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Phantom Gold measurements: a stunning web first!
#11
OK, I am going to post a new set of measurements. These measurements were taken with the mic about 1 meter from each Phantom. Each Phantom Gold was measured separately. See picture for an illustration of the mic setup. 

I am attaching several new measurements, all of which look pretty amazing to me (given the cost and size of this speaker, er. hifi system). The waterfall plots look exceptionally clean. This is a Stereophile Class A loudspeaker in every sense of the term. I have seen Class A loudspeakers with much worse waterfall plots. I am also attaching a RTA plot for the left loudspeaker, which has a finer resolution. 

Once again, ignoring the inevitable bass hump due to placement near the back wall, these are exceptionally smooth measurements for what  is a bargain priced loudspeaker. Let me remind everyone that $3K is chump change for a speaker of this quality. There are mini monitors produced by companies like Harbeth and Spendor that cost more (and these don't come with 4500 watt amplifiers, D-to-A converters, preamp, wireless streaming etc.). 

More to follow, including distortion, impulse response etc. 

   

   

   
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#12
More measurements. RTA, and frequency responses at 1 meter with 1/6 octave smoothing. 

   

   

   
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#13
(25-Sep-2016, 13:34)MountainGuy Wrote: I too am interested to see if Phantoms are time aligned.  Different people have different sensitivities to time alignment so for some, it is important.

On line at Stereophile today is a review of the Dynaudio 200 XD. They have done it right re.: time alignment in DSP between the two drivers. If Phantom Golds have this kind of time response I'll be very happy Big Grin
Also worth noting is that Dynaudio is using the amplifier technology used in Tact and Lyngdorf amps, originally Toccata, but now from TI.
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#14
(28-Sep-2016, 12:47)ogs Wrote:
(25-Sep-2016, 13:34)MountainGuy Wrote: I too am interested to see if Phantoms are time aligned.  Different people have different sensitivities to time alignment so for some, it is important.

On line at Stereophile today is a review of the Dynaudio 200 XD. They have done it right re.: time alignment in DSP between the two drivers. If Phantom Golds have this kind of time response I'll be very happy Big Grin
Also worth noting is that Dynaudio is using the amplifier technology used in Tact and Lyngdorf amps, originally Toccata, but now from TI.

I'm sorry, but human hearing is one subject that is not witchcraft, but it is a science that has been extensively studied in acoustics. There are many good authoritative textbooks, starting with the legendary book by the great German physicist Helmholtz. One the world's greatest acoustics experts is sound engineer Dr. Floyd Toole (employed at Harman International). Here is what he had to say about phase/time alignment: 

"It turns out that, within very generous tolerances, humans are insensitive to phase shifts. Under carefully contrived circumstances, special signals auditioned in anechoic conditions, or through headphones, people have heard slight differences. However, even these limited results have failed to provide clear evidence of a 'preference' for a lack of phase shift. When auditioned in real rooms, these differences disappear..". 

Whether the Phantom's are time aligned or not has little bearing on their perceived sound quality. A quick read through Stereophile would let you know most if not all class A loudspeakers are not time aligned. While my Quads are time aligned, even Peter Walker, their late designer admitted that it was not a critical aspect of their sound quality. The phase true nature is more or less an accident of their design. Similar planars, like the Magenplanar 3.6r, are not phase true. Thiel speakers are phase true, and so are Vandersteens. But this requires using first-order crossovers, which are very gentle. Many top loudspeaker designers will tell you that the game is not worth the candle. Forcing first order crossovers requires using drivers that can handle a lot of bandwidth outside their normal range, which can lead to problems. So, there's no magic bullet that makes time aligned speakers easier to design, or inherently better to the ear. I wish human hearing were that simple. It's an extraordinarily complex system with many quirks due to evolution (our ears were designed to listen to predators in the jungle and run away from them, not listen to high end audio!). 
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#15
(28-Sep-2016, 13:37)srima Wrote:
(28-Sep-2016, 12:47)ogs Wrote:
(25-Sep-2016, 13:34)MountainGuy Wrote: I too am interested to see if Phantoms are time aligned.  Different people have different sensitivities to time alignment so for some, it is important.

On line at Stereophile today is a review of the Dynaudio 200 XD. They have done it right re.: time alignment in DSP between the two drivers. If Phantom Golds have this kind of time response I'll be very happy Big Grin
Also worth noting is that Dynaudio is using the amplifier technology used in Tact and Lyngdorf amps, originally Toccata, but now from TI.

I'm sorry, but human hearing is one subject that is not witchcraft, but it is a science that has been extensively studied in acoustics. There are many good authoritative textbooks, starting with the legendary book by the great German physicist Helmholtz. One the world's greatest acoustics experts is sound engineer Dr. Floyd Toole (employed at Harman International). Here is what he had to say about phase/time alignment: 

"It turns out that, within very generous tolerances, humans are insensitive to phase shifts. Under carefully contrived circumstances, special signals auditioned in anechoic conditions, or through headphones, people have heard slight differences. However, even these limited results have failed to provide clear evidence of a 'preference' for a lack of phase shift. When auditioned in real rooms, these differences disappear..". 

