0:01 do you consider yourself to be
0:04 a two-channel purist who prefers to
0:06 listen to music alone in the dark and
0:08 relish in the deep dark
0:08 dark
0:11 vast abyss of music that you have
0:13 collected over the years or do you
0:15 consider yourself a home theater
0:17 enthusiast somebody who loves action
0:21 popcorn lights and effects with friends
0:22 and family
0:25 or are you like me somebody who likes a
0:26 little bit of both
0:29 but maybe with less hair
0:31 well in an ideal world
0:33 there really would be no difference your
0:35 home theater speaker would
0:37 work just as well for two-channel
0:39 listening as it would the other way around
0:40 around but
0:41 but
0:44 in the real world that's just not the
0:46 way things go
0:48 the real problem begins when you try to
0:51 increase additional output which is
0:54 a need for most home theater enthusiasts now
0:55 now
0:57 certainly there are two channel audio
0:59 file types who
1:02 love louder systems and i'm one of them but
1:02 but
1:04 when you really try to break things down
1:06 and look at the
1:08 components that make
1:10 a hi-fi system
1:13 versus a home theater system this is
1:15 what i've come up with so
1:16 this is actually the second time i
1:18 created this video the first time it was a
1:19 a
1:20 total car wreck
1:23 and i decided to help me pace myself a
1:25 little bit more and maybe to keep things
1:28 from being a little bit too disjointed
1:30 i would create a powerpoint slide yeah i
1:32 know it's like it's like work right
1:34 nobody wants to look at powerpoint
1:35 slides but
1:37 i promise you we'll all benefit from me
1:40 having done this before we split her off
1:41 and actually start stepping through the slide
1:42 slide
1:44 let's take a swing over to my home
1:46 theater room where i'm going to give you a
1:47 a
1:50 brief as brief as i can an overview of the
1:52 the
1:53 metrics that i'm going to be talking
1:55 about in this discussion
1:57 personally speaking
1:58 i can read stuff all day and it really
2:01 just doesn't sink in until i'm able to
2:04 see it or visualize it or you know get
2:06 hands-on with it so that's what i'm
2:07 going to do real fast i'm going to kind
2:10 of make this a quick intro but
2:12 i do encourage you to watch my previous
2:13 series of videos about understanding the
2:15 measurements and i'll put it up in the
2:16 card and i'll try to make sure i'll link
2:18 it in the description down below
2:21 so what we're going to start off with is
2:23 i've got a pair of stereo speakers right now
2:24 now
2:26 now i'm going to move this speaker over
2:27 here in the center so it makes a little
2:29 bit easier to understand what i'm
2:30 talking about
2:33 normally when you have your your setup
2:35 you have first of all the on axis
2:38 response and that is the direct sound so
2:40 again let's imagine that you are sitting
2:42 right here in the primary listening
2:44 position you've got your speaker aimed
2:46 toward you now i've got this one flipped
2:47 upside down those of you who are
2:49 wondering this is the tweeter right here
2:51 and i wanted my ear to be at the tweeter
2:52 axis because
2:53 otherwise you get a droop in the
2:55 mid-range response
2:58 so my ear will be aligned with the mid
3:00 or with the tweeter axis
3:02 and that is the on axis sound it's just
3:05 the first sound coming right toward you
3:07 it doesn't go anywhere else that is
3:09 direct sound then the next step you have
3:11 is what is called the listening window
3:14 that involves the on axis sound
3:16 and then plus or minus 30 degrees off to
3:18 the side of the speaker so not quite all
3:20 of the speaker not all the radiation
3:22 from the speaker but a smaller window of
3:24 about plus or minus 30 degrees onto the
3:26 side then you have a smaller vertical
3:28 window like this
3:31 gatormouth that's about plus or minus 10
3:33 degrees so a little bit up and a little
3:35 bit down but not much and the reason you
3:36 have a listening window is that supposed
3:39 to be more i guess indicative of how
3:41 most people are probably going to hear
3:43 the sound because getting dead on axis
3:45 with a speaker is tough to do especially
3:47 when it's a large speaker and maybe you
3:50 can't get your ear at the exact right
3:51 height or trying to tow it in is a
3:53 little bit tough for for any number of
3:55 reasons so that's why we have the
