Will today's pro audio end up in future homes?

Western Electric theater systems from the 1930's era are still coveted by collectors today. I'm curious if the pro audio equipment getting used today in small/medium sized venues will become coveted by audiophiles when these systems ultimately get replaced.

I've run across a few pro audio providers doing interesting things, like Danley Sound Labs. They offer a pro horn-based system "ideal for nightclubs" called Pure Groove. Looks pretty cool and specs look good, 70Hz to 18kHz +/-3 dB (they also sell a sub). They do have a wide 90 degree dispersion pattern that might not be ideal for home applications, but perhaps that's not a big issue.

Probably not the aesthetic cup-of-tea for many, but coukd be interesting to see what crazy audiophiles could do with speakers like these.

Anyone using pro audio equipment like this at home?

 

From what I gather, it's hard enough for these guys to get small book shelf speakers past the wife.
I could just imagine a wife having a major fit if those were even on the property.
I am a big speaker guy A7's and above so in the future I'm sure there will still be guys like me around who just like big speakers and will be all in on those baby's!

 

I wished. Even my boombox (40watts powered speaker w/ FM and MP3 player) has a horn tweeter.

 

No.

 

Those guys are SO crazy! Tom Danley is really an acoustical genius (and I say that as a professional loudspeaker design engineer). Once upon a time in Chicago I visited their place, whereupon they showed me an acoustic levitation system, that would use very high sound pressure ultrasonic nodes to hold I believe it was some kind of metal in the air, which they then melted with a laser, still suspended in the air. Some kind of NASA deal.

Tom was telling me how, in order to build a sonic boom simulator for NASA, he realized that "all you really needed at the horn throat was a source of volume velocity" which he supplied with...massive industrial fans, like 10-20 HORSEPOWER each. 170 dB at 8 Hz or something wild like that.

There was also a speaker that looked like a Shoji screen room divider-one side's vertical edge hinged/compliant, the other vertical edge had a kind of voice coil, and a frame next to that full of rare earth magnets. Kinda sorta vaguely like a Magneplanar twisted around. 80-18k Hz with very good dispersion.

They had also invented the rotary subwoofer, originally for use in elephant research, to reproduce very low frequencies at very high sound pressure levels.

Anyway back to PA systems in the house, I rather doubt it. The only ones I see much are Altec "Voice Of The Theatre" and I think that is due in great part to a nostalgia play. And those were theater speakers, not really pro speakers. Heck, those theater speakers could probably play louder than "pro" stuff which I don't think even really existed at the time, at least not what we would call "pro" today.

Still, if someone wants to donate me Iron Maiden's World Slavery Tour Turbosound rig, I'll figure out where to fit it

 

So what is it about these "pro" speakers that Tom has designed that make them unsuitable for HiFi listening in the home?

Seems to me that the principles are largely the same. Also, I'm curious if other horn builders have looked at his approach to single-point source implementations. That seems like an interesting implementation.

 

Those pro systems are typically designed for much larger spaces than the average home and are also likely optimized to be played at much higher volumes than would be typical in the home.

 

I think WE is coveted today because its unique gear from the dawn of Hi Fi, built on principles that were necessary then, such as very high efficiency to make the most of very low power, and because I don't think there was anything comparable made in that era for home use (IIRC "home audio components" began in the 1950's).

But today's pro audio doesn't really have that uniqueness. It's just designed for ruggedness and high SPL. I think another "problem" is that it tends to be very flat and neutral, which to many audiophile's ears comes off as "sterile and boring" (mine included).

 

I read a post from Tom on another forum where he seems in agreement regarding yopur assesment that pro speakers tend to be "too neutral". He says:

I would say there are several big audible differences in general between what one might be used to though.

