Sealed monitors, group delay/time domain?

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xyrium

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So, I'm in the market for a new pair of monitors. I've tried very unsuccessfully with SPL meter and parametric EQ to integrate a sub/sat monitoring system, and now I'm left with a pair of EMU PM5 monitors, that are rather anemic in the lower frequencies.

However, after doing some reading, I've become very interested in sealed cabinet monitors like the AE 22, old NS10, etc. I can't say that I've ever had an opportunity to listen to such a monitor, any opinions on how much a difference it makes? It appears that the primary issue is the time delay of low frequencies.

I can probably still get my hands on the AEs, but wouldn't be able to listen to them in advance. I suppose I'm ok with that since they're under $1k, but if alternatives like the Dyn BM6a or otherwise are better, and canjustify the $700 additional cost, I'd go with them. Does anyone have any suggestions on sealed monitors that I can listen to? There don't appear to be many on the market.
 
xyrium said:
So, I'm in the market for a new pair of monitors. I've tried very unsuccessfully with SPL meter and parametric EQ to integrate a sub/sat monitoring system, and now I'm left with a pair of EMU PM5 monitors, that are rather anemic in the lower frequencies.

However, after doing some reading, I've become very interested in sealed cabinet monitors like the AE 22, old NS10, etc. I can't say that I've ever had an opportunity to listen to such a monitor, any opinions on how much a difference it makes? It appears that the primary issue is the time delay of low frequencies.

I can probably still get my hands on the AEs, but wouldn't be able to listen to them in advance. I suppose I'm ok with that since they're under $1k, but if alternatives like the Dyn BM6a or otherwise are better, and canjustify the $700 additional cost, I'd go with them. Does anyone have any suggestions on sealed monitors that I can listen to? There don't appear to be many on the market.
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Sealed as in "No bass port hole?" I'm a little confused on what you mean there. Speakers are a pretty popular theme around here, so a quick search might get you more info.

I've worked on NS10s and honestly, if you're looking for low end or a "pleasant" sound, NS10s are not the best for that sort of thing.

The NS-10s actually have a pretty shitty frequency response defined with a huge mid range boost and very limited low end. But that's what makes it a speaker of choice among commercial studios. You get to sound good on those, it sounds pretty good on most systems (allegedly).

I've also worked with the Dyn BM6a in my time in school a few years ago and they seemed solid enough. Good power output, decent low end coupled with a sub. Not my speaker of preference, but good all around. Dynaudio puts out some good stuff.

See, the issue about "better" is really a subjective thing with speakers. My better is not your better. Standards don't imply that it works well for everyone, so I think it really depends on what you want out of the speakers.

If you want a extreme low end feel without a sub, Mackie HR824s are amazingly popular for this kind of thing. I see them alot in hip hop, R&B type setups. I find the low end to be way too hyped for my taste. I've heard Yamaha put out a line of speakers to follow up on the NS-10s, which I've heard and I'm partial on.

I personally mix on Tannoy Reveal (passive), which are not the greatest speakers in the world, but have a certain quality that I'm used to. But if I could suggest companies at least worth looking into in my opinion:

Yamaha, Tannoy, Genelec, Dynaudio, Adam, Event, ATC and Hafler.



Keep speaker placement, uncontrolled room reverberation/acoustics and speaker decoupling (separating from any resonant surfaces) in mind.
 
Your ears won't give a damn what design/construction technology is used to make any given loudspeaker, any more than your driving feet will care whether you have a straight 6 or a V6 under the hood. There will be some sealed speakers that will be better for/to your ears than some open or ported speakers, and some ported once that you ears will prefer over some sealed ones. Let your ears tell you which ones to get.

G.
 
yeah, integrating a ported speaker nearfield with a sub is not the best solution as "Blue" speakers know, in fact if you've still got your sub, as an experiment try closing the ports on you 5's and then add your sub, the xover will be higher but I wouldn't be surprised if it integrates better.
as for what to choose, I could not tell you, as has been stated it's a personal thing, plus I use my own designs (sealed thank you very much, as I prefer the sound), but if your looking for bass in any kind of reasonabley sized nearfield either ported, tl or pr will give you more than sealed,,, generally.
 
Thanks all for the responses. I understand the need to audition, and also understand the subjective nature of the inquiry. I suppose I am trying to determine if there are any technical folks on the board that understand the details about both acoustic suspension and bass reflex designs, and if any newer bass reflex designs have been able to achieve the time alignment that sealed (acoustic suspension) units do.

I'm not interested in tubby, or slow bass response, and don't need something that goes flat down to 40 Hz (so I'm not really that interested in the Mackies, which *I* consider a little tubby *in my* small room). I want snappy low frequency response that doesn't muddle up the mids, but can do -3dB at 50Hz and keeps time with the mids without ringing. I'm also not really looking for general gear recommendations, unless someone knows of some manufacturers that have made attempts at sealed powered monitor designs. My apologies if ayone thought this was another "please tell me which gear is best" thread.