3:57 listening window response
3:59 then next up is the early reflections
4:01 response and this is where things are really
4:02 really
4:04 crucial to understand
4:06 early reflections is
4:07 is basically
4:08 basically
4:10 the front portion of the speaker so the
4:12 frontal hemisphere the sound coming out
4:15 of the front of the speaker
4:16 all around
4:18 to the horizontal side so
4:21 zero degrees to 90 degrees this way zero
4:23 degrees to 90 degrees this way so the
4:25 horizontal sound that comes out hits
4:27 this wall over here
4:29 bounces off and comes over here
4:31 those are called your first reflections
4:33 because they are the first ones to hit a
4:35 wall or hit a surface and then come back
4:37 to you in the city position
4:40 vertically you do have a smaller window
4:41 it's a little bit larger than the
4:42 listening window but it's still a little
4:44 bit smaller than the entire frontal
4:46 hemisphere i don't remember the exact
4:47 numbers now but it's a small portion
4:49 going up toward the ceiling and a small
4:51 portion going down toward the floor and
4:53 then you get a reflection off the
4:54 ceiling that's called your ceiling
4:56 bounce you get a reflection off the
4:57 floor that's called your floor bounce
5:00 now ideally you want all of those
5:03 reflections to sound the same or as
5:06 close to the same as that initial on
5:08 axis direct sound same thing for your
5:10 listening window you want all of those
5:13 responses that are coming at you first
5:14 and you want the reflected sounds that
5:16 are bouncing off the walls and coming at
5:18 you you want those to sound the same
5:20 because if they don't then you can
5:22 imagine that you would have a
5:24 coloration of the sound so let's say for example
5:26 example
5:28 you have good mid-range quality coming
5:30 out of the front of the speaker but you
5:33 have bad mid-range quality going to the
5:35 sides and then it's reflected back to
5:37 you and that is what we talk about when
5:39 we talk about directivity the early
5:43 reflections directivity index is just
5:44 it's a difference of the listening
5:47 window response so that smaller little
5:49 window of response up and down and side
5:52 to side versus the broader side assad
5:54 and the broader up and down response so
5:56 you take those two you take the
5:57 difference and any difference there
6:00 really ideally if it were a completely
6:01 omnidirectional speaker spreading sound
6:02 throughout the room in the exact same
6:05 way throughout then you would just break
6:07 even that'd be a zero right
6:08 but ideally what we're looking for in
6:11 the early reflections is a smooth
6:13 line right and any deviation you have
6:16 from that line indicates a deviation in
6:18 response between the listening window
6:20 and the early reflections response i
6:22 will also note that the early
6:24 reflections does include a wall bounce
6:26 behind the speaker but you can pretty
6:28 much consider the front of the speaker
6:29 the main portion and the main
6:31 contributor to the early reflections now
6:33 the early reflections
6:34 is considered the
6:35 the
6:37 most important
6:40 metric in sound quality accuracy
6:42 and it's important because as i
6:44 mentioned a minute ago when you have the
6:46 reflected sound if it sounds different
6:48 from what you're hearing as your direct
6:50 sound then that's going to change the
6:52 tonality or the timbre
6:54 the overall sound signature of what
6:56 you're hearing that can also play a role
6:58 on the imaging as well so you could have
7:00 smearing and things like that of
7:01 instruments and the sound stage so for
7:04 example if you're listening to a track
7:06 with a saxophonist right here well he
7:08 may not sound exactly right here he
7:11 could wander a bit from side to side and
7:12 that is also
7:14 due to in part
7:17 uh of the early reflections response
7:20 versus the on axis response so again
7:22 ideally what you're wanting is you want
7:23 the early reflections to mimic as
7:26 closely as it possibly can the on axis
7:28 response and there is
7:30 a discussion that we can have at a later
7:32 time about
7:35 how much do you want it to mimic
7:37 that gets into the discussion of the
7:40 directivity index value how flat the
7:41 directivity index is going across the
7:45 x-axis or how upright it is going across
