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HiFi vs Home Theater Speakers. What's the difference?

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This content differentiates the critical audio performance metrics for two-channel stereo listening versus home theater systems, explaining how factors like output, linearity, and directivity apply differently to each.

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do you consider yourself to be

a two-channel purist who prefers to

listen to music alone in the dark and

relish in the deep dark

dark

vast abyss of music that you have

collected over the years or do you

consider yourself a home theater

enthusiast somebody who loves action

popcorn lights and effects with friends

and family

or are you like me somebody who likes a

little bit of both

but maybe with less hair

well in an ideal world

there really would be no difference your

home theater speaker would

work just as well for two-channel

listening as it would the other way around

around but

but

in the real world that's just not the

way things go

the real problem begins when you try to

increase additional output which is

a need for most home theater enthusiasts now

now

certainly there are two channel audio

file types who

love louder systems and i'm one of them but

but

when you really try to break things down

and look at the

components that make

a hi-fi system

versus a home theater system this is

what i've come up with so

this is actually the second time i

created this video the first time it was a

total car wreck

and i decided to help me pace myself a

little bit more and maybe to keep things

from being a little bit too disjointed

i would create a powerpoint slide yeah i

know it's like it's like work right

nobody wants to look at powerpoint

slides but

i promise you we'll all benefit from me

having done this before we split her off

and actually start stepping through the slide

slide

let's take a swing over to my home

theater room where i'm going to give you a

brief as brief as i can an overview of the

the

metrics that i'm going to be talking

about in this discussion

personally speaking

i can read stuff all day and it really

just doesn't sink in until i'm able to

see it or visualize it or you know get

hands-on with it so that's what i'm

going to do real fast i'm going to kind

of make this a quick intro but

i do encourage you to watch my previous

series of videos about understanding the

measurements and i'll put it up in the

card and i'll try to make sure i'll link

it in the description down below

so what we're going to start off with is

i've got a pair of stereo speakers right now

now

now i'm going to move this speaker over

here in the center so it makes a little

bit easier to understand what i'm

talking about

normally when you have your your setup

you have first of all the on axis

response and that is the direct sound so

again let's imagine that you are sitting

right here in the primary listening

position you've got your speaker aimed

toward you now i've got this one flipped

upside down those of you who are

wondering this is the tweeter right here

and i wanted my ear to be at the tweeter

axis because

otherwise you get a droop in the

mid-range response

so my ear will be aligned with the mid

or with the tweeter axis

and that is the on axis sound it's just

the first sound coming right toward you

it doesn't go anywhere else that is

direct sound then the next step you have

is what is called the listening window

that involves the on axis sound

and then plus or minus 30 degrees off to

the side of the speaker so not quite all

of the speaker not all the radiation

from the speaker but a smaller window of

about plus or minus 30 degrees onto the

side then you have a smaller vertical

window like this

gatormouth that's about plus or minus 10

degrees so a little bit up and a little

bit down but not much and the reason you

have a listening window is that supposed

to be more i guess indicative of how

most people are probably going to hear

the sound because getting dead on axis

with a speaker is tough to do especially

when it's a large speaker and maybe you

can't get your ear at the exact right

height or trying to tow it in is a

little bit tough for for any number of

reasons so that's why we have the

listening window response

then next up is the early reflections

response and this is where things are really

really

crucial to understand

early reflections is

is basically

basically

the front portion of the speaker so the

frontal hemisphere the sound coming out

of the front of the speaker

all around

to the horizontal side so

zero degrees to 90 degrees this way zero

degrees to 90 degrees this way so the

horizontal sound that comes out hits

this wall over here

bounces off and comes over here

those are called your first reflections

because they are the first ones to hit a

wall or hit a surface and then come back

to you in the city position

vertically you do have a smaller window

it's a little bit larger than the

listening window but it's still a little

bit smaller than the entire frontal

hemisphere i don't remember the exact

