John Matheson wrote:
wrote in message
...

Dick, I don't disagree with most of what you say above.
But I also can't see why it contraindicates what I said
either. You do seem to be implying that a loudspeaker with
a severely discontinuous power response should be acceptable
because all real acoustic sources are like that.

I WOULD seem to be saying that only if you did not read what
I wrote.

I can't agree that mitigates the need for a smooth power
response in a speaker intended to replay a variety of types
of recorded sounds.

I never said it did. I was basically challenging YOUR assertion
that a speaker without a smooth power response was incapable
of reproducing the sound of a real musical instrument in
that same space. Specifrically, in one VERY constrained context,
you're right, but only because in the broader context, NO speaker
is capable of faithfully replicating the sound of the instrument
it is attempting to produce in that same space.

On a slightly unrelated matter, given that: 1. noise induced
hearing loss is a V-notch centred around 4kHz; 2. nearly all
conventionally designed speakers have a power response hole
in this region due to driver and crossover design;

I would instantly challenge you to support this assertion: that
"nearly all" conventionally designed speakers suffer form this
problem. Having seen a LOT of conventionally designed speakers,
the mere statistics of your claim are rather easy tp test. Have
you, in fact, done so, or is this simply assuming this to be
axiomatic without once challenging the assumption?

I find supplying speakers with ones that don't suffer such a deep
power
response hole is a very personally rewarding occupation for me
because of
the very real joy it brings to so many of my clients' lives. That joy
comes
from the ability to hear and understand dialogue at normal speaking
volumes
in real rooms without strain. The same property makes music
reproduction
better too - all other things being equal (which I accept they never
are).

Having actually measured it at one point, I find that my copy
of an 18th century fenhc double haprsichord has some pretty
serious holes in the power response at a number of frequencies.

Why have the last 5 centuries of harpsichord makers not experienced
the joy of filling in these serious defects? What's wrong with them?

I'm not being in the least facetious: You basically assert that
an even power response is requisite to the proper enjoyment of
music. I counterassert that such a view is extremely narrow and
overly constrained to the point where it ignore some of the most
fundamental drawbacks at the level of first principles in terms
of recreating a realistic sound field of a musical event. No
doubt even power response is a great specification to crow about,
and one that, really, is not all that hard to achieve. But in doing
so, precisely WHAT problem have you fixed?

Back to the original question: Why is a speaker with a perfect power
response, with a uniform, frequency-independent radiation pattern,
requisite to the production of a realistic sound field of an
instrument in the same venue?

If you say the uniform directivity and power response is good, then
you are also asserting that the lack of such in a real instrument
is bad. If you are saying that the radiation pattern of the instrument
is good, then maybe what you are saying is that uniform power response
and radiation pattern is not necessarily bad, but maybe irrelevant.