HELP: Stax and classical music

[catscratch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif I must be the only person who has no issue with trance using electrostatics or something.

I should elaborate.

I find that a lot of trance is mastered with club sound systems in mind. These systems have a tremendous boost to bass frequencies, and the bass reproduction is usually pretty distorted. Therefore, trance artists tend to rely on the bassiness of these systems for the bass impact in their music. Electrostats have bass that is far too clean, and trance sounds too lean on them.

This doesn't apply to all artists, since some clearly master their disks for home stereos, and these have good bass. But some artists, like Hallucinogen, obviously master their disks with club systems in mind, and sound very bass-light on 'stats. I've heard Hallucinogen live in a club setting, and it had overwhelming, monstrous bass.

This doesn't apply to more downtempo electronic music. Hallucinogen is Shpongle's psytrance alter-ego, and Shpongle has plenty of bass on the SR-404. It's not mastered for club systems. Stuff like rock and classical can sometimes have overwhelming bass on the SR-404.

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well physics is physics. Electrostatic speakers of all shapes and forms don't move back and forth in a completely linear manner, and that's a scientifically provable fact. Even if the measurements he described turned out to be completely flawed, the point he was trying to illustrate with them is no less accurate. A better way to argue against it would be to suggest that the very high frequency and very low amplitude of such ripples is unlikely to be audible.

You miss the basic point, which has to do with failing to report the sources relied on for your conclusions. The original site I commented on failed to do this. Thus the reader is in no position to say whether or not results are interpreted correctly, whether the original authors made a mistake, or even if the alleged facts exist! While there is nothing wrong with stating a conclusion, generally, even in these forums, people who claim to have facts to back up their conclusions provide more information about these facts.

A quick k google of "waterfall plots" shows that they are established to determine resonances in speakers cabinets. Basically the technique involves looking at pulse response showing 3 dimensions of time frequency and amplitude.

http://www.libinst.com/wattlar.htm

A clue to the possible misinterpretation is that the "finding" applies to near field measurements of loudspeakers. Why near and not far? Because the waterfall effect you get from the test pulse , i.e. echos of decreasing amplitude, it will occur even with a perfectly flatly moving surface if it is large enough.

When a microphone is very close to the speaker diaphragm it will pick up delayed energy from the more peripheral regions of the speaker (whether electrostatic or otherwise) which will arrive at the microphone, delayed by the extra time taken to travel from the edges to the microphone, compared to the time taken for sound to travel from in front of the microphone.

This ends up being not important for loudspeakers, because the cure is to listen far enough away from the speaker, that the time for a signal to travel to the listener from the center vs the periphery of the speaker becomes miniscule. This is simple geometry

It is more of an an isue with electrostatic speakers because they generally present a large frontal surface compared to a dynamic speakers . However, consider how chaotic the near-field response would be with a a large floor stander with tweeter woofer and midrange some distance apart. The same phenomenon would occur as the signals from the different speakers arrived at the microphone.

I belabor this point somewhat because it could be somewhat of an issue for any large diaphragm in a headphone, which is after all heard in a near field condition. Generally stat diaphragms are considerable larger than dynamic (but not the Stax Sr001/003's)and will show some of this effect. And big dynamics will show more of this than small dynamics or iem's.

 

[Nomad]

Omega1 is far better than Omega2 for classical, although for some pop the Omega2 should be the way to go.

The only things close to Omega1 for classical are:

-R10: Less real but the soundstage (being as bigger) is a bit more "in front of you" on the R10, hence preferrable. Still, the difference is very small and can't make up for the lack of realism compared with Omega1

-K1000 from V20: You can miss some deep lines of cello with it but it is almost as realistic as the Omega1

-Orpheus: A bit euphonic and ethereal for my taste for classical. Still an excellent choice.

For Classical I'd say that is almost a tie between Omega1 and R10.