Double Bass Ultimate DB Cab (or amp) Shootout, Anyone?

[DukeLeJeune]

We can largely "subtract out the room" when we are listening in it. Of course, we gotta be in the room to do that and that's why I said that listening to recordings made in another room can be quite misleading.

Something critical to the ears is the directions from which reflections arrive. When they arrive from the same direction as the first-arrival sound, they tend to be perceived as coloration. When they arrive from a very different direction, they tend to be perceived as enhancing timbre and immersion or envelopment (assuming they are spectrally correct). If you ever played with a cassette tape recorder as a kid and noticed how unnatural voices sounded when played back, that's one reason.

One type of recording that I think would facilitate "listening through the room" would be a binaural recording played back through earphones or headphones. Binaural recordings use a dummy head and dummy ears to get the head and ears' effects on incoming sound, which makes a huge difference. One of these days that's something I'd like to get into because I think it would be useful from a marketing standpoint, but the initial investment in a good binaural setup is pretty steep. Here's an introduction to binaural recordings, listen through earphones or headphones (the closer the little speaker is to your ear canal, the better) to at least the first two minutes or so:



And, here's a song recorded binaurally (there's a female vocalist off to the left that you will hear long before you see, just in case the sound doesn't match the visual at first):



The camera movement on this one is unfortunately disconnected from the audio:



Anyway if I ever have the budget to generate in-room recordings of bass cabs or whatever, binaural recordings are what I'd lean towards.

 

[Ric Vice]

One type of recording that I think would facilitate "listening through the room" would be a binaural recording played back through earphones or headphones. Binaural recordings use a dummy head and dummy ears to get the head and ears' effects on incoming sound, which makes a huge difference. One of these days that's something I'd like to get into because I think it would be useful from a marketing standpoint, but the initial investment in a good binaural setup is pretty steep........

Anyway if I ever have the budget to generate in-room recordings of bass cabs or whatever, binaural recordings are what I'd lean towards.

Duke,
Very cool stuff, indeed. I remember NPR doing some broadcast segments with Binural recordings, quite remarkable. Considering the Schoeps FMK Binural microphone cost $7,100.00, even at that, it would be interesting.

Ric

 

[drurb]

Something critical to the ears is the directions from which reflections arrive. When they arrive from the same direction as the first-arrival sound, they tend to be perceived as coloration. When they arrive from a very different direction, they tend to be perceived as enhancing timbre and immersion or envelopment (assuming they are spectrally correct). If you ever played with a cassette tape recorder as a kid and noticed how unnatural voices sounded when played back, that's one reason.

Much of what's "desirable" in concert hall reflection has to do with the interaural (between-ear) correlation of the reflections. See work by Ando, in particular.

One type of recording that I think would facilitate "listening through the room" would be a binaural recording played back through earphones or headphones. Binaural recordings use a dummy head and dummy ears to get the head and ears' effects on incoming sound, which makes a huge difference. One of these days that's something I'd like to get into because I think it would be useful from a marketing standpoint, but the initial investment in a good binaural setup is pretty steep. Here's an introduction to binaural recordings, listen through earphones or headphones (the closer the little speaker is to your ear canal, the better) to at least the first two minutes or so:

Well, I'm sure you weren't explaining binaural recordings for me. Indeed, they are a good way to listen to a room and that has been done for decades. Some of the best work of that type was done in Jens Blauert's lab at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Blauert and colleagues took "dry" recordings and even convolved them with the theoretical head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) so that designers could "hear" a concert hall before it was built! You may be interested to know that wonderful binaural spatialized recordings can be made without any pinna on the dummy head. In a reverberant environment, the transfer functions of the pinna turn out to be less important than many think.

The Virtual Barber Shop is an impressive binaural recording and one often used to introduce students to the concepts. Anyone interested should have fun with it!

Actually, the required investment in a good binaural setup need not be all that steep. If you ever want to do it, I'd be happy to help. You know how to find me.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Much of what's "desirable" in concert hall reflection has to do with the interaural (between-ear) correlation of the reflections. See work by Ando, in particular.

