Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?

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rockadanny

My speakers (TMM configuration) have a slanted (back) baffle (to attempt time aligning tweeters with the mids?). Should my ears be at same height as center of tweeters or do I take the baffle angle (tweeter center axis extrapolated to my ears) into consideration? :dunno:
Yellow or pink line in picture?



« Last Edit: 10 Oct 2012, 11:25 pm by rockadanny »

JohnR

Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #1 on: 11 Oct 2012, 12:03 am »
They would have been designed for the pink line. On the yellow line, they will likely be a bit hot up top and possibly have a bit of a dip further down.

Letitroll98

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Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #2 on: 11 Oct 2012, 03:58 am »
My speakers (TMM configuration) have a slanted (back) baffle (to attempt time aligning tweeters with the mids?).

If tilted back for time alignment, that would seem to be negated by listening on the yellow line.  However we don't listen (or hear) on a straight line, you would hear the cylindrical wavefront from almost any reasonable listening height.  As John notes, it would be more the voicing of the speaker that would determine the proper listening height.  One assumes the designer allows for normally seated listeners so I would start with that and see how it sounds.  Which begs the question, why are you asking?  Is there a problem with your present setup?  Perhaps it has more to do with those large appendages attached to your head than listening height.   :P 

rockadanny

Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #3 on: 11 Oct 2012, 12:38 pm »
Thanks John and Letitrol98. Just curious about the science behind matching ear height with tweeters mounted on sloped baffles. What you say makes sense.

Letitroll98 - Please do not mock my giant ear appendages. I was born without ear hair cells and thus was fitted with these with which to hear. Growing up, all the children teased me so. :oops: Yes, they made playing football difficult, but I was always the one who could over hear the other team's coach whisper strategies to his team, and thus take advantage for winning. So, :nono:

rockadanny

Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #4 on: 11 Oct 2012, 02:24 pm »
No perceived problem with current height. But then again, until I heard a high end system I perceived no problems with my then low end system.  :)

I was hoping that the answer would have been the yellow line as my tweeter height is 36", about 7" or 8" shorter than my ears, regardless of chosen chair. With these speakers (Eggleston Works Fontaines, and I assume the Andras as well), I don't see how anyone can match tweeter height to their ears. I've never seen these, nor any floor standers, raised up on 8" blocks. And I'm only 5'9"! If it were an inch or two I could easily try a different height to test, but 8" is quite a difference.

I'm hoping they were voiced with this in mind - tweeter lower than ears.

Letitroll98

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Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #5 on: 11 Oct 2012, 03:17 pm »
I have some small 35" high MTM "towers" in a secondary system and with the tweeter at 26".  So I though certainly I should tilt these back to raise the apparent tweeter projection to ear height.  Wrong, they were voiced to sound correct just the way they were. 

On the other hand some floorstanders like B&W 802 and Vandersteen 2Ci have dedicated stands made for them by Target that raise them off of the floor by specified amounts, many, if not most owners swear by these.  So there are instances where floorstanders are recommended to be raised off of the floor.  However I have a local dealer for Eggleston Works and he doesn't display them on stands, so I assume they are where they are suppose to be.

Lastly, Pierre Sprey of Mapleshade insists you need to sit on or near the floor for best reproduction, you might try it if you have a small stool or overstuffed pillow....   

neobop

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Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #6 on: 11 Oct 2012, 03:42 pm »
My speakers (TMM configuration) have a slanted (back) baffle (to attempt time aligning tweeters with the mids?). Should my ears be at same height as center of tweeters or do I take the baffle angle (tweeter center axis extrapolated to my ears) into consideration? :dunno:
Yellow or pink line in picture?



Depending on the x-over, there can be a vertical tilt in radiation pattern.  A first order Butterworth high pass has a - 15 degree tilt.  A third order Butterworth tweeter has + 15 for normal polarity and - 15 for reverse polarity.  When tweeters are placed below the woofer, speaker usually has 3rd order Butterworth, normal polarity. 
neo

*Scotty*

Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #7 on: 11 Oct 2012, 05:55 pm »
The original Andra had first order networks with a lot of overlap. There is currently no info on the mfgrs website as to what order networks are used in their speakers. I suspect they are setup to place the lobing errors the crossover has where they will do the least harm to the frequency response curve when the speaker is listened to on the axis described by the redline. This also may or may not coincide with the driver setback necessary to approximate some sort of time alignment of the tweeter and mid-woofer. The Esotar tweeter starts to beam at 10kHz, if your ears are above the tweeter at your listening position this may place your ears more or less on axis with the tweeters output above 10kHz giving you better high frequency reproduction.
 Scotty

Ericus Rex

Re: Tweeter height vs. ear height different for slanted baffles?
« Reply #8 on: 11 Oct 2012, 09:06 pm »
No perceived problem with current height. But then again, until I heard a high end system I perceived no problems with my then low end system.  :)

I was hoping that the answer would have been the yellow line as my tweeter height is 36", about 7" or 8" shorter than my ears, regardless of chosen chair. With these speakers (Eggleston Works Fontaines, and I assume the Andras as well), I don't see how anyone can match tweeter height to their ears. I've never seen these, nor any floor standers, raised up on 8" blocks. And I'm only 5'9"! If it were an inch or two I could easily try a different height to test, but 8" is quite a difference.

I'm hoping they were voiced with this in mind - tweeter lower than ears.

Do some A/B-ing with you sitting on something 8" shorter (stack of books maybe) and with your normal chair.  If you prefer the sound on the shorter chair you can raise only the fronts of the cabinets with a slab of wood; tilt them back a bit.  This would mimick the angle of the drivers relative to your ears (when listening in the lower position) without using 8" risers.  'Raise them by how much' depends on how far away from the speaker you listen.  I'd start somewhere around 1/2" thick slab, I'd guess.