Revealing speakers

[RobbieGong]

Good thread !!

[walpurgis]

If you want to hear revealing, have a listen to a pair of Quad ESL 57s.

I have owned these and to my ears they are certainly stunningly revealing. There again, so is a pair of Lowther horns but you could not get speakers that sound more different!

There have been speakers that measure flat and don't sound particularly analytical and others that measure flat and are ruthlessly revealing, so the best way to choose a speaker is to try and hear it on your own system, or at least hopefully being driven by equipment that you are familiar with in a sympathetic environment.

[Reffc]

If you want to hear revealing, have a listen to a pair of Quad ESL 57s.

I have owned these and to my ears they are certainly stunningly revealing. There again, so is a pair of Lowther horns but you could not get speakers that sound more different!

There have been speakers that measure flat and don't sound particularly analytical and others that measure flat and are ruthlessly revealing, so the best way to choose a speaker is to try and hear it on your own system, or at least hopefully being driven by equipment that you are familiar with in a sympathetic environment.

+1

[ledzep]

If you want to hear revealing, have a listen to a pair of Quad ESL 57s.

I have owned these and to my ears they are certainly stunningly revealing. There again, so is a pair of Lowther horns but you could not get speakers that sound more different!

There have been speakers that measure flat and don't sound particularly analytical and others that measure flat and are ruthlessly revealing, so the best way to choose a speaker is to try and hear it on your own system, or at least hopefully being driven by equipment that you are familiar with in a sympathetic environment.

See this is the point some people say revealing is not very good yet some of the nicest sounding speakers are very revealing.

[Oldpinkman]

The ESL's are probably THE reference for revealing (either number). The 57's perhaps the very clearest window, but the most obvious bass rolloff, and very beamy. The 63's for all they are a bit "windy" have a sound I find more rounded and undoubtedly image much better. Broadly, apart from blocking out all the light, if you can get them in a decent size room, a sensible distance from the walls, you can pretty much just plonk the 63's down on stands and you will get good imaging. you can fanny about for a lifetime trying to get the 57's to do it - but when they do...... (stacked are a different kettle of fish again - but you need a big room)

The ventricals are more similar than different. Firstly they too are sadly directional (more in the vertical than horizontal plane - sound really odd when you are standing up). But - whilst never quite that ethereal transparency the stats do - much more similar than different. The etched mylar tweeter presumably being responsible. And they are easier to image than the 57's. And domestically much more acceptable - although pretty insensitive and not that easy to drive. But if you want to come for a listen, you'll know revealing when you hear it next.

The bumf (which I found in a drawer recently) says they were "voiced to match the ESL 63's". This implies we all sat there and thought - "how could we design a moving coil to replace the Quad electrostatics" - cos otherwise I think we'd have been happy putting a pink triangle on the Quads. In fact Andrew came down with the Helmholtz resonator design and different drive units, and impressed Arthur. They then changed the bass driver, tried ribbon tweeters, settled on the etched mylar, developed a necessarily complicated crossover and we ended up with something tonally quite similar to the 63's. Every pair was hand built - the drive units hand matched because the midrange drivers exhibited great variations between units. But coming back to your earlier point - what is revealing? that largely meant taking the design and its constraints, and setting the crossover to achieve as near as possible to flat response from a microphone 1m away. It ended up +-3db 40Hz to 20KHz. Its bass rolls off more gently than the cliff edge ESL's but pretty steep for all that.

Against all my religious principals and upbringing, I am seriously interested in experimenting with powered subwoofers with them. Early adventures are very promising.

I'll put the kettle on

[Macca]

Bright and revealing are not the same things. Most of the sound is 'revealed' in the mid range so the quality of the implementation there (and not in the tweeters) is what will seperate truly revealing speaker from the also-rans. I agree that the '57 is a good benchmark as it adds and subtracts absolutely nothing. Providied the rest of the system is competent this can only be a good thing. As for flat response across the board I think most people find speakers that are flat (i.e within 1dB) in the bass to sound bass light, purely because of the sensitivity in our hearing which reduces as frequency reduces. So you often get speakers with +5 to +7 dB of bass lift from 300 to say 40Hz in order to compensate and give a 'full' sound in the real world. Nothing wrong with this approach, it does not mean the loudspeaker is less accurate, in fact it will probably sound more accurate. Very few people want aneamic sounding bass.

