[analogsurviver]

Yes, F=ma as mentioned in the document. Written differently: a=F/m. With more mass you just need more force to reach a certain acceleration. If you increase the mass, and you increase the force (by increasing the current, by increasing the voltage) with the same ratio and everything stays the same (all other things being equal). Only efficiency is lower.
(By increasing or decreasing the volume, all acceleration of the driver's moving parts is increased or decreased by the same factor, the resulting wave shape is identical except for the amplitude, simply giving lower or higher volume. The same should hold for adding mass to the driver: simply gives a lower volume. Again, all other things being equal.)

[Edit3: Actually the force has to move more than only the mass of the moving parts of the driver, but also the mass of the displaced air, plus mechanical resistance of the suspension. So things are a bit more complicated. But that doesn't mean that increased mass can not be compensated for with increased force.]

In the "all other things being equal" there may (or may not) be complications, but Newton's 2nd Law of Physics doesn't cause any problems for the above!

[Edit: By the way, related to this: The reason why multi-way loudspeakers use different sized drivers for different frequency bands is not that larger and hence heavier drivers would not be able per se to reproduce the higher frequencies, but because the dispersion pattern depends on the ratio between wavelength and driver size. Large drivers will beam the higher frequencies more than low frequencies.]
[Edit2: Electrostatic loudspeakers have the reputation to be "fast and precise" supposedly because they have a very light membrame. However others claim that in reality because of the narrower dispersion pattern of the large driver surface there are less reflections and reverberations, and that can be perceived as increased "precision".]

Correct - as long you CAN increase the force. This ends with low SPLs, where you can not increase the force - because for certain SPL it is given and adding any more force woul increase SPL required - which is forbidden if the accuracy is to be maintained.

Regarding ESL vs dynamic drivers. Correct - to a point. Please go trough the paper of Peter Walker from Quad - where he describes the design of push pull electrostatic design , which is now almost universally adopted by the vast majority of manufacturers.
Save one - for which said late Peter Walker is quoted as saying which loudspeaker not developed by him he would have liked to be his brainchild.

The main difference between a dynamic and an electrostatic driver is in the fact that ESL diaphragm is - across most of its range, if designed correctly - damped by AIR - therefore not requiring the Aichille's heel of any dynamic driver, which is the inevitable departures from the perfect piston motion in most dynamic drivers. Even if we limit the dynamic drivers to the free open air performance of dipoles ( ribbons, planars, etc ), without having to deal with the more common issues of enclosure problems, there usually is still the problem of dynamic driver having larger mass and therefore worse performance.

Only recently there have been breaktroughs in this regard - dynamic drivers capable of better transient response than ESLs. ESLs are notoriously hard to drive in electrical sense in the treble ( requiring drive that is, in EU at least, forbidden to be sold to the general public due to safety ) and the fact that stator electrodes in ESLs are extremely hard to make to be both acoustically as transparent as possible while having low mechanical resonance - the two being mutually exclusive and always the hardest compromise any manufacturer of ESLs is faced with.

Although most ESLs are quite>very>extremely directional ( to the point I would definitely prefer headphones over "head-in-a-vice-loudspeakers-or-extremely-poor-sound" , there ARE ways around it. At least two - mentioned above, albeit not explicitely. One behaves like a dipole, another as a full height line source. Both still offer better /less exitation of room modes and reflections than a common dynamic speaker in a box - not to mention inherently better transient response and far lower THD.

Currently, the fastest transducers available are both EARSPEAKERS - MySphere 3.2 ( a very advanced dynamic full range driver ) and RAAL Requisite SR1a ( world's first full range ribbon ).

Similar level of performance in loudspeakers is available in Alsyvox range of planar/ribbon from Spain. I do NOT want to go and audition them, despite one of my acquaintances owning a pair in less than 10 km range.

Entry model starts at 60+kEur ...

 

[sander99]

Please go trough the paper of Peter Walker from Quad

I think I read that once a long time ago, and would like to read it again. Do you know where I can find it?

 

[analogsurviver]

I think I read that once a long time ago, and would like to read it again. Do you know where I can find it?

 

[analogsurviver]

Here you go : http://www.hembrow.eu/personal/widerangeelectrostatic.html

 

[71 dB]

[Edit: By the way, related to this: The reason why multi-way loudspeakers use different sized drivers for different frequency bands is not that larger and hence heavier drivers would not be able per se to reproduce the higher frequencies, but because the dispersion pattern depends on the ratio between wavelength and driver size. Large drivers will beam the higher frequencies more than low frequencies.]