Whether the Phantom's are time aligned or not has little bearing on their perceived sound quality. A quick read through Stereophile would let you know most if not all class A loudspeakers are not time aligned. While my Quads are time aligned, even Peter Walker, their late designer admitted that it was not a critical aspect of their sound quality. The phase true nature is more or less an accident of their design. Similar planars, like the Magenplanar 3.6r, are not phase true. Thiel speakers are phase true, and so are Vandersteens. But this requires using first-order crossovers, which are very gentle. Many top loudspeaker designers will tell you that the game is not worth the candle. Forcing first order crossovers requires using drivers that can handle a lot of bandwidth outside their normal range, which can lead to problems. So, there's no magic bullet that makes time aligned speakers easier to design, or inherently better to the ear. I wish human hearing were that simple. It's an extraordinarily complex system with many quirks due to evolution (our ears were designed to listen to predators in the jungle and run away from them, not listen to high end audio!). 

I agree with MountanGuy here:  "Different people have different sensitivities to time alignment so for some, it is important"
I do not care much for statistics in this regard. I prefer time aligned speakers. If I took part in a listening session and identified  time aligned playback correct every time, but nine others did not, the result would be negative because of not being "statistically significant". I'd still be right, but a published result of the analysis would show something else.
And no, when using DSP for filter creation, first order filtering is no longer a necessity. Amplitude, phase and time can be manipulated independent of each other.
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#16
ogs - I suspect this one might be difficult to describe in words, but I am interested in your comments above. When you listen to a reasonably decent speaker that happens to have poor time alignment, what is it you actually hear that you do not like? I am kind of wondering if I have ever heard this myself, but actually had no idea what it was that I had noticed! (although I think it is more likely I am one of those not sensitive to this, I have read about others that are though)
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#17
(28-Sep-2016, 15:06)Confused Wrote: ogs - I suspect this one might be difficult to describe in words, but I am interested in your comments above.  When you listen to a reasonably decent speaker that happens to have poor time alignment, what is it you actually hear that you do not like?  I am kind of wondering if I have ever heard this myself, but actually had no idea what it was that I had noticed!  (although I think it is more likely I am one of those not sensitive to this, I have read about others that are though)

Hi Confused - you are right, it is difficult to describe but I'll try.

First of all, on a flat baffle passive speaker, sound from the treble unit will arrive first. This creates a very specific colouration that may sound favourable on some recordings/music and not good with other types of music. You will play more music that matches the speakers and less of the type that does not match well.

Secondly, you'll notice that the stereo image, stage or perspective, whatever one calls this, is not coherent. It can be compared to looking through a window pane where the glass is not evenly thick. The view will be distorted. On good recordings the stereo stage will have different properties depending on which part of the frequency spectrum is prominent.

The worst part for me is treble or overtones arriving before mid and bass. One does not loose all dimensionality if the time domain is not corrected so it is perfectly possible to live with an otherwise good speaker, but having learned how time coherent sounds I always end up trying to fix it.

A time coherent speaker design can sound less impressive compared to other speakers in a shop demo, so it is not as easy to 'sell' (to an inexperienced customer).

One of the best examples I know of is the Celestion SL600Si speaker with the DLP600 correction unit. The speaker was reviewed by Stereophile around 1992. http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspea...index.html I do not think Celestion had a huge success with this, mostly because the DLP600 had to be inserted in a digital chain between a CD transport and DAC for example. Too complicated. Today this would be very easy.
The review has many parts and is quite long, but is worth reading - and the measurements is worth studying. I never owned this speaker my self.

If you have heard a time compensated speaker that you like, it will be quite obvious when you return to a 'conventional' speaker. You'll miss the special open and often 'effortless' character of it's presentation.
There is of course much more to speaker design than time coherence. A bad speaker will not suddenly be world class when it is time coherent - but it can help.
Like this DEQX demo: http://www.soundandvision.com/content/de...azing-demo or youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-2I4DpmaNU
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#18
ogs. Agreed. For example, there's something special about a single full range driver which has that coherence. It's special.
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#19
Hi ogs,

Thanks for your description of time coherence which is very close to what I understand.

On my system, I have used various time coherence correction systems, Trinnov Amethyst, Dirac, RePhase and Acourate. What was quite revealing to people listening to the system, was that the 3D image of the sound stage was appearing and disappearing very obviously when switching the correction on and off, whether the listeners were 'trained' listeners or 'untrained' ones.

Mitch (mitchco on computeraudiophile.com) has written a certain number of posts on the correction of time alignment of speakers using Acourate. Here (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conten...lkthrough/) is the first of the series.

He also has written a funny review of Vancouver Audio Show (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conten...udio-show/), where he is analyzing the time coherence of the speakers he has listened to. Quite interesting.
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#20
To bring this on topic again; in srima's first post the graphs also show the Gold impulse response. This looks much better than the impulse response I got when measuring the White Phantom. Even if I account for differences in measurement equipment and software, the cleaner looking Gold impulse is a sign that Devialet has done some work here. Devialet also defines Phantom Gold as the "audiophile" version of Phantoms. I am really looking forward to audition a pair of Golds.
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