On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:58:25 AM UTC-7, Walt wrote:
On 10/16/2013 6:10 AM, Greg Wormald wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/s...s-hft-and-feq-
transform-bose-wave-radio
Hmmm,
Linn has maintained for many years that *any* unpowered speakers in the
room has an effect on the sound--usually negative.
And there's a lot to that. An unpowered speaker is a passive radiator
that will vibrate in response to the sound field and re-radiate acoustic
energy thereby changing how things sound. It's just like the
sympathetic strings on a sitar or a hardanger fiddle.
Whether the effect is "better" or not is a matter of taste, but in
general engineers do not design speakers to be played in a room with
some unknown passive radiator so the smart way to bet is that it's not
an improvement.
At your typical big-box retail showroom where you might have 100 or more
passive radiators it's impossible to tell what a speaker might actually
sound like. Speakers that are bass deficient will be helped along by
all the passive radiators and resonating cabinets, while those with a
'proper' amount of bass will tend to sound muddy. I have a suspicion
that manufacturers of 'budget' systems take this into account at the
design phase.
Although I suppose if
the unpowered speakers were better than the powered ones the effect
could be positive.
Yeah, but in that case it would probably sound even better if the good
ones were powered and the lousy ones binned.
--
//Walt
Everything in a room affects the acoustics of the room. Speakers in the room actually don't have a particularly big effect. If the drivers are absorbing acoustic energy it's probably a good thing if it's audible at all.