JBL Synthesis 4367 - oh mama...

[Andrewjvt]

Please explain why you think it’s drivel, picking up on earlier points I made if you wish. I note you didn’t respond. 

He means and as others have also picked up that you don't quite understand the meaning of dynamic, and a few other things

 

[Vladimir]

From wikipedia:

In music, the dynamics of a piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. Dynamics are indicated by specific musical notation, often in some detail. However, dynamics markings still require interpretation by the performer depending on the musical context: for instance a piano (quiet) marking in one part of a piece might have quite different objective loudness in another piece, or even a different section of the same piece. The execution of dynamics also extends beyond loudness to include changes in timbre and sometimes tempo rubato.

Dynamics are one of the expressive elements of music. Used effectively, dynamics help musicians sustain variety and interest in a musical performance, and communicate a particular emotional state or feeling.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

I think what I said agrees, because I was talking about volume too. But applying musical notation to hi Fi is another matter. It’s a subjective term possibly with a meaning slightly different to different people. But this is all moot to the flow of the conversation and the points I was making in a few posts earlier, re davedotcos points about recreating the sound of a concert at home, recreating bass of a concert, choice of speakers etc.

 

[davedotco]

We came across these when a few customers started using them with our amps over on the US Audioshark Forum I could tell from there reaction they were good.

I got to hear a pair and they are amazing! Ugly as hell but the sound.

We have another company in Austria creating an immersive sound demo system using the M2’s with 16 channels of bridged 1400W amps!

I want a pair!

Using your modules would make much more sense. Clean power and domestically acceptable packaging, unlike the Crown amps that JBL pushes under Harman's umbrella. Also one can build a system with Nord modules and DIY M2s for bedroom bookshelf Sonus Faber money. You can buy just the TOTL drivers (and the special horn) JBL uses in the M2. I see a lot of DIY M2s builds going on DIY Audio.com and the Lansing Heritage forums.

Most JBL drive units are available as individual components and always have been. Back in the day when studio and PA speaker systems were often custom made, often with JBL components, it was possible to pick up some used drive units at a fraction of their normal prices.

For example, studios might blow a couple of bass drivers and in the rush to get up and running immediately might buy new units rather than wait for their own units to be reconed, or they might want to 'upgrade' to more powerfull units etc, etc.

This would often leave the speaker repair services (such as the legendary 'Wembly Loudspeakers') with loads of spare 'frames' that, in the case of the less popular models, could be had for little more than beer money. Back then the 2312/123A 12 inch bass drivers were plentiful and it was alwas a project of mine to use 2 of these plus a (2420/LE85) compression driver in a simple two way system. I loved the bass of the 4310/L100 models but not the mids and highs, hence the compression driver. Horn of choice was to be the Altec 811 (from the smallest VOT system) which was very good, particularly when well damped.

Sadly other things got in the way and when I moved back into hi-fi, other things got in the way.

 

[davedotco]

I think what I said agrees, because I was talking about volume too. But applying musical notation to hi Fi is another matter. It’s a subjective term possibly with a meaning slightly different to different people. But this is all moot to the flow of the conversation and the points I was making in a few posts earlier, re davedotcos points about recreating the sound of a concert at home, recreating bass of a concert, choice of speakers etc.

I did not say any such thing!

Please read what I have written before making such ridiculous comments.

I referenced "live music", some of which, you will be surprised to hear, can be reproduced effectively in the home.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

Im not trying to take you out of context, and you need not be defensive therfore, but I posted about the jbls and said for the reasons I gave I didn’t think they would be good for my tastes and needs at least- see your post where you replied to mine. The inference being your thought that these would be better on the dynamic range score compared to my set up which you described as ‘regular’. I was just interested why you thought that.

 

[Vladimir]

What does this video tell you?

Altec 803B Horn... Cone Loudspeaker -vs- Compression Driver

 

[lpv]

On the car analogy thing, we can play a little game of fantasy car buying - in which we are all billionaires.

If you wanted to travel from A to B as quckly as possible on the German Autobahn, which car would you buy?

Feel free to boast about the specs of your fantasy car, including its' max speed.

car analogy sucks. there are many examples of ultra fast/ hi end/ luxury/ small cars but looks like vintage/ PA style loudspekaers are only massive/ ugly and not so cool to look at.. unless you love loudcoffin instead of loudspeakers

 

[Vladimir]

can you give us few visually acceptable/ not wardrobe style examples of merx speakers please?

How about this merk?

Let me get lindsay and dave horny too.

 

[Native_bon]

Just to make the point about home music sounding more dynamic than live music. I have experienced this firsthand with some recordings from a Acid jazz funk group called Incognito.

