Anyone want a TLP Credenza?

[OrthoFan]

There was a post on another now-defunct board that discussed the fact that all-acoustic sound systems are heavily dependent on room listening conditions--far more-so than all electric phonographs.

I noticed that, myself, when I moved my (erstwhile) Credenza from one apartment to another one, across the hall, in the building I lived in several years ago. In the second apartment, it was the mid-range that seemed to have been impacted--diminished over what it had been in the apartment I'd lived in earlier. I blamed this on the fact that the second apartment was more exposed to street noises (crappy, single-pane windows), but there may have been other factors at play, such as differences in the size of the rooms.

By the same token, the 4-40 I now own sounds much better--louder, more apparent bass, etc.--in the apartment I'm living in, over what it sounded like in the previous unit. Along this line, there is more bass when the listener is situated towards the right of the 4-40's horn than there is when seated directly in front of, or to the front and left, of the horn. (Others have confirmed this.)

The reasons for this, I leave to the sonic experts.

[Nat]

I've got a pair of Martin Logan SummmitX electrostatic speakers - much the same is true: placement is very important, and even rotating them slightly makes a significant difference.

Why this should be true of an acoustic instrument is a very interesting question - aside from the obvious bits about resonance of walls, etc. perhaps becasue acoustic instruments are so directional?

Nat

[gramophoneshane]

I think the floor has a big impact too. I've had my 202 on wood, concrete & carpeted floors, and it sounds best on concrete, followed by wood, and it's rather sad on carpet as it is now.

[gregbogantz]

There are no magical reasons why acoustic players should be more or less dependent on room acoustics than electric players. The main difference is that horns (acoustic or electronic) are considerably more directional in their emissions, particularly at the treble frequencies than cone-type loudspeakers. So the treble will be considerably different sounding depending on where the listener is positioned relative to the axis of the horn. In addition to their "beaminess", their response off-axis gets very "lobey" - that is the frequency response gets filled with peaks and valleys caused by cancellations in the acoustic waves caused by reflections in the mouth of the horn. Those are the main reasons that I personally don't like horns to have anything to do with decent hifi speakers. Differences in bass are very much dependent on the standing wave "modes" of the room geometry. When the listener is positioned at a "node" in the room geometry at a specific frequency, that frequency will hardly be heard at all. Conversely, when the listener is positioned at an "anti-node", that frequency is noticeably enhanced. Something that "golden ears" refuse to believe is that their listening rooms have several orders of magnitude more to do with the sound they hear than any amount of "tweaking" and twiddling they do with their turntables or amplifier tubes and capacitors. Room acoustics are ultimately THE controlling factor determining whether your listening experience is a good or a bad one. Some rooms are just hopeless. For example, the more nearly square they are, the worse they are, and parallel walls are not desirable as they enable standing waves, which means that typical rooms in typical houses are pretty undesirable places in which to get good audio reproduction. You may have noticed that recording engineers tend to monitor their work in mixing rooms that have lots of sound deadening material and which have few or no parallel walls. These characteristics are designed into the room purposely to reduce the effect of standing acoustic waves and interior reflections in the rooms.

[OrthoFan]

Hi Greg:

That really explains a lot, and pretty much confirms what I've noticed all these years. I can also understand, now, why the sound is better when I listen to my 4-40 towards the front-right of the horn. On the right side are the Marina style bay windows, which angle outward, while on the left side, the wall is flat.

OF

[frenchmarky]

I can see where the environment would be a bigger issue with acoustic machines simply because the bass volume suffers the most, compared to modern pickups/amps/speakers. You always appreciate whatever bass you can manage to wring out of soundboxes and horns (along with the records usually having their bass response chopped down for equalization)... and you can't just push a 'bass boost' button or play around with equalizer knobs. Heck with acoustic machines, I don't even care how LOUD a really low bass note is - just being able to hear it in the first place is a win!