Pediophobia
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsRemember Chucky the scary clown? In the 1988 movie Child’s Play, film producers took advantage of a particular phobia that more than a few people have. It’s known as Pediophobia and it is the fear of dolls, or more generally, a fear of things most people find normal.
What the film producers did was to exaggerate a doll’s features, so they went from cutsie to horrific (the nasty teeth and smile). This is a spin-off of a similar device used in the movie The Exorcist. Remember Regan (played by Linda Blair)? A cute girl who eventually spits green fluids and has her head spinning (literally). It’s the exaggeration of normal that fascinates us.
The point of all this is that when we choose to take something “normal” and exaggerate its features, there are typically two reactions: acceptance or rejection.
I have seen more than a few people walk into Music Room Two and put their hand over their mouth in a combination of horror and astonishment. (and the opposite)
“That’s a stereo system?”
And I have seen my share of audiophiles reel backwards when faced with a gargantuan exaggeration of normal. Remember Magico’s giant assemblage of horns that engulfed the entire room? It was fascinating to watch people’s reactions. Some were drawn to the spectacle like flies to molasses. Others shook their heads in disapproval.
I, for one, love the extremes—not so much as a potential customer, but because I love to be presented with the new and extraordinary.
Bring on the clowns!
With the exception of in-wall-speakers or furniture-like stereo consoles all speakers are more or less foreign bodies in a normal living room. Maybe some spherical horn loudspeakers could be regarded as an object d’art and some flat planar speakers as room dividers. But generally loudspeakers face the same problem as CRT-based TV-sets did which generally were hidden in cupboards. The core problem remains: where to hide the speakers and how to move them automatically to the best in room position for a listening session. And even in a dedicated music room a serious audiophile has to close his eyes in order to get the best acoustic illusion – quite different to home theatre sessions where the visual effect is most dominant. No wonder many spouses show severe signs of loudspeaker-phobia! Not to mention the associated cable-phobia resembling snake-phobia!
I’m slightly amused by this post only because it’s the opposite with me.
My little 2 way Danish, shoe box, loudspeakers [mounted on 920cm of concrete Besser (Cinder) blocks (two vertical, one horizontal), Liquid Nailed (epoxy resin) together for maximum inertia] that are 37/63% midway between the floor & the ceiling, have a soundstage that sounds so ‘big’ (in the room) that most visitors to my living room also look…well, more amazed than horrified…but there can be a ‘thin line’ between the two facial expressions; like crying hard & laughing hard.
One chap even asked me where the subwoofer is; to which I replied, “What subwoofer?”
Of course the fact that my listening room is only 5.5m x 4m x 2.6m kinda helps.
I’m 6’4″ tall, 230lbs & I always hear that, “size isn’t everything”
True that!
ps. My wife only has phobias outside our front door; inside she’s as cool as the proverbial cucumber.
I’m with you on small and am about to look at the D&D 8c, but have never yet been convinced by a speaker with aluminium drivers, and these units have three of them. It’s the dispersion pattern that is interesting and placement 10cm from the rear wall.
Steven,
Lots of aluminium drivers to choose from these days.
I owned standmounts with titanium tweeters 18 months ago (American), but I found that after about two & a half hours of listening that I wanted to run away & do something else…first time in my life that I was afflicted with listener fatigue.
After 8 months I had to move them on & go back to something with a treated silk 1″ dome (European)
My advice, if you want it, would be, after they’ve run in, to listen to them for extended periods of time (6hrs at a time) as often as you can to see if your ears are metal driver friendly.
As much as I prefer a slightly more edgy sound (older ears) these days as opposed to smooth (younger ears) I’m also wary of metal drivers.
My Harbeths had 1″ aluminium dome SEAS tweeters; now they WERE smo-o-oth in 1993.
I don’t know how 10cm from the wall can give you decent depth in the soundstage…THAT would be interesting to listen to.
Nothing like a Golden duck to inspire the Kiwi’s but Stephen Smith could be firing again…tomorrow’s another day 🙂
In your opinion did the Umpire get that ‘back’ bye off Smith right or wrong?
More important things first, the Burns dismissal was a jaffer, watched a bit or Warner/Labu they slept till SAvEng.
I will be doing Harbeth v 8C side by side, and will get to borrow the 8c over a weekend, so a long session will suffice to test for fatigue.
Steven,
Hmmm…they look very good on paper.
$16,999AU rrp here; although successful haggling might take a grand, maybe a grand & a half off.
I’d be very interested to hear your impression(s) on them next week.
What a fab way to spend the w’end.
I hope Eng v SA isn’t too much of a distraction 🙂
…Enjoy!
They are definitely brighter than Harbys, but they’re also a number of other things, so I think if you’re only comparing sound and like Harbeths, they may not appeal. But if you want all the other features/conveniences of the D&D’s, they’re certainly impressive.
badbeef,
With 59yo ears, my learned philosophy is,
“Brighter is Better!” 🙂
My favorite exaggeration in audio is, when the soundstage overrules the silhouette of the speakers by an amount as large as possible.