This is due to fact that the live sound is looped through compressors and limiters to the Pa speakers, while the live recording goes straight to CD or which ever format bypassing any form of dynamic compression.

Sounds much more dynamic than the live show at home due to more head room, but not perceived as loud as the live show.

 

[davedotco]

Just to make the point about home music sounding more dynamic than live music. I have experienced this firsthand with some recordings from a Acid jazz funk group called Incognito.

This is due to fact that the live sound is looped through compressors and limiters to the Pa speakers, while the live recording goes straight to CD or which ever format bypassing any form of dynamic compression.

Sounds much more dynamic than the live show at home due to more head room, but not perceived as loud as the live show.

Strickly speaking, this is not live music. It is an entirely artificial construct so there really is no reference. The last live music I heard, just a few days ago, was in a small pub in twickenham. A four piece band, the only thing amplified was the electric piano, which of course had its own amp and speaker, sax, bass and drums were all 'au naturel'.

We were no more than 15-20ft away from the musicians so it could be reproduced in a decent sized domestic room, with the right sort of setup anyway. Most hi-fi systems simply could not cope with the peak levels or the explosive transients, they just would not have the headroom, the 'bin and horn' systems we have been discussing just might!

 

[Native_bon]

Just to make the point about home music sounding more dynamic than live music. I have experienced this firsthand with some recordings from a Acid jazz funk group called Incognito.

This is due to fact that the live sound is looped through compressors and limiters to the Pa speakers, while the live recording goes straight to CD or which ever format bypassing any form of dynamic compression.

Sounds much more dynamic than the live show at home due to more head room, but not perceived as loud as the live show.

Strickly speaking, this is not live music. It is an entirely artificial construct so there really is no reference. The last live music I heard, just a few days ago, was in a small pub in twickenham. A four piece band, the only thing amplified was the electric piano, which of course had its own amp and speaker, sax, bass and drums were all 'au naturel'.

We were no more than 15-20ft away from the musicians so it could be reproduced in a decent sized domestic room, with the right sort of setup anyway. Most hi-fi systems simply could not cope with the peak levels or the explosive transients, they just would not have the headroom, the 'bin and horn' systems we have been discussing just might!

Surely most live music are amplified, no?.. Well most I have been to are, apart from few places like the Jazz cafe london, Ronnie Scotts or smollensky's on the strand. Even then vocals are most of the time through a mic. Yes 'bin and horn' systems may handle amplified music better, but if we talking of unamplified music which I suppose you are, don't see why regular Hifi speakers cannot handle unamplified music. IMHO

 

[davedotco]

Just to make the point about home music sounding more dynamic than live music. I have experienced this firsthand with some recordings from a Acid jazz funk group called Incognito.

This is due to fact that the live sound is looped through compressors and limiters to the Pa speakers, while the live recording goes straight to CD or which ever format bypassing any form of dynamic compression.

Sounds much more dynamic than the live show at home due to more head room, but not perceived as loud as the live show.

Strickly speaking, this is not live music. It is an entirely artificial construct so there really is no reference. The last live music I heard, just a few days ago, was in a small pub in twickenham. A four piece band, the only thing amplified was the electric piano, which of course had its own amp and speaker, sax, bass and drums were all 'au naturel'.

We were no more than 15-20ft away from the musicians so it could be reproduced in a decent sized domestic room, with the right sort of setup anyway. Most hi-fi systems simply could not cope with the peak levels or the explosive transients, they just would not have the headroom, the 'bin and horn' systems we have been discussing just might!

Surely most live music are amplified, no?.. Well most I have been to are, apart from few places like the Jazz cafe london, Ronnie Scotts or smollensky's on the strand. Even then vocals are most of the time through a mic. Yes 'bin and horn' systems may handle amplified music better, but if we talking of unamplified music which I suppose you are, don't see why regular Hifi speakers cannot handle unamplified music. IMHO

Real musical instruments have a huge dynamic range, easily sufficient to overdrive most hi-fi systems which is why even top quality recordings use plenty of compression. In addition to the jazz band mentioned earlier, I have recently experienced a 'folk duo' playing guitars, hand percussion and singing completely unamplified.

Again I think that most hi-fi systems would fail to cope, average levels might be modest enough but a single guitar, played hard will peak at 100-110 dB, far higher than most hi-fi systems can manage.

I accept that I am pretty old school on this but then given my 'pro' and 'hi-fi' background I think I have a better than average handle on this. Walking from the control room to the studio floor and back again during setup is most instructive, as is switching from big 'main monitors' to smaller 'nearfield' designs during post production.

