Tim's Site on Various Things

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====== The sound of higher directivity speakers ======


Reading this article from Sausalito Audio got me thinking about what it is that I like about horn speakers for hifi.
[[https://www.sausalitoaudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Interpreting-Spinorama-Charts.pdf|Interpreting "Spinorama" Charts]]

In that article they point out that narrower dispersion speakers are generally not preferred, with their sound being described as more colored and less open sounding than speakers with wider dispersion. This has  been my impression as well. But I have learned to hear past the coloration effect of narrow directivity and enjoy the greater sense of clarity it offers. I noticed many years ago that my initial impression of a good wide dispersion speaker was always that it sounded very open and neutral. After listening for a while the effect would start to morph into a confusing sense of something like white noise being added to the signal. It's not that I could actually hear white noise in the background. It just gave me a feeling like there was something hazy about the sound, and within about 20 minutes this would become fatiguing. I would describe it as a sort of pastel effect on the sound, or perhaps a sense of compressed dynamics. Higher directivity speakers like horns do this much less but at the expense of sounding less open and more colored. The thing is I can adapt to that coloration, and the less open effect can be mitigated with wider stereo speaker placement. So coloration bothers me less than a high ratio of reflected to direct sound in the long run.