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Mixing Cabinets and Phase Response.

#21
billfitzmaurice said:
+1. Phase is of no consequence if the system has only one phase response, it's when you have different phase responses competing with each other that things get muddy. If each driver set operates within its own frequency bandwidth there's no problem.
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Bill, don't you think crossover design is of some consequence there as far as good even representation is concerned? - though more often in the nearer field than as one gets further out where room response begins to play more of a part? Seems like some multiway systems rise or fall because of what's going on in the crossover region(s).

I've noticed among the more sophisticated designers and DIYers in the home enthusiast camp that there is a lot more concern for designing crossovers that represent well over a larger area - perhaps driven by the sophisticated measurement tools that can now show what's going on at various placements in the soundstage. More of them are becoming aware of the importance of pattern matching, controlling relationships between nulls and lobes, much like what is going on in SR circles.
 
#22
greenboy said:
I've noticed among the more sophisticated designers and DIYers in the home enthusiast camp that there is a lot more concern for designing crossovers that represent well over a larger area - perhaps driven by the sophisticated measurement tools that can now show what's going on at various placements in the soundstage. More of them are becoming aware of the importance of pattern matching, controlling relationships between nulls and lobes, much like what is going on in SR circles.
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There's a lot to that, but the electric bass cab industry has got a long way to go with driver alignments before it can benefit from well engineered crossovers.
 
#23
billfitzmaurice said:
There's a trade off with every speaker. The ideal speaker would be a single element with zero moving mass, infinitely narrow and infinitely high. It doesn't exist. Electrostatic speakers with those goals in mind, Quad ESL for example, are acknowledged to be some of the best sounding speakers in existence.
As one goes further and further from that ideal speaker, for whatever reason, more and more compromises are necessary. That's all well and good if one is aware of those compromises and how to make the best of them. A well designed speaker system will consider phase response as one of those compromises. A poorly designed system will ignore it. That doesn't mean that one might not find a system assembled by the 'throw of the dice' method to sound perfectly acceptable, you're bound to throw a 7 or 11 every once in a while. But you're just as likely to roll craps.
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Nicely said.

Finding a speaker you'll be happy with is often about finding the right set of comprimises.

Right now, I really like the sound of this old ampeg folded horn...the comprimise...its huge, but there's just something about its tone that does it for me. I do wish I could find a modern design that captures the what ever "it" is about that cab in a smaller package.

So, my trade off is a really big cab, to get efficiency and tone that I like.
 
#25
For me the most important thing to keep in perspective is that though the Science is sound regarding Phasing this applies much more in a Laboratory than in the real world. The Physics of each situation for most of us are entirely different and the sound is more affected by the environment than the environment affect by the sound.
 
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#26
Actually it's the acoustic environment that messes with rigs with poor phase alignment issues worse than it does with ones that are a little closer to phase parity. But as I've said a few times now, bass players aren't always going to notice much because they don't tend to roam enough area to realize that "their tone" isn't what various listening positions are getting. It's out further that things are often a wall of sludge or tinniness. It's got nothing to do with laboratory versus this or that live venue.

That said, a lot of common mixed cabs and cab tunings aren't necessarily all that different in terms of phase; rather: some are - some are not.
 
#31
:eyebrow:

anyhow, the point of checking out how a rig sounds everywhere is an important one when it comes to a lot of issues. First thing i do is check out a rig from several locations and get the opinions of those who know what they're talking about who are willing to walk around. One of the reasons I've stuck with my mismatched setup is that it tends to sound the same up close (not on stage but in the audience), and father away. Ditto for moving left to right unless you get way, way off axis.

Are the 15 and 12 i use similar in phase response? maybe, i wouldn't put tons of cash on it. however it seems to work well. Perhaps "happy accident" might better describe my situation.
 
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#32
The first few milliseconds of a sound impulse are especially critical to clarity and timbre, and all else being equal the cleaner we can make the first few milliseconds, the better the subjective sound quality.