If anyone has any technical info they'd like to share about how current ported designs deal with their time alignment problems, or any info on manufacturers that specifically address those issues, I'd love to read it.

DS21, where do you get your design plans from, or are you doing them yourself? Also, are your designs active or passive?

Thanks!
 
ds21 said:
yeah, integrating a ported speaker nearfield with a sub is not the best solution as "Blue" speakers know, in fact if you've still got your sub, as an experiment try closing the ports on you 5's and then add your sub, the xover will be higher but I wouldn't be surprised if it integrates better.
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Agreed, and one of the reasons why I didn't even bother with the stuff of the "Sky". I did stuff the ports, and that did seem to remove some artifacts, but it also created a hole I couldn't fill without muddying up the midbass region. So, I'm done with subs unless they are only augmenting the lowest octaves of hearing, pretty much 20 and 40Hz, and my sats can run flat to 50Hz.
 
xyrium said:
I'm not interested in tubby, or slow bass response, and don't need something that goes flat down to 40 Hz (so I'm not really that interested in the Mackies, which *I* consider a little tubby *in my* small room). I want snappy low frequency response that doesn't muddle up the mids, but can do -3dB at 50Hz and keeps time with the mids without ringing. I'm also not really looking for general gear recommendations, unless someone knows of some manufacturers that have made attempts at sealed powered monitor designs. My apologies if ayone thought this was another "please tell me which gear is best" thread.

If anyone has any technical info they'd like to share about how current ported designs deal with their time alignment problems, or any info on manufacturers that specifically address those issues, I'd love to read it.

DS21, where do you get your design plans from, or are you doing them yourself? Also, are your designs active or passive?

Thanks!
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First I have to ask what kind of treatment do you have in your room, also do you know the response of your room, it might just be the room is the problem.
if you don't have a program to measure your room here's a good one:

http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/

as far as ported and group delay goes it a function of the roll off so you can actually create a ported box to get closer to a sealed but than you run into other problems. the advantage proted have is as I said lower hz for size also lower distortion and greater efficiency (generally) there are always trade offs.

p.s. my own designs, bigger and passive
 
ds21 said:
First I have to ask what kind of treatment do you have in your room, also do you know the response of your room, it might just be the room is the problem.
if you don't have a program to measure your room here's a good one:

http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/

as far as ported and group delay goes it a function of the roll off so you can actually create a ported box to get closer to a sealed but than you run into other problems. the advantage proted have is as I said lower hz for size also lower distortion and greater efficiency (generally) there are always trade offs.

p.s. my own designs, bigger and passive
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Thanks DS21. I have several Sonex 24x24x2 panels, and mulitple 24x48x2 OC 703 panels. I have a standing wave around 80Hz, which is mostly alleviated by corner placement and ceiling/wall transition panels, as well as a mild -3dB cut with a parametric. I have REW, but using an ECM mic, did not see anything beyond a few 3-6dB bumps and valleys.

Yes, I agree that ported gets you more low freq., I just want better low freq as in quality. I've built a few of John Krutke's farfield designs using the Seas aluminum drivers and they are ok AFA low frequency output is concerned, but there's an overall lack of cohesiveness from most ported designs that I've experienced, compared to live performance. Maybe I need to step up and audition what's out there in the $2-3k range instead of $1-2k.

So, no info on your secret sealed designs? :)
 
The use of a port can extend the usable response of a low frequency speaker, but below the port tuning, the woofer becomes uncontrolled and will flap wildly in conventional ported systems. Most two-ways are also crossed over way too high, compromising the vocal range.

As previously stated, it's all about trade-offs. You want this? What are you willing to give up to get it?

Separate sub woofers create additional problems by introducing phase cancellations at crossover, and exciting unwanted room nodes - eliminating the advantages of near field monitoring. (Ever notice how many powered subs have polarity switches? It's because they don't know which way will be best either.) Separate sub woofer box placement is a hit or miss proposition, guaranteed to cause problems in poorly treated rooms.

It's all about compromises and trade-offs. I've been wrestling with a solution to nearfield speaker design problems for more than 4 decades. I've seen a lot of designs come and go in the music industry. I think I've found a solution, but I'll let the engineers at AES tell me if I finally got it right.
 
xyrium said:
but there's an overall lack of cohesiveness from most ported designs that I've experienced, compared to live performance. Maybe I need to step up and audition what's out there in the $2-3k range instead of $1-2k.
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I think it's important to remember *purpose* here. This is not an audiophile task, it's a audio engineering task. The two are not the same; while an audiophiliac may require as close to reality as possible, this is far from a necessity in audio engineering, and can, for some ears, actually be considered a detriment.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I think it's important to remember *purpose* here. This is not an audiophile task, it's a audio engineering task. The two are not the same; while an audiophiliac may require as close to reality as possible, this is far from a necessity in audio engineering, and can, for some ears, actually be considered a detriment.