numbers now but it's a small portion

going up toward the ceiling and a small

portion going down toward the floor and

then you get a reflection off the

ceiling that's called your ceiling

bounce you get a reflection off the

floor that's called your floor bounce

now ideally you want all of those

reflections to sound the same or as

close to the same as that initial on

axis direct sound same thing for your

listening window you want all of those

responses that are coming at you first

and you want the reflected sounds that

are bouncing off the walls and coming at

you you want those to sound the same

because if they don't then you can

imagine that you would have a

coloration of the sound so let's say for example

example

you have good mid-range quality coming

out of the front of the speaker but you

have bad mid-range quality going to the

sides and then it's reflected back to

you and that is what we talk about when

we talk about directivity the early

reflections directivity index is just

it's a difference of the listening

window response so that smaller little

window of response up and down and side

to side versus the broader side assad

and the broader up and down response so

you take those two you take the

difference and any difference there

really ideally if it were a completely

omnidirectional speaker spreading sound

throughout the room in the exact same

way throughout then you would just break

even that'd be a zero right

but ideally what we're looking for in

the early reflections is a smooth

line right and any deviation you have

from that line indicates a deviation in

response between the listening window

and the early reflections response i

will also note that the early

reflections does include a wall bounce

behind the speaker but you can pretty

much consider the front of the speaker

the main portion and the main

contributor to the early reflections now

the early reflections

is considered the

the

most important

metric in sound quality accuracy

and it's important because as i

mentioned a minute ago when you have the

reflected sound if it sounds different

from what you're hearing as your direct

sound then that's going to change the

tonality or the timbre

the overall sound signature of what

you're hearing that can also play a role

on the imaging as well so you could have

smearing and things like that of

instruments and the sound stage so for

example if you're listening to a track

with a saxophonist right here well he

may not sound exactly right here he

could wander a bit from side to side and

that is also

due to in part

uh of the early reflections response

versus the on axis response so again

ideally what you're wanting is you want

the early reflections to mimic as

closely as it possibly can the on axis

response and there is

a discussion that we can have at a later

time about

how much do you want it to mimic

that gets into the discussion of the

directivity index value how flat the

directivity index is going across the

x-axis or how upright it is going across

the x-axis now the more flat it is the

more omni-directional a speaker is that

means that it's playing a point source

360 degrees around it

but the

more linear it is or the more sloped it

is that means that as you go higher in

frequency it's becoming more and more

directional so you can start off at the

low frequencies typically with the

omnidirectional sound that is spread

throughout the room so let's say about

400 hertz or so

everywhere in the room is pretty much

affected the same but as you begin to go

higher in frequency you start to narrow

up that radiation pattern and the higher

frequencies become more directional and

there is less energy sent to the side

walls and the rear walls and the floor

and the ceiling but again we're going to

save that for a different topic at

another later date because that that's

going to get this one too far off track

but anyway i hope that little bit of a

crash course helps give you a better

understanding of what i mean when i say

on axis listening window and early

reflections and directivity index

because these things are crucial to

understand as we get into this next

portion of the conversation okay so now

we are back and we are going to flip

through some slides and i'm going to

talk about some of these metrics that we

just discussed now we're going to talk

about them and show you why they're

applicable to you either in the home fi

realm or the home theater realm now the

first set of slides that i have up right

now is going to be dedicated to the two channel

channel

purists and this is what i deem as

requirements for a two-channel purist

you want linear on-axis response and you

want a good smooth linear listening

window response

base extension ideally you know it would

be 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz but most

people that i find based off of doing

these reviews and all the information

that i get back

they tend to be happy with 40 to 50 hertz

hertz

f3 anechoic response so in other words

it doesn't have to play all the way down

to the subwoofer levels

it can play down into the 40 or 50 hertz

region anechoic because when you put

