If you are convinced how certain speakers sound without hearing them, good for you.
I'm not in that league.
I'm not devoted to anything, nor to anyone.
I'm not devoted to my speakers – which is why I participate in this forum.
If you are convinced how certain speakers sound without hearing them, good for you.
I'm not in that league.
If you are convinced how certain speakers sound without hearing them, good for you.
I'm not in that league.
Thanks for that. I was at CES 2009, but didn't know about the demo.
I liked this quote from further down the thread, about the AR demos.
To me that says a lot. Maybe it's easier than we think to get the music right, it's the acoustics that trip us up!
They are shown in Taiwan during audio shows. Since I normally visit every room that has speakers playing, I would have noticed at least the brand if the sound was attractive to me, obviouse it is for people of a different taste. I looked through some local reviews, yes, here are people that like certain characteristics, same as many will like others.
I did some search, Bromann was Bosendorfer, now I know the sound, and yes, they do sound as I would would have predicted. I went to audit them due to the rave of news.
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Personally , I can't stand speakers which do not "colour" the sound somewhat.Actually I'm not sure I ever heard any that don't but some color more convincingly and gracefully than others . I couldn't live with Lowthers for a few specific traits but they color the sound in a way that the best and most expensive SOTA mainstream can't begin to approach.
The reason I would eventually build Lynn speakers is that I can relate to his sound aesthetics . I'm getting old and headbanging times are over and I'm not going to acquire very refine taste in avant-garde classical material as much as I would like to aspire to it . I need fairly universal speaker designed by the individual who's taste I trust and without big ego in the picture.Then there is 25% of chance that I will like the speakers (one really can't expect more) I admire Lynn's generosity. If I were him I'd just use my contacts in industry and get the unobtainable drivers and say Sayonara to DIY community. I'm almost positively sure once the speaker is designed and the plans published some will take bits and pieces of it and make profit and Lynn will not see a dime.
Joshua , you have quite nice and expensive setup which should color the sound in very pleasant way.To get realism you talk about (with your expectation level and reference points ) would require a major effort in time and money. Try not to get offended here . It's a DIY forum and most DIY folks find components with price tag more than $200 a rip off and have little to no personal experience with better equipment. They 'heard" it at quick demos at dealers and shows and formed' their "opinions " (I'm guilty of such myself ) also whenever (way too little ) I go to orchestra hall and opera I only see old Jewish faces , non of them looking like a member of a DIY clan ;you can't expect many soul mates here . Rgrds, L
The reason I would eventually build Lynn speakers is that I can relate to his sound aesthetics . I'm getting old and headbanging times are over and I'm not going to acquire very refine taste in avant-garde classical material as much as I would like to aspire to it . I need fairly universal speaker designed by the individual who's taste I trust and without big ego in the picture.Then there is 25% of chance that I will like the speakers (one really can't expect more) I admire Lynn's generosity. If I were him I'd just use my contacts in industry and get the unobtainable drivers and say Sayonara to DIY community. I'm almost positively sure once the speaker is designed and the plans published some will take bits and pieces of it and make profit and Lynn will not see a dime.
Joshua , you have quite nice and expensive setup which should color the sound in very pleasant way.To get realism you talk about (with your expectation level and reference points ) would require a major effort in time and money. Try not to get offended here . It's a DIY forum and most DIY folks find components with price tag more than $200 a rip off and have little to no personal experience with better equipment. They 'heard" it at quick demos at dealers and shows and formed' their "opinions " (I'm guilty of such myself ) also whenever (way too little ) I go to orchestra hall and opera I only see old Jewish faces , non of them looking like a member of a DIY clan ;you can't expect many soul mates here
. Rgrds, L
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I have recordings of performances I was at live, and know where and how the mics were placed, truthfully, when a system gets good enough, I cannot tell if it differed from what I heard. Of course my seat was no where near the mics, but the distance from the stage was not to much different. The individual instruments are reproduced to a point that I cannot pick out flows with full confidence.
I'm convinced that I can make some judgements about design flaws that I've heard time and time again in various designs. I'm convinced that there is no legitimate reason to surface mount a dome tweeter. I'm convinced that the crossover is an act of lazy design- first order with a soft dome at what, 2k? Way to limit the output abilities of the speaker.
I'm convinced that despite the terrible XO design, they actually tout that weakness.... I'm convinced that I've heard several other designs like it and they're better than expected, but still badly flawed in ways that are correctable.