These speakers are voiced to be nominally flat which “sounds normal” but in the home, Floyd Toole and others have found a more pleasing spectrum is one that tilts down at about -1dB per octave. As a result, these tend to sound a bit bright, not harsh or horn sounding but a bit bright.
In most commercial uses, the listeners are farther away than in the home and so the flat response is desirable given the absorption of hf sound over distance. Here the smaller SM-60 hf section has a slight edge in magazine spec’s as the hf driver goes well past 20KHz.
​

He goes on to say that he'd voice the speaker so that it had a roll off:

If I were making a Synergy horn for the home, one thing I would do is not have the system voiced flat. While it goes against my grain, I have to agree with Floyd Tools survey that concluded a roll off was most preferred over flat with today’s recordings.
I have the first pair of SH-50’s myself and they are a bit bright on everything but records. In fooling around, to me, I like about a -1 dB per octave slope bottom to top. For the places most of the SH-50’s go, flat is what is expected and relative to the vast majority of compression drivers, the 4550 does go up pretty high. In the SH-50, I have put an ultrasonic low pass filter it the hf circuit because in commercial sound hf oscillation is not unheard of and it allows me to keep the sensitivity high out to the corner. When one has a horn with curved walls, it is possible to have a higher sensitivity but only on axis as the pattern narrows.
The idea here with all the Synergy horns are the entire pattern has essentially the same sound field and response (constant directivity) and acts like , measures like, sounds like there is only one driver and no crossovers.
​

He goes on to say that he is thinking about a home version of his Synergy speakers, so it would be interesting to hear what he comes up with in this area combing his single-point source approach with, perhaps, better drivers and more appropriate voicing.

Here's a link to the other forum for those interested in reading his other comments: Question about Danley Sound Labs 50's or 60's »

 

Pro audio can be gear for large spaces or for studio/ small commercial type spaces. In the second case typically the amplifiers are not megawatt but operated bridged mono etc.

Pro gear covers such a broad range that it is hard to speak generically about it. However, to my ears the pro gear of the 1985-95 era is the best sounding and it falls off after that. I was in recording studios in the 80s, 90s, and 00s assisting classical musicians and I noticed a steady dropoff of pro gear quality both in amps and speakers. I leave aside digital/analog variance. There are always exceptions though but those are usually custom or built to typical audiophile standards.

FWIW I have a JBL UREI amp from around 1990 and Mogami cables which are used widely in recording.

 

Yes, If I can't get a nice pair of Klipsch Cornwalls I'm going pro audio in my planned basement Tiki Bar...

 

I think Altec VOTT could be considered the first true pro gear, and I can tell you they are very good in a home set up with a little tweaking and good recordings.

 

Leaving Danley aside for the moment, I actually don't think the principles are "largely the same." Pro speakers (and let me specify I'm thinking mostly about touring sound) are generally concerned foremost with high sound pressure level and ruggedness thereof. Then, coverage angle is often a big factor. Of course pro makers want "good sound" but that needs must be subservient to the first two principles. For instance, coverage angle is generally dealt with by somehow making the horn rectangular. But this is not really the best from a acoustic point of view-a wave doesn't naturally expand like that unless perhaps driven from a rectangular source. This apparently results in some time-domain "reflections" or delayed energy, which may be the source of "horn honk."
[reference Holland and Fahy "The Sound of Midrange Horns for Studio Monitors" Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, vol 44, No. 1/2, 1996 January/February, stumbled upon at http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/Holland&Newell_1995_Sound_of_Horns.pdf
which is not actually the paper I have in mind; that might have been in Speaker Builder magazine.]

Most PA systems in the past sounded pretty bad-just listen to old bootlegs. These days, most systems can sound pretty clean, particularly the awesome EAW Anya setup I heard in a "virtual soundcheck" event with Robert Scovill. Steve Winwood's guy got up and played saxophone, and it sounded like a really good home hi-fi. Nine years (!!) of DSP work controls each speaker in the array to make the sound lovely and even throughout even a difficult venue like the Forum. So there is convergence of a kind to home sound, but I'm not sure if ONE of those array cabinets would really sound at home in the home. It would be interesting to try!

Maybe someone with access could organize something like that???? Pretty please with cream and sugar?

 

Definitely, look no further than Danley sound labs like you said. If I could afford some those would be my go-to right now. Just watch..