that into a room you get a little bit of

room gain a little bit of boundary gain

and that helps bring up that low end a

little bit more also combined with

there's i won't say there's not a lot

but it's

more common to find music that

has bass rolled off below 40-50 hertz so

there's not as much content in that

lower region for the majority of genres

and certainly there are exceptions but

again we're speaking in generalities

smooth early reflections directivity

index as i said before if you don't have

this then you will have some timbre

mismatching going on between what you

hear coming directly at you versus what

is reflected off the sidewalls now

directivity really matters when you

start talking about multiple drive units

let's say for example you have a speaker

with a tweeter and a mid-range

probably going to be okay in terms of

horizontal directivity probably going to

be a little bit off in vertical

directivity if you've got the tweeter up

here in the mid-range down here

if you have a speaker that has multiple

mid-ranges or multiple mid-bass drivers

well the further those drivers are

spread apart this way or that way

is going to dictate

the radiation pattern that speaker and

it's probably going to have a

directivity index that suffers output is

not as important in the

two-channel listening realm as it is in

the home theater and i say that because

most people based on again anecdotal

information that i get back from

listeners and people who watch my videos

and read my reviews they tend to tell me that

that

when i mention that i listen to 85 to 95

db or something you know on the lower

end they'll say well that's too loud i'm

usually between 70 to 80

75 to 85 65 to 75. so

boiling that down generally speaking i

find that

audiophile types generally again

don't listen to music as loud as home

theater types tend to listen to their

playback systems now requirements for

the home theater enthusiasts

higher output now this is again

generality but i find that most home

theater enthusiasts are listening

between the 75 to 85 decibel region and

these are

average output this isn't including

transient dynamic peaks this is just

average listening levels and that is

typically at a little bit of a further

seated distance than the two channel

enthusiasts with higher output you need

low compression and low distortion just

like 2 channel you want smooth early

reflection directivity index but in this

case you want it for its eq ability now

this is where i find that the biggest

difference is probably acceptable

in home theater versus two channel and

that is

non-linearity in the on-axis and the

listening window response the reason i

say that that's not as crucial is

because most home theater people by and

large are using equalization matter of

fact i recently did a poll i found that

about 80 percent of my viewership you use

use

equalization that seems to be more

geared toward the home theater

enthusiast because there still are a lot of

two-channel purists who don't want to

use equalization

so that's why i say that home theater

doesn't necessarily need as smooth

response you just need

good early reflections directivity and

we're going to talk about reasons for

that in a little bit another reason that

non-linearities may be okay is because

you're focused on the action on the

screen for example you know if you go to

any movie you can have

distractions in the theater sometimes

they're really annoying if you have a

low level of anxiety like i sometimes do

when i go to the theater

you'll be worried a bit about the

numskull behind you who won't shut up

during the previews but you find that

once the movie starts

even if that person is still yapping a

little bit too much

you don't notice it as much because

you're focused really on what's going on

on the screen and that's why i say that

i find myself and having talked to

others that

you can handle non-linearities in the

response it doesn't have to be perfect

you know the timbre needs to be close to

real as close to real as you could

possibly get it but i think that you're

more willing to forgive some of those

inadequacies or

insufficiencies when you are watching a

movie because you're focused more on the

action on screen as opposed to turning

the projector off or turning the

television off and listening intently

for that sound low bass extension is not

necessary out of your main speakers in a

home theater and that's because pretty much

much

all home theaters

have subwoofers so you're directing the

low frequency content to dedicated

subwoofers unlike two channel where they

may not use dedicated subwoofers even

though i still contend that

every system

realistically every system can benefit

from dedicated subwoofers and maybe

there's a couple rare exceptions but

there's probably very few and far

between that couldn't benefit from a true

true

low frequency transducer driving all the

base now let's talk more about the

smooth early reflections directivity

index and this slide i'm kind of giving

you a recap of the

the

regions that

define what the early reflections are as

well as the listening window because as

