FrantzM said:
Hi
This is all conjectures and anecdotes but ...
Don't we have the same effect in visuals? You take a small 40" diagonal screen and watch in the nearfield, say less than 1 meter from it. IS that the same feeling as looking at a 100 inches diagonal? from
It is not an issue of SPL or bass. Take a small speaker, say a Neumann KH80 DSP or Genelec equivalent properly mated with a pair of SVS 4000 or Neuman or Genelec subwoofers, correctly integrated .. FR flat as a pancake from 20 to 20,000 Hz ... will that fool you into thinking you're listening to say a Revel Salon 2 or Neuman KH 420, similarly corrected for flat FR?
Allow me to have my strong doubts. This is the question and he answer reside in something beyond simple SPL. Baffle size for once could be a direction one would go in... Dispersion in the lows , say power response under the Schroeder frequency is a place I would look into ... Not SPL, not even THD or IM ...
From anecdotes and casual observations. The Dutch and Dutch 8C,the Kii3, the JBL 708 even the 308 don't sound small ... In my observation, the JBL 305 does ...
Question needs to be approached with seriousness, not flippancy and outright dismissiveness. IMHO this is a really audible, thus measurable phenomenon.
Peace
Click to expand...
Given I spent many years on the AV forums discussing with others that same subject about viewing distances, Field Of View etc on the apparent sense of size, that same analogy has come to my mind on this issue before. As for the displays: I spent many years trying to get as immersive an effect as possible with my 42" plasma (which was HUGE at the time vs CRTs, when I bought it new). I moved my seating close to the screen, I put black out behind the image, watched with the lights out. It was great, but it never fooled my brain in to thinking I was looking at actually large objects. This was really laid bare when I finally moved to projection. Even close up to the plasma, watching a Star Wars movie, it felt like I'd moved to have a better view of toy-sized space ships zipping around. On the big projection screen, the space ships actually had a dominating effect, an impression of size, closer to "real" ships gliding overhead. Size matters.
As to the question of this thread, far be it for me to solve that issue as many here have a far better grasp of the technicalities. But I've noticed that wider-baffle speakers tend so sound larger and richer than narrow speakers, generally speaking.
I've mentioned before that this was particularly the case when I auditioned the Devore O/96 speakers, with their two-way mating of a 10" woofer with tweeter on a squat wide-baffle. Art Dudly in his review of the O/96 wrote this: (Of the modern trend to more decor-friendly, skinny speakers):
" Lower-treble and midrange tones, the wavelengths of which can exceed the radial size of the drive-units that disperse them, tend to reflect from a speaker's cabinet, delaying a small portion of the output. Among the first aspects of the sound to suffer are imaging cues.
But a loudspeaker without a baffle is like a herd of sheep without a fence and a border collie: Much of what you paid for will wander away."
Clearly not an objective technical description, but it nonetheless sort of captures to me the experience or perception I have listening to that speaker (and to some degree other wider baffle speakers). It feels like some of the sound is sort of "getting away" in the upper mid/treble in skinnier speakers where the wider baffle seems to be "corralling" more of the sound to be focused back to the listener. Maybe not true, but I'm trying to account for why the speaker has such an obviously bigger, richer sound, especially mids on up to the high frequencies, than most speakers including the ones I own (Thiel/Joseph Audio). Even things like cowbells, chimes, drum cymbals all sound bigger and more robust.
My Joseph speakers are small and skinny but can sound really big. Though more in soundstaging aspects.
My Thiel 2.7s sound bigger still, richer, instrument sizes somewhat thicker and bigger, and they cast an utterly massive soundstage size when required (and I currently have a subwoofer going with those).
And yet, neither makes instruments sound as BIG as the smaller Devore wide-baffled speaker. The soundstage isn't as massive on the Devores, but the sense of sheer mass, image size and weight just sounds bigger, more like full sized drums, pianos, acoustic guitars, sax...whatever. It's one of the main things that beguiled me about them which has left me pondering how they do it. (And it's among the most common description of their sound by listeners and reviewers, just how big and hefty the sonic images are despite their fairly small stature).
Given I spent many years on the AV forums discussing with others that same subject about viewing distances, Field Of View etc on the apparent sense of size, that same analogy has come to my mind on this issue before. As for the displays: I spent many years trying to get as immersive an effect as possible with my 42" plasma (which was HUGE at the time vs CRTs, when I bought it new). I moved my seating close to the screen, I put black out behind the image, watched with the lights out. It was great, but it never fooled my brain in to thinking I was looking at actually large objects. This was really laid bare when I finally moved to projection. Even close up to the plasma, watching a Star Wars movie, it felt like I'd moved to have a better view of toy-sized space ships zipping around. On the big projection screen, the space ships actually had a dominating effect, an impression of size, closer to "real" ships gliding overhead. Size matters.As to the question of this thread, far be it for me to solve that issue as many here have a far better grasp of the technicalities. But I've noticed that wider-baffle speakers tend so sound larger and richer than narrow speakers, generally speaking.I've mentioned before that this was particularly the case when I auditioned the Devore O/96 speakers, with their two-way mating of a 10" woofer with tweeter on a squat wide-baffle. Art Dudly in his review of the O/96 wrote this: (Of the modern trend to more decor-friendly, skinny speakers):Clearly not an objective technical description, but it nonetheless sort of captures to me the experience or perception I have listening to that speaker (and to some degree other wider baffle speakers). It feels like some of the sound is sort of "getting away" in the upper mid/treble in skinnier speakers where the wider baffle seems to be "corralling" more of the sound to be focused back to the listener. Maybe not true, but I'm trying to account for why the speaker has such an obviously bigger, richer sound, especially mids on up to the high frequencies, than most speakers including the ones I own (Thiel/Joseph Audio). Even things like cowbells, chimes, drum cymbals all sound bigger and more robust.My Joseph speakers are small and skinny but can sound really big. Though more in soundstaging aspects.My Thiel 2.7s sound bigger still, richer, instrument sizes somewhat thicker and bigger, and they cast an utterly massive soundstage size when required (and I currently have a subwoofer going with those).And yet, neither makes instruments sound as BIG as the smaller Devore wide-baffled speaker. The soundstage isn't as massive on the Devores, but the sense of sheer mass, image size and weight just sounds bigger, more like full sized drums, pianos, acoustic guitars, sax...whatever. It's one of the main things that beguiled me about them which has left me pondering how they do it. (And it's among the most common description of their sound by listeners and reviewers, just how big and hefty the sonic images are despite their fairly small stature).