Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Peter Morris said:
My 2c worth ...

Throw is the subjective ability of a speaker system to project quality articulate sound over distance.
The further it does this the more throw it has. The system does not have to be loud to have throw, nor does it have to have any particular polar pattern.
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Part of this "effect" of throw and the clarity over distance has to do with the direct to "other" signals arriving at the listener.

A large narrow pattern horn will have more direct sound to the far listener than a wider coverage pattern horn would-due to the extra reflections arriving which can lower the intelligibility. So it appears cleaner and even if the level is lower-it can sound better.

SPL is pretty easy to grasp, but overall sonic quality/clarity is a lot harder to get a good handle on.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Ivan Beaver said:
Part of this "effect" of throw and the clarity over distance has to do with the direct to "other" signals arriving at the listener.

A large narrow pattern horn will have more direct sound to the far listener than a wider coverage pattern horn would-due to the extra reflections arriving which can lower the intelligibility. So it appears cleaner and even if the level is lower-it can sound better.

SPL is pretty easy to grasp, but overall sonic quality/clarity is a lot harder to get a good handle on.
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Absolutely - if you have a long narrow room then you need a narrow horn to minimize reflections in order to achieve clarity at a distance, if your outside then the pattern can be 360 horizontal. The clarity of a narrow (horizontal) horn outside is no better than a wide angle horn, it just has less output for a given input. A speaker may throw better in one room than another.

A badly designed array with a lot of cancelation and comb filtering will not throw well anywhere. I guess you could say throw is a bit like ALcons.
 
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Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

I've got an analogy i've been thinking of and would like to check and see if it works. Would a balloon work ? As in.. a certain amount of energy is going to come out of the drivers/compression drivers. So this is like blowing up a balloon and then stopping. The flare or box design then acts to modify the ballon. If you squish down on the top of the balloon it will spread sideways and front/back. So this is a bit like a narrow vertical dispersion flare. If you then constrict the sideways part (horizontal dispersion) then this gives the balloon nowhere to go but forward - assuming it cant go back for the sake of this analogy.

Ie a narrow vertical and possibly narrow horizontal gives greater forward output because that's what the balloon has been squished to. Same energy (balloon has same volume of air) but more concentrated.

And to further the balloon thought.. SPL decreases over distance because of friction in air and, in effect the balloon gets bigger as it spreads out however, the amount of energy it has is still the same but now spread out over a larger area. Kind of like drawing a square on a balloon which is 1/2 full; and then blowing more air into balloon. The amount of energy in the square remains the same but the square is now bigger so the energy is dispersed more. This is where the air in the balloon does not represent the energy but the balloon skin represents the wavefront.

Clear as mud ? Do these analogies work - shaping the sound and decreasing volume over distance ?


Andrew
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

andrew gissing said:
I've got an analogy i've been thinking of and would like to check and see if it works. Would a balloon work ? As in.. a certain amount of energy is going to come out of the drivers/compression drivers. So this is like blowing up a balloon and then stopping. The flare or box design then acts to modify the ballon. If you squish down on the top of the balloon it will spread sideways and front/back. So this is a bit like a narrow vertical dispersion flare. If you then constrict the sideways part (horizontal dispersion) then this gives the balloon nowhere to go but forward - assuming it cant go back for the sake of this analogy.

Ie a narrow vertical and possibly narrow horizontal gives greater forward output because that's what the balloon has been squished to. Same energy (balloon has same volume of air) but more concentrated.

And to further the balloon thought.. SPL decreases over distance because of friction in air and, in effect the balloon gets bigger as it spreads out however, the amount of energy it has is still the same but now spread out over a larger area. Kind of like drawing a square on a balloon which is 1/2 full; and then blowing more air into balloon. The amount of energy in the square remains the same but the square is now bigger so the energy is dispersed more. This is where the air in the balloon does not represent the energy but the balloon skin represents the wavefront.

Clear as mud ? Do these analogies work - shaping the sound and decreasing volume over distance ?


Andrew
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I would have said if you have a red balloon on stage, and through you system it still looked, and sounds exactly like a red balloon at 600ft your system has very good throw. If it looks and sounds like a blurred image of football at 150ft your system has poor throw.

The reason it would look blurred is that there is too much cancelation and comb filtering happening within the speaker array, and /or the directivity of yoursystem does not match room it’s in and there are too many reflections from the walls and ceiling.

If you can make the balloon look almost as big at 200ft as it does at 50ft, provided the image is clear your system will be perceived as having even better throw. i.e.minimum SPL loss while maintaining clarity.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Peter Morris said:
A badly designed array with a lot of cancelation and comb filtering will not throw well anywhere. I guess you could say throw is a bit like ALcons.
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Hence the reason a SINGLE well behaved source of sound will "carry" (or be more useful) at far distances.

Also sources that have a lot of cancellation and combfiltering within themselves are much more prone to being "blown around in the wind".

If it starts out as a coherent source it will hold up much better. The actual SPL may be the same between good and bad sources-but they will not have the same quality or intelligibility.