G.
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Sadly, a lot of audiophiles still have a "smiley face eq" buried somewhere in the playback chain. I think most engineers strive for as close to "uncolored" as possible.

For example, I really love Grado headphones; they make everything sound wonderful. But, I wouldn't dream of listening to them for any information about a mix, exactly because "they make everything sound wonderful." Great for enjoying music; useless for evaluating a mix.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
Sadly, a lot of audiophiles still have a "smiley face eq" buried somewhere in the playback chain.
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LOL, ain't it the truth. Often times it's buried in the loudspeaker itself.

The inescapable fact is that only Nature designs and builds human ears and brains, and no two of them are the same. This is great news for designers such as yourself, Harvey, as there will always be a market for a variety of loudspeakers and loudspeaker design, and that's great news for everybody, as it keeps research flowing, along with all the benefits associated with it.

I guess what I'll never understand, however, is why the end user should care about the design on anything other than a technical appreciation level. Having sold loudspeakers for several years on every level from car stereos to mastering suite arrays to everybody from casual users to hardened audiophiles and engineers, there is one solid fact I came away with from those experiences; there is NO consensus based upon listener, experience, economics or technology. When all personal bias is removed from testing, there is absolutely no way to predict based upon a person's stated preferences, budget or intended use which loudspeaker they listen to in testing they will actually prefer.

I have fooled (not on purpose) "the best" with $200 12" three ways and $100 ported bookshelves who thought they were listening to stuff 5x-10x more expensive, and, conversely had when tested blindly equally rejected $2500 ea "studio towers" which they raved about being recommended by (name the review column or mentor of your choice) as being the best thing ever wrought by Man. Sometimes they get it "right" by the book, but just as often the book winds up going out the window.

Equally, these educated and experienced folks, when blindly tested, couldn't guess the speaker design (number of crossovers, ported or not, dome or ribbon, woofer diameter, etc.) on anything much better than a roughly 50-50 rate of correctness just as easily attributable to random chance as anything else.

So, yeah, if you're into speaker building as a vocation or avocation, then it's great to talk about design. But, IME/IMHO, when it comes to selecting a speaker on which to actually do your own personal listening or mixing, forget about the design and let your ears be your guide.

G.
 
Well, I prefer accuracy to everything else. As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been working on this nearfield problem for decades. This is the prototypes response curve. I think I'm getting close; the production version will be even better:
 
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As a follow up, it required a lot of thinking outside the box to come up with a monitor design that wasn't a compromise of some sort. A few people have already heard the prototypes; this is what they had to say:

"After hearing your HG3 speakers, I am just counting the days when I can put all my old speakers in the closet!" - Ed Cherney, Producer, Engineer

"One of the best nearfield monitors I've ever heard!" -Al Schmitt, Producer, Engineer

"The design is clever and performance is well balanced. These are very good console-top monitors." -George Augspurger, Acoustician, and speaker designer

"I want to buy six sets; one for every studio here!" -Jeff Greenburg, owner of Village Recorders

"The most musical, ear-friendly, and accurate speakers that I have ever heard!" -Ted Perlman, Producer, Engineer

I'm hoping to add a few more quotes - after Bruce Swedien, George Massenburg, Elliot Scheiner, Tony Visconti, Chuck Ainlay, Frank Filipetti, Daniel Lanois, Terry Manning, Bob Olhsson, Jay Frigoletto, and Elliot Scheiner hear them at AES next week.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
As a follow up, it required a lot of thinking outside the box to come up with a monitor design that wasn't a compromise of some sort. A few people have already heard the prototypes; this is what they had to say:

"After hearing your HG3 speakers, I am just counting the days when I can put all my old speakers in the closet!" - Ed Cherney, Producer, Engineer

"One of the best nearfield monitors I've ever heard!" -Al Schmitt, Producer, Engineer

"The design is clever and performance is well balanced. These are very good console-top monitors." -George Augspurger, Acoustician, and speaker designer

"I want to buy six sets; one for every room!" -Jeff Greenburg, owner of Village Recorders

"The most musical, ear-friendly, and accurate speakers that I have ever heard!" -Ted Perlman, Producer, Engineer
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Any speculations on when & how much?
 
WhiteStrat said:
Any speculations on when & how much?
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I believe they'll be shipping around the first of the year, with an MSRP of around 3 grand, don't know what the street price will be. And they'll be made in the USA.

Like I said, it took me years to make these suckers work the way I think a speaker should work. It was designed to be the solution to a problem.
 
darrin_h2000 said:
and...which of us here will be chosen to be beta testers...lol.
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I've spent decades working on the problem of compromised near field performance; I think I finally got it right! Probably some of the engineers at the AES will turn out to be my Beta testers (although most of the Beta testing was done last year).
 
$3000 is pretty impractical for most levels of recording engineers south of the bigger commercial studios...what materials are going into them?
 
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