i said before the

difference between the listening window

and the early reflections is what gives

you the early reflections directivity

index on the right side you'll see a

example of a speaker that i measured

earlier this year and it's one of the

better ones if not really the most

linear on-axis response that i've seen

so far and it really does have

maybe even still the best early

reflections directivity index shown in

this dashed blue line down here so we're

going to walk through a few examples i'm

going to show you a

good speaker in terms of on-axis

linearity and early reflections i'm

gonna show you a bad one and then i'm

gonna show you one that is a little bit

of both but give you a reason why i

think that the latter can be used for

home theater but maybe not used for two

channel stereo listening now this

speaker has

smooth on-axis and listening window

response as defined by the black line

and the green dash line i mean they're

pretty linear all things consider you

got to keep in mind the scale here each

bar set is 5 db so this speaker is

within about plus or minus one and a

half db

through most of the

basically about 30 hertz to 20 kilohertz

and that is superb now if we go to the

bottom and we look at this dash blue

line that's the difference between the

early reflections and the listening

window response and remember earlier i

said that you really want that to be as

smooth as possible whether it's a flat

line or whether it's kicked up that

that

that's up to preference but you want it

to be linear

also remember that this does take into

account horizontal and vertical usually

what you're going to find is the

vertical drive some

little blips some little deviations in

the early reflections directivity index

even when the horizontal response is

quite smooth and that really is the case here

here

the earlier reflections directivity

index for this speaker is about as

textbook perfect as you could hope to

get short of it being a single

transducer coaxial driver this is as

about as good as it's going to get

you we see this little bit of a bump

right around the one and a half

kilohertz region and that is so minor

that it's really not even worth calling out

out but

but

the reason that that is there is because

of the vertical distance between the tweeter

tweeter

and the drive unit that's below or the

mid-range and if we go to the horizontal

response we can see that the horizontal

response is just falling off

almost textbook perfectly so the issue

is not in the horizontal plane it's just

vertically and it's a very very minor

issue therefore this speaker will work

perfect for both

home theater

as well as 2-channel listening and it

and it has plenty of output for home

theater as well this is a speaker with

poor on-axis response as well as poor

listening window response and poor early

reflections directivity index and we see

that by this

black line and the dashed green line is

just really not quite linear i mean if

you take a

500 foot view back of it

it doesn't look terrible but the

resonance at about the one and a half

kilohertz area really throws off the linearity

linearity

and then the treble has some issues

going on

combined with a boost in the high frequency

frequency

now you think

okay well can i eq that well that's when

we go down here to look at the early

reflections directivity index and we try

to determine can we eq that and by this

graphic this dash blue line we can tell

that probably not

the reason for that is because

it's linear through about two kilohertz

and then there's a pretty big jump of

about four or five db and then it falls

back down at about what is that four or

five kilohertz again so we have a pretty

significant deviation here

now if that's due to the vertical plane

we might be okay

so let's see is it

looking at the horizontal plane

we can see that no indeed what we were

seeing with the

issues in the directivity index are

actually due at least in part to the

horizontal response and the reason we

see that is because if we take this

bottom response at 90 degrees

if it was linear it would continue

falling on down but it rebounds at a

crossover region

bounces back up falls back down bounces

back up again so this is a multi-way

speaker that doesn't hold its radiation

pattern in the horizontal plane well at all

all

that means that if you were trying to eq

it you could eq one region of it but it

will reflect across all regions of it

meaning that if i wanted to

bring down this notch right here i could

do that i would also do it in the off

axis responses too if i wanted to bring

up this notch at 1.5 kilohertz well in

doing so i also bring up some

non-linearities off-axes and really what

that means is i'm just exacerbating the

problem of having an on-axis response

that does not match the off axis

response so you can't simply eq that

away you

you're really stuck with a design that

is limited

in its performance basically but this

speaker does have a pretty good bit of

output here's a speaker that i think is

a really good example of how the data

can be twisted and confused and manipulated

manipulated

to give you a story depending on what