7:48 the x-axis now the more flat it is the
7:50 more omni-directional a speaker is that
7:53 means that it's playing a point source
7:55 360 degrees around it
7:56 but the
7:58 more linear it is or the more sloped it
8:00 is that means that as you go higher in
8:03 frequency it's becoming more and more
8:05 directional so you can start off at the
8:06 low frequencies typically with the
8:09 omnidirectional sound that is spread
8:10 throughout the room so let's say about
8:12 400 hertz or so
8:14 everywhere in the room is pretty much
8:16 affected the same but as you begin to go
8:18 higher in frequency you start to narrow
8:20 up that radiation pattern and the higher
8:22 frequencies become more directional and
8:24 there is less energy sent to the side
8:26 walls and the rear walls and the floor
8:28 and the ceiling but again we're going to
8:30 save that for a different topic at
8:33 another later date because that that's
8:34 going to get this one too far off track
8:36 but anyway i hope that little bit of a
8:37 crash course helps give you a better
8:40 understanding of what i mean when i say
8:42 on axis listening window and early
8:44 reflections and directivity index
8:46 because these things are crucial to
8:48 understand as we get into this next
8:51 portion of the conversation okay so now
8:52 we are back and we are going to flip
8:54 through some slides and i'm going to
8:56 talk about some of these metrics that we
8:58 just discussed now we're going to talk
8:59 about them and show you why they're
9:02 applicable to you either in the home fi
9:05 realm or the home theater realm now the
9:07 first set of slides that i have up right
9:09 now is going to be dedicated to the two channel
9:10 channel
9:12 purists and this is what i deem as
9:14 requirements for a two-channel purist
9:17 you want linear on-axis response and you
9:20 want a good smooth linear listening
9:22 window response
9:24 base extension ideally you know it would
9:27 be 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz but most
9:28 people that i find based off of doing
9:30 these reviews and all the information
9:32 that i get back
9:34 they tend to be happy with 40 to 50 hertz
9:35 hertz
9:38 f3 anechoic response so in other words
9:39 it doesn't have to play all the way down
9:41 to the subwoofer levels
9:43 it can play down into the 40 or 50 hertz
9:45 region anechoic because when you put
9:47 that into a room you get a little bit of
9:49 room gain a little bit of boundary gain
9:51 and that helps bring up that low end a
9:53 little bit more also combined with
9:55 there's i won't say there's not a lot
9:56 but it's
9:59 more common to find music that
10:02 has bass rolled off below 40-50 hertz so
10:04 there's not as much content in that
10:07 lower region for the majority of genres
10:09 and certainly there are exceptions but
10:11 again we're speaking in generalities
10:14 smooth early reflections directivity
10:17 index as i said before if you don't have
10:19 this then you will have some timbre
10:21 mismatching going on between what you
10:23 hear coming directly at you versus what
10:25 is reflected off the sidewalls now
10:27 directivity really matters when you
10:30 start talking about multiple drive units
10:32 let's say for example you have a speaker
10:36 with a tweeter and a mid-range
10:38 probably going to be okay in terms of
10:40 horizontal directivity probably going to
10:41 be a little bit off in vertical
10:42 directivity if you've got the tweeter up
10:44 here in the mid-range down here
10:48 if you have a speaker that has multiple
10:51 mid-ranges or multiple mid-bass drivers
10:52 well the further those drivers are
10:55 spread apart this way or that way
10:57 is going to dictate
10:59 the radiation pattern that speaker and
11:00 it's probably going to have a
11:03 directivity index that suffers output is
11:05 not as important in the
11:08 two-channel listening realm as it is in
11:10 the home theater and i say that because
11:13 most people based on again anecdotal
11:15 information that i get back from
11:17 listeners and people who watch my videos
11:19 and read my reviews they tend to tell me that
11:20 that
11:23 when i mention that i listen to 85 to 95
11:25 db or something you know on the lower
11:27 end they'll say well that's too loud i'm
11:29 usually between 70 to 80
11:34 75 to 85 65 to 75. so
11:36 boiling that down generally speaking i