Apologies for coming over as something of a knowitall but mainstream hi-fi has, long ago, given up on the attempt to reproduce music 'as live', there are all sorts of practical reasons why this is the case but their are a select few enthusiasts within the industry who try to keep the dream alive.

 

[Vladimir]

The advantage is in the large, robust, high efficiency drivers. They play very loud, with minimum distortion, and at only few watts, which means the amplifier is also doing clean, unclipped transients. The 15" driver barely moves yet the floors are shaking. 110dB low distortion transient for a compression driver is just another day at the office.

On the opposite side you have a 6.5" midbass and dome tweeter in a tiny box at 82-85dB efficiency, straigning to get loud. The midbass is pumping air moving over an inch, trying to do midrange at the same time. Distortion is thrrough the roof, the 60W amp is choking and clipping the transients. 110dB low distortion transient for a 1" dome tweeter gets you an engineering award and patent money.

 

[Native_bon]

The advantage is in the large, robust, high efficiency drivers. They play very loud, with minimum distortion, and at only few watts, which means the amplifier is also doing clean, unclipped transients. The 15" driver barely moves yet the floors are shaking. 110dB low distortion transient for a compression driver is just another day at the office.

On the opposite side you have a 6.5" midbass and dome tweeter in a tiny box at 82-85dB efficiency, straigning to get loud. The midbass is pumping air moving over an inch, trying to do midrange at the same time. Distortion is thrrough the roof, the 60W amp is choking and clipping the transients. 110dB low distortion transient for a 1" dome tweeter gets you an engineering award and patent money.

For sure I understand the big 15'' driver having more headroom. Size of room comes into play here. A regular hifi speaker will not compete with a compression driver of that magnitude, but may well be over kill in a regular listening living room of say 5x7 meters. No doubt it will handle dynamics better due to headroom, but this becomes relevant depending on volume of space in listening area.

 

[Vladimir]

The advantage is in the large, robust, high efficiency drivers. They play very loud, with minimum distortion, and at only few watts, which means the amplifier is also doing clean, unclipped transients. The 15" driver barely moves yet the floors are shaking. 110dB low distortion transient for a compression driver is just another day at the office.

On the opposite side you have a 6.5" midbass and dome tweeter in a tiny box at 82-85dB efficiency, straigning to get loud. The midbass is pumping air moving over an inch, trying to do midrange at the same time. Distortion is thrrough the roof, the 60W amp is choking and clipping the transients. 110dB low distortion transient for a 1" dome tweeter gets you an engineering award and patent money.

For sure I understand the big 15'' driver having more headroom. Size of room comes into play here. A regular hifi speaker will not compete with a compression driver of that magnitude, but may well be over kill in a regular listening living room of say 5x7 meters. No doubt it will handle dynamics better due to headroom, but this becomes relevant depending on volume of space in listening area.

I agree absolutely. I made a black and white case to explain how I personally understand and experienced high efficiency speakers.

Here's how Mark Levinson sees it.

Sales pitch or some truth to what he says? Thoughts?

 

[Vladimir]

The high efficiency talk starts at 23:28.

 

[davedotco]

The advantage is in the large, robust, high efficiency drivers. They play very loud, with minimum distortion, and at only few watts, which means the amplifier is also doing clean, unclipped transients. The 15" driver barely moves yet the floors are shaking. 110dB low distortion transient for a compression driver is just another day at the office.

On the opposite side you have a 6.5" midbass and dome tweeter in a tiny box at 82-85dB efficiency, straigning to get loud. The midbass is pumping air moving over an inch, trying to do midrange at the same time. Distortion is thrrough the roof, the 60W amp is choking and clipping the transients. 110dB low distortion transient for a 1" dome tweeter gets you an engineering award and patent money.

For sure I understand the big 15'' driver having more headroom. Size of room comes into play here. A regular hifi speaker will not compete with a compression driver of that magnitude, but may well be over kill in a regular listening living room of say 5x7 meters. No doubt it will handle dynamics better due to headroom, but this becomes relevant depending on volume of space in listening area.

There are a number of factors here that are being conflated into the one discussion, it becomes confusing so I shall try and separate them out.

Firstly, the peak levels of any live musical event (even a solo instrument) are so high that most mainstream hi-fi systems do not come close to handling them, but because the dynamic range is so wide (uncompressed by the recording process) the average levels may be quite modest. The perception of loudness is related to average, not peak levels so we think our hi-fis can handle this, but they can't.

The upshot is that we do not percieve the live event as being louder than the reproduction but we do percieve a difference and this difference is what makes a live event sound live.