the story is that you want to tell

and this is really a pitfall of

of some analyst you know if you're

trying to analyze the data and maybe you

go into it with preconceived notions or

uh an axe to grind for whatever reason

let's start with the poor on-axis

and listening window responses we can

see that they're just kind of bouncing

all over the place

and when you get into higher frequency i

mean it smooths out a little bit but

you've still got some issues going on

and right away you can imagine that this

would not be an ideal speaker for

2-channel listening because it's just

not neutral across the board it could be

worse i've certainly seen worse but on a

whole you would have to do some pretty

decent eq to get this thing flat well if

you're a two-channel purist you don't

have equalization so you can't get that

to tailor to the sound that you want but

if we're a home theater enthusiast or if

you're a two channel enthusiast with equalization

equalization

can you eq the speaker well let's go

look down here this blue line maybe at

first glance you're thinking no you

really can't because it's it's kind of

dipping and it's bouncing up

but the dip isn't really as much of a concern

concern

and if you just kind of draw an

imaginary line through there you're

probably okay and then you've got a

little bit of a peek but it's reasonably

narrow in q

relative to its amplitude so its

amplitude's about maybe 2 db 1 or 2 db

over this magical trend line that i would

would

imaginarily draw through here

and you can see that if you just drew

the trend line through here the early

reflections directivity index of the

speaker looks pretty darn good and it actually

actually

is a speaker that you could eq and if we

go look at the horizontal response it

basically just tells us the same story

that yes indeed the horizontal looks

quite good the vertical is what's really

throwing things off in these early

reflections area

and we can eq this speaker this happens

to be a diy sound group speaker i don't

remember what the cost is to build it

but it does come in kit form i want to

say it's like 400 or 500 bucks for one

speaker you would build it yourself and

i think this is a great example of a

speaker that has

poor on-axis linearity but really good

early reflections directivity and that

means that for two-channel listening

without eq

probably not a good choice but if you

have home theater system with

equalization or your two-channel

enthusiast and you do have something

like a mini dsp or odyssey or any of

those kind of good eq systems then you

could flatten this speaker right out you

could tweak it and shape it to your own

desire it doesn't have to be flat it can

be tweaked to whatever you want but the

good thing is is as you're adjusting the

on axis response you are also adjusting

the off axis response in the similar

fashion and therefore everything that

hits you from the front side of that

speaker is also going to be really at

you from the side off the reflection of

the walls and it's going to work to

provide you with an overall sound that you

you

actually want now we're going to talk

about compression output linear area but

we're going to do this rather briefly

because i've discussed this

in depth before i'll throw a link in the

card up here or i'll try to remember to

but basically what this hits on is

transients dynamic range of a speaker if

you're listening to music or

a vocalist or you're watching a movie at

a lower volume and then all of a sudden

something comes on you know pretty strong

strong

you want the speaker to be able to relay

that sense of urgency and if it can't

then usually it's unable to do so

simply due to compression meaning that

if i have a sound that is 10 db higher

than the sound i'm listening to right

now well i want my speaker to be able to

play that 10 db louder instantaneously

but if a speaker suffers compression it

may only play five or six or seven db

louder it won't achieve that full 10 db

swing and that's what these test results

show and basically every speaker that

i've shown you so far is okay in terms

of output limitations but when you start

getting into crazy high output like 102

db at one meter which is a pair in a

room would be about 92 to 94 db at four meters

meters

you start to show weaknesses you start

to see signs of weaknesses in these

designs and this is generally what i see

against all speakers so

a few of them will really do well at the

102 db region

most of them do pretty well at 86 and 96

db so most of them had a pretty good 20

db dynamic swing but fewer of them have

26 db dynamic range and the reason i

test a little bit further because i just

kind of want to see what the limits are

that's a factor that you really need to

consider when you're talking about home

theater because

as i said before most home theater

enthusiasts are going to be listening to

it a little bit louder on average and

they're also generally speaking going to

be sitting a little bit further away

which means they're going to turn it up

a little bit louder as well and you want

to be able to cover that full dynamic

