What’s Slam Got To Do With It?

[Spannko]

…. It’s nothing but a second hand artefact.

Oftentimes in life, we have to be careful what we wish for. This is particularly so within the realm of high fidelity, or audiophilia. Ever since Linn introduced the Isobarik’s with their ability to produce prodigious amounts of super tight bass, particularly when driven actively, the ability to be able to produce bass with “slam” has been used as a benchmark for many high end loudspeakers. However! It seems to me that wishing for a speaker with slam only guarantees that we will end up with a speaker with slam, and not necessarily one which can play music in a tuneful and melodic fashion. For this, it appears that we have to wish for a loudspeaker with musicality, which in turn, may or may not possess an ability to slam our socks off. That’s what I think, but am I right? Discuss!

[matthias]

I think we have to wish for a loudspeaker with musicality which may possess an ability to slam.
Slam is very important for me, it is a basic ingredient of unamplified live music, a fun factor.

[markiteight]

I think you're right, Spannko. The Zu Audio Dirty Weekends could slam with the best of 'em, the 308Ps can't. The JBLs are considerably more musical and ultimately more enjoyable, but I do miss the dynamics and slam of the Omens*.

There are a lot of loudspeakers out there that slam well but are quite poor musically (see: Wilson Audio. Heck...they even had a model with SLAMM built right into their name, and they were terrible). Indeed, there are so many out there that it would be easy to correlate slam to poor musicality. But I think you're correct that slam and musicality are mutually exclusive traits that can coexist. I suspect the 3677s are quite good at both musicality and knocking socks off.


* It almost isn't fair to compare any passive (as in unpowered) speaker directly with the 308P as you have to consider the amplifier's influence on the outcome. My assessment of the Omen's performance would likely be quite different if the Klout I was using was swapped out for, say, a pair of TM3s.

[matthias]

I suspect the 3677s are quite good at both musicality and knocking socks off.

Yes, they are.

[Rutger]

…. It’s nothing but a second hand artefact.

Oftentimes in life, we have to be careful what we wish for. This is particularly so within the realm of high fidelity, or audiophilia. Ever since Linn introduced the Isobarik’s with their ability to produce prodigious amounts of super tight bass, particularly when driven actively, the ability to be able to produce bass with “slam” has been used as a benchmark for many high end loudspeakers. However! It seems to me that wishing for a speaker with slam only guarantees that we will end up with a speaker with slam, and not necessarily one which can play music in a tuneful and melodic fashion. For this, it appears that we have to wish for a loudspeaker with musicality, which in turn, may or may not possess an ability to slam our socks off. That’s what I think, but am I right? Discuss!

I have never heard a loudspeaker regardless of size that have ” slam” standing on soft SD feets.
I have also never heard a loudspeaker with slam If using a bad source.

One can ask themself - has a a big Cerwin Vega ”slam” regardless of source quality ?

I have many times heard speakers with ”slam ” using a good source and the loudspeakers were standing on spikes. I have heard Linn tukans with ” slam” with a LP12 as source and the speakers didnt have soft feets….

[Lego]

…. It’s nothing but a second hand artefact.

Oftentimes in life, we have to be careful what we wish for. This is particularly so within the realm of high fidelity, or audiophilia. Ever since Linn introduced the Isobarik’s with their ability to produce prodigious amounts of super tight bass, particularly when driven actively, the ability to be able to produce bass with “slam” has been used as a benchmark for many high end loudspeakers. However! It seems to me that wishing for a speaker with slam only guarantees that we will end up with a speaker with slam, and not necessarily one which can play music in a tuneful and melodic fashion. For this, it appears that we have to wish for a loudspeaker with musicality, which in turn, may or may not possess an ability to slam our socks off. That’s what I think, but am I right? Discuss!

What is slam exactly,W.T overture ?

[Spannko]

Is slam a good attribute? Can there be poor slam? How would we be able to tell the difference?

[matthias]

It is very interesting to search for keyword "slam" on this forum and even more when you combine this with search for author.

[Spannko]

It is very interesting to search for keyword "slam" on this forum and even more when you combine this with search for author.

That’s possibly quite interesting Matthias! Would you like to elaborate?

[matthias]

That’s possibly quite interesting Matthias! Would you like to elaborate?

There are two camps here. The members of both camps are standing on the foundation of the tune method.
But for the members of one camp this is not enough, they do not want to be without "slam" for example.

