Auricle Kit

[FLOW]

Hello Jeff,

I'm planning to order the Satori/Raal MT "Auricle" Kit.
I have no other choice than putting them close to the wall.
So i thought i could increase the height (and of course reducing the depth) to replace the port on the front side. Mark told me you preferred it sealed. Since i have the lowest WAF on earth i won't be able to add a Subwoofer. So I would know what is the F3 of the sealed and the vented version. And if i increase the height from 15 to 16.5 i will be able to place the port on the front side.

thank you very much

Florian

[Jeff B.]

Hello Jeff,

I'm planning to order the Satori/Raal MT "Auricle" Kit.
I have no other choice than putting them close to the wall.
So i thought i could increase the height (and of course reducing the depth) to replace the port on the front side. Mark told me you preferred it sealed. Since i have the lowest WAF on earth i won't be able to add a Subwoofer. So I would know what is the F3 of the sealed and the vented version. And if i increase the height from 15 to 16.5 i will be able to place the port on the front side.

thank you very much

Florian

My concern is not about moving the port to the front, which should work fine, it is the change in frequency response you will get very close to the wall. Upper bass and lower mids could get heavy due to the boundary reinforcement if they are right up to the wall. Any distance you can give them from the wall will be beneficial.

As for the Auricle bass response, it will be as follows:
Sealed, the Qtc is .75, F3 = 52 Hz, F6 = 41Hz and F10 = 31 Hz
Vented with 2” x 8” port, F3 = 44 Hz, F6 = 37 Hz, and F10 = 31 Hz
(This is really quite extended for a small woofer and cabinet)

I still like the sealed cabinet better – It sounds more natural, cleaner, and bit better defined in the bass, and the cone movement is much better controlled. The woofer has a very high compliance and low Fs, as vented designs, below Fb it can get a lot of cone travel. The sealed box controls this very well. A high-end design shouldn’t just have the deepest extension, it should also have excellent resolution in the bass. I believe this one achieves this goal with excellent results.

Jeff

[FLOW]

Thank you Jeff for all the informations.

[johnnyrichards]

The Kairos gives up nothing in bass enjoyment when sealed, and IIRC the Auricle uses the same woofer. If not, disregard this message. The Satori is a very nice driver, and for pure musicality was a standout (IMHO) at Indy last year.

[FLOW]

Yes the Kairos and the Auricle are designed with the same Satori MidWoofer.
I still have two main problems that Jeff can't really solve.

1-For my wife, putting two 18L bookshelfs speaker on my desk is like putting 2 American fridges in the living room. And she is a fan of Meshell Ndegeocello and Marcus Miller so if it don't plays low frequencies she will left the house. Especially if she see the bill...
But i prefer a cleaner bass restitution. The sweet -6b slope and the F6 41HZ sounds sweet to me. Please tell me if its totally stupid but maybe i could build a sort of a device that seal or open the port tube when i want ?

2-It's maybe not the right place to ask this question but i still don't understand why bookshelf speakers can't be placed close to the wall. Actually i understand why acoustically.
But in theory when you have the room to place a stand it means you have the room to place a full range tower. So you lost the benefit of building a small cabinet that you could put on a desk or in a bookshelf.
Maybe it's a metropolitan and European problem because our apartments are small and expensive but i would really be interested to know what is the proportion of bookshelf speaker builders that actually want to put them on a desk or in a bookshelf. I know some crossover of few commercial speakers are cooked in that way.

Anyway a Satori/Raal speaker will probably sounds better close to one of my parallel square room walls than any other bookshelf i could ever build and put on my desk. At least for me.

Thank you

Florian

[bkeane1259]

Please tell me if its totally stupid but maybe i could build a sort of a device that seal or open the port tube when i want ?

Not stupid at all. You can simply stuff the port with any type of closed cell material. There's really no need to build anything exotic. I did this in an auto subwoofer. I used a wedge of memory foam in the port and it is completely sealed. I can easily remove the foam if needed and reuse it at a later time. Obviously there are many more ways to temporarily close a port. People do it. It's certainly NOT a stupid proposition.

[Jeff B.]

Yes the Kairos and the Auricle are designed with the same Satori MidWoofer.
I still have two main problems that Jeff can't really solve.

1-For my wife, putting two 18L bookshelfs speaker on my desk is like putting 2 American fridges in the living room. And she is a fan of Meshell Ndegeocello and Marcus Miller so if it don't plays low frequencies she will left the house. Especially if she see the bill...
But i prefer a cleaner bass restitution. The sweet -6b slope and the F6 41HZ sounds sweet to me. Please tell me if its totally stupid but maybe i could build a sort of a device that seal or open the port tube when i want ?