[Edit2: Electrostatic loudspeakers have the reputation to be "fast and precise" supposedly because they have a very light membrame. However others claim that in reality because of the narrower dispersion pattern of the large driver surface there are less reflections and reverberations, and that can be perceived as increased "precision".]

Multi-way loudspeakers exist, because it's extremely demanding to make a driver that operates well within all 10 octaves (music uses typically 8-9 octaves) of human hearing. It's much easier to divide the frequency range into pieces of fewer octaves and use drivers that are mechanically and acoustically optimized for each of those narrower bandwidths. It's correct that larger drivers can (theoretically) produce high frequencies and the insane directivity becomes an issues above frequencies were the driver is not anymore small compared to the wavelength. Typically large (bass) drivers however can't produce high frequencies well, because they are not mechanically rigid enough at high frequencies to radiate sound effectively. This is a direct consequence of the driver being optimazed mechanically for low frequencies (resonance damping etc.)

This is a good point.

 

[sander99]

The rest of us listen to music with IEMs, Headphones, stereo speakers (sold my 5.1 system, I grew up), etc, and would like to discuss them also. Your very tiny world is only interesting to a few.

"The rest of us..."
No, although I also listen to stereo speakers, and (virtual speakers over) headphones, I certainly also listen over (real and virtual) multi channel speaker systems.
But indeed head-fi is of course primarely aimed at headphone and iem listeners. Part of those are not aware of the limitations of conventional headphone- and iem listening. So I think it is very important and usefull to inform them about the differences between headphones and speakers etc.
You may have a deliberate personal preference for iems or headphones over speakers, or stereo speakers over multichannel, based on experiencing all of those and that is okay.
But there also exist many people who never heard a well setup speaker system and are fully unaware of the pros and cons, and the differences in spatial representation of sound. They could very well develop a preference for speakers or multichannel speakers if they are made aware of the possibilties and try and compare for themselves.

 

[538681]

and compare for themselves.

Fair enough but it was not actually my intent to exclude "multi channel speaker systems".

"But indeed head-fi is of course primarily aimed at headphone and iem listeners"

You could have fooled me! But I guess its just this so called "Sound Science" thread and sub-threads where it appears there is an undue number of speaker salesmen.

Given this thread is supposed to be about "Myths" the one I feel is endlessly promulgated is the Myth that in order to have sound quality you need to have audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction. Loose, vague, and very unscientific synonyms get thrown around like "natural", "realistic", and "accurate" with absolutely zero evidence that a certain piece of music over a certain device actually exhibits this property (although I might believe a musician). At the moment many of us, not privy to engineers rooms or the live music venue, must just take other peoples word for it.

Some folks feel this means using speaker monitors in a treated room that mimics the sound engineers setup. This conflates the spatial makeup or "sound stage" attribute as a necessary property of sound quality. I posit that these spatial properties are the only attributes that truly make up the difference we see between IEMs, Headphones, 2 channel speakers, and multi-channel systems. There are also devices that apparently can entirely mimic multi-channel "presence" in headphones but I digress

I propose that "spatial" properties are not an aspect of Sound Quality. They are a property of preference. Folks give far to much weight to the effect. Reviewers make outlandish claims as to this cable or DAC or whatever changes sound stage. Generally always in terms that more is better.

I have found spatial properties to be some of the most subjective of all. When lying in bed with my headphones, music is cozily intimate. Sitting with the very same headphones they can take on surround sound properties depending on the music. Outside, the same headphones make music appear as if coming from the heavens. This, my old 5.1 surround system, was incapable of doing.

I have a pair of near field Genelecs on my desk, very carefully placed, so sound never appears to come from my speakers. There are a number of electronica tracks that make my head turn because the sound comes from behind me.

Do I prefer my Genelec speakers to my IEMs or headphones? Of course not, except on Tuesday or Friday when I'm writing. IEMs are great for critical listening and my headphones after a beer. Next week I'll mix it all up.

So to come back to my main points:

Myth one: Audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction is possible and a worthy goal. I say, except for the very few, its not possible nor would you recognize it even if you had it. Thus its not a worthy goal. For me, however, its not a goal because I don't care.

Myth two: That spatial properties, that define speakers as different from headphones or IEMs, are somehow better. It's different, but given myth one above, not important in the definition of sound quality.

Ok, so perhaps I'm a lost soul wandering around in a faraway soundscape. But I'm certainly having a good time.

 

[bigshot]

Since this thread has been pinned, it's become the general open topic thread for Sound Science. It's always a good idea to lurk a bit before you come out swinging.

I'll be happy to discuss these topics with you if you reel in and stop the ad hominem attacks.

