Semi Omni v Point and Squirt

[Nihil Sleighride]

more natural to my ears and sounds like real music playing in the room.

Absolutely, I just find I'm listening and enjoying the music, as opposed to listening and critiquing my HiFi

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The problem per usual is with closed minds, and bigots. They have come to accept a way, they think it is right because they are used to it, Ray Allison had this in the US but did get a degree of acceptance. The only market where the omni and semi omni dominated was in the Scandinavian region in the late 60's and early 70's starting with Sonab. Everywhere else it is just point and squirt, point and squirt. In the early days it wasn't so prominent as big speakers had wide baffles which helped dispersion, but as time and BBC nonsense took over the point source became more and more dominant to the point now with the prevalent tall narrow baffle, WAF, multi small driver enclosures it is like two laser beams.

The DIY market has gone largely open baffle and that is far less of a problem as you have an open back dispersion.

[SteveTheShadow]

Yes,
I'm trying, with the big semi-omnis to get back to the wide baffle/shallow box, against the wall configuration. This, combined with a smaller, 10 degree tilted top face, semi-omni midrange cabinet with forward firing tweeter, should give a nice room-wide spread of sound. Good bass with decent extension, should come courtesy of the 2.5 cu ft sealed cab. That's the theory anyway.

I think this kind of stereo is ripe for a comeback. Reading the old books, from the late fifties and through the sixties, it seems that this widescreen sound spread was what stereo was supposed to be, ie to give the concert hall experience in the living room. I can't remember this pinpoint imaging business ever making an appearance as a desirable characteristic of stereo reproduction in the 1970s hi-fi press. It was all about how big your hi-fi could make the soundscape. Hell, even Ivor was making the semi-omni concept, the top of his range, with the Isobarik PMS/DMS speakers.

I remember in the 80s, everyone was whipping Proac Tablettes, Neat Petites and those farty little Acoustic Energy things into submission using 100W amps, raving about the millimetre perfect imaging, and poor old Christ Frankland was having regular monthly fits of apoplexy about the way things were going.

"I've been to many a live concert; jazz, rock and classical and I'll be damned if I ever got that pinpoint imaging you rave about. It's a load of old claptrap!" was one of his replies to a letter to his mag. The right venerable purely classical loving Peter Turner, in the same magazine, often waxed lyrical about his beloved Isobarik speakers and how they could, when set up properly, take him into a virtual concert hall.


"Bringing on Back the Big Sound" Now there's a catchy slogan for the semi-omni comeback campaign.
I think I'll have a T shirt printed with it on.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

There is no evangelism there is only reality, now lets find out some reality from you, your opinions have been formed by listening to what semi omni speakers.

[Fretless]

All speakers are a compromise trying to create an acoustic field in a space. I have had traditional speakers, flat-panel magnetostatics and now NVA semi-omni's.

All have their pro's and con's. I was very contented with the picture-like presentation of my panel Magnepan MMG's but missed the drive and vitality of box speakers with cones. The Cubes combine the space-filling acoustic with that lifelike, direct punch and emotiveness and are, for me, a solution I am more than happy to stick with.

Yes, it's a matter of taste and preference. But a speaker thet works with a room acoustic is actually very hard to compare with one that sets up its own dynamic field within a room. I have a fairly tiny listening space, but living with Cubes gives me the impression that the walls and ceiling just vanish when the music starts.

Me. I'm happy.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

And you formed that opinion by listening to alternatives not from theory or the desire for argument.

MY opinions are formed form listening to EVERY type of speaker design available in the past 50 years. Some very weird one amoungst them that none of you will have heard of. One driven by water one a stick on polystyrene panel to stick on tea chests or similar.

[savvypaul]

The clincher, for me, is that my semi omnis (cube 1s) create scale without boom or congestion. No conventional speaker has been able to do so in my (slightly unusual) room.

The proposal that 'what you like...is what you like' is undeniable...but only in the context of what you have actually heard. Everyone should hear a semi omni in their own room...

[SteveTheShadow]

I've not heard all the types of speaker, but I've heard a fairly wide range of types from horns, to magneplanars, electrostatics, and open baffles and numerous single driver and multiway boxes with ports, sealed and transmission lines.
There are two that have really floated my boat:
1. tall Voight type tapered quarter-wave resonators
2. semi omnis
The rest I wouldn't give house room to anymore. It's that simple I'm afraid. (YMMV and all that jazz of course)
Out of the two above that I really like, the semi-omni generated soundfield is the one that permits the biggest degree of suspension of disbelief.
I would argue that most of the point and squirt brigade kick out an exaggerated, in 'yer face, irritating version of reality, and don't get me started on the need for 99% of the bloody things to be out in the room before they will stop that godawful booming. I, for one, don't want that fecking racket in my living room.

With a well designed room-aware speaker, you can listen for hours on end, with no listener fatigue, and that is what it is all about.

Now you may or may not be a religious person, but play the 1969 original version of "Oh Happy Day" by The Edwin Hawkins Singers" through a pair of semi omnis, at a healthy level and you are right there in that congregation praising the Lord with them
If you have NVA Cubes, try it on Spotify or whatever and see what I mean.
Me and Mrs Jones by Billy Paul is another one, as is "Jump" by Van Halen.

[ArseHats]

Clearly it is not the case that all examples of a particular design of speaker are universally preferable to all speakers of a different design.
There's nothing controversial in my writing that.
The individual listener can compare only individual examples of different designs, and express a subjective preference accordingly.
Over time, and many comparisons, the individual may notice that they have a general preference for one design over another. (Maybe they've compared similarly priced examples, and maybe they've compared specific examples that reduce the likelihood that other design or component variables might muddy the comparisons of a specific design feature.)
Should such a general preference be established, that general preference would indeed constitute one aspect of the individual listener's own subjective reality. It would be right for that person to take into account such a general preference when deciding which speakers to listen to, to buy, and if the person possesses the necessary skills, to build.
It may be that the same general preference for a particular design of speaker is also found in the subjective realities of others. Additionally, it may be that yet other people exist who experience different preferences. And experience those preferences for purely sonic reasons, in their own valid subjective realities.
Prejudice and habit may play a part in the forming and cementing of a stated preference, in the subjective reality of any person, but not necessarily so in every case.
What are the alternatives to this?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I am sorry but this makes no sense. I agree if you are doing that between examples of both types, but the difference is not so much quality as presentation. We are talking about a different way of presenting the music which is more natural and more real. Until you have owned it and experienced it you really don't know what we are talking about.