I've read Blauert but not Ando, not yet anyway. Greisinger is another source I've spent some time with. My better home audio speakers are designed to promote decorrelation in the first order reflections, but I can count on one hand the number of speaker designers I'm aware of who deliberately take that into account.

Actually, the required investment in a good binaural setup need not be all that steep. If you ever want to do it, I'd be happy to help. You know how to find me.

Thank you!

 

[Povl Carstensen]

That's not at all the type of preference to which I was referring. Let me explain further. No two real speaker systems of different designs will measure the same (assuming a meaningful set of measures) and no two will sound the same. The ability of normal human listeners to discriminate between them under laboratory conditions would reveal relatively small inter-individual differences. On the other hand, given those real physical differences, different people will prefer the sound of one over the other. Different people will weight the various sonic characteristics differently and so will judge one or the other system to be preferred.

Now, you gave the example of two speakers that measure the same, one with a plastic cone and the other with a paper cone. I'm assuming that, in your example, they are acoustically (physically) identical. Your preference for a paper or plastic cone has nothing to do with sound. That is not preference based on auditory perception at all or based on any sensory perception for that matter. I was limiting my discussion to acoustic measurements and auditory processing and decision-making.

With regard to valves and transistors, the history of all that is littered with bias. When some people know that they are listening to a valve amp (especially one on which they plunked down a bunch of cash), they will come up with all kinds of adjectives to distinguish it from a solid-state amp. I really don't want to go down that rabbit-hole, especially on the internet, but there's good evidence amassed over decades that, given essentially identical measurements within certain tolerances, people cannot distinguish between and have no reliable preference between valve-based and solid-state amps, per se. That is not to say that typical valve-based circuits do not sound different than typical solid-state circuits. They generally do. The vast majority of that difference can be explained by the sometimes-preferred frequency-response anomalies of the valve circuits. In some contexts, such as musical instrument amplification, those frequency-response characteristics are often part and parcel of the artist's sound.

I am pretty convinced that a paper/cardboard cone transmits the sound with a different timbre than a plastic cone. And I suspect the same could be said about the way the signal is transmitted through different devices like tubes and transistors. Now you might say that the difference is distortion or colouring (or lack of the same), but still.
Edit: The thing is, plastic and paper are not acoustically (physically) identical. In that respect our disagreement is partly semantic, I suppose.

 

[drurb]

I am pretty convinced that a paper/cardboard cone transmits the sound with a different timbre than a plastic cone. And I suspect the same could be said about the way the signal is transmitted through different devices like tubes and transistors. Now you might say that the difference is distortion or colouring (or lack of the same), but still.
Edit: The thing is, plastic and paper are not acoustically (physically) identical. In that respect our disagreement is partly semantic, I suppose.

In your example, you assumed that they measured the same. To the extent that the two types of cones have different "timbres," then they will not measure the same at all. If the differences are large enough to be audible, then some might prefer one over the other. In that case, we're in absolute agreement. That said, one must consider sources of variance. I suspect that any differences that might exist between plastic and paper cones, per se, would be swamped by the myriad other factors that will differ between any two speaker systems.

 

[Povl Carstensen]

In my experience paper cones do sound very different than plastic ones. And even if the loudspeakers measured the same, I would leave the space mentioned in my first post, for intangibles. For instance, many tube devices are built with respect for a flat frequency curve, but their sound is still preferred by some. Ofcourse I realise there are other measurements, and I am painfully aware of psychoacoustic phenomenae.

 

[rickwolff]

I am painfully aware of psychoacoustic phenomenae.

If it's passed the pain threshold, perhaps you need to turn your amp down. lol

 

[drurb]

In my experience paper cones do sound very different than plastic ones. And even if the loudspeakers measured the same, I would leave the space mentioned in my first post, for intangibles. For instance, many tube devices are built with respect for a flat frequency curve, but their sound is still preferred by some. Ofcourse I realise there are other measurements, and I am painfully aware of psychoacoustic phenomenae.