Too small speakers (even when paired with subs) can lack authority, so this has limits…but as impressive as large walls of speakers can sound, their impression as a whole (mixture of own sound and optical relation to the soundstage) is what makes it for me.
So I also enjoy to see and hear the extremes in terms of size and overwhelming sound, but the real great experience is the lack of optical strike combined with a maximized soundfield, soundstage, impact and transparency.
I enjoyed tine shoebox single driver point source speakers without crossover (no horns or transmission line design) presenting an unbelievable realistic and natural sound – I guess due to a near perfect step response and audibly irrelevant phase shifts. Compared to these Mini-Monitors the huge tower speaker I could listen just made a specific mostly unnatural sound. (My criterion here is that a speaker should clearly reveal if a violin or a viola is playing. Or for “authority “ reason: if it’s a kettle drum or a big gong! ) The majority of big multi-driver speakers (having the driver distributed over a large baffle surface) just could produce spectacular high volumes, sound pressure levels I never listen to. Those who need body shaking bass levels might add active subwoofers – but certainly will stop desperately this adventure due to problems with phase coherent integration.
paulsquirrel,
Maybe it’s the ‘ageing thing’ with me.
When I was 19yo it was ALL about the body shaking bass levels.
My ears were young & their frequency ‘curve’ was flat, in fact it may have even risen slightly in the higher registers (8-20kHz)
Now, forty years on, the bass can look after itself…if you know what I mean.
I’m more interested in the mids & the highs.
Yeah, I remember getting an Ipod with the small earphones and thinking how can you get music outta this thing. It went in a drawer with other small things.
“Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.”
~ Michelangelo
Michaeldavitt,
So, with Michelangelo’s words of wisdom still burning into my retinas I must ask you, “Is your drawer overflowing yet?” 😉
Room dominating speakers and electronics are impressive to me, not so much to my wife, or even lots of others of either gender. What would drop my jaws, and make me stand back in awe, would be the sound of the IRSV’s in MR2 coming from something hidden or so small it didn’t stand out. Picture Paul standing in the middle of the room alone with a BHK set-up with the room filling sound signature of the IRSV’s, but they’re not there. Truly frightening…..
In the mean time I’ll come back to reality… since I’ve given up on the ‘boob tube’ other than the local news and some documentary types of programming, I retreat to a dedicated sound room that is isolated quite well from the rest of the house. Things are sounding so good the dogs even love being in there. Most amazing and somewhat frightening (?) is that I have found my wife joining me for a listening session more often ….
….lucky bastard!
Sometimes…. 🙂 Not usually the rule.
how many times do you have to be told not to peek in others drawers……?
🙂
Clowns, Dolls and Anime are creepy ! Never trust a dude in a Tunic ! To get great bass below 30 hz you need big woofers moving a little air smoothly , not small woofers violently moving lots of air and always have clean underwear in your car!
Of course, our hearing is heavily influenced by our vision since our senses are intertwined. Good chefs take great pains to make the visual presentation part of the taste experience. Do speakers need to look outlandish either in size or shape in order to provoke a favorable response? Let’s assume the IRS can put the orchestra in my living room. Do I really want the orchestra in my living room? In fact, this whole business of music reproduction in the home involves multiple illusions. Since I have to live with the components whether they play or not, I try to avoid the grotesque and the silly.
This one preceded Chucky by many years. One of the first made-for-television horror films and written by the great Richard Matheson. Check it out:
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNR0UVPPQ2Lt2slQefIkiQCxzAPuFA:1577371585570&q=trilogy+of+terror+doll&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBlqWIx9PmAhVBnp4KHfBYDQ8QiR56BAgLEBA&biw=2048&bih=722
I am glad we live in world with IRS V speakers, McLaren sports cars, and MV Augusta racing motorcycles. At some point in my life, I would like to experience all these cost-no-object design exercises. Especially in the optimal environments (Music Room 2 or the race track). But I have zero desire to own any of these pinnacles of man’s engineering prowess.
At some point in my life I realized owning expensive toys that are crafted to near perfection are more trouble and worry than any sustained joy they bring. I don’t fault or criticize in any way those that choose to own the best. In fact I am thankful to them for funding their development and continued availability.
My Super Seven roadster and Duck Monster are the perfect cost to joy balance for my continued state of motoring wellbeing. For my audio system? I am searching for that perfect balance.
Too bad I couldn’t find the entire episode. Just this one clip from the middle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z0bdJPvDaw
Spoiler Alert; at the end the doll does kill Telly Sevalas.
My best sound system is a maze of DSPs, equalizers, mixers, preamplifiers, amplifiers. There are two main tower speakers at one end of the room. There are 16 others you’d probably think of as satellites hidden around the room. I made them as inconspicuous as I could. Most of the electronics is in a cabinet which is not in view when its doors are closed. When Paul visited my house he probably didn’t know it but he was sitting no more than 3 feet from one of the satellite speakers. Each one contributes so little sound and is baffled in a way that you have to put your ear up close to it to know if it’s even working. The system has over 100 functioning controls. All but about a dozen remain set at the same spot once the system was tuned to the room. That dozen has to be adjusted for each recording individually. Finding the optimal settings can take a long long time.