[Arjen]

Slam. I don’t know if I get your point, Spannko. Isn’t a good slam, wether it is pronounced wee, subtle or more forwarded, a vital part of tuneful musicality, essential to attract the listener to the music? If the source has slam and the set up and speaker can reproduce the slam as it is meant, I think it will even play the pants off. Like the drumming of Mick Fleetwood on Rumours.

[springwood64]

I'm not sure what 'slam' is. Perhaps I've never heard it, or if I did hear it, didn't value it.

Do you mean bass that you feel? Quite a lot of my music produces that, and it is fun, but for me not what I enjoy most. I can tune my speaker positions to produce more bass that shakes the room, but I optimise them to play bass that sounds in tune, and this generally means a bit less bass to my ears. When they produce more bass it sounds woollier, less well defined, and tends to last longer (I visualise it wandering around the room and sniffing in the corners). That doesn't sound slammy so probably isnt what you mean.

Years ago I heard a friend's Yamaha speakers that seemed to punch me in the chest, and while fun for the first 30 seconds or so I found them exhausting and chose more restrained Ruark speakers - I wanted to spend the evening with them, not the Yamahas.

I like to hear bass that underpins the music, gives it a solid foundation, but is fundementally part of the tune and does not dominate unless that is key to the piece. Some tracks like The Chain, or Bad Guy make a big feature of the bass, and here I feel it is meant to be powerful, but it still has to be in tune. Playing Bad Guy on Kalla is delight because I hear more structure to the tune of the bass - it is more interesting and subtle than I realised.

In summary, I want the bass to have the same attributes as all the frequencies - it should start on time, peak on time and leave on time, as should the mid and the treble. Surely nothing else is tuneful.

[DelNaja]

User Music Lover has talked about slam and could elaborate, I'm sure, but I haven't seen him for a long time.

[Lego]

Is slam a good attribute? Can there be poor slam? How would we be able to tell the difference?

If slam is a sudden increase in bass intensity at a certain frequency then it's probably not a good attribute,which doesn't mean people won't like it . Remember the Mission 770s,known for their slam,very popular in the early 80s.

[chefren]

Do you mean bass that you feel? Quite a lot of my music produces that, and it is fun, but for me not what I enjoy most. I can tune my speaker positions to produce more bass that shakes the room, but I optimise them to play bass that sounds in tune, and this generally means a bit less bass to my ears. When they produce more bass it sounds woollier, less well defined, and tends to last longer (I visualise it wandering around the room and sniffing in the corners). That doesn't sound slammy so probably isnt what you mean.

To me slam is about more than just bass, but yes it's the viceral feeling of certain dynamic sounds; drums, but perhaps bass guitar and other usually rhythm section instruments.

As you say you can make most systems produce a certain level of slam by sacrificing other things. But when the system has the capacity to slam intrinsically, then you don't need to do this and it just comes through anyway even if you don't especially try to optimize for it.

As for musicality vs. slam.. if you are listening to a recording where the drummer for example wanted to really go for a dynamic drum sound by hitting the drums harder than normal, isn't the system compromised if it cannot communicate that? Or if it cannot communicate why Louis Armstrong was famous for being able to play the trumpet really loud. I don't mean you have to have this massive system capable of endless dynamics, but if it's too restrained, I think it loses the ability to communicate aspecs of the musical performance.

So yes, to me a system needs to be able to do slam at least to some extent.

[Charlie1]

I'm not sure what 'slam' is. Perhaps I've never heard it, or if I did hear it, didn't value it.

Do you mean bass that you feel? Quite a lot of my music produces that, and it is fun, but for me not what I enjoy most. I can tune my speaker positions to produce more bass that shakes the room, but I optimise them to play bass that sounds in tune, and this generally means a bit less bass to my ears. When they produce more bass it sounds woollier, less well defined, and tends to last longer (I visualise it wandering around the room and sniffing in the corners). That doesn't sound slammy so probably isnt what you mean.

Years ago I heard a friend's Yamaha speakers that seemed to punch me in the chest, and while fun for the first 30 seconds or so I found them exhausting and chose more restrained Ruark speakers - I wanted to spend the evening with them, not the Yamahas.