Badman,
While I agree with you 100% on the mounting of any dome tweeter setting it flush to the surface, and I agree and I don't use first order networks on my speakers, there are others who swear by those designs. It is a very different set of parameters that those people are looking at than you or I who would use higher order networks. I happen to be a proponent of 4th order LR filters as a starting place for any networks I do. I don't want a wide overlap between devices, but others are looking for just kind of thing. Then again others want to use a digital dsp option with brick wall filters that I just don't want to do.
While I agree with you 100% on the mounting of any dome tweeter setting it flush to the surface, and I agree and I don't use first order networks on my speakers, there are others who swear by those designs. It is a very different set of parameters that those people are looking at than you or I who would use higher order networks. I happen to be a proponent of 4th order LR filters as a starting place for any networks I do. I don't want a wide overlap between devices, but others are looking for just kind of thing. Then again others want to use a digital dsp option with brick wall filters that I just don't want to do.
My old friend and Audio Research / Magnepan dealer is an avid chamber music aficionado and is one of a founder members of local chamber music society for quarter of a century regularly attending concerts in different venues . He plays me recordings trough his reference Audio Research Magnepan setup which costs tens of thousands of $$ (admittedly his demo room is compromised) an says that it sounds as close to real thing as possible. I hear alien sound from outer spaces hanging in the air removed from earthly touch . He answers that I'm a member of SET cult and can't be taken seriously not too mention my peasant background and cultural deficiencies (somewhat true). Simply said it's hard to have a meaningful discussion with somebody with a taste of a Pterodactyl (phrase stolen from invaluable Romy the Cat ) and that would be me
Everybody knows that countersunk tweeter sounds better so if someone in a rather elaborate design with custom made drivers decides to mount it on the board there must be a reason for it and its not because of ignorance of a designer. (I assume)
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I used transistor amps from 1968 to 1993, switched back and forth from 1993 to 1997, and have used DHT-triode amps since.
I worked at Beaverton campus of Tektronix from 1979 through 1988. I know how to measure things, having worked at the Spectrum Analyzer business unit for five years. I bought one of the early MLSSA units, along with matching Aco Pacific microphone, back in 1991. I've used Radford, Tektronix SG505/AA501, and the more modern PC-based distortion analyzers.
I was working, along with a couple of other Tek guys, on an advanced MOSFET amplifier with dynamic distortion correction when all three of us finally gave up on transistors in 1991. All three of us heard a triode-converted Dyna Stereo 70 at a hifi meet and decided we'd been wasting three years of our time.
The big puzzle was why the stupid room heater sounded better. A Stereo 70 is a pretty primitive amplifier, close to the bottom rung of tube amplifiers. No, it wasn't "euphonic distortion". We had all kinds of clever 2nd and 3rd-harmonic distortion generators, and they didn't sound anything like a tube amp. They just sounded bad, like a germanium-era transistor amp with extra dirt and muck thrown in.
A few experiments with true (thermal) Class A transistor amplifiers showed a way forward; most of the grain and crud disappeared, but the tonality stayed the same. Hmm. Most the trick circuits measured slightly better, but didn't sound any better, and sometimes worse. If we had persisted in that direction, we foresaw building very large, fan-cooled Class A amplifiers with extremely high slew rates, in the 1000V/uSec range. It was possible to build interesting transistor amps, but it was a very steep curve.
By comparison, tube amps with pretty basic circuits sounded rather good. With the kind of rigor that's necessary in the solid-state world, the sound went from rather-good to extraordinary.
The general conclusion in our little Tek group was the active devices were just better; more linear, less trouble with dynamic capacitance, and didn't need complex protection circuits. The static measurements of the complete amplifier were not telling the whole story; the differences you could repeatably hear were at the device level.
Put another way, for same amount of design effort, I could get better results with vacuum tubes than transistors. Granted, the "Golden Age" amps of the Fifties are plenty colored; from a circuit perspective, they're nearly all the same, so that's not a surprising result. (The Williamson of 1948 resulted in a near-monoculture for ten years, and not much variation after that.)
I wanted to design an amplifier that had the lowest distortion in the forward path (lowest intrinsic distortion), so that resulted in the Amity amplifier (named after my daughter). The next version was the Karna (named after my partner).
