Today was my lucky day. Mssr. Phil Townsend held a listening party at his house, and several diyAudio members attended (along with a lot of smart and friendly audio folks).
Phil set up super-systems in every part of his house. In the "Japanese" room were his Maiko Feastrex D5nf with hand-built everything except the Macbook streaming lossless audio. A spectacular sound in an experimental nearfield setup (last summer I heard them far-field in his huge living room and they were even more exciting and sonically life-sized).
An FE108E-Sigma BiB room, the Frugel-Horns with digital Darling, a state-of-the-art headphone rig were some of the other systems. (We didn't get to hear the Frugels due to so many systems -- a happy dilemma).
In another part of Phil's house were his Harvey's with FE126eN (planet10 eNaBLed drivers). They were positioned in perfect corners and the room was much longer (shoebox-shaped) than the "Japanese" room. The bass was thunderous. Not "blaring amounts of 50Hz bass". More like clean pure deep-down 30-something subwoofer bass.
The pluck and snap of guitar strings was absolutely lifelike to my ears. I think this is what people call a "fast" sound -- lively, clear, snappy, unlike a typical speaker. Some more experienced folks gave the edge to the Feastrex in the midrange -- okay, fair enough!
But in Phil's vast audio laboratory masquerading as his house, I have to say the most astonishing thing I heard today were the Harveys. Every system sounded great, but the Harveys blew my mind. What part of that was the room, the amp, the source, the eNaBLe / driver mods, I can't separate -- the whole combination was perfect. I can tell you that vino played no role -- I stayed sharp for the experience!
Anyway, don't take my word for it -- a lot of fellow forum members were there and no doubt have a different, arguably more astute take on things. But that is my two cents. I feel like I experienced "the perfect system". Thank you Phil and all the good people who attended.
Phil set up super-systems in every part of his house. In the "Japanese" room were his Maiko Feastrex D5nf with hand-built everything except the Macbook streaming lossless audio. A spectacular sound in an experimental nearfield setup (last summer I heard them far-field in his huge living room and they were even more exciting and sonically life-sized).
An FE108E-Sigma BiB room, the Frugel-Horns with digital Darling, a state-of-the-art headphone rig were some of the other systems. (We didn't get to hear the Frugels due to so many systems -- a happy dilemma).
In another part of Phil's house were his Harvey's with FE126eN (planet10 eNaBLed drivers). They were positioned in perfect corners and the room was much longer (shoebox-shaped) than the "Japanese" room. The bass was thunderous. Not "blaring amounts of 50Hz bass". More like clean pure deep-down 30-something subwoofer bass.
The pluck and snap of guitar strings was absolutely lifelike to my ears. I think this is what people call a "fast" sound -- lively, clear, snappy, unlike a typical speaker. Some more experienced folks gave the edge to the Feastrex in the midrange -- okay, fair enough!
But in Phil's vast audio laboratory masquerading as his house, I have to say the most astonishing thing I heard today were the Harveys. Every system sounded great, but the Harveys blew my mind. What part of that was the room, the amp, the source, the eNaBLe / driver mods, I can't separate -- the whole combination was perfect. I can tell you that vino played no role -- I stayed sharp for the experience!
Anyway, don't take my word for it -- a lot of fellow forum members were there and no doubt have a different, arguably more astute take on things. But that is my two cents. I feel like I experienced "the perfect system". Thank you Phil and all the good people who attended.
Poindexter said:
A couple threads
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128079
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=111612
dave
I'd not blindly accept anyone's ranking of systems; we have unique preferences and contexts. However, I am more likely to weight the sonic descriptions of a (live?) music lover more heavily than those of the experienced 'audiophile'. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
P.S. I have heard others state that they have preferred a Fostex 4.5" 'speaker system to a Feastrex-based system. You are not on your own.
Oh, I forgot. What type of system were the Harvey's strapped to?
Also - a little OT - how far does a person need to sit from the Harveys for the sound to integrate? Less than the taller Saburo? A double-mouth that could be enjoyed from a minimum 6-ish feet would be sweet. Apologies if I am covering old ground.
