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mdyde wrote:I don't think you'll find that intermodulation is a significant/noticeable issue with most modern (e.g. studio monitor) speakers - if it was, listening to any recorded music through the speakers would sound equally objectionable.
Rated Power (at 1 kHz with 1% THD): 150 watts
Rated Load Impedance: 4 ohms
Burst Power Output: 350 watts
Rated THD (1W to –1 dB of rated power): 0.1 %
Slew Rate: 35V/μS
Distortion (THD, SMPTE IMD, DIM 100): < 0.035%
Signal-to-Noise (20Hz-20kHz, unweighted, referenced to 150W into 4!): > 102 dB
mdyde wrote:Sorry - I simply don't agree with the case that you seem to be making in this and other threads that innacuracies may be desirable in speakers and add musicality and character.
The job of a speaker is just to turn an electrical (recorded audio) signal into an acoustic signal (air pressure wave). It's simply a problem of engineering. A speaker should *not* in general be a musical instrument in its own right. If it behaves like an instrument, i.e. if it colours the sound, then it doesn't fully meet its design specification.
Today I heard a pair of Mackie PA 3 way speakers doing some sound reinforcement of a brass band and singers outside. Impressive. Fine. Yes - I was impressed. They did their job and did it well. I'm sure you would have been delighted with them. The 2 way speakers did it less than well, but they worked too.
But I guarantee that, compared to what I know (and have heard) to be possible, an organ played through these speakers will sound like a good organ, well recorded, played through good speakers.
In promoting Hauptwerk, are we producing hi-fi copies of instruments or are we producing instruments
At the EOCS London meeting at Easter, I demonstrated to members how organ stops could be made to sound not as organ stops through speakers, but as organ pipes sounding themselves in their own right.
Of course, if Hauptwerk users are happy with their software and hardware to result in playable recordings of organs, then viewing speakers as merely problems of hi-fi engineering is fine. But if Hauptwerk users intend their equipment to result in something that aurally _is_ an organ, then attention to acoustic detail beyond the bounds of conventional hi-fi is required.
However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic.
An example of this is apparent to me on a daily basis when comparing Radio 3 to Classic FM. Through good speakers, both are fine. But through speakers good enough to project realism beyond hi-fi, there is an objectionable distortion on Classic FM at the top end - possibly digitisation noise, which makes it very difficult to tolerate. That critical realism can make the difference between something sounding plastic and something sounding "there".
Diapasons are a very complex sound and a difficult sound to reproduce, and if one has sat at the console of St Maximin with the Cromorne just an inch or so behind one's back and the Trompettes en Chamade not far above one's head, one knows that the sound one hears through the headphones, even the best of headphones, just simply does not compare. It sounds like the hi-fi recording which it is. When put through good three way speakers wonderful for reproducing music, like the headphones, the sound will continue to be a really good recording. Perhaps that can work if the recording is played back in an equivalent position, here in this church perhaps, by speakers on the west wall.
But if we want to work as organ builders, and work with the sound, and manipulate that sound to work as a real sound source as an instrument in a different position, in a different format and place, such as a chancel/nave tower, then we have to do something different.
mdyde wrote:Number of speakers, position, quality, power and directionality matter enormously in my view, but again I don't believe that using speakers that aim to colour the sound will help . . .
My point is simply that using loudspeakers that aim to modify/colour/distort the sound is not the way to achieve that with modern sound generation technology.
The point is twofold - first, that no speaker is neutral - all speakers have their "signature" - multiply the speakers and you multiply the signature so that the organ is transformed through the transfer function of the type of speaker.
If the instrument is to sound as an instrument, then the speaker needs to emit the sound of the pipe at the point of exit of the sound from the pipe.
If the instrument is to sound as an instrument, then the speaker needs to emit the sound of the pipe at the point of exit of the sound from the pipe. For many stops then a looser coupling can be tolerated but for certain stops a close coupling is important to achieve the reproduction sounding as the original. The acoustic modification provided by a speaker can synthesise this effect when the original recording has not done so.
People often argue about the theory when proof of the pudding is in the practice. The invitation to come and hear is open.
David Pinnegar wrote:However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic.
The ear is much more sensitive to that which can be measured.
However well a sound is recorded, some stops recorded and reproduced as hi-fi will sound plastic
You are merely describing poor "hi-fi" - which is admittedly prevalent.
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