Then there is the effect of scale as you have mentioned, this does make quite a difference as you say, which is why I have tried to use examples of smaller scale musical events for evaluation purposes and as examples in this discussion. An acoustic jazz or classical quartet can be reproduced in a domestic setting in the way that an orchestra or full on rock band can not. Personally I find large scale music, reproduced in domestic surroundings to be impossible to take seriously, so I play such things uncritically and for fun only.

There is also the matter of what a domestic hi-fi system is trying to achieve, it certainly is not the recreation of a live event, the recording process often makes this impossibe. At best you might get an insight into how that event was achieved, for example a sense of how the musicians are playing, the environment they are playing in etc. Most of the time though the system is playing the music to conform to a set of hi-fi standards, nice soundstage, warm sound etc, etc none of which are actually relevent to the original event.

I appreciate that this is all getting a bit philosophical and most people just want to play some tunes but having seen and been involved in some recording, both comercial and non commercial and seen what can be achieved I find this all rather interesting.

 

[Vladimir]

The upshot is that we do not percieve the live event as being louder than the reproduction but we do percieve a difference and this difference is what makes a live event sound live.

Thanks for that DDC. Clears things quite a bit for me.

For transients, just like for frequency range, our brain extrapolates info based on the data it gets (say timing or harmonics) to surpass the limitation of our senses. This is why tweeter breakup modes are pushed beyond mere 20kHz (horizontal). With high efficiency we do the same in amplitude (vertical).

 

[insider9]

The advantage is in the large, robust, high efficiency drivers. They play very loud, with minimum distortion, and at only few watts, which means the amplifier is also doing clean, unclipped transients. The 15" driver barely moves yet the floors are shaking. 110dB low distortion transient for a compression driver is just another day at the office.

On the opposite side you have a 6.5" midbass and dome tweeter in a tiny box at 82-85dB efficiency, straigning to get loud. The midbass is pumping air moving over an inch, trying to do midrange at the same time. Distortion is thrrough the roof, the 60W amp is choking and clipping the transients. 110dB low distortion transient for a 1" dome tweeter gets you an engineering award and patent money.

For sure I understand the big 15'' driver having more headroom. Size of room comes into play here. A regular hifi speaker will not compete with a compression driver of that magnitude, but may well be over kill in a regular listening living room of say 5x7 meters. No doubt it will handle dynamics better due to headroom, but this becomes relevant depending on volume of space in listening area.

I agree absolutely. I made a black and white case to explain how I personally understand and experienced high efficiency speakers. 

Here's how Mark Levinson sees it.

Sales pitch or some truth to what he says? Thoughts?

Thanks for the link. Interesting perspective. I have no idea if that's just a sales pitch or the truth with regards to high sensitivity designs.

However I do agree with him talking about music and what hifi should portray it as. I do use and previously used his speakers so I am biased but for a guy who has DSP and tried just about every possible setting I can say this. I'm only running DSP up to 300Hz to remove room interaction. The rest of frequency spectrum is left untouched and only adjusted for phase. I've not managed to improve how they're voiced and I've tried, many many times. Each time I improved one thing something else felt wrong.

 

[lpv]

my last live gig was jamiroquai at manchester arena few weeks ago.. the gig was great but the sound was pain; disjointed bass, piercing mids ( my ears were bleeding) and echo.. if you don't know music you barely could understand what was going on sometimes.. how anybody would want to recreate that at home?

 

[davedotco]

my last live gig was jamiroquai at manchester arena few weeks ago.. the gig was great but the sound was pain; disjointed bass, piercing mids ( my ears were bleeding) and echo.. if you don't know music you barely could understand what was going on sometimes.. how anybody would want to recreate that at home?

Mostly they wouldn't.

This is why my contribution to this thread has been based on the reproduction of relatively small scale music, with mostly unamplified instruments that can be reproduced in domestic type surroundings.

 

[Native_bon]

Double post

 

[davedotco]

Is very much a big picture, marketing oriented sort of guy. Whatever his new 'big thing' is he will get into it and promote it with great zeal.

Most of what he is saying is established wisdom but slanted to suit his new project which happens to involve high sensitivity speakers. Some years ago he promoted his low sensitivity ribbon speakers inch the same way.

It's marketing, don't take it to heart.

 

[Native_bon]

Very interesting video, but leaves me with more questions. He mentioned inefficient speakers turn energy into heat there by loosing a lots of information. This some how is in conflict with so called expensive inefficient speakers that need lot of power to give their best.

So are we wasting money buying inefficient or less sensitive expensive hi-fi speakers?