Hi all!
After more than half a year of playing around with my Nat-P's, I finally found a network that made them perfectly flat. Gone are the peaks and valleys, and they are replaced by a perfectly flat on-axis response.
But...
I told my wife to give me her opinion of them. We had been listening for months to a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS8 speakers, which have a rising FR from 2 or 3 KHz up. Anyway, without me telling her anything, her opinion was "they sound pretty...uh... flat". And it wasn't a good thing (suffice to say, I'd really like to have her sense of hearing. It's not the first time she's perfectly accurate in her comments).
I did some work on the crossovers today, mainly changing a conjugate circuit on the tweeter side, shaping the response upwards from 3 KHz up (not in any way near the slope of the Monitor Audios, though). I had now an extra 2.5 dB or so at 10 KHz. She was happy and thrilled. I, myself, thought the speakers came alive with that change.
I did some informal off-axis measurements, and the speakers are flat at 20° or so.
I've been thinking a lot about this. Most designs I've seen aim for flat FR on-axis. I right now have an almost flat response off-axis. I do not have a reference to compare them with, so I'm not sure whether they do sound better this way. They do sound a bit more natural to me, but that could be because I'm used to a "colored" speaker.
So... what is correct? Flat on axis, flat off axis or...???
After more than half a year of playing around with my Nat-P's, I finally found a network that made them perfectly flat. Gone are the peaks and valleys, and they are replaced by a perfectly flat on-axis response.
But...
I told my wife to give me her opinion of them. We had been listening for months to a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS8 speakers, which have a rising FR from 2 or 3 KHz up. Anyway, without me telling her anything, her opinion was "they sound pretty...uh... flat". And it wasn't a good thing (suffice to say, I'd really like to have her sense of hearing. It's not the first time she's perfectly accurate in her comments).
I did some work on the crossovers today, mainly changing a conjugate circuit on the tweeter side, shaping the response upwards from 3 KHz up (not in any way near the slope of the Monitor Audios, though). I had now an extra 2.5 dB or so at 10 KHz. She was happy and thrilled. I, myself, thought the speakers came alive with that change.
I did some informal off-axis measurements, and the speakers are flat at 20° or so.
I've been thinking a lot about this. Most designs I've seen aim for flat FR on-axis. I right now have an almost flat response off-axis. I do not have a reference to compare them with, so I'm not sure whether they do sound better this way. They do sound a bit more natural to me, but that could be because I'm used to a "colored" speaker.
So... what is correct? Flat on axis, flat off axis or...???
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