Actually, what you cite are not fundamental psychoacoustic phenomena. They are psychological judgment phenomena. Psychoacoustics refers to the hard science of the relation between physical stimuli and how they are processed and perceived. It is a subset of psychophysics and state-of-the art experiments are most often designed to eschew subjective judgments. I'm not painfully aware because, for me, psychoacoustics is quite pleasurable.

 

[Povl Carstensen]

If it's passed the pain threshold, perhaps you need to turn your amp down. lol

View attachment 736298

It is more like adjusting my amp, hearing the results, and realise it has been turned off the whole time.

 

[WayneDupuis]

I started on my way to double bass as my main instrument playing an Ovation acoustic bass through a Polk Audio sub, then purchased an acoustic image series ii Contra head, and tried it through my Eden 4 ohm 2x10 XLT. The sound was harsh and thin compared to the Polk. This made no sense to me at all so I started trying different cabs. The Polk was sitting there so I pulled the power out of it and plugged it into the ai head, and boom; there was the natural sound of the instrument. This got me thinking maybe it's a full range vs sub speaker thing?
I went to my local car audio store and bought a ported single 10 cab and a dual voice coil 350 watt, 4 ohm sub. Wired it for 2 ohm load and buttoned it into the cab. This speaker is about 2 feet tall and front ported Bassworx cab and it is amazing that it works so well for both my standup and acoustic ovation with the AI head.
I can crank the volume stand a foot away from the head and no howling or squellching.
Why do electric cabs sound so thin in comparison?

I would love to hear some quality comparative recordings of some of the current, popular, DB cabs.

I'm thinking MAS 45 and 26, Fearless f110, F112, Genzler Array Neo 112, Crazy 8 or 88.others?..and probably a powered speaker - perhaps a Qsc 10 or 12.

I'd love to hear 'controlled' comparative recordings with Both a pickup and a microphone.

Ed Friedland, any chance you have something like this in the works? I know from you website that you are most impressed with the F112 and had a F110 on order. I'd love to hear how they compare to some of these others. What I'm most interested in is the most 'natural' double bass sound.

 

[Mike Arnopol]

I started on my way to double bass as my main instrument playing an Ovation acoustic bass through a Polk Audio sub, then purchased an acoustic image series ii Contra head, and tried it through my Eden 4 ohm 2x10 XLT. The sound was harsh and thin compared to the Polk. This made no sense to me at all so I started trying different cabs. The Polk was sitting there so I pulled the power out of it and plugged it into the ai head, and boom; there was the natural sound of the instrument. This got me thinking maybe it's a full range vs sub speaker thing?
I went to my local car audio store and bought a ported single 10 cab and a dual voice coil 350 watt, 4 ohm sub. Wired it for 2 ohm load and buttoned it into the cab. This speaker is about 2 feet tall and front ported Bassworx cab and it is amazing that it works so well for both my standup and acoustic ovation with the AI head.
I can crank the volume stand a foot away from the head and no howling or squellching.
Why do electric cabs sound so thin in comparison?

It's not as much as they're thin, it's just that often the mids and highs are seriously out of balance.(which I guess makes them thin!) A lot of electric bassists want elevated mids so that they can hear their attack better. A lot of slap players like silly grating highs. You can eq in mid or high boosts pretty easily----but IME it's a lot harder eq'ing out obnoxious mids and highs. A well designed cab can have balanced present mids and highs. A poorly designed cab---not so much.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

Something critical to the ears is the directions from which reflections arrive. When they arrive from the same direction as the first-arrival sound, they tend to be perceived as coloration. When they arrive from a very different direction, they tend to be perceived as enhancing timbre and immersion or envelopment (assuming they are spectrally correct). If you ever played with a cassette tape recorder as a kid and noticed how unnatural voices sounded when played back, that's one reason.