11:37 find that
11:40 audiophile types generally again
11:43 don't listen to music as loud as home
11:45 theater types tend to listen to their
11:47 playback systems now requirements for
11:50 the home theater enthusiasts
11:53 higher output now this is again
11:56 generality but i find that most home
11:57 theater enthusiasts are listening
12:01 between the 75 to 85 decibel region and
12:02 these are
12:04 average output this isn't including
12:06 transient dynamic peaks this is just
12:09 average listening levels and that is
12:10 typically at a little bit of a further
12:13 seated distance than the two channel
12:16 enthusiasts with higher output you need
12:19 low compression and low distortion just
12:22 like 2 channel you want smooth early
12:25 reflection directivity index but in this
12:28 case you want it for its eq ability now
12:31 this is where i find that the biggest
12:34 difference is probably acceptable
12:36 in home theater versus two channel and
12:38 that is
12:41 non-linearity in the on-axis and the
12:43 listening window response the reason i
12:46 say that that's not as crucial is
12:48 because most home theater people by and
12:51 large are using equalization matter of
12:53 fact i recently did a poll i found that
12:57 about 80 percent of my viewership you use
12:58 use
13:00 equalization that seems to be more
13:01 geared toward the home theater
13:03 enthusiast because there still are a lot of
13:04 of
13:06 two-channel purists who don't want to
13:08 use equalization
13:11 so that's why i say that home theater
13:12 doesn't necessarily need as smooth
13:15 response you just need
13:17 good early reflections directivity and
13:18 we're going to talk about reasons for
13:20 that in a little bit another reason that
13:22 non-linearities may be okay is because
13:24 you're focused on the action on the
13:28 screen for example you know if you go to
13:30 any movie you can have
13:32 distractions in the theater sometimes
13:34 they're really annoying if you have a
13:36 low level of anxiety like i sometimes do
13:38 when i go to the theater
13:40 you'll be worried a bit about the
13:42 numskull behind you who won't shut up
13:44 during the previews but you find that
13:46 once the movie starts
13:48 even if that person is still yapping a
13:50 little bit too much
13:51 you don't notice it as much because
13:54 you're focused really on what's going on
13:56 on the screen and that's why i say that
13:59 i find myself and having talked to
14:00 others that
14:02 you can handle non-linearities in the
14:04 response it doesn't have to be perfect
14:06 you know the timbre needs to be close to
14:08 real as close to real as you could
14:10 possibly get it but i think that you're
14:12 more willing to forgive some of those
14:14 inadequacies or
14:16 insufficiencies when you are watching a
14:18 movie because you're focused more on the
14:21 action on screen as opposed to turning
14:22 the projector off or turning the
14:24 television off and listening intently
14:27 for that sound low bass extension is not
14:30 necessary out of your main speakers in a
14:32 home theater and that's because pretty much
14:33 much
14:34 all home theaters
14:37 have subwoofers so you're directing the
14:39 low frequency content to dedicated
14:41 subwoofers unlike two channel where they
14:44 may not use dedicated subwoofers even
14:47 though i still contend that
14:48 every system
14:50 realistically every system can benefit
14:52 from dedicated subwoofers and maybe
14:53 there's a couple rare exceptions but
14:55 there's probably very few and far
14:57 between that couldn't benefit from a true
14:58 true
15:01 low frequency transducer driving all the
15:03 base now let's talk more about the
15:05 smooth early reflections directivity
15:07 index and this slide i'm kind of giving
15:08 you a recap of the
15:09 the
15:11 regions that
15:14 define what the early reflections are as
15:16 well as the listening window because as
15:18 i said before the
15:20 difference between the listening window
15:22 and the early reflections is what gives
15:24 you the early reflections directivity
15:27 index on the right side you'll see a
15:29 example of a speaker that i measured
15:30 earlier this year and it's one of the
15:33 better ones if not really the most
15:36 linear on-axis response that i've seen
15:38 so far and it really does have