 

[castleofargh]

Fair enough but it was not actually my intent to exclude "multi channel speaker systems".

"But indeed head-fi is of course primarily aimed at headphone and iem listeners"

You could have fooled me! But I guess its just this so called "Sound Science" thread and sub-threads where it appears there is an undue number of speaker salesmen.

Given this thread is supposed to be about "Myths" the one I feel is endlessly promulgated is the Myth that in order to have sound quality you need to have audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction. Loose, vague, and very unscientific synonyms get thrown around like "natural", "realistic", and "accurate" with absolutely zero evidence that a certain piece of music over a certain device actually exhibits this property (although I might believe a musician). At the moment many of us, not privy to engineers rooms or the live music venue, must just take other peoples word for it.

Some folks feel this means using speaker monitors in a treated room that mimics the sound engineers setup. This conflates the spatial makeup or "sound stage" attribute as a necessary property of sound quality. I posit that these spatial properties are the only attributes that truly make up the difference we see between IEMs, Headphones, 2 channel speakers, and multi-channel systems. There are also devices that apparently can entirely mimic multi-channel "presence" in headphones but I digress

I propose that "spatial" properties are not an aspect of Sound Quality. They are a property of preference. Folks give far to much weight to the effect. Reviewers make outlandish claims as to this cable or DAC or whatever changes sound stage. Generally always in terms that more is better.

I have found spatial properties to be some of the most subjective of all. When lying in bed with my headphones, music is cozily intimate. Sitting with the very same headphones they can take on surround sound properties depending on the music. Outside, the same headphones make music appear as if coming from the heavens. This, my old 5.1 surround system, was incapable of doing.

I have a pair of near field Genelecs on my desk, very carefully placed, so sound never appears to come from my speakers. There are a number of electronica tracks that make my head turn because the sound comes from behind me.

Do I prefer my Genelec speakers to my IEMs or headphones? Of course not, except on Tuesday or Friday when I'm writing. IEMs are great for critical listening and my headphones after a beer. Next week I'll mix it all up.

So to come back to my main points:

Myth one: Audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction is possible and a worthy goal. I say, except for the very few, its not possible nor would you recognize it even if you had it. Thus its not a worthy goal. For me, however, its not a goal because I don't care.

Myth two: That spatial properties, that define speakers as different from headphones or IEMs, are somehow better. It's different, but given myth one above, not important in the definition of sound quality.

Ok, so perhaps I'm a lost soul wandering around in a faraway soundscape. But I'm certainly having a good time.

You defend your personal preferences that we can summarize as placing the feeling of detail you get from IEM, above most of the rest. There is no science or objectivity to it, it's only what you happen to care most about. Not everybody has the same priorities about sound.

Myth one, is a logical fallacy. By that logic, we can't exactly reproduce the sound of a piano, so why bother making it sound like a piano? That's not an argument. Audio reproduction isn't black or white. Nether are our feelings about audio.

Myth two has been explained to you a few times now. We assume that the album was made with and for speakers, because historically it's undeniable that the bulk of everything available was done for stereo speakers. We also consider that even today, it's just more practical for a professional to try and work on something standardized so that interactions with other professionals can stay consistent. Something hard to have with headphones or IEMs.
So once we settle on the fact that most albums were done for and with speakers, it's not a myth but a fact that speaker playback will give an experience closer to the original intent than the indeed significantly different IEM experience. And coming closer to the original intent is tightly related to the idea of fidelity.
If you have albums made with headphones(and no speaker simulation), or at least with headphone playback as main "client", then you'll logically come to the opposite conclusion. But rejecting something as not important just because you don't really care about it, that's as subjective as it gets.


I feel like we're going in circle now. Like what you like, bigshot does the same, and all is well. Being a headphone and IEM forum doesn't mean we should ignore reality anytime it doesn't make them look good. It's by pointing out the issues we have, that we'll get more people working on fixing/mitigating them. IMO that's better than being stuck in a hobby so slow to evolve that the industry has spent decades making up issues just so that they could sell us stuff to fix them.

 

[538681]

You defend your personal preferences that we can summarize as placing the feeling of detail you get from IEM, above most of the rest. There is no science or objectivity to it, it's only what you happen to care most about. Not everybody has the same priorities about sound.

Myth one, is a logical fallacy. By that logic, we can't exactly reproduce the sound of a piano, so why bother making it sound like a piano? That's not an argument. Audio reproduction isn't black or white. Nether are our feelings about audio.