 

Scale for one thing. These are speakers designed to deliver continuous 100+ dB levels into 2,000-square foot spaces, which is entirely different from home listening in a typical 200, or 300-square foot living space where the listener is maybe 10 feet or sometime a lot less from the speakers. There may also be other different design goals -- at home for hifi listening we may be looking for a certain kind of ability to do stereo imaging so we may be concerned with nearfield effects of diffraction and driver mating and time domain performance that's different from a PA designer looking to fill a big space with lots of sound pressure, even if they're looking to fill it evenly and cleanly. I would think that if you're looking for pro gear whose use and design goals are more analogous to those of the home hifi listener, you'd be looking at nearfield studio monitoring systems designed to sound right at 75-85 dB playback levels, not so much big venue PA systems. A speaker designed to deliver a flat response at circa 125 dB SPLs from a 30-foot listening distance mounted somewhere up in space in a big cubic volume, isn't necessarily going to deliver the best sound at 80 dB and a 7-foot listening distance, while the speakers themselves are three feet from sidewall room boundaries and 5 feet from ceilings, etc. Just like a Forumla 1 engine isn't necessarily going to deliver the best performance in your lawn mower.

 

No chance, Pro Audio is for professional installations, not residential home general contractors.

 

Who's house?...



Not mine!
-Bill

 

Not sure I agree with the comments above because I have lived with my PMC MB2S-P's for around 2 years now and i love them.

Although thats as pro-audio as I am willing to go, with monitors. The rest of my kit is standard
hi-fi electronics.

 

Much of the Western Electric theater gear was built without cost being much of a consideration and was originally leased to theaters because the price would be too high if sold. Some of their drivers are quite expensive as collectable objects, but, many are expensive because they still sound magnificent (e.g., 555 field-coil compression drivers, 597 field coil tweeter, 713a, b or c compression drivers, WE/Jensen/ERPI M10 field-coil cone drivers).

I have not heard that much modern professional speakers so I cannot say which ones will gain future high end status. The expensive Genelec speaker I have heard sound truly BAD to me.

 

If someone were to give me some equipment for Meyer Sound, I would figure a way to make that work.

 

Well, if the term Pro Audio includes mastering gear, a lot of it is directly useful in home systems. I'm using a few pro audio items at home (but none like that pair of speakers)!

• Lynx Hilo DAC/ADC/hp amp
• Weiss EQ1-Mk 2 digital equalizer
• Various Mogami, Canare, and Gotham cable assemblies made by pro audio shops

The Lynx is a great DAC for its price, and the Weiss is a joy to use.

 

No chance, maybe not in most audiophile homes, but there are a lot of pro audio in private homes today.
Not due too lack of understanding of audio and sound but because that is what they choose.
There will always be people who choose to follow their own path and be perfectly happy.
people who stray off the accepted path are not looking for perfect sound sound, they are looking for their sound.

 

I first heard VOTTs in the home of a theater tech in 1971. I didn't notice what his source components were, as in the darkened room, I was mesmerized by the slide projector in a closet. When the door to the closet was opened, a mirror on the back side bounced the projection onto the wall between the VOTTs. I don't know if the slides were synchronized, or simply timed.

I'm quite happy with the Yamaha P7000s & P3500s pro amps fed from the preouts of my Yamaha RX-A1050 for 7.0 HT & 2-channel. I do not care for the looks of the new Yamaha PX series.

 

Funny a couple of years ago I did a session where the monitors were Genelec 1032's -- can't remember if it was the a or the b version -- and a genelec sub, and not only was it the first recording session I remembered walking out of and not wanting to cut my ears out, but I thought to myself, "Wow, I could listen to those at home and enjoy it."

 

A friend of mine worked for them in the 90's and went through several pairs of their monitors in his house. They just aren't great at anything but loud, clean and accurate in terms of measured frequency response. Detail, air, imaging... not a lot there. Ultimately they are quite fatiguing.

Happily he sold each pair he got at his employee discount for a hefty profit.