2-It's maybe not the right place to ask this question but i still don't understand why bookshelf speakers can't be placed close to the wall. Actually i understand why acoustically.
But in theory when you have the room to place a stand it means you have the room to place a full range tower. So you lost the benefit of building a small cabinet that you could put on a desk or in a bookshelf.
Maybe it's a metropolitan and European problem because our apartments are small and expensive but i would really be interested to know what is the proportion of bookshelf speaker builders that actually want to put them on a desk or in a bookshelf. I know some crossover of few commercial speakers are cooked in that way.

Anyway a Satori/Raal speaker will probably sounds better close to one of my parallel square room walls than any other bookshelf i could ever build and put on my desk. At least for me.

Thank you

Florian

The term "bookshelf speaker" has a double usage. In the general sense any speaker built using a small cabinet seems to be called a "bookshelf speaker". This goes back to early days of audio and the audio magazines appear to perpetuate this still. Unfortunately, I think this usage as a general term is a misnomer. In the strictest sense a "bookshelf speaker" should be one designed specifically for placement on a bookshelf or desktop. The terms here should imply design intent for the speaker's application.

As the designer, I would never consider the Auricle to a be bookshelf speaker in this strict sense. I believe that is an inappropriate application for this speaker and would compromise its performance. I consider the speaker to a "stand mounted monitor", and it was designed specifically for that application. I don't believe it will work well on a desk top near a wall either. Sorry.

The difference here is that with a stand mounted speaker that is placed a reasonable distance from a wall we will lose acoustic loading of the driver at low frequencies due to those frequencies having wavelengths that are acoustically large compared to the baffle. In order for the axial response to be perceived as flat, as a designer, I have to create within the speaker a lift at lower frequencies that compensates precisely for this loss, otherwise the lower midrange and upper bass will sound thin.

Once the speaker is designed for this application, if you move it near a boundary, like a desktop or wall, or "bookshelf", the boundary will reinforce the very frequencies that have been compensated for and the response will get a significant boost of up to 6dB in the lower mids and bass. This will usually make the midrange sound overly thick, warm, and muddy (if you like adjectives).

Most of my speakers have been designed for free-field stand-mounted use, because this is by far the most common usage for speakers this size. The Continuum and the Soprano have both been designed to work really well on a desktop or near a wall, but the Kairos, the Adelphos, and the Auricle with the RAAL will not sound as balanced in that location. Maybe I need to consider doing another high-end desktop kit design, but even with crossover changes the Auricle will be quite a large speaker to place on a desk, so it will probably have limited appeal in this application.

I hope this explains things. I do not want you to order a speaker that may perform poorly in your application without explaining these things first. If you have a way to equalize the response then you might be able to compensate for some of the boost.

Jeff B.

[FLOW]

Thank you very much for the advices.

Jeff, at each time i read your posts in forums i think, if it's not already the case, you should start writing a book for keeping all your knowledge. Like we use to say in french "words fly, writings remain".

So if i resume :
- I can seal the port of the vented version and keep my wife
- I have to buy the cheap and famous Behringer ECM8000 measurement microphone.
- For my windows computer i have to install the room Eq Wizard (http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/index.html) and to install an equalizer on windows (http://sourceforge.net/p/equalizerapo/w ... mentation/).
- For my wife's mac i have to install a sound EQ
- I have to stop watching TV because any other source than my PC or Wife's mac will not sound right at all.
- I can start saving money, again, to buy a digital equalizer.

Florian

[Jeff B.]

Thank you very much for the advices.

Jeff, at each time i read your posts in forums i think, if it's not already the case, you should start writing a book for keeping all your knowledge. Like we use to say in french "words fly, writings remain".

So if i resume :
- I can seal the port of the vented version and keep my wife
- I have to buy the cheap and famous Behringer ECM8000 measurement microphone.
- For my windows computer i have to install the room Eq Wizard (http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/index.html) and to install an equalizer on windows (http://sourceforge.net/p/equalizerapo/w ... mentation/).
- For my wife's mac i have to install a sound EQ
- I have to stop watching TV because any other source than my PC or Wife's mac will not sound right at all.
- I can start saving money, again, to buy a digital equalizer.

Florian

Or you could just use an equalizer with your media player and simply make sure the low end sounds balanced to you.