15:40 maybe even still the best early
15:43 reflections directivity index shown in
15:46 this dashed blue line down here so we're
15:47 going to walk through a few examples i'm
15:49 going to show you a
15:51 good speaker in terms of on-axis
15:53 linearity and early reflections i'm
15:55 gonna show you a bad one and then i'm
15:58 gonna show you one that is a little bit
16:01 of both but give you a reason why i
16:03 think that the latter can be used for
16:06 home theater but maybe not used for two
16:07 channel stereo listening now this
16:09 speaker has
16:11 smooth on-axis and listening window
16:13 response as defined by the black line
16:16 and the green dash line i mean they're
16:18 pretty linear all things consider you
16:20 got to keep in mind the scale here each
16:22 bar set is 5 db so this speaker is
16:24 within about plus or minus one and a
16:25 half db
16:27 through most of the
16:30 basically about 30 hertz to 20 kilohertz
16:33 and that is superb now if we go to the
16:34 bottom and we look at this dash blue
16:36 line that's the difference between the
16:38 early reflections and the listening
16:40 window response and remember earlier i
16:42 said that you really want that to be as
16:44 smooth as possible whether it's a flat
16:46 line or whether it's kicked up that
16:47 that
16:49 that's up to preference but you want it
16:51 to be linear
16:54 also remember that this does take into
16:57 account horizontal and vertical usually
16:58 what you're going to find is the
17:00 vertical drive some
17:03 little blips some little deviations in
17:06 the early reflections directivity index
17:07 even when the horizontal response is
17:09 quite smooth and that really is the case here
17:11 here
17:12 the earlier reflections directivity
17:14 index for this speaker is about as
17:15 textbook perfect as you could hope to
17:18 get short of it being a single
17:20 transducer coaxial driver this is as
17:23 about as good as it's going to get
17:25 you we see this little bit of a bump
17:26 right around the one and a half
17:28 kilohertz region and that is so minor
17:30 that it's really not even worth calling out
17:31 out but
17:32 but
17:34 the reason that that is there is because
17:36 of the vertical distance between the tweeter
17:38 tweeter
17:40 and the drive unit that's below or the
17:42 mid-range and if we go to the horizontal
17:44 response we can see that the horizontal
17:46 response is just falling off
17:48 almost textbook perfectly so the issue
17:50 is not in the horizontal plane it's just
17:52 vertically and it's a very very minor
17:54 issue therefore this speaker will work
17:56 perfect for both
17:58 home theater
18:00 as well as 2-channel listening and it
18:02 and it has plenty of output for home
18:04 theater as well this is a speaker with
18:07 poor on-axis response as well as poor
18:10 listening window response and poor early
18:13 reflections directivity index and we see
18:14 that by this
18:17 black line and the dashed green line is
18:19 just really not quite linear i mean if
18:20 you take a
18:23 500 foot view back of it
18:25 it doesn't look terrible but the
18:27 resonance at about the one and a half
18:29 kilohertz area really throws off the linearity
18:30 linearity
18:32 and then the treble has some issues
18:34 going on
18:36 combined with a boost in the high frequency
18:37 frequency
18:38 now you think
18:41 okay well can i eq that well that's when
18:43 we go down here to look at the early
18:45 reflections directivity index and we try
18:48 to determine can we eq that and by this
18:50 graphic this dash blue line we can tell
18:52 that probably not
18:54 the reason for that is because
18:57 it's linear through about two kilohertz
18:59 and then there's a pretty big jump of
19:01 about four or five db and then it falls
19:04 back down at about what is that four or
19:06 five kilohertz again so we have a pretty
19:08 significant deviation here
19:10 now if that's due to the vertical plane
19:12 we might be okay
19:15 so let's see is it
19:17 looking at the horizontal plane
19:19 we can see that no indeed what we were
19:20 seeing with the
19:22 issues in the directivity index are
19:25 actually due at least in part to the
19:27 horizontal response and the reason we
19:29 see that is because if we take this
19:32 bottom response at 90 degrees
19:34 if it was linear it would continue
