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Post by markc on Sept 1, 2020 8:16:52 GMT -5
I will put my money betting that a computer was not used to design that speaker! It was designed by a human designer for sexiness and aesthetics and maybe computer modelling was subsequently used to optimise and make the most of the overall style, but only optimising what was possible while keep that design and any limitations it had, rather than designing de novo. You want my address to send that money, markc ? www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/kef-blade-loudspeaker-hi-fi/The advertorial blurb of the Absolute Sound article you linked is rhetoric and you should have gone to the source at Kef! The Blade was clearly designed by a person based on artistic form, exactly as its looks would lead one to suspect. Then, as I said, computer optimisation to get the best sound that that form allowed plus tweaking of the form to deliver it would have been done, but the look of the thing was born primarily of aesthetic considerations.  all of this aside, if it sounds 1/10 as glorious as it looks and I had that kind of money I’d buy them in a heartbeat! (which is why aesthetics drive the hearts and mind and soul. Our ears are trained to deceive us and we over-ride them every day as they are secondary senses. This is a major factor affecting all of us in the audio Hobby. |
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Post by 405x5 on Sept 1, 2020 9:21:19 GMT -5
“Note: This is the first tune I noticed this noise even though I played at these levels with plenty of other bass heavy tunes (Without the throbbing synthetic POP bass groove). While this is not great news, it shouldn't affect me in my normal day to day usage. However, if techno-pop/rap is your thing, I'm not sure these should be your first choice for powered speakers.” If pop/rap were my thing, the “noise” wouldn’t matter! (The more the better)! As it is these days when I’m driving in traffic and the car next to me is loosening my fillings, I’m convinced that I now live on another planet 🌎. Bill |
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Post by garbulky on Sept 1, 2020 9:57:58 GMT -5
The advertorial blurb of the Absolute Sound article you linked is rhetoric and you should have gone to the source at Kef! The Blade was clearly designed by a person based on artistic form, exactly as its looks would lead one to suspect. Then, as I said, computer optimisation to get the best sound that that form allowed plus tweaking of the form to deliver it would have been done, but the look of the thing was born primarily of aesthetic considerations. View Attachmentall of this aside, if it sounds 1/10 as glorious as it looks and I had that kind of money I’d buy them in a heartbeat! (which is why aesthetics drive the hearts and mind and soul. Our ears are trained to deceive us and we over-ride them every day as they are secondary senses. This is a major factor affecting all of us in the audio Hobby. If you read that blurb carefully, it looks like both looks and function went hand in hand. "Initially engineers worked with a design company"... There's nothing wrong with doing that. It would be hard to prove that it was a looks first and then later optimization. |
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Post by 405x5 on Sept 1, 2020 11:28:24 GMT -5
Thanks, that's a good list of goals. Are there firms marketing CAD programs for speakers where you can, for example, add an internal brace of a specified material to a specified place, or move the tweeter an inch, and get a prediction of the result? There are, but to my knowledge they're mostly proprietary. There are some "consumer" programs available to DIY fans, but from what I understand, they're Model-T Fords compared to the latest Lexus model. Companies such as Meridian, KEF, and others attempt to use cutting edge computer optimization for their products. An available example would be the KEF Blade models. The relatively new blade is old hat to me. ....43 years I’ve been living with offset driver configuration loudspeakers, whose design arose out of extensive study of the listening room environment/acoustic room boundaries. Bill |
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Sept 1, 2020 13:27:18 GMT -5
People here will argue about anything...
To the OP, sounds to me like what you experienced is the benefits of custom DSP and custom designed amplification tailored to the driver in the system. Also, when you push such a system (any system, actually) you will discover its limitations. If you like the sound otherwise, stay away from those limitations. If the limitations are impacting your ability to enjoy the system, then you may need something different.
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Post by Cogito on Sept 1, 2020 16:01:19 GMT -5
People here will argue about anything... To the OP, sounds to me like what you experienced is the benefits of custom DSP and custom designed amplification tailored to the driver in the system. Also, when you push such a system (any system, actually) you will discover its limitations. If you like the sound otherwise, stay away from those limitations. If the limitations are impacting your ability to enjoy the system, then you may need something different. I agree 100%. This particular issue isn't a limitation in my normal day to day usage. However, I'm VERY surprised this hasn't come up in the dozens and dozens of very favorable reviews I've seen of this product. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Sept 1, 2020 16:55:15 GMT -5
Computer programs are really handy for designing a speaker cabinet... but that's not where most of these wondrous little speakers benefit.