Now the ear/brain system doesn't really hear waveforms as such... it hears energy distibutions (and even that's not accurate, but it's a bit closer). It is quite possible that adding a second cab whose response "zigs" where the other one "zags" will result in a more favorable energy distribution, which can sound better than just having one "clean" sound source. This would be one of those cases where "all else" was not equal.

I can certainly understand people being frustrated by the apparent disconnect between theory and the real world. In my opinion when there is such a disconnect (assuming listener bias isn't a factor), then the theory is either incorrect or incomplete... and the real world is a very, very complicated place, so complete theories are pretty rare. But that doesn't mean theories are useless; every good-sounding piece of equipment any of us owns started out as a good idea, a practical application of valid theories.

Regarding cabs and their environments, consider that while an unamplified grand piano sounds best in a good recital hall, it still sounds really good in a living room or a high school gym. And it sounds good pretty much throughout the room, not just in one place. I think a musical instrument cab that's doing its job well should likewise sound good in a wide variety of environments, especially given that we can EQ a bit if we need to. Well... that's one theory, anyway!
 
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#33
Then there is a whole nother variable if your playing live and part of your sound is through the PA.

I think it is important to have good cabs and a good sound but I think this stuff can be analysed a little too much.
 
#34
Red Planet said:
Then there is a whole nother variable if your playing live and part of your sound is through the PA.

I think it is important to have good cabs and a good sound but I think this stuff can be analysed a little too much.
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I don't disagree. Like I'm not about to go tell Victor Wooten that his rig sucks because it's mixed, or tell Marcus Miller he shouldn't line 410's side by side because it cuts dispersion to nothing. They like it, they sound fantastic in the PA, end of story. But if you're bugged by your sound, learning a bit about speaker science can solve many problems for you. Knowledge is never a bad thing.
 
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#35
As far as knowledge goes, and this is anecdotal: 9/10th of the bad-sounding sound engineers whose "work" I have heard didn't know much of anything - though sometimes they had a lot of dumb ideas - myths - that they'd expound on if caught in the right mood at the bar, their favorite haunt. Things like the "it takes bass 30 feet to develop" manglement are exactly why many of them are NOT good at sonic problem solving; they misunderstand so much of what they are hearing if they are bothering to hear at all.

Having a knowledge base to work from gives you a lot of methods to problem solve, and believe me there are lots and lots of problems that have very little to do with the performing talent. Problems where it's good to be drawing off of a lot of acoustics concepts and not just wandering in the dark. People who tend to take pride in their work for the right reasons are people who want to learn more and apply it. That's true of bassists, sound engineers, and test pilots.

Ears really aren't that hard to come by. But brains to use them well are.
 
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#36
Even though this isn't strictly about mixing cabs with different phase, it can be. Here's an example of one thing that goes on with small or average cross-section ports as power is increased:

port_10V_1v_20mV.jpg


This overlay was constructed using a prototype software version that did not have separate colors for each buffer but the blue lines are phase and the orange are impedance. As more power is applied the port actually changes the box tuning and the in-box impedance drops. So you actually end up with both power compression which can also change things, and this effect of increasing power messing with phase which you normally don't hear, but the results on box tuning which you can hear.

With multiple boxes some of which may have inadequate port area, it's just another contributor to sloppy sound even before in-port resonances or chuffing are introduced to the mix.
 
#37
JimmyM said:
I don't disagree. Like I'm not about to go tell Victor Wooten that his rig sucks because it's mixed, or tell Marcus Miller he shouldn't line 410's side by side because it cuts dispersion to nothing. They like it, they sound fantastic in the PA, end of story. But if you're bugged by your sound, learning a bit about speaker science can solve many problems for you. Knowledge is never a bad thing.
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Agreed.
 
#40
Although the real world often differs from the paper one, in reality, a player is virtually never able to test a rig in a live setting before buying, let alone to test it from many points in one or more venues. Therefore, it makes sense to stack the odds in favor of a system that works when buying. Understanding the theory seems like the best way to do that. I must confess my 310-210 stack sounds great for the band, but I haven't TRULY listened to it from the audience yet. That's my next step.
 

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