19:37 falling on down but it rebounds at a
19:38 crossover region
19:41 bounces back up falls back down bounces
19:42 back up again so this is a multi-way
19:45 speaker that doesn't hold its radiation
19:47 pattern in the horizontal plane well at all
19:48 all
19:50 that means that if you were trying to eq
19:53 it you could eq one region of it but it
19:56 will reflect across all regions of it
19:58 meaning that if i wanted to
20:00 bring down this notch right here i could
20:03 do that i would also do it in the off
20:05 axis responses too if i wanted to bring
20:09 up this notch at 1.5 kilohertz well in
20:10 doing so i also bring up some
20:13 non-linearities off-axes and really what
20:15 that means is i'm just exacerbating the
20:18 problem of having an on-axis response
20:19 that does not match the off axis
20:22 response so you can't simply eq that
20:24 away you
20:26 you're really stuck with a design that
20:28 is limited
20:31 in its performance basically but this
20:32 speaker does have a pretty good bit of
20:35 output here's a speaker that i think is
20:37 a really good example of how the data
20:40 can be twisted and confused and manipulated
20:41 manipulated
20:43 to give you a story depending on what
20:45 the story is that you want to tell
20:48 and this is really a pitfall of
20:50 of some analyst you know if you're
20:51 trying to analyze the data and maybe you
20:54 go into it with preconceived notions or
20:56 uh an axe to grind for whatever reason
20:59 let's start with the poor on-axis
21:01 and listening window responses we can
21:03 see that they're just kind of bouncing
21:04 all over the place
21:06 and when you get into higher frequency i
21:07 mean it smooths out a little bit but
21:09 you've still got some issues going on
21:11 and right away you can imagine that this
21:13 would not be an ideal speaker for
21:15 2-channel listening because it's just
21:17 not neutral across the board it could be
21:19 worse i've certainly seen worse but on a
21:22 whole you would have to do some pretty
21:24 decent eq to get this thing flat well if
21:26 you're a two-channel purist you don't
21:29 have equalization so you can't get that
21:31 to tailor to the sound that you want but
21:33 if we're a home theater enthusiast or if
21:34 you're a two channel enthusiast with equalization
21:36 equalization
21:38 can you eq the speaker well let's go
21:41 look down here this blue line maybe at
21:43 first glance you're thinking no you
21:44 really can't because it's it's kind of
21:47 dipping and it's bouncing up
21:49 but the dip isn't really as much of a concern
21:50 concern
21:52 and if you just kind of draw an
21:54 imaginary line through there you're
21:55 probably okay and then you've got a
21:58 little bit of a peek but it's reasonably
22:00 narrow in q
22:02 relative to its amplitude so its
22:05 amplitude's about maybe 2 db 1 or 2 db
22:07 over this magical trend line that i would
22:08 would
22:10 imaginarily draw through here
22:12 and you can see that if you just drew
22:13 the trend line through here the early
22:15 reflections directivity index of the
22:18 speaker looks pretty darn good and it actually
22:19 actually
22:21 is a speaker that you could eq and if we
22:23 go look at the horizontal response it
22:24 basically just tells us the same story
22:26 that yes indeed the horizontal looks
22:28 quite good the vertical is what's really
22:30 throwing things off in these early
22:32 reflections area
22:34 and we can eq this speaker this happens
22:37 to be a diy sound group speaker i don't
22:38 remember what the cost is to build it
22:41 but it does come in kit form i want to
22:43 say it's like 400 or 500 bucks for one
22:45 speaker you would build it yourself and
22:48 i think this is a great example of a
22:49 speaker that has
22:52 poor on-axis linearity but really good
22:55 early reflections directivity and that
22:56 means that for two-channel listening
22:58 without eq
22:59 probably not a good choice but if you
23:01 have home theater system with
23:02 equalization or your two-channel
23:04 enthusiast and you do have something
23:06 like a mini dsp or odyssey or any of
23:09 those kind of good eq systems then you
23:11 could flatten this speaker right out you
23:13 could tweak it and shape it to your own
23:15 desire it doesn't have to be flat it can
23:16 be tweaked to whatever you want but the
