Electrostats are called bipole speakers because they throw out sounds equally forwards and backwards.
Dipole.
Maybe equal but opposite phase.
Electrostats are called bipole speakers because they throw out sounds equally forwards and backwards.
I appreciate the thought. But that is not possible. So, my question is narrowly focused on what type of speakers might be the best in this situation.Why not move the whole seating setup closer to the screen? You'll enjoy your small TV better (and even an 85" would benefit from moving closer), get away from the rear wall, and could maybe even optimize the seating position for best bass. The design aspect doesn't have to end up bad if you are creative enough to find a use for the new space behind the couch.
I'm no expert but I'm guessing the niche for the TV, the glass in the room and the ceiling are acoustical disasters. But if you get nice enough looking speakers you can probably afford (design-wise) to move them into the room and somewhat reduce the effect of that disaster.
The company I work for is slowly expanding and a couple of years ago, a few of us moved into a warehouse-sized space (I don't know the square footage). Hard walls & floor. The ceiling has insulation (fiberglass I assume) with the paper-side exposed. There was so much reverb that it was hard to converse if you were more than about 3-feet away... A very strange "feeling"! Now it's more than half-full of desks & workbenches and "stuff" an the acoustics are a lot more "normal".So, the sound needs to be loud because the space is big, which exacerbates the reflections. We don't actually like it loud, but the louder it is, the easier it is to hear the dialog clearly.
I was reading this paper by Dr @David Griesinger just a few days ago.Let me start with a few imo relevant points made by acoustics and psychoacoustics researcher David Griesinger:
"The goal of the ear/brain is to extract meaningful sound objects from a confusing acoustic field. To the brain reverberation is a form of noise. Where possible the brain stem separates direct sound from reverberation, forming two distinct sound streams: foreground and background."
“If you want to communicate with sound, you need to make the direct sound distinctly audible.”
"The earlier a reflection arrives the more it contributes to masking the direct sound."
"Transients are not corrupted by reflections if the room is large enough - and 10ms of reflections free time is enough." (Ten milliseconds of reflection-free time is long enough for the ear to separate the direct from the reflected sound down to 700 Hz, according to Earl Geddes.)
Imo the above quotes point towards maximizing the direct-to-reverberant sound ratio, which implies narrow-pattern speakers. The next (long) quote will indicate that frequencies north of 500 Hz are the most important for speech, which implies that a narrow (and ideally uniform) radiation pattern down to 500 Hz would be great, but that below 500 Hz the radiation pattern doesn't matter as much:
"It is well known that the information content of speech is (almost) entirely in frequencies above 500Hz. For all people, even children, this means that information – at least the identity of vowels – is encoded in amplitude modulations of harmonics of a lower frequency tone... harmonics have a unique property – they combine to make sharp peaks in the acoustic pressure at the frequency of the fundamental frequency that created them... The sharp peaks also facilitate separating the signals from noise, and with the appropriate neural network the peaks from one sound source can be separated from another.
"These peaks only exist when the incoming signal consists of a tone with a definite pitch and lots of upper harmonics. Furthermore, the peaks only exist when there are two or more harmonics at the same time within one critical band." [emphasis Duke's]
The part that I bolded above, about the peaks which exist when the harmonics arrive at the same time, imo implies that a speaker which is time-coherent north of 500 Hz or so is likely to be superior from an intelligibility standpoint. (Floyd Toole did not find phase coherence [and therefore presumably time coherence, which is much more elusive] to contribute to sound quality, therefore my interpretation of Griesinger here is apparently at odds with Toole's position.)
So imo here are four characteristics we'd like:
1. High direct-to-reverberant sound ratio at the listening positions;
2. Minimal reflections arriving within the first 10 milliseconds (Toole and Griesinger both consider reflections in the vertical plane to be relatively benign, so this is mostly about lateral reflections);
3. The reflections should have approximately the same spectral balance as the first-arrival sound; and
4. Time coherence north of 500 Hz is arguably desirable.
Imo the Dutch & Dutch 8c and JBL M2 are two strong candidates (even if you have early reflections off the wall behind you). But I wanted to post the Griesinger quotes because they offer a basis for evaluating these and other candidate loudspeakers. A speaker with a bit narrower pattern than either, perhaps in a two-way with a bit lower crossover point than either, might also be a candidate, IF it is as free from colorations and limitations as the 8c and M2.