One type of recording that I think would facilitate "listening through the room" would be a binaural recording played back through earphones or headphones. Binaural recordings use a dummy head and dummy ears to get the head and ears' effects on incoming sound, which makes a huge difference. One of these days that's something I'd like to get into because I think it would be useful from a marketing standpoint, but the initial investment in a good binaural setup is pretty steep. Here's an introduction to binaural recordings, listen through earphones or headphones (the closer the little speaker is to your ear canal, the better) to at least the first two minutes or so:



And, here's a song recorded binaurally (there's a female vocalist off to the left that you will hear long before you see, just in case the sound doesn't match the visual at first):



The camera movement on this one is unfortunately disconnected from the audio:



Anyway if I ever have the budget to generate in-room recordings of bass cabs or whatever, binaural recordings are what I'd lean towards.

FWIW: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread...

 

[WayneDupuis]

Thanks! That makes sense.
Would your 4x5 make for a good cab to double electric and double bass using an iamp 500 Doubler?

It's not as much as they're thin, it's just that often the mids and highs are seriously out of balance.(which I guess makes them thin!) A lot of electric bassists want elevated mids so that they can hear their attack better. A lot of slap players like silly grating highs. You can eq in mid or high boosts pretty easily----but IME it's a lot harder eq'ing out obnoxious mids and highs. A well designed cab can have balanced present mids and highs. A poorly designed cab---not so much.

 

[rickwolff]

Thanks! That makes sense.

Would your 4x5 make for a good cab to double electric and double bass using an iamp 500 Doubler?

back on the first page Mike said:

If you're using just a mic, I've found that I get the best feedback resistance with the 45.5. If I have to double one of my 6" cabs is my choice but for DB I've found that the 45.5 is the most natural. The 18sound 5.5" speaker is a bit bigger in terms of cone area . It moves about the same amount of air as one of the super 12's like theThunderchild or the fearless.

I know it's getting to be a somewhat long thread, but don't worry, there isn't going to be a quiz until we get to page 12.

 

[WayneDupuis]

Thanks Rick.

back on the first page Mike said:


I know it's getting to be a somewhat long thread, but don't worry, there isn't going to be a quiz until we get to page 12.

 

[Mike Arnopol]

Thanks! That makes sense.
Would your 4x5 make for a good cab to double electric and double bass using an iamp 500 Doubler?

The 45 will work for electric but is not as extended in the low end as the 26 or 46.Fine for 4 string but I think that the B string is pushing it if you want decent volume. The 45 is like a conventional single 12 speaker. If I were doubling and had the choice I'd go with the 26 which is very close in quality to the 45 for DB but better for EB. And about the same dynamic range. The 46 is as loud as two 45's. Lots of DB players using the cabs based on the custom 6.5" woofer.

 

[rickwolff]

OK, I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER.

Do you remember waiting for your Christmas presents when you were a little kid? Well that's how I'm feeling since I was contacted by a well known and respected speaker designer who has asked me to Beta-test a new cabinet he is designing specifically for Double Bass.

Once I get the new speaker I plan on 'trying' to do some recordings that I hope will illustrate its characteristics. I'm thinking of putting a mic on the bass (acoustic) and the same model mic on the cab and another couple mics at some distance to determine projection and blend in the mix etc.

I'm really excited about this. Earlier in this thread (post #8) I stated that what I was looking for in my on-stage amplified sound was: " the 'studio' sound of a really nice bass". While, it turns out he was designing a cab with just that goal in mind. I hope he is successful in meeting his design goals. I'll know more in a couple weeks and will post here (hopefully with some sound clips (for what they may be worth, recognizing the serious difficulty in making an amateur recording that is useful.)) If I get a sound off the speaker cab is similar to my acoustic sound I'll consider it a success.

 

[drurb]

Intriguing, Rick. Intriguing...

 

[rickwolff]

Intriguing, Rick. Intriguing...

Maybe you'd like to try it after me. I would certainly appreciate and respect your opinion!