I like to hear bass that underpins the music, gives it a solid foundation, but is fundementally part of the tune and does not dominate unless that is key to the piece. Some tracks like The Chain, or Bad Guy make a big feature of the bass, and here I feel it is meant to be powerful, but it still has to be in tune. Playing Bad Guy on Kalla is delight because I hear more structure to the tune of the bass - it is more interesting and subtle than I realised.

In summary, I want the bass to have the same attributes as all the frequencies - it should start on time, peak on time and leave on time, as should the mid and the treble. Surely nothing else is tuneful.

I like what you saying.

As an aside, I thought 'slam' was the physical kick in the chest that you can feel - especially from bigger drive units. But perhaps I got the wrong idea.

[matthias]

User Music Lover has talked about slam and could elaborate, I'm sure, but I haven't seen him for a long time.

Yes, it is worth to check out his 19 posts here about "slam" :-)

[tokenbrit]

I like what you saying.

As an aside, I thought 'slam' was the physical kick in the chest that you can feel - especially from bigger drive units. But perhaps I got the wrong idea.

Slam makes me think rock/drums, but there's also dynamics and scale particularly with classical and the way you can feel a full orchestra especially symphonies that have weight, (change of) mood & drama, be it Beethoven's Pastoral, or Saint-Saens organ symphony... I guess that's slam too 🤷
Agree with chefren's description and pov that the bass(slam) is part of the tune, in that respect, and Pete's that bass shouldn't be artificially exaggerated, but also shouldn't be obviously absent - would we argue that transients aren't part of the (presentation of the) tune? Isn't slam an aspect of transients just discussed more in regard to bass, but not exclusively?

[matthias]

Isn't slam an aspect of transients just discussed more in regard to bass, but not exclusively?

Yes, certainly not excusively. What slam is in the midbass is something like attack at higher frequencies. Both are surely no artefacts made by the speaker but present at a live concert. Some speaker drivers seem to do a much better job for delivering slam and attack than others, for example what a good 15 inch driver does for slam can do a good compression driver for attack. I agree also that both slam and attack are part of the tune.

[donuk]

For me, slam, is really a lower frequency transient, caused by say an energetic plucking of a double bass string or a crack on a drum.
The joy of hearing it might very much depend upon whether it was there in the original performance. Is it simply the crack of a speaker cone reaching the end of its cycle and distorting, or is it the sound caused by the distortion added to a very brief period of an amplifier being overdriven?
Both can have a pleasing effect. Electric guitarists have utilised these phenomena for years.

Or is it an ecstatic outburst by a musical instrument.

And - not for me to say - where does tunedem fit into this?

FWIW, my view is, if you like it, fine.

Donuk

[Spannko]

For me, slam, is really a lower frequency transient, caused by say an energetic plucking of a double bass string or a crack on a drum.
The joy of hearing it might very much depend upon whether it was there in the original performance.

And - not for me to say - where does tunedem fit into this?

FWIW, my view is, if you like it, fine.

Donuk

For me, you’ve summed up “slam” very well Don. I too see slam as a low frequency transient as opposed to a mid frequency transient, which I think of as “attack”.

Where does tunedem fit into this? For me, it doesn’t. Well, not really, but it might! Research on the subject of transients suggests that a good phase response is necessary in order to ensure a fundamental and its harmonics are reproduced with the correct time and amplitude relationships, as springwood64 suggested. This is also a requirement for the accurate reproduction of pitch, so there’s a relationship between accurate transient and pitch reproduction. To understand this, I see transients and pitch as siblings born of harmonicity; the accurate reproduction of a fundamental and its harmonics. We can’t hear perfect harmonicity, although some people say that for some unexplainable reason they get a sense that it “feels” more “right”, for want of a better explanation. However, we can detect inharmonicity when the reproduced pitch of a note doesn’t meet our expectations, which is why the tune method of analysis is an accurate indicator of a systems linearity, its harmonic ability, and therefore, it’s musicality. Also, harmonicity is a vital component of speech intelligibility, which explains why soundtracks played via Källa are so captivating.

Edit: I’ve just realised, if what I’ve said above is correct, accurate transient reproduction must be as important as accurate pitch reproduction since they both derive from accurate harmonicity. The difference being, pitch is much easier to analyse for the human ear/brain system. So maybe the title of this thread should be changed to “What’s slam got to do with it? ……. It’s a necessary requirement of accurate sound reproduction” ! 😂🤣😂