Myth two has been explained to you a few times now. We assume that the album was made with and for speakers, because historically it's undeniable that the bulk of everything available was done for stereo speakers. We also consider that even today, it's just more practical for a professional to try and work on something standardized so that interactions with other professionals can stay consistent. Something hard to have with headphones or IEMs.
So once we settle on the fact that most albums were done for and with speakers, it's not a myth but a fact that speaker playback will give an experience closer to the original intent than the indeed significantly different IEM experience. And coming closer to the original intent is tightly related to the idea of fidelity.
If you have albums made with headphones(and no speaker simulation), or at least with headphone playback as main "client", then you'll logically come to the opposite conclusion. But rejecting something as not important just because you don't really care about it, that's as subjective as it gets.


I feel like we're going in circle now. Like what you like, bigshot does the same, and all is well. Being a headphone and IEM forum doesn't mean we should ignore reality anytime it doesn't make them look good. It's by pointing out the issues we have, that we'll get more people working on fixing/mitigating them. IMO that's better than being stuck in a hobby so slow to evolve that the industry has spent decades making up issues just so that they could sell us stuff to fix them.

You are incorrect on so many fronts. I am making the case that its all about "preferences" including your desire to divine "intent", but for sake of brevity I'll just take the piano example.

"Myth one, is a logical fallacy. By that logic, we can't exactly reproduce the sound of a piano, so why bother making it sound like a piano? That's not an argument. Audio reproduction isn't black or white. Nether are our feelings about audio."

There is no logical fallacy. I never said we can't bother but its quixotic. What piano? Played where? How close were the mics? How did the player chose to play the piano? Does the engineer hear piano tunes correctly? Did the engineer change things up a bit due to bad conditions for the recording? Anyway, you implied as much. A sound engineer may or may not be obsessed with creating a certain piano sound, should I be?

In the room or on my head or in my ears its not going to be THAT piano, by a mile. And if I, with my memories of the way a piano should sound, doesn't think its correct, I'll EQ the heck out of the sound, to hell with anyone's intent.

I find the obsession with "intent" in sound to be rather funny. Let's take the analogy of film. Film buffs and art historians concern themselves, sometimes, with the "intent" of the film writer, director, editor, actors and others. But as critics or viewers we could care less. If we happen to know their intent we will say if they failed or succeeded, as will the box office. The viewer is in the driver seat.

If the filmmaker weakly complains that their film was only meant to be in an IMAX theater to understand their full "intent", they would be making fools of themselves. Now I like to see an IMAX movie now and then, but always more than viewing it at home? Of course not, I just have a "preference" for one or the other based on mood (or I did before Covid).

In short, you have no scientific basis for making a claim that if a music listener puts enough effort and money into a system, in an attempt to reproduce the "intent" of the sound engineers, he will have a better experience. A better experience over headphones or IEMs? Often not. You can say they will have a different experience and you can get into discussing those nuances I suppose, like fidelity, if that for some reason interests you. You can claim your preferences for speakers. But you need to step back into reality and don't make specious claims of a higher quality of experience, what we ought to hear, for the rest of us.

Film was my first love, perhaps film is in many ways a more mature medium dealing with the mix of art and technology.

 

[bfreedma]

Fair enough but it was not actually my intent to exclude "multi channel speaker systems".

"But indeed head-fi is of course primarily aimed at headphone and iem listeners"

You could have fooled me! But I guess its just this so called "Sound Science" thread and sub-threads where it appears there is an undue number of speaker salesmen.

Given this thread is supposed to be about "Myths" the one I feel is endlessly promulgated is the Myth that in order to have sound quality you need to have audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction. Loose, vague, and very unscientific synonyms get thrown around like "natural", "realistic", and "accurate" with absolutely zero evidence that a certain piece of music over a certain device actually exhibits this property (although I might believe a musician). At the moment many of us, not privy to engineers rooms or the live music venue, must just take other peoples word for it.

Some folks feel this means using speaker monitors in a treated room that mimics the sound engineers setup. This conflates the spatial makeup or "sound stage" attribute as a necessary property of sound quality. I posit that these spatial properties are the only attributes that truly make up the difference we see between IEMs, Headphones, 2 channel speakers, and multi-channel systems. There are also devices that apparently can entirely mimic multi-channel "presence" in headphones but I digress

I propose that "spatial" properties are not an aspect of Sound Quality. They are a property of preference. Folks give far to much weight to the effect. Reviewers make outlandish claims as to this cable or DAC or whatever changes sound stage. Generally always in terms that more is better.

I have found spatial properties to be some of the most subjective of all. When lying in bed with my headphones, music is cozily intimate. Sitting with the very same headphones they can take on surround sound properties depending on the music. Outside, the same headphones make music appear as if coming from the heavens. This, my old 5.1 surround system, was incapable of doing.