Thanks again
Also - a little OT - how far does a person need to sit from the Harveys for the sound to integrate? Less than the taller Saburo? A double-mouth that could be enjoyed from a minimum 6-ish feet would be sweet. Apologies if I am covering old ground.
Thanks again
The way I SWAG it, at 6 ft a ~188 Hz mass corner is required which is about what the published sims show the Harvey designed for, so for good summation it needs the vent acoustic centers to be < ~23" from the driver's center-line, which it does, though there might be some subtle performance improvement by re-thinking the positioning of the vent's 'diaplane' braces to more closely be at their acoustic centers with the downside that they wouldn't be symmetrical due to the lower vent's floor loading. Spacing them up off the floor to get the drivers up to ear height would allow symmetry at the expense of a half octave of floor loading on the one vent, so no 'free lunch'.
GM
GM
Hi guys, just to clarify:
I'm saying that the total "Harvey" room / system sounded better to me than the total "Japanese" room. But bear in mind that these rooms are as different as can be.
Tthe Harveys were in the corners of the short end of a shoe-box-shaped room:
http://sfaudio.googlegroups.com/web/SFAS.1.17.09043.jpg
And the Japanese room was an experimental near-field setup, with cabs pulled into the middle of the room away from walls/corners, listening position is on the floor:
http://sfaudio.googlegroups.com/web/SFAS.1.17.09026.jpg
(Harvey room was also a slab of concrete.) So room differences were at least as important as anything else. (Pictures courtesy of forum member Benthos.)
Not perfectly but I am posting a different thread of my month-long eNaBLe "research" later today which does encompass the Harvey room in part (but mostly took place in my room).
I think you can see from Benthos' picture that there's an Antique Sound Labs amp with Benchmark DAC (brought by an attendee) and CD player the make/model of which I didn't catch. But this is not Phil's high-end stuff -- he swapped in his hand-built stuff a couple days later (even yummier).
I would guestimate the chair was 6.5 feet back, presumably the same distance the speakers are from each other, roughly (in the first picture above). eNaBLe plus the double horns seems to make the sweet spot wide enough to walk around in (exact position not so critical).
Thank you again Phil! And thank you forum members Monte Verdi and Benthos for organizing (and Benthos for snapping the pix).
I'm saying that the total "Harvey" room / system sounded better to me than the total "Japanese" room. But bear in mind that these rooms are as different as can be.
Tthe Harveys were in the corners of the short end of a shoe-box-shaped room:
http://sfaudio.googlegroups.com/web/SFAS.1.17.09043.jpg
And the Japanese room was an experimental near-field setup, with cabs pulled into the middle of the room away from walls/corners, listening position is on the floor:
http://sfaudio.googlegroups.com/web/SFAS.1.17.09026.jpg
(Harvey room was also a slab of concrete.) So room differences were at least as important as anything else. (Pictures courtesy of forum member Benthos.)
Not perfectly but I am posting a different thread of my month-long eNaBLe "research" later today which does encompass the Harvey room in part (but mostly took place in my room).
I think you can see from Benthos' picture that there's an Antique Sound Labs amp with Benchmark DAC (brought by an attendee) and CD player the make/model of which I didn't catch. But this is not Phil's high-end stuff -- he swapped in his hand-built stuff a couple days later (even yummier).
I would guestimate the chair was 6.5 feet back, presumably the same distance the speakers are from each other, roughly (in the first picture above). eNaBLe plus the double horns seems to make the sweet spot wide enough to walk around in (exact position not so critical).
Thank you again Phil! And thank you forum members Monte Verdi and Benthos for organizing (and Benthos for snapping the pix).
Yes, thanks again Phil!
Yes, this was a great demo of how much difference rooms make to sound.
And how different people here the same sound differently...
Another pair of ears reports:
The harvey's had a very nice, useable bottom-end.
The mids & highs I didn't find that nice...
Phil said enabling helped, they were worse...
I liked the mids & highs in the 108s in the TLs better...
The feastrex sounded muffled, is a work in progress, with some problems @ the current point.
