They dont disappear. They are just less obvious in stereo.This is a much more elegant version of my post above.
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They dont disappear. They are just less obvious in stereo.This is a much more elegant version of my post above.
If it mattered strongly don't you think some stereo results would yield winners in the comparison which had previously been losers?
I have not followed this thread thoroughly, and don't really want to get involved in whatever speaker-world conflict is occurring here as there are plenty well enough of those in headphones. However, a quick scan revealed that this plot is coming up a lot
View attachment 79823
And people keep saying things like "imagine the deviations", and since I had a moment spare and access to WebPlotDigitizer and excel, I figured I'd throw them into excel, make some box plots, and possibly slightly reduce the amount of imagination in the world (my primary goal in life).
All data was scraped using WebPlotDigitizer so take the digits right of the period with some grains of salt.
All data
View attachment 79824
Mono only
View attachment 79825
Stereo only
View attachment 79826
Sound quality only
View attachment 79827
Spatial quality only
View attachment 79828
And here's the excel sheet. I didn't get terribly creative since I had about 20 minutes spare, but if I have even slightly decreased the amount of imagination in the world, I can sleep easier tonight.
Edit: The box plots were created with literally whatever the Excel 365 defaults are, other than adding median lines. I make no promises, commentary, assurances, or statements regarding the accuracy or usefulness of the box plots for the task at hand.
@Duke have you read Floyd's book "sound reproduction" ?Probably.
But thus far I've only seen mono vs stereo data for four speakers: Rega, KEF, Quad, and whatever speaker is being EQ'd (or not) in Amir's post #273.
I'm not really interested in who wins and who loses. I'm much more interested in WHY the scores change. And I don't think it's necessarily because "flaws are less noticeable in stereo" because for TWO of the four EQ Models in Amir's post, the stereo score was LOWER than the mono score.
There are particular pieces of information which I'm on the lookout for, and from time to time something comes along which might be relevant, and then I start poking around. I want to know how the sausage is made.
Precisely what Toole says.That's pretty cool! Shows deviations are larger in mono if I read it rightly, implying (perhaps) that more differences can be determined in a mono test than in stereo. I'd expect stereo adds interactions between speakers, room, etc. that make it harder to distinguish differences among the speakers themselves.
Downmixing to mono should work fine unless there are phase anomalies between sounds mixed across left and right. Such recordings do exist and effects can cause this, sort of issue, but generally it should be ok.What's the best way to test in mono? I've tried downmixing from stereo but it does not sound good. One-channel only does not sound good, either. Maybe I need true mono recordings.
@Duke have you read Floyd's book "sound reproduction" ?
It covers a lot more than a few graphs shown in this thread. Chapters 3.4, 7.4.2 etc
Steep on the high pass or the low pass?
And how steep is steep?
I'm currently getting good results with 3rd-order high pass / 3rd-order low pass at @80 Hz, which is 1 octave above the -3 dB point of the mains at 39 Hz, which combined with the crossover, should lead to the mains being -24 dB down acoustically at ~ 40 Hz.
If so, then I wonder why all crossovers aren't brickwall filters? Surely there must be some pro vs con tradeoff otherwise?I think it's 24 or 48db per octave on the miniDSP. Both the high pass and low pass filters set to 80hz. The rolloff does cross over a little, but it's not nearly as much as most diagrams I see of speaker crossovers.
Seems like the perfect handoff would be a subwoofer playing 80hz, and then the main speakers playing 80.0001hz and up.
If so, then I wonder why all crossovers aren't brickwall filters? Surely there must be some pro vs con tradeoff otherwise?
In the 3rd edition of his book (I have both editions) Toole identifies the Quads as the "ESL 63". The ESL 63 does not have absorbent pads on the rear half of the enclosure.
Seems like the perfect handoff would be a subwoofer playing 80hz, and then the main speakers playing 80.0001hz and up.
If so, then I wonder why all crossovers aren't brickwall filters? Surely there must be some pro vs con tradeoff otherwise?
^^This.^^Brickwall filters are not benign.
Interesting. So was it the ESL 57? Which would be ironic in this context, since the 57 was used and admired in its early years almost exclusively as a mono system. It was an affluent-middle-class purchase, likely to be used in not-too-small rooms with hard plaster walls, with a very specific listening chair. Very difficult for it to shine in a test of this nature, I guess.
That being said, I THINK it is possible to make corrections in the digital domain which are not possible in the analog domain, so it MIGHT be possible to make a benign brick wall filter. That is not my area of expertise.
Back to blending mains with subwoofers: The real world is more complicated than my examples above because the main speakers have their own inherent rolloff, with its accompanying phase shift, which are added to the rolloff and phase shift of the highpass filter, and which then interact with the rolloff and phase shift of the lowpass filter on the sub(s). Imo the secret weapon for fine-tuning the blend of all these rolloff slopes and phase shifts is having a continuously-variable phase control on your subwoofer amp(s).
So here is my suggestion for manually dialing-in the blend between subwoofer(s) and mains, applicable to most subwoofer amps that have a continuously-variable phase control:
1. Adjust the gain control on the subwoofer amp. This usually makes the most difference.
2. Adjust the low-pass filter frequency of the subwoofer amp. This usually makes the next most difference.
3. Adjust the phase control on the subwoofer amp. This usually makes the least difference but it still can make or break the combination.
4. Cycle back through several times to fine-tune.
If I end up blind testing with subs (though I don’t know if we have a strong consensus either way yet on that), your advise and others would be helpful on how to correctly set it up.It goes without saying that levels should also be matched so adjusting gain of the sub to match level with main(s) around XO point is equally crucial.