Leading Edge Panels

[bonzo]

Did anyone get a demo of this at the hifi show last month? What's the feedback

 

[garysan]

Did anyone get a demo of this at the hifi show last month? What's the feedback

I was very impressed with these. I went to an ad-hock 'after hours' demo where they played a pretty bass heavy EDM track by Trentemøller, first with the panels in the room (it sounded awesome) and then they stopped it, man-handled the panels out of the room and into the hallway, then played the track again. This time it sounded like 50 other high end systems I'd heard before; good, excellent in fact but not mind blowing...

They then brought the panels back in and re-played the same track a third time. Each time the volume was matched at the same level. Once the panels were back in the room the awesomeness returned

From what Jeremy (The Right Note) was telling us, ideally the panels should be suspended from the ceiling by about 8" to allow soundwaves to move across each side of the panel for best effect. You can have single sided panels which are attached to the ceiling but apparently you need twice as many.

Hope that helps, Gary.

 

[bonzo]

Thanks I have 12 ft ceilings and that's what I am thinking, but after a demo.

 

[hifinutt]

I was very impressed with these. I went to an ad-hock 'after hours' demo where they played a pretty bass heavy EDM track by Trentemøller, first with the panels in the room (it sounded awesome) and then they stopped it, man-handled the panels out of the room and into the hallway, then played the track again. This time it sounded like 50 other high end systems I'd heard before; good, excellent in fact but not mind blowing...They then brought the panels back in and re-played the same track a third time. Each time the volume was matched at the same level. Once the panels were back in the room the awesomeness returned

From what Jeremy (The Right Note) was telling us, ideally the panels should be suspended from the ceiling by about 8" to allow soundwaves to move across each side of the panel for best effect. You can have single sided panels which are attached to the ceiling but apparently you need twice as many.

Hope that helps, Gary.

ah yes I heard that too , pretty good but don`t think I will be spending that much mullah on panels , made my own !

 

[hifinutt]

interesting in the same demo room they were using the alethia balanced power supply which arouses fierce debate on here !!!

 

[Muddy Funster]

Agree, Phil. Think it is too much too and not required when other pro solutions are available at soooo much less!

You are comparing apples with oranges. Micro-perf panels are used a lot by acousticians now, because they provide absorption and some attenuation with a long lifespan, don't eat into too much depth of wall and can act as narrow-band Helmholtz resonators. They are preferred over porous absorbers in bigger studios and especially in the built environment now. The BBC used similar systems for years, but this was when 'micro-perforation' meant 2mm or larger holes punched in plates, often laid over fibreglass. The perforations can be as small as 0.05mm thick, but typically 0.5mm-2mm are used in audio settings (the Kaiser/LE panels use 1mm diameter holes, with a 6x6 grid per centimetre covered by perforations).

Micro-perforation panels also have some extremely interesting acoustic properties that are currently being explored. As the size of the perforations and the honeycomb behind them have shrunk thanks to changes in manufacturing, they have started to exhibit unexpected bonuses. They begin to behave in a non-linear manner, in that their performance changes with respect to the magnitude of the incident sound wave. It's perhaps that which seems to give MPP systems a benefit over more conventional solutions, especially when playing things with lots of transients and playing them loud. This is still in the theory stage, but the panels absorption/Helmholtz resonator properties are mathematically solid. Personally, I'm more convinced by the technology than the explanation in the domestic market, which seems not to tally perfectly with the physics of the things.

It's possible to pick up very cheap micro-perf panels from China, but you need a 10,000 sq m minimum order, and they only have absorption properties. The LE panels and others - like DeAmp and Armstrong - have something like 10-20x the number of perforations per sq m than the generic Chinese ones, but you need to have the size and number of perforations broadly 'tuned' for the size of room. The Armstrong panels are really ceiling clouds designed to work in large open-plan office spaces (and they work exceptionally effectively too), but that means any properties aside from simple absorption are out-of-band for most domestic rooms. DeAmp gets closer, IMO, but they are still designed for larger spaces and not everyone wants something that looks a bit like a stainless steel chesegrater on the walls and ceilings.

The LE panels seem expensive from a surface view, but they are not the kind of things you can knock together and do things that you will struggle to achieve without a lot of porous room treatment, if at all. We go about this in an arse-about-face way sometimes. We spend tens of thousands on the electronics and hundreds on the room treatment. I don't think it should be the other way round, but there needs to be a better balance. Those of us on the other side of the fence periodically push this subject, have mild success and then everything stops dead for another half decade.

 

[Rodney Gold]

I made these myself , pretty cheaply , micro perforation that can be printed and a specialised acoustic aborbent polyester material all in a 3" thick frame , didn't use honeycomb , but will try a panel with some , I can get various material types , cell wall thickness and depth of honeycomb from my local composite resin suppliers - reasonably priced.

Cost me around 100 quid , but I had the machinery to print etc , would probably cost you under 200 quid a panel if you had it made by someone else , 1200 mm x 600 mm

VERY waf friendly .. i chose mirrored acrylic to frame it as I had it in stock and have laser cutters , but on reflection (excuse the pun) it would have been better to frame them with a commercial picture type frame.

Room treatment with panels in the Hf and bass traps and/or DSP in the bass region under 300hz is the biggest bang for the buck upgrade you can make

 

[Rodney Gold]

Well , in the fist place I did not use honeycomb and the perforated material is not a rigid material , it has some give.

There really is little difference in how you make HF/mid diffusion absorption panels. The principle is more or less the same

You use a porous material covering to diffuse the HF and let sound through and a small air gap between that and an acoustic absorbent material , the freqs the inside absorbs is dependent mainly on thickness. On average a 2-3" thickness of absorption material like rockwool etc will work from 1-2k upwards

The stick on the wall foam stuff a lot of folk use is not ideal tho. it really just absorbs only HF and little or no midrange.

To use very highly specific treatments you really need to measure the room precisely to know what areas to target , my solution is most likely far less precise than the leading edge stuff. Its a better idea to know what you are treating and apply the cure with precision

Less is more with panels , sticking lots of them (or rugs on walls , heavy curtains etc) can suck the life out of the room.

The brain expects some liveliness in the sound

Panels like these will not affect your bass - the room acts as a resonator in the low bass under 3-400hz and these panels only treat the room where it acts like a reflector so if your problem is bass overhang masking treble or mids , they wont help much.

The most effective points to put panels is first reflection points , and to find these , sit in your listening position and slide a mirror along the wall (or ceiling if you can) and where you can see the mid/tweeter is that point.

Thereafter the next most effective point is the walls behind the speakers.

If you sit far from a wall behind your chair , it might be effective to put panels on that wall so sound doesn't reflect back to your listening position and smear the imaging and timberal qualities. wont be effective if you near that wall.

If you dont want to make or buy panels , anything that stops reflections at these points is better than nothing , so you can try with other stuff and if it works for you , then make up/buy the real Mcoy stuff....