Hence the reason some speakers "sound better" at further distance.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Ivan Beaver said:
Hence the reason a SINGLE well behaved source of sound will "carry" (or be more useful) at far distances.
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The tricky bit is to get a collection of drivers to behave like that, or even harder, a collection / array of boxes to behave like that. Some do it better than others.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Are there any tests on the wind effects on systems? It would be an interesting spec to have to better evaluate polar response on outdoor systems.

Say a fixed point and distance in a 0, 5, 10 mph crosswind.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Glenn Adams said:
Are there any tests on the wind effects on systems? It would be an interesting spec to have to better evaluate polar response on outdoor systems.

Say a fixed point and distance in a 0, 5, 10 mph crosswind.
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Except it's the variation in air movement that makes it sound 'off'.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Glenn Adams said:
Yes - gusty
But it is a start to understanding what happens and if one systems deals with it better than another.
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I have never seen any spec like that. And even if one manufacturer had some data (what would it be-intelligibility?-phase?-amplitude? impulse? etc)
without the data measured the same way from another manufacturer-there is no way to compare.

And there are all sorts of different situations that could be measured differently-mounting height-aiming-number of boxes etc.

Right now side by side in the same situation is the best that I can think of.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

The term "throw" had relevance in the late 70's/early 80's, with JBL horns. They had a "cake cutter" horn, that only projected 30'. Period.
The other horns projected like a normal horn. The conventional wisdom has prevailed. Much too long.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Jack Arnott said:
The term "throw" had relevance in the late 70's/early 80's, with JBL horns. They had a "cake cutter" horn, that only projected 30'. Period.
The other horns projected like a normal horn. The conventional wisdom has prevailed. Much too long.
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And yet, from the current article here on Sound Forums in the news on the Meyer Leo install in the Louisville football stadium:

"Eleven SB-3F loudspeakers throw crisp, mid-high-frequency sound to the far end seats and an upper deck terrace over 700 feet away. Eight 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements arranged in cardioid arrays supply low end, and two arrays of three-each MICA® line array loudspeakers provide additional coverage."

Thinking one or two Jerichos would have done the job cheaper and better, but that's another thread.

Best regards,

John
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

andrew gissing said:
I've got an analogy i've been thinking of and would like to check and see if it works. Would a balloon work ?
Andrew
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I think that's a good analogy from an energy standpoint. The one area where it falls apart is that the dispersion of any real world speaker changes with frequency. One must keep in mind that just about every pro sound manufacturer that states a dispersion angle is generally talking about a range of high frequencies where the size of the horn is substantial in comparison to the wavelengths. If you want the pattern to maintain below 2Khz then it requires size. A box that is 15 inches wide isn't going to have much control at all around 500Hz. Keep in mind that 12" woofers with a fairly rigid cone (I'm not talking about guitar amp speakers) have at most 90 degrees of "focus" around 1Khz. The crossover region of a typical 2-way box is generally fraught with variation from lobing (driver spacing) as well as directivity changes of the horn and woofer. Almost everything is in transition over the 2 octaves between 750 and 3Khz.
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Jack Arnott said:
The term "throw" had relevance in the late 70's/early 80's, with JBL horns. They had a "cake cutter" horn, that only projected 30'. Period.
The other horns projected like a normal horn. The conventional wisdom has prevailed. Much too long.
Click to expand...
I always referred to them as "potato mashers", because they looked like some versions of a mash potato tool.

I think we are talking about the same thing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jbl...ntage-jbl-model-175-driver-and-potato;570;428

Or were you talking about the lens horn

https://www.google.com/search?q=jbl...453-pair_jbl_2395_lenses_and_horn%2F;1024;768
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Ivan Beaver said:
I always referred to them as "potato mashers", because they looked like some versions of a mash potato tool.

I think we are talking about the same thing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jbl...ntage-jbl-model-175-driver-and-potato;570;428

Or were you talking about the lens horn

https://www.google.com/search?q=jbl...453-pair_jbl_2395_lenses_and_horn%2F;1024;768
Click to expand...

To keep the swerve going, does anyone wish to explain the physics behind the slant-plate "lens"?
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

Tim McCulloch said:
To keep the swerve going, does anyone wish to explain the physics behind the slant-plate "lens"?
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There is probably a reason why that design has not be used in several decades----------------------------

Except a MAJOR player is using them in their new cabinets for the "dance" market.

My guess is that the guys that now own the clubs remember them from the "studio 54 days" and believe they can "relive" their youth-or what they "think they remember".

I could be completely wrong. But I have never heard anybody say anything good about the old "slant lens"-except they were wide-but at what freq and how even?

I have never used any-so cannot make any personal experience comments
 
Re: Help me understand the concept of speaker “throw” please.

We called potato mashers also. I still have a pair of those and a pair of the big lens. It used to mount on an oval horn that was used by itself in some Clair boxes.

The idea as I remember was to increase horizontal coverage while cutting down on beaming. They "Sounded OK" for the day.
The potato masher was in monitors with a 15. They worked well also.
 
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