I have a pair of near field Genelecs on my desk, very carefully placed, so sound never appears to come from my speakers. There are a number of electronica tracks that make my head turn because the sound comes from behind me.

Do I prefer my Genelec speakers to my IEMs or headphones? Of course not, except on Tuesday or Friday when I'm writing. IEMs are great for critical listening and my headphones after a beer. Next week I'll mix it all up.

So to come back to my main points:

Myth one: Audio fidelity or accurate sound reproduction is possible and a worthy goal. I say, except for the very few, its not possible nor would you recognize it even if you had it. Thus its not a worthy goal. For me, however, its not a goal because I don't care.

Myth two: That spatial properties, that define speakers as different from headphones or IEMs, are somehow better. It's different, but given myth one above, not important in the definition of sound quality.

Ok, so perhaps I'm a lost soul wandering around in a faraway soundscape. But I'm certainly having a good time.

Quite a rant, but at the end, I realized that your version of “science” is simply your preference, not an objective position.

All good - we all prefer what we prefer, but you might want to consider toning down the dramatics over your personal subjective preferences.

 

[PhonoPhi]

... but you might want to consider toning down the dramatics over your personal subjective preferences.

It always ends up as a condescending advice/directive from the same group of people here...

OK, not going to argue that the "as intended" can be reproduced only if one has the exact same ear channels, as a sound engineer, and the differences in pinna gain alone won't make it "the same", whichever the efforts in "calibrating", so "fidelity" is nothing but subjective...

On a positive, we all can agree that the speaker setups are perfectly/ideally compatible with all types of hearing aids

 

[sander99]

"as intended" can be reproduced only if one has the exact same ear channels, as a sound engineer

Of course not. This idea is like a reverse understanding of some of the things explained in this thread. What does NOT work is trying to get the same vibrations at everybodies ear drums. Because everybodies brains will interpret the same vibrations differently!

 

[PhonoPhi]

Of course not. This idea is like a reverse understanding of some of the things explained in this thread. What does NOT work is trying to get the same vibrations at everybodies ear drums. Because everybodies brains will interpret the same vibrations differently!

"Some of the things explained in this thread..."
If brains are interpreting vibrations differently, why bother with science, just calibrate your speakers to your liking and enjoy the music!

Why should someone then to bother to impose their subjective opinions to other people other than for insecurities(?) of one's ego?

While it can be kind of OK in a casual conversation, doing it under auspice/pretense of "science" is hardly acceptable.

 

[sander99]

If brains are interpreting vibrations differently, why bother with science, just calibrate your speakers to your liking and enjoy the music!

And again a reverse understanding. If a speaker measures flat at the listening position, and you play a flat recording of for example an acoustic instrument, the same frequency spectrum that would have been produced by the instrument is produced by the speaker. Your HRTF applies the same changes to that same frequency spectrum and in both cases the same changed frequency spectrum will reach your ears (sorry) ear drums. So your brain will interpret the playback of the recording the same as the real instrument. (Yes, this is a simplification not looking at some complicating factors but it is really a bit difficult to discuss everything involved.)
If another person does these 2 things (listening to the instrument or the flat recording played back over flat speakers) his brains will also interpret both the same although his hrtf is different and the frequency spectrum reaching his ear drums is different both from the original as from the frequency spectrum on your ear drums.
(Another question is whether you and this person will have the same experience, that is a question we will never be able to answer but that is another matter.)
If however you play back that flat recording over your IEMs the frequency spectrum reaching your ear drums will be different from the frequency spectrum reaching your ear drums when listening directly to the instrument. So your brain will interpret it differently (to your brain it will sound colored compared to the real instrument). The same for the other person. And his brain will interpret it not only different from the real instrument, but also different from how your brain interprets the recording over IEMs. So the common reference is gone as well!
Now you may wonder about electronic instruments. You could argue they don't have a "objective real" sound because they only can be heard via transducers (of whatever kind). However, if someone would want to have some control over how people will experience these, more specific: would want everyone to experience them similar and not totally different, then playback over speakers can be used as a common reference, while playback over IEMs (or headphones) can not!
All the above is with regards to both tonality and spatial aspects of the sound!

By the way, binaural recordings (or binaural simulations) are not suitable for playback over speakers. Because then the signal would undergo the whole HRTF thing twice! A binaural recording simply has not the right "dimensionality" (as in meters or seconds or newtons or watts all have a different dimensionality) so to speak for speaker playback. Similar a traditional "panning based" stereo recording has in fact not the right "dimensionality" for IEM or headphone playback. (Even if someone can enjoy the resulting sound anyway).