Phil said they didn't sound that way in the larger room.
Or in different cabinets.
Sometimes it's fun sorting all this stuff out...
Nice to see someone with so many projects, and so many successful ones at that.
Yes, this was a great demo of how much difference rooms make to sound.
And how different people here the same sound differently...
Another pair of ears reports:
The harvey's had a very nice, useable bottom-end.
The mids & highs I didn't find that nice...
Phil said enabling helped, they were worse...
I liked the mids & highs in the 108s in the TLs better...
The feastrex sounded muffled, is a work in progress, with some problems @ the current point.
Phil said they didn't sound that way in the larger room.
Or in different cabinets.
Sometimes it's fun sorting all this stuff out...
Nice to see someone with so many projects, and so many successful ones at that.
Thanks for all the interesting reports
Sounds more like an Ultimate Work In Progress Session to me
.......Wish I was there, I always enjoy this type of hands on listening session...
But seriously.. sometimes it really takes lots of time and effort to figure out how to get the sound right... I had a glare problem for my phonostage for quite some time.. and I just discovered that it was due to the glass Mana shelves ... got those glass shelves changed to plywood and the glare vanished... I'm kicking myself for not having tried this earlier
Sounds more like an Ultimate Work In Progress Session to me
.......Wish I was there, I always enjoy this type of hands on listening session...But seriously.. sometimes it really takes lots of time and effort to figure out how to get the sound right... I had a glare problem for my phonostage for quite some time.. and I just discovered that it was due to the glass Mana shelves ... got those glass shelves changed to plywood and the glare vanished... I'm kicking myself for not having tried this earlier
Art work
It was wonderful to have you all here... I had a great time as did Christine.
We used her room to listen to the Harvey's It's also her art space.
I few notes about the system driving the Harvey's.
The amp was a Antique Audio Tulip...
It now has the big JJ 2A3 (aka 300b) and 12AX7 drivers in a SRPP config but taking the sig off the plate of the input section instead of the cathode of the top part of the triode stack. Plus the left and right channels use cathode sharing. Mundorf coupling caps. I Removed the input transformers and replaced all resistors with Audio Note 2 watters. New PS based on Duncan Amp sim. Fixed baising and a grid chokes (Mikey) Kept the AA iron and chassis. Not my best amp but nice.
The passive vol control is from Tube CAD.
The CD player we used was not really up to par... its an old ahh tjoeb cd player... rather sad. Sad too cause I can't spell the name of that player but you all know the one I mean.
The Harvey's are simply wonderful, I love them. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get the stuffing right. That might helpl to get the mids a bit cleaner.
Next job is to remove the Feastrex from the small room (144"x 165") back into the living room. It was a bad idea to put them in the small room. Oh well.
The New Maiko II will be a great addition... Hint Hint
All is well
Good Luck Mr. Obama and good night
It was wonderful to have you all here... I had a great time as did Christine.
We used her room to listen to the Harvey's It's also her art space.
I few notes about the system driving the Harvey's.
The amp was a Antique Audio Tulip...
It now has the big JJ 2A3 (aka 300b) and 12AX7 drivers in a SRPP config but taking the sig off the plate of the input section instead of the cathode of the top part of the triode stack. Plus the left and right channels use cathode sharing. Mundorf coupling caps. I Removed the input transformers and replaced all resistors with Audio Note 2 watters. New PS based on Duncan Amp sim. Fixed baising and a grid chokes (Mikey) Kept the AA iron and chassis. Not my best amp but nice.
The passive vol control is from Tube CAD.
The CD player we used was not really up to par... its an old ahh tjoeb cd player... rather sad. Sad too cause I can't spell the name of that player but you all know the one I mean.
The Harvey's are simply wonderful, I love them. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get the stuffing right. That might helpl to get the mids a bit cleaner.
Next job is to remove the Feastrex from the small room (144"x 165") back into the living room. It was a bad idea to put them in the small room. Oh well.
The New Maiko II will be a great addition... Hint Hint
All is well
Good Luck Mr. Obama and good night
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