and lots of insulation both in the walls and ceiling. The speakers are sort of suspended from the ceiling...these are the biggest speakers and I have some smaller bookshelf type speakers also. These speakers, I don't remember what brand they are but might be SONY...the cabinets they were in were falling apart so I made new cabinets out of scrap plywood and stuck some boat speaker grilles over them.

The problem is even when I am right under them, they have so-so sound. They are clear enough but lack bass and are never gonna win any sound awards.

 

[technocrat]

Good quality powered speakers will contain a digital signal processor (dsp) which can analyse and change the signal in real time. The whole concept of perfect speakers and amplifier design no longer applies as the dsp can compensate the signal to match the performance of the drivers and enclosure. This is where the amazing performance of mini-speakers comes from.

 

[thermite]

The problem is even when I am right under them, they have so-so sound. They are clear enough but lack bass and are never gonna win any sound awards.

No fear. Old ear.

All you need is to find a time machine not stripped for Old Iron spare gearbox parts and turn back your body condition to around age 19.

Cannot assure you it will improve your hearing to where right-decent speakers sound louder again..

But if I knew as much about women at age 19 as I do in my 77th year?
Fair chance I'd not have lived to clock 21, let alone given much of a damn about audio SHE did not generate "episodally!"

 

[Yan Wo]

... Like water-skiing behind a missile-armed destroyer?

Why do I have no trouble believing you have done that!

 

[GregSY]

I can't see for shit, but my hearing and sense of smell is still pretty good. For whatever reason, I've been good about using hearing protection since I was in my early 20's. I wish I'd kept as much care in keeping carb cleaner, grinding chips, and other shit out of my eyes.

 

[dcsipo]

Well...the welding issue is a good one...I've had a Denon and Onkyo and one other over the years and never had any issue. But those were less-fancy receiver so who knows?

So here's my screwed-on tin ceiling (which I did 20 years ago before the fad). The shop itself is a wood framed building with sheetrock walls and lots of insulation both in the walls and ceiling. The speakers are sort of suspended from the ceiling...these are the biggest speakers and I have some smaller bookshelf type speakers also. These speakers, I don't remember what brand they are but might be SONY...the cabinets they were in were falling apart so I made new cabinets out of scrap plywood and stuck some boat speaker grilles over them.

The problem is even when I am right under them, they have so-so sound. They are clear enough but lack bass and are never gonna win any sound awards.

uhm...might as well hang some Bose 901s on chains

 

[thermite]

Why do I have no trouble believing you have done that!

LOL! I had trouble enough to get up and stay up back of a 50 Hoss Evinrude on a 14 foot "MFG", HS daze.

One of our mates, an escapee from Mass-o-Nuthin Military Academy and home for incorribly unsalvageable wayward boys, bet us he could ski barefoot, then even did it on one foot.

Collected the smuggled underage booze and larfed his arse off.

"You guys should have noticed the Cypress Gardens Instructor patch on my swim trunks from my "Summer Job"!"

WTF did WE know about it?

Destroyer's wake? Might be "para-skiing" is best you could hope to survive.

Then again? Marines are part of the Navy, y'know? No question yah could find plenty of 'em daft enough to try it on for a lark.

"Marines don't DIG" when it comes to foxholes. Let the OTHER poor, dumb, bastard go on the defensive.

Ain't never discovered the SECOND thing a Marine will not do, though.



I HAVE watched - from above - as OTHERS water-skied behind a Mike-Boat.

That wasn't the impressive part.

It was the pair of Huey's flying "shark guard", door gunners with their M60' machine guns Eagle-eyed. Cam Ranh Bay. 1968.

Water clear enough, and sandy bottom light enough, that we could see the SHARKS from OUR aircraft, too.

Not even close to the nuttiest of things some among us did in that crazy f**ked-up war.

 

[metalmagpie]

If you've had that amp 20 years you can't hear above 3kHz anyway. Buy cheap.

 

[tnmgcarbide]

my last job working in a factory , where i was the machinist...the only real machinist.. this was 1994 .
every assembler,mechanic ,carpenter, general jerkoff had their own piece-of-shit radio . all tuned to
either the worst 8 song rotation pop/marketing country am station...or the worst 8 song rotation pop/marketing country fm station . either the worst. they all had either a beat-to-shit sanyo boombox
or a fucking ancient zenith or motorola clock-radio ...driven into total distortion. they just assumed
that it was supposed to sound ...like a freakin' icepick in my ear. they didn't know any different.

i digress...

 

[DDoug]

In the mid 1980's I used to visit a few friends working in one of those large drafting rooms.

Everyone else had xistioned to CAD, but these old timers held on to the boards.

At the end of the aisle was the classic 5-tube am radio, tuned to "The music of your life".
Music of Your Life - Wikipedia

And no-one was un-happy....

IIRC pipe smoking was still prevalent (very) there.

Been in an office that had this playing:
Beautiful music - Wikipedia
Or:
Adult standards - Wikipedia

AkA Muzak.

Driving thru Altoona last spring, truck radio found the last remaining station running that format....

 

[tnmgcarbide]

watch out for those all-american 5's . they have sequential heaters in the tubes, no isolation transformer.
the chassis is hot . the B+ on the inside could be around 160 volts.

it will keel.

 

[DDoug]

watch out for those all-american 5's . they have sequential heaters in the tubes, no isolation transformer.
the chassis is hot . the B+ on the inside could be around 160 volts.

it will keel.

Have had a few of them, outside is always Bakelite....

 

[GregSY]

Well....after looking at several options, I found a speaker that seems to have what I want. Big, heavy, affordable, and a little obscure. I just ordered them so they're not here yet...but they sound like they sound good.

Magnat Transpuls 1500 Review: 100% Old School Speakers