These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Out of Pod Experience

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Living room speakers
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Mina Sebiestar
Minmatar Inner Space Conglomerate
#1 - 2015-11-14 07:17:22 UTC
Gonna grab me pair of floor standing speakers below are few links that made it to final stage at this point i need some input from community what to buy and or personal preferences and why.

Feel free to add manufacturer i miss or you personally think is worth a look,i would like to keep price around 300 and up to 400 $ mark.

Cheers.




JBL

Pioneer

Polk audio

Polk audio opt 2

BIC America

Boston acoustic

Infinity

Pure acoustic


You choke behind a smile a fake behind the fear

Because >>I is too hard
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#2 - 2015-11-14 07:53:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Jill Xelitras
Not a sound-engineer, but worked with (touring) audio equipment.

1) Don't buy what you haven't been able to listen to. Use the same music for the test, to hear differences.
2) The final sound-quality does not only depend on the speakers but on the quality of each step from source to output.
3) The same speakers can sound differently in different rooms.
4) A separate subwoofer may be needed to get the full sound experience.
5) Gold-plated cables are non-sense.

p.s.

what is the rest of your kit ? Specifically the amp ? Some speakers "require" the appropriate amplifier with controller to work at their full potential. BOSE does that for example.

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.
Mina Sebiestar
Minmatar Inner Space Conglomerate
#3 - 2015-11-14 09:24:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Mina Sebiestar
I have some 30 years young analog amp that i recently dusted off it have 4x100w RMS (450max) output at 4 ohm due to this every new speaker can be driven effortlessly due to them usually being 8 ohm few even 6.

I cant really test it because every speaker will sound louder on this amp and transporting amp it self gonna be pain and since i am not pairing new speakers with old ones(4 ohm 120w RMS yamahas) i just need to see what ppl see as good quality manufacturer and maybe some personal prefs so i can proceed with purchase.

Two current speakers are for TV/DVD/phone/Laptop that is used as media center,two new ones gonna be for my desktop to listen music games separately from tv speaker bank stuff like that....something higher than 35' would be almost at ear level while seated and closer to 4 ohm the better

For now im favoring Pioneer just on specs but i never owned one.

You choke behind a smile a fake behind the fear

Because >>I is too hard
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#4 - 2015-11-15 12:06:29 UTC
Mina Sebiestar wrote:
For now im favoring Pioneer just on specs but i never owned one.


It does get good reviews and Pioneer generally know what they are doing.

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.
Lan Wang
Princess Aiko Hold My Hand
Safety. Net
#5 - 2015-11-17 14:52:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Lan Wang
shame you left out Bower & Wilkins , if you want a good speaker i recommend B&W DM602 or DM603's Twisted

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
Mina Sebiestar
Minmatar Inner Space Conglomerate
#6 - 2015-11-17 20:27:52 UTC
JBL

Got these at the end they are cut above from all linked ones imo.

....those B&W floor standing looks nice they better be excellent rather than good for their class.

You choke behind a smile a fake behind the fear

Because >>I is too hard
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#7 - 2015-11-18 01:56:09 UTC
Mina Sebiestar wrote:
JBL

Got these at the end they are cut above from all linked ones imo.

....those B&W floor standing looks nice they better be excellent rather than good for their class.


Good choice and good price.

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.
Khergit Deserters
Crom's Angels
#8 - 2015-11-18 02:20:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Khergit Deserters
Great to hear that audiophiles are still around! I've been living with PC speakers and headphones for too many years. It comes with marriage, kids, and sharing spaces with family members, I suppose. I miss the sounds of sound waves bouncing off of walls and filling a room.

(I learned an interesting thing learned while studying how to soundproof a little room for getting nice sound out of a guitar amp. (Generally, the curve on good tone drastically shoots up as the volume increases. X decibels-- OK. X + 10 decibels-- OMG, what have I been missing!)

The thing learned was: Your house/apartment is built on a wooden frame network. Each beam of wood is a natural resonator and conductor of sound wave energy. And they're interjoined, so the vibrations carry through the whole grid of resonators. In other words, your house/apartment is like a giant resonating speaker system, sending vibrations to all rooms, and into the neighborhood. A window pane acts like a drumhead, forming an amorphous group of waves into a defined sheet of sound. Cry Stopping vibration energy leakage is kind of like stopping water leakage-- every little hole must be plugged).
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#9 - 2015-11-18 07:43:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Jill Xelitras
Khergit Deserters wrote:

(Generally, the curve on good tone drastically shoots up as the volume increases. X decibels-- OK. X + 10 decibels-- OMG, what have I been missing!)


