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Great to see Tom Danley posting! Admittedly I was unfamiliar with Mr. Danley's designs so this thread has been enlightening.
I believe that is what audiophiles are talking about when they talk of a good speaker "disappearing." People not in to subjective descriptions of sound scratch their head, but it means "disappearing" as an apparent source of the sound and the more of the sound that doesn't seem to be directly coming out of the speakers - including hard panned information - the more a speaker is "disappearing."
The speakers that did this the most in my room where the MBL omnis I owned.
But recently I've had a fascinating experience in placing some fairly cheap spring-based footers under my floor standing speakers. They are on a wood floor in an older house. The idea was to try decoupling the speaker as some have noted impressive effects in doing so.
When I placed the springs under the speakers I could no longer feel any vibrations to the floor beneath the speakers even with loud bass-heavy music. But the most fascinating effect was in how the speakers "disappeared" as sound sources much more. Everything seemed to take place behind and beyond the speakers. Even harder panned instruments and voices didn't seem to "stick" to the speaker but rather just floated free, often further behind than before. Neat stuff. My layman's inference is that - absent the spring footers - something about coupling the speaker to the floor, having the floor vibrate (and perhaps pass back up to the speaker?) produced some form of distortion that helped "locate" the speakers as sound sources. (Though I didn't love everything about the effect of the spring footers).
Anyway, I'd sure love to hear your new speaker design some day!
It is my observation that the less of these extra things speakers do, the more you can make it sound like and even have people get up to look for a center channel speaker to find where the voice in front of them is coming from.
I believe that is what audiophiles are talking about when they talk of a good speaker "disappearing." People not in to subjective descriptions of sound scratch their head, but it means "disappearing" as an apparent source of the sound and the more of the sound that doesn't seem to be directly coming out of the speakers - including hard panned information - the more a speaker is "disappearing."
The speakers that did this the most in my room where the MBL omnis I owned.
But recently I've had a fascinating experience in placing some fairly cheap spring-based footers under my floor standing speakers. They are on a wood floor in an older house. The idea was to try decoupling the speaker as some have noted impressive effects in doing so.
When I placed the springs under the speakers I could no longer feel any vibrations to the floor beneath the speakers even with loud bass-heavy music. But the most fascinating effect was in how the speakers "disappeared" as sound sources much more. Everything seemed to take place behind and beyond the speakers. Even harder panned instruments and voices didn't seem to "stick" to the speaker but rather just floated free, often further behind than before. Neat stuff. My layman's inference is that - absent the spring footers - something about coupling the speaker to the floor, having the floor vibrate (and perhaps pass back up to the speaker?) produced some form of distortion that helped "locate" the speakers as sound sources. (Though I didn't love everything about the effect of the spring footers).
Anyway, I'd sure love to hear your new speaker design some day!