23:18 good thing is is as you're adjusting the
23:21 on axis response you are also adjusting
23:24 the off axis response in the similar
23:26 fashion and therefore everything that
23:27 hits you from the front side of that
23:29 speaker is also going to be really at
23:31 you from the side off the reflection of
23:33 the walls and it's going to work to
23:35 provide you with an overall sound that you
23:36 you
23:38 actually want now we're going to talk
23:40 about compression output linear area but
23:41 we're going to do this rather briefly
23:43 because i've discussed this
23:45 in depth before i'll throw a link in the
23:48 card up here or i'll try to remember to
23:50 but basically what this hits on is
23:53 transients dynamic range of a speaker if
23:56 you're listening to music or
23:58 a vocalist or you're watching a movie at
24:00 a lower volume and then all of a sudden
24:02 something comes on you know pretty strong
24:03 strong
24:05 you want the speaker to be able to relay
24:08 that sense of urgency and if it can't
24:10 then usually it's unable to do so
24:13 simply due to compression meaning that
24:17 if i have a sound that is 10 db higher
24:18 than the sound i'm listening to right
24:21 now well i want my speaker to be able to
24:24 play that 10 db louder instantaneously
24:26 but if a speaker suffers compression it
24:29 may only play five or six or seven db
24:31 louder it won't achieve that full 10 db
24:33 swing and that's what these test results
24:36 show and basically every speaker that
24:39 i've shown you so far is okay in terms
24:42 of output limitations but when you start
24:44 getting into crazy high output like 102
24:47 db at one meter which is a pair in a
24:50 room would be about 92 to 94 db at four meters
24:52 meters
24:54 you start to show weaknesses you start
24:56 to see signs of weaknesses in these
24:59 designs and this is generally what i see
25:01 against all speakers so
25:03 a few of them will really do well at the
25:05 102 db region
25:08 most of them do pretty well at 86 and 96
25:10 db so most of them had a pretty good 20
25:13 db dynamic swing but fewer of them have
25:16 26 db dynamic range and the reason i
25:17 test a little bit further because i just
25:20 kind of want to see what the limits are
25:21 that's a factor that you really need to
25:23 consider when you're talking about home
25:24 theater because
25:26 as i said before most home theater
25:27 enthusiasts are going to be listening to
25:29 it a little bit louder on average and
25:30 they're also generally speaking going to
25:32 be sitting a little bit further away
25:33 which means they're going to turn it up
25:35 a little bit louder as well and you want
25:36 to be able to cover that full dynamic
25:38 range every music or your movie soundtracks
25:39 soundtracks
25:41 your discussion your dialogue etc all
25:42 the sounds that are going on in the
25:44 movies you want to be able to capture
25:46 that you want that wince you want that
25:48 sound that makes you blink
25:50 because that's where the goods are in my
25:52 humble opinion a few notables that i'm
25:53 really not discussing in this video
25:55 simply due to time distortion you know i
25:57 said earlier you want low distortion
25:59 what is low distortion well
26:02 just completely generically speaking
26:04 i generally look at about three percent
26:06 thd as kind of the mark of okay this
26:07 speaker's starting to kind of run out of steam
26:08 steam
26:10 that's a personal choice you could
26:13 choose one percent it really depends
26:14 on the
26:16 the content that you're listening to uh
26:18 the order of distortion and the
26:20 frequency where that distortion occurs
26:22 along with the order so it's not
26:24 something you can quantify into a single
26:26 band i said three percent that's just
26:28 something i generally go off of if it's
26:30 below one percent that's probably going
26:32 to be completely undetectable in terms
26:34 of harmonic distortion uh we're also not
26:36 getting into imd intermodulated
26:38 distortion where a speaker plays one
26:40 tone but also another tone or multi-tone
26:43 where it plays multiple tones at a time
26:45 generally speaking i find that the
26:47 compression and the distortion testing
26:49 that i do are enough to give you a good
26:51 idea of what a speaker's system
26:54 capabilities are specific directivity
26:55 index value i mentioned earlier that
