Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/26/83; site ihuxl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!floyd!whuxlb!pyuxll!eisx!npoiv!npois!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!we13!ihnp4!ihuxl!seifert From: seifert@ihuxl.UUCP Newsgroups: net.audio Subject: Re: Speakers Message-ID: <434@ihuxl.UUCP> Date: Wed, 13-Jul-83 09:33:46 EDT Article-I.D.: ihuxl.434 Posted: Wed Jul 13 09:33:46 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 14-Jul-83 21:29:59 EDT References: <1392@iedl02.UUCP> Organization: BTL Naperville, Il. Lines: 38 "British" speakers intentionally "beam" the high frequencies at you, as opposed the the "American" school of thought which tries for as wide a pattern of dispersion as possible (remember omni- directional speakers?). The idea is to avoid early reflections which mess up the sound. My view is that low frequencies are going to be omni-directional (or close to it) no matter what you do, so build the high- frequency drivers to match. Also, I don't like having the sound change drastically when I walk around the room. Which also explains why I haven't gotten Carver's sonic-holography toy. There is the alternate method of eliminating early reflections: cover the 'speaker' half of the room with sound absorbing material, carpet, ceiling tile, rugs on the walls, etc. Put sound reflecting material on the other end for balance. Put the listening chair/sofa/whatever in the middle. I haven't tried this, but would like to some day. Has anyone experimented with this? It was in "Absolute sound" or "Sensible sound" a couple of years ago. An interesting side-effect of building speakers with 'wide-angle tweeters' is that, in the old days, when tweeters beamed horribly, they were also much more efficient than the woofer, and would have a resistor in series to decrease the power to them. Now they are building 180-degree tweeters and gee, it takes more power to cover more area! To get enough power into the tweeter of my AR-11s, they made the impedance at 10 kHz about 1.5 Ohms, the max impedance is about 16 Ohms somewhere in the bass region. The speakers are rated at 4 Ohms, but your amp better not mind driving under 2 Ohms! And whatever you do, don't parallel anything with them! (assuming solid state, tranformerless output power amps.) Dave Seifert ihnp4!ihuxl!seifert