The Ariel was designed for moderate-power triode amplifiers: at the time I designed it, I had been listening to the Audionics CC-2 amplifier since 1977, when I built my own version on the Audionics production line. As transistor amps go, it sounds pretty much the same as modern transistor amps. Not a surprise, since the full-complementary low-TIM topology is pretty similar to the modern norm.
The new loudspeaker? It's designed for people who already have low-to-moderate-power direct-heated-triode (45, 2A3, 300B) or pentode (6L6, EL84, EL34, KT88) amplifiers. That was the primary design intention of the Ariel twenty years ago, and it is the same for the new loudspeaker. Thus, the name of the thread.
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Hello Limono,
This is IMHO a very strange opinion as for what it seems Jabo horns have a Kugelwellen profile which is very similar to a Le Cleach horn profile.
(But for sure different of a Tractrix horn)
Best regards from Paris,
Jean-Michel Le Cléac'h
<Sigh> I forget one little thing, and you immediately jump to the conclusion that I attack you (even if it wasn't me who posted those plots in the thread), and that I have simulated the OSWG in a way to deliberately show it in a bad light. The data comes from my website, and we had a short discussion about it when I put it up: Jean Michel on Lecleach horns. As you will see on my web page, the OSWGs DO have radius'ed mouths.
You also seem to assume that I defend and promote the AH425, going to desperate measures in the process. I do neither. I helped design it, but I don't make it, I don't sell it, I don't even use it anymore. There are many simulations of it on my website, because it's a convenient size to simulate. I'm not going to run those simulations again with another horn just to distance me from the AH425 project.
From the simulations on my website it is quite evident that the OSWG has directivity characteristics very much different, and much more constant, than the AH425. I even show the polar maps with different settings so as to not be criticized by you for cheating.
Then I forget to push the "log scale" button on one plot, one of two traditional polar plots...
But OK, I'll find those simulations and put up a log-scaled polar plot. In the meantime, people can look at the polar maps, which gives a more complete picture. The link to my website is in my signature below.
Regards,
Bjørn
Thank you very much for posting your horn-simulation data, Bjorn. I sincerely apologize for any hard feelings that may have resulted from recent postings. I try and keep things on a positive tone, but don't always succeed.
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Personally , I can't stand speakers which do not "colour" the sound somewhat.Actually I'm not sure I ever heard any that don't but some color more convincingly and gracefully than others . I couldn't live with Lowthers for a few specific traits but they color the sound in a way that the best and most expensive SOTA mainstream can't begin to approach.
The reason I would eventually build Lynn speakers is that I can relate to his sound aesthetics . I'm getting old and headbanging times are over and I'm not going to acquire very refine taste in avant-garde classical material as much as I would like to aspire to it . I need fairly universal speaker designed by the individual who's taste I trust and without big ego in the picture.Then there is 25% of chance that I will like the speakers (one really can't expect more) I admire Lynn's generosity. If I were him I'd just use my contacts in industry and get the unobtainable drivers and say Sayonara to DIY community. I'm almost positively sure once the speaker is designed and the plans published some will take bits and pieces of it and make profit and Lynn will not see a dime.
Joshua , you have quite nice and expensive setup which should color the sound in very pleasant way.To get realism you talk about (with your expectation level and reference points ) would require a major effort in time and money. Try not to get offended here . It's a DIY forum and most DIY folks find components with price tag more than $200 a rip off and have little to no personal experience with better equipment. They 'heard" it at quick demos at dealers and shows and formed' their "opinions " (I'm guilty of such myself ) also whenever (way too little ) I go to orchestra hall and opera I only see old Jewish faces , non of them looking like a member of a DIY clan ;you can't expect many soul mates here
This pretty well sums it up. I hope Earl Geddes and Jean Michel and many other peers will go on helping the growing process of this project. The posts of recent weeks esp Lynn have helped move things on. It would be great knowing how many out there have built or started to build this new project. These pioneers one hopes will share their experience. Where are getting there but it istaking its time.
Hi Pano
To me this is entirely correct and why it is not possible to get the impression of a large venue in a small one. The queues are just wrong. Multi-channel is an improvement, but lets face it two channel is the standard. That's why things that are recorded for two channel and small rooms can be very effective, but a two channel recording of a large venue is never going to be completely satisfactory.
Bjorn
I was not referring to you specifically but the continued assault on constant directivity waveguides that appears in this thread. That's fine if one is using valid comments and data, but herein they have not been so fair.