I was reading this paper by Dr @David Griesinger just a few days ago.
http://www.davidgriesinger.com/paris.pdf...
He also talked about the techniques recording and mixing engineers need to employ. I believe what he said applies to speakers and room acoustics too. Our speakers and rooms should properly reproduce these recorded reflections/reverberations (if they are actually in the recordings), not too little and not over-emphasized. [over-emphasis Duke's]
2. Wide dispersion stereo speakers like Revel 328Be (or similarly wide dispersion speakers). The thinking is that if the reflections are uniform, it will be easier to hear.
Let me start with a few imo relevant points made by acoustics and psychoacoustics researcher David Griesinger:
"The goal of the ear/brain is to extract meaningful sound objects from a confusing acoustic field. To the brain reverberation is a form of noise. Where possible the brain stem separates direct sound from reverberation, forming two distinct sound streams: foreground and background."
“If you want to communicate with sound, you need to make the direct sound distinctly audible.”
"The earlier a reflection arrives the more it contributes to masking the direct sound."
"Transients are not corrupted by reflections if the room is large enough - and 10ms of reflections free time is enough." (Ten milliseconds of reflection-free time is long enough for the ear to separate the direct from the reflected sound down to 700 Hz, according to Earl Geddes.)
Imo the above quotes point towards maximizing the direct-to-reverberant sound ratio, which implies narrow-pattern speakers. The next (long) quote will indicate that frequencies north of 500 Hz are the most important for speech, which implies that a narrow (and ideally uniform) radiation pattern down to 500 Hz would be great, but that below 500 Hz the radiation pattern doesn't matter as much:
"It is well known that the information content of speech is (almost) entirely in frequencies above 500Hz. For all people, even children, this means that information – at least the identity of vowels – is encoded in amplitude modulations of harmonics of a lower frequency tone... harmonics have a unique property – they combine to make sharp peaks in the acoustic pressure at the frequency of the fundamental frequency that created them... The sharp peaks also facilitate separating the signals from noise, and with the appropriate neural network the peaks from one sound source can be separated from another.
"These peaks only exist when the incoming signal consists of a tone with a definite pitch and lots of upper harmonics. Furthermore, the peaks only exist when there are two or more harmonics at the same time within one critical band." [emphasis Duke's]
The part that I bolded above, about the peaks which exist when the harmonics arrive at the same time, imo implies that a speaker which is time-coherent north of 500 Hz or so is likely to be superior from an intelligibility standpoint. (Floyd Toole did not find phase coherence [and therefore presumably time coherence, which is much more elusive] to contribute to sound quality, therefore my interpretation of Griesinger here is apparently at odds with Toole's position.)
So imo here are four characteristics we'd like:
1. High direct-to-reverberant sound ratio at the listening positions;
2. Minimal reflections arriving within the first 10 milliseconds (Toole and Griesinger both consider reflections in the vertical plane to be relatively benign, so this is mostly about lateral reflections);
3. The reflections should have approximately the same spectral balance as the first-arrival sound; and
4. Time coherence north of 500 Hz is arguably desirable.
Imo the Dutch & Dutch 8c and JBL M2 are two strong candidates (even if you have early reflections off the wall behind you). But I wanted to post the Griesinger quotes because they offer a basis for evaluating these and other candidate loudspeakers. A speaker with a bit narrower pattern than either, perhaps in a two-way with a bit lower crossover point than either, might also be a candidate, IF it is as free from colorations and limitations as the 8c and M2.
We just had a brief argument regarding the merits of ->early (lateral) reflections. These are missing in Your room, aren't they? All reflections, except from behind the sofa, are late by any standard. Regarding more directional speakers, like Double Dutch, they stand out not so much because of more directivity. The cardioid technique shifts down the frequency, at which directivity starts to increase, that's all. It wouldn't help to much then. I can't imagine to use pro speakers in that room. Such would really provide a beaming directivity. If that helps, I doubt it.Thank you. That seems clear now. I appreciate your help, and that of others including @Duke in clarifying this for me.