On the other hand you can put the lift in the mid-range - this will sound superficailly impressive but will have far more of an effect on the sound and could definatley be described as coloured. The problem here is that not only can it get on your tits after a while it also masks the differences in recordings. Some swear by it though.

[cloth-ears]

I used to have a pair of 57’s and apart from being pig ugly they did pretty much tick all the boxes in the mid and high range only letting themselves down on the bass. I tried using a sub but found it muddied the midrange somewhat. I put this down to the bass frequencies modulating the 57’s membranes and causing a minor Doppler effect. I could be wrong.

[Reffc]

Bright and revealing are not the same things. Most of the sound is 'revealed' in the mid range so the quality of the implementation there (and not in the tweeters) is what will seperate truly revealing speaker from the also-rans. I agree that the '57 is a good benchmark as it adds and subtracts absolutely nothing. Providied the rest of the system is competent this can only be a good thing. As for flat response across the board I think most people find speakers that are flat (i.e within 1dB) in the bass to sound bass light, purely because of the sensitivity in our hearing which reduces as frequency reduces. So you often get speakers with +5 to +7 dB of bass lift from 300 to say 40Hz in order to compensate and give a 'full' sound in the real world. Nothing wrong with this approach, it does not mean the loudspeaker is less accurate, in fact it will probably sound more accurate. Very few people want aneamic sounding bass.

On the other hand you can put the lift in the mid-range - this will sound superficailly impressive but will have far more of an effect on the sound and could definatley be described as coloured. The problem here is that not only can it get on your tits after a while it also masks the differences in recordings. Some swear by it though.

I wouldn't say so particularly. Don't forget that measurements are quoted either anechoically or semi-anechoically and in real rooms, within 1.4m of a rear wall, you will typically get a +6 to +9dB bass lift depending on the room/speaker.

As for bass & treble sensitivity, this is something which is dependant upon volume. The obvious explanation for the effect is the Fletcher Muson curve (see below) which describes the sensitivity of human hearing with volume at different frequencies. As our hearing has evolved to be more sensitive in the mids (where speech occurs and presumably where we hear the sabre toothed tiger growling at us!) our hearing is less sensitive at the extremes, partcularly below 1KHz abnd above 8KHz:



Looking at the above, as SPL increases, we become more attuned to the bass and treble and hearing response is much flatter, so any significant lift in bass or treble won't be that welcome as it will tend to dominate. This is why amps used to carry loudness buttons, to boost bass and treble at low volumes to restore the flat hearing response. Most loudspeakers are still designed with a flat bass response due to bass lift in-room and many with a lift in treble to allow a flat response anechoically at 85dB.

[Oldpinkman]

For anyone interested, having googled the old testicals to see what the online world had to say about them, I see a London dealer called audio gold has a pair up for sale for 600 queens English. Personally, if I didn't have a pair I'd bite his hand off. You will need a decent competent 100w amp (say a 405-2) to drive them. And for all it says ribbon tweeters on the ad - they look like the (better) etched mylars to me. Very Very rarely for sale. Rather like rocking horse shit - very hard to find.

They are apparantly missing covers, but these (if you want them) were a simple plywood frame painted black, attached by dot velcro so not hard to make your own. Also the originals would have had some "airy" foam bungs for the rear ports where used close to (very close to) a rear wall - but again not hard to create something.

Just so you know

[Macca]

I wouldn't say so particularly. Don't forget that measurements are quoted either anechoically or semi-anechoically and in real rooms, within 1.4m of a rear wall, you will typically get a +6 to +9dB bass lift depending on the room/speaker.

.

True to an extent but I have found that having to boost bass by using room boundaries is not as effective as having it built in to the response of the speaker. Added to which you begin to cloud/muddy the mids. I much prefer to use speakers standing in free space. Of course if you have both room and tuning (Q)effects operating it will dominate, probably unpleasantly. Unless your a bit of a bass fiend that is.