I'm not a sound-engineer, so take this with a pinch of salt. I will try to explain how I understood certain concepts from what I remember reading or having seen done at my old work.

First thing is that we need our ears to hear. The way the ear works is that variations in air pressure hit the eardrum which than passes it on to the cochlea which transforms it into electrical signals that our brain perceives as sound. The important part is that the cochlea is not equally sensitive to low, medium or high pressure waves. Whithin our hearing amplitude generally considered to be 20Hz to 20kHz, we are more sensitive to higher pitched mid-range (1kHz to 4kHz) sounds than to lower ones.

linked dspguide wrote:
Table 22-1 shows the relationship between sound intensity and perceived loudness. It is common to express sound intensity on a logarithmic scale, called decibel SPL (Sound Power Level). On this scale, 0 dB SPL is a sound wave power of 10-16 watts/cm2, about the weakest sound detectable by the human ear. Normal speech is at about 60 dB SPL, while painful damage to the ear occurs at about 140 dB SPL.

(and two paragraphs below)

The range of human hearing is generally considered to be 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but it is far more sensitive to sounds between 1 kHz and 4 kHz. For example, listeners can detect sounds as low as 0 dB SPL at 3 kHz, but require 40 dB SPL at 100 hertz (an amplitude increase of 100). Listeners can tell that two tones are different if their frequencies differ by more than about 0.3% at 3 kHz. This increases to 3% at 100 hertz.


This probably explains a good chunk of why "X decibels-- OK. X + 10 decibels-- OMG, what have I been missing!"

Another thing is how (air pressure a.k.a. sound) waves travel through the air. Imagine ripples in the water from throwing stones into a pond. Smaller stone = smaller ripple that fade quicker. Larger stone = bigger ripples that spread further. It's similar with sound waves. Deep booming sounds (low-frequencies) carry further than high frequencies.

On a side note: very low frequencies are omni-directional, that's why the placement of your sub doesn't matter as much as the placement of your loudspeaker cabinet housing mid-range speakers and tweeters. High-frequencies are very directional. That's why tweeters are at the top of your floorstanding cabinets, and also explains why it is recommended to have them roughly at the height of you ears.

The soundwaves travel through the air from the source (loudspeaker) until they hit an object. What happens then is that a part of the energy of the soundwave is passed on to the object and a part is reflected. In a totally empty room, you will hear the reflected waves very well (might I say annoyingly well).

What happens to the energy that is passed on to the object ? For high frequencies, the energy dissipates generally. Lower frequencies can make the object vibrate, which creates new soundwaves. If you stand outside of a closed car, which has music unning, you will hear most of the lower frequencies but miss completely on the mid to high frequencies. And I think we all know that thump, thump, thump sound from the sub in a car that is still far away. This, passing on energy, is what makes complete soundproofing difficult / expensive.

The fact that high frequencies are very directional and that they dissipate quickly, is why positionning your loudspeakers correctly is important.

Every room will sound differently because the soundwaves may travel different distances before they re reflected or dissipated. Also different material has different degrees of reflection or absortion. A carpeted room sounds different from a tiled one. Even the number of people in a room changes the sound quality.

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#10 - 2015-11-18 07:51:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Jill Xelitras
part 2

On Loudspeakers.

I've talked about how deep booming sounds are long waves of airpressure changes and how high pitched sounds are short waves of airpressure.

Have you ever wondered why the tweeter on a sound cabinet is this tiny 1" cone, but the mid-range and sub speakers are bigger ?

In order to create soundwaves (differences in airpressure), a magnet is used to pull the cone of a speaker back and release it again. The smaller the cone the faster it will spring back to its original position, making it easier to produce high frequency waves. Larger cones are used to create the mid to low-range frequencies.

Smaller cones require less energy to be moved than larger cones. This means that it takes more energy to create mid and low frequency sounds. One of the many reasons why 20W Loudpeakers sound awful compared to 40W, 60W ... But don't trust the numbers only. Same as bigger speakers say 6" should sound better than a 5" (for the appropriate frequency range) , that is not a guarantee of better sound quality.

There's another property of waves that I forgot to mention in the last post. Two waves can either cancel each other out or reinforce each other, depending of whether they are in phase or out of phase. Some cabinets house several speakers of the same size. Using the reinforcing property of soundwaves, this allows the manufacturer to create a sound both louder and with a bigger range to it as if it came from a single bigger loudspeaker.

The last important bit of information I can think of today is to make sure you connect the poles correctly between your amp and your speaker. You know + on + and - on -. If you reverse the polarity the loudspeaker will still work, but it's not optimal.

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.