26:57 that would really be a conversation for
26:58 another day so that's what we're going
27:00 to leave it and to wrap everything up
27:03 spl is really the the big compromiser
27:05 here if you want a speaker that has a
27:08 lot of output linearity you want a
27:11 speaker that has multiple drive units
27:13 and when you have multiple drive units
27:15 then you start compromising on the
27:17 directivity index meaning that whereas a
27:20 crossover is placed you may have a
27:22 mismatch in radiation from a tweeter to
27:24 a mid-range or a mid-range to a mid-bass
27:26 or if you have multiple mid basses or
27:27 multiple mid-ranges you have a continuity
27:28 continuity
27:32 disconnect there and that creates issues
27:34 with the direct sound versus the off
27:36 axis sound and that really means that
27:38 it's going to cost you more money to get
27:40 a speaker that's able to
27:42 fix those issues because usually the way
27:44 it's done is by active crossover dsp crossovers
27:46 crossovers
27:47 or more steep
27:48 steep filters
27:49 filters
27:51 in your crossover which means more
27:53 crossover components and
27:56 the magnitude of cost just increases a
27:58 lot to get more components into a
28:00 crossover network so
28:01 i would say generally that if you're
28:04 looking at budget speakers let's say a
28:05 few hundred bucks and they have multiple
28:07 mid-ranges well you can probably assume
28:08 that it's not going to have great
28:10 directivity uh if you're looking a
28:12 little bit more maybe
28:14 five six hundred to a thousand and over
28:16 a thousand then you're probably getting
28:18 a little bit safer but you don't know
28:20 until you have the data and certainly
28:22 you can buy it and try it but the data
28:23 helps you make a better educated
28:25 decision and that's really what this
28:26 whole video was about directivity
28:29 smoothness always matters it doesn't
28:32 matter if it's just 2-channel or if it's
28:34 multi-channel home theater and you've
28:37 got equalization smoothness always
28:39 matters because in no case do you want
28:42 the off axis sound to sound different
28:45 than the on-axis sound on-axis linearity
28:47 and listening window linearity are
28:48 are
28:50 more crucial for 2-channel without eq
28:53 but less crucial for
28:55 systems with equalization for the
28:57 reasons i discussed earlier and then the
28:59 the underlying thing for all of this is
29:02 does the on-screen action
29:04 take your mind off of the imperfections
29:07 in your speaker system i certainly think
29:08 that it does
29:10 uh maybe there's research out there to
29:12 kind of prove the disconnect but i can
29:14 tell you from my personal experience and
29:16 talking with others that that really is
29:18 the case and i think this is one reason
29:21 why some people say well i own you know
29:24 a b c or d speaker and i see your
29:26 measurements but i still like it well
29:28 that could be one reason why but there's
29:30 also another
29:32 multitude of reasons why you may or may
29:35 not like a speaker that i may or may not
29:37 like but again that's when we look at
29:38 the data and we try to work through
29:40 things together to provide us both with
29:42 a better understanding of what we're
29:43 seeing and how it's going to relate to
29:46 what we hear in our listening room and
29:47 that's really it i appreciate you
29:48 watching and i truly hope you learned
29:51 something this video took a little bit
29:53 more effort than i normally do and it's
29:55 probably not even going to show but i
29:56 hope it does and i really hope that it
29:58 helps you understand why i'm a proponent of
29:59 of
30:02 good data not just any old data but good
30:05 data to help us all learn and be better
30:07 informed of purchase decisions and to
30:10 understand what's going on in our rooms
30:12 not just to understand the differences
30:13 between two channel and home theater
30:15 systems but really to have a better
30:18 understanding and appreciation of
30:20 how to make a better purchase decision
30:22 and with all of that said i am out i
30:24 hope you have a good one
30:26 oh yeah and if you haven't subscribed
30:27 before please consider doing that hit
30:29 the like button that would really be
30:31 appreciated and uh we'll talk to you all
30:33 later yeah i'll talk to y'all later peace