There are quite a few physical limitations that simply cannot be overcome by any amount of cool cabinet design. For example, let's assume that you have a 5" woofer, which has a peak excursion of 0.5" in each direction. And let's assume you're putting it in a small cabinet with no room for a passive radiator or a big port. (Both of those also give you a benefit - but that benefit is also subject to specific limits.) There is an absolute limit on how much air that speaker can move... period... end. You can trade off efficiency, against low frequency response, against distortion... So, for example, you can make it play very loud, but not go below 80 Hz... Or you can make it go flat down to 20 Hz, but at the expense of being very inefficient, and not being able to play very loudly... Where "fancy" DSP processing enters the game is in terms of what happens when you actually reach those limits. For example, let's assume I've optimized my little wonder to be flat down to 20 Hz, and put a powerful amplifier inside it. It will sound really great when playing very quietly, but if I try to play loud organ notes it will distort, and may even damage itself.
Enter the DSP..... First of all I'm going to use my DSP to watch what's coming in very carefully... So, for starters, I'm going to make my speaker almost indestructible... If you play really quiet organ music through it that music will simply play... However, if you try to turn it up, I'm going to limit the low notes to a level that's safe for my speaker... Not only will I limit the overall output, but I'll keep track of how long it plays, and calculate how much the voice coil will heat up... So my little wonder will never distort, or get too hot, and will always sound pretty good... But you may notice that it never seems to make really loud pipe organ notes...
And, since I have plenty of processing power, all of this super-smart limiting will be distortion-free.
But we're not done yet... We probably all know that, when you play low notes, your ears aren't very sensitive to the low note itself... And most of what you hear are the harmonics... So, if we have a low note that we can't safely play at the proper level, we'll BOOST the harmonics that go with it so the low note SEEMS louder... When we do this we will PERCEIVE the low note as being louder than it really is... In fact, if someone tries to play a really clean low note that we can't play... We'll cut out the dangerous low note, and juts plain MAKE UP some harmonics that will trick us into THINKING we hear it... This sort of trickery is quite often done with those cool little portable speakers, and the speakers in your phone... And it's how they manage to sound better than we know they possibly can... (Of course it requires that we customize the programming to the specific speaker, cabinet, and electronics we're using.) Incidentally... if you want to check out another tiny little speaker that is scary-good for its size... check out these...
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Post by daveczski65 on Sept 2, 2020 9:57:18 GMT -5
Wish they would bring back the Stealth 6s...Love my pair and would luv a couple more.
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Post by leonski on Aug 23, 2021 1:47:37 GMT -5
Frequency content for music is far from uniform.
As you note? Techno / pop-rap can have a LOT of bass energy. And frankly, I think you are getting quite good performance from a 6 1/2" driver.
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Post by vcautokid on Aug 23, 2021 5:23:41 GMT -5
Yes! For the rest us day to day folks and what currently could be had Vanatoo and Edifier are heavy hitters on what is possible on the easy money. Would be cool if Emotiva had a current answer on Stealth or Airmotiv. Sure the big spread is nice but budget and space and use case frequently dictate otherwise. I am a fan of the right solutions, and big doesn't always mean better all the time. Small speaker monitor like solutions for me are fun. Go just about anywhere, no fuss driving them no black boxes if you don't want them. They can be a self contained solution or pretty close. Plus, more of my friends can get them then say the much bigger spreads where financials and other considerations come into play.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Aug 23, 2021 8:45:11 GMT -5
I am personally a major fan of powered speakers (I have a pair of our Stealth 8's in my living room).
I find the Vanatoo Transparent Zeros very impressive in terms of sound... and even more so when you see their size... they are actually smaller in person than they look in the pictures. And they actually deliver what seems like substantial amounts of reasonably low bass. (More importantly they manage to have a nice balanced sound... and don't sound at all "tinny".)
They also have both analog and digital inputs (remember that they are powered speakers with built-in amplifiers)... And they can play quite reasonably loud in a small to medium sized room...
The only "catch" is that they can be somewhat difficult to mount. The main drivers are on the front and either the top or bottom is occupied by a passive radiator. If you put the passive radiator on the bottom then you must use the stand so the bottom is raised off what it's sitting on... And, if you put the passive radiator on the top, then you need to be careful not to set or drop anything on the tops... Because, of this, they work well with a tripod mount, but can be a bit tricky to find a safe home for on a crowded desk...
(They also have an interesting, and rather tricky, way that you program them... but you don't do that very often.)