range every music or your movie soundtracks

soundtracks

your discussion your dialogue etc all

the sounds that are going on in the

movies you want to be able to capture

that you want that wince you want that

sound that makes you blink

because that's where the goods are in my

humble opinion a few notables that i'm

really not discussing in this video

simply due to time distortion you know i

said earlier you want low distortion

what is low distortion well

just completely generically speaking

i generally look at about three percent

thd as kind of the mark of okay this

speaker's starting to kind of run out of steam

steam

that's a personal choice you could

choose one percent it really depends

on the

the content that you're listening to uh

the order of distortion and the

frequency where that distortion occurs

along with the order so it's not

something you can quantify into a single

band i said three percent that's just

something i generally go off of if it's

below one percent that's probably going

to be completely undetectable in terms

of harmonic distortion uh we're also not

getting into imd intermodulated

distortion where a speaker plays one

tone but also another tone or multi-tone

where it plays multiple tones at a time

generally speaking i find that the

compression and the distortion testing

that i do are enough to give you a good

idea of what a speaker's system

capabilities are specific directivity

index value i mentioned earlier that

that would really be a conversation for

another day so that's what we're going

to leave it and to wrap everything up

spl is really the the big compromiser

here if you want a speaker that has a

lot of output linearity you want a

speaker that has multiple drive units

and when you have multiple drive units

then you start compromising on the

directivity index meaning that whereas a

crossover is placed you may have a

mismatch in radiation from a tweeter to

a mid-range or a mid-range to a mid-bass

or if you have multiple mid basses or

multiple mid-ranges you have a continuity

continuity

disconnect there and that creates issues

with the direct sound versus the off

axis sound and that really means that

it's going to cost you more money to get

a speaker that's able to

fix those issues because usually the way

it's done is by active crossover dsp crossovers

crossovers

or more steep

steep filters

filters

in your crossover which means more

crossover components and

the magnitude of cost just increases a

lot to get more components into a

crossover network so

i would say generally that if you're

looking at budget speakers let's say a

few hundred bucks and they have multiple

mid-ranges well you can probably assume

that it's not going to have great

directivity uh if you're looking a

little bit more maybe

five six hundred to a thousand and over

a thousand then you're probably getting

a little bit safer but you don't know

until you have the data and certainly

you can buy it and try it but the data

helps you make a better educated

decision and that's really what this

whole video was about directivity

smoothness always matters it doesn't

matter if it's just 2-channel or if it's

multi-channel home theater and you've

got equalization smoothness always

matters because in no case do you want

the off axis sound to sound different

than the on-axis sound on-axis linearity

and listening window linearity are

are

more crucial for 2-channel without eq

but less crucial for

systems with equalization for the

reasons i discussed earlier and then the

the underlying thing for all of this is

does the on-screen action

take your mind off of the imperfections

in your speaker system i certainly think

that it does

uh maybe there's research out there to

kind of prove the disconnect but i can

tell you from my personal experience and

talking with others that that really is

the case and i think this is one reason

why some people say well i own you know

a b c or d speaker and i see your

measurements but i still like it well

that could be one reason why but there's

also another

multitude of reasons why you may or may

not like a speaker that i may or may not

like but again that's when we look at

the data and we try to work through

things together to provide us both with

a better understanding of what we're

seeing and how it's going to relate to

what we hear in our listening room and

that's really it i appreciate you

watching and i truly hope you learned

something this video took a little bit

more effort than i normally do and it's

probably not even going to show but i

hope it does and i really hope that it

helps you understand why i'm a proponent of

good data not just any old data but good

data to help us all learn and be better

informed of purchase decisions and to

understand what's going on in our rooms

not just to understand the differences

between two channel and home theater

systems but really to have a better

understanding and appreciation of

how to make a better purchase decision

and with all of that said i am out i

hope you have a good one

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YouTube Transcript:HiFi vs Home Theater Speakers. What's the difference?