I should also point out something else about ALL powered speakers that isn't obvious until you own a set: wires. Nobody has yet designed a "serious" powered speaker that can be run on batteries in normal use.
When you look at the pictures you see a pair of speakers sitting on a table. It looks very simple and neat.
But, in real life, every serious powered speaker requires at least a power cable connected to it (at least to one of the pair). And, in addition to that, with a powered speaker like the Vanatoo, all of your source inputs must also be connected to the "master" speaker, and a wire run from there to the "slave" speaker. (Even if you use Bluetooth you still need the power cable and the wire connecting the two speakers.)
This is not a big deal...
Especially if the speaker is located where you can simply run the wires behind it...
But it can be a factor if you want to hang that speaker on a wall... or sit it on a tripod... or put it in the middle of your desk.
Yes! For the rest us day to day folks and what currently could be had Vanatoo and Edifier are heavy hitters on what is possible on the easy money. Would be cool if Emotiva had a current answer on Stealth or Airmotiv. Sure the big spread is nice but budget and space and use case frequently dictate otherwise. I am a fan of the right solutions, and big doesn't always mean better all the time. Small speaker monitor like solutions for me are fun. Go just about anywhere, no fuss driving them no black boxes if you don't want them. They can be a self contained solution or pretty close. Plus, more of my friends can get them then say the much bigger spreads where financials and other considerations come into play. |
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Post by vcautokid on Aug 23, 2021 10:02:12 GMT -5
Not really. Mounting is easy with the right speaker and right mount. Also stands work great too. Or in some cases your desk with do. You are not limited by your imagination and ingenuity, not so much the product per se. I visit professional tight spaced control rooms for instance that mount speakers at least as big as Stealth 8's no problem. I love the versatility of these new powered speakers. I am not a big fan anymore of the Black Boxes all over and a powered monitor frankly is just so easy. Also no guess work. Everything is engineered and designed and ready to go.
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Post by drtrey3 on Aug 23, 2021 10:43:09 GMT -5
About that Bluetooth . . .
Ah, ok, I see it is just an option. Bluetooth is not an audiophile connection.
Trey
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Post by leonski on Aug 23, 2021 15:04:03 GMT -5
Some flavor of APT-X may be the hifi solution for bluetooth www.aptx.com/ |
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Post by Cogito on Aug 23, 2021 20:30:23 GMT -5
About that Bluetooth . . . Ah, ok, I see it is just an option. Bluetooth is not an audiophile connection. Trey But it's SUPER convenient and more than adequate for casual listening, especially if you have an aptX HD source. If Bluetooth isn't your thing, the Edifiers also have balanced and unbalanced analog, optical, coaxial and USB inputs. |
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Post by leonski on Aug 23, 2021 23:44:19 GMT -5
I had a CA DacMagic + and the Blue Tooth dongle was originally 100$ for something worth about 1/3 that. Just another symptom of CA Greed.
It IS an attractive idea ruined by CA.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Aug 24, 2021 11:37:34 GMT -5
There is currently no viable lossless Bluetooth option.
From what I've read there is a lossless option in the Bluetooth standard - but nothing supports it except a few rather proprietary products.
AptX is not lossless. AAC is not lossless.
AptX HD is NOT lossless.
There definitely are differences... And both AAC and AptX are better quality than the default Bluetooth audio mode (SBC).
Some flavor of APT-X may be the hifi solution for bluetooth www.aptx.com/ |
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Post by drtrey3 on Aug 24, 2021 14:42:23 GMT -5
Oh heck yeah blu-tooth is super convenient and my kids love it. I have it set up on my Preamp for the kids. I just got the crazy idea that the preamp was blutooth ONLY. Not sure how I got that idea. But that would not be what I am looking for. I think I even saw a blutooth only one tube preamp! Just not my sauce.
Trey
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Post by leonski on Aug 24, 2021 21:31:24 GMT -5
There is currently no viable lossless Bluetooth option.
From what I've read there is a lossless option in the Bluetooth standard - but nothing supports it except a few rather proprietary products.
AptX is not lossless. AAC is not lossless.
AptX HD is NOT lossless.
There definitely are differences... And both AAC and AptX are better quality than the default Bluetooth audio mode (SBC).
Some flavor of APT-X may be the hifi solution for bluetooth www.aptx.com/IF.....a Real BIG IF......I somehow must go BT? I won't let perfect (not implimented widely) be the enemy of Good......APT-X and perhaps AAC....... |
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