Two month with Jordan EIKONA's VTL

[natujazz]

I bought the EIKONA's drivers as soon as they become available in Europe (hifisound.de). As soon as they arrived, put them in 6L closed boxes and get not bad first impressions. Now they look's like this. How do they sound? Comparing with what? They have a natural sound balance - very similar to my Harbeth P3ESR. The bass is not so fast as with FH3 Alpair7, but they nicely fills this 100=500Hz hole which I alwais feel missing with other driver/enclosure combination (FH3, MarKen7, Metronome Fostex FE108Sigma, BR Alpair10.2). The high's - as you see, I add a helper tweeter with 2 order crossover at 9 kHz. May be it just because of my hearing which drops rapidly somwhere after 13 kHz. 3D - not the best which I heard (the king of 3D were my MarKen with Alpair7, IMO), but good enought. The sound is reproduced like a large oval filling the space between the speakers and rarely goes to the left or right side from the speakers. Microdinamic - everythig is there, but details do not grab your attention - speakers just allow you to listen the main event - the music. Sibilance region - very soft and natural - better then Alpair7 IMO. Concluding, these speakers invite you listen to the music, not the sounds. In my case (I mainly listen to jazz, instrumentals, some classics, girl and guitar...) they are good enought to stay at least a couple of years. Thak You for reading.

 

[ticovski]

Thank you for sharing

 

[Dufus]

Nice collection and nice Forster

 

[Colin]

Thanks for the write-up. Oddly enough, I have a pair of early Harbeth P3 enclosurse I am restoring to take the Eikona driver. The Harbeth box is very well made and about the right size for a Qts of 0.707.

 

[natujazz]

Hi Colin, sure You will get a good result. My first impression with 6L closed box was that I do not need more hi-freq content. But in VTL the things changes - may be because of the VTL wide baffle which radically affects the overall tonal balance. Are Yours P3 enclosures made of mdf, like mine, or from plywood?

 

[Colin]

My P3s are the early plywood version. They'd been kicking around in a workshop for a bit so the veneer needs restoring or possibly re-veneering. They're so well made and solid it's worth the effort - and it's not every day you get Harbeth boxes to play with.

I've heard the Eikona's in the 7L cabinets on Ted's website and they sounded good in those, even without an added sub. I also briefly heard them in the VTL cabinet and was surprised how deep they went. I didn't get to try them properly set up so can't comment on the HF in those cabinets. It sounded OK to me in the 7L boxes.

 

[natujazz]

Thank You Colin, sure Harbets are made to last for their price tag and even above. And yes, the bass in VTL is deep enough for my kind of music. It would be nice to hear from you about the results of Harbeth - Eikona collaboration . Thank's again and good luck with Eikonas.

 

[Colin]

The removable baffle on the Harbeth enclosure is especially useful as it will enable me to try a couple of different drivers that suit 6L, sealed box loading.

 

[natujazz]

I suppose that Your project is very interesting because Harbet P3 are "thin wall" cabinets with dampening. May be we can get the output which will be different from the standart 15-18 mm robust plywood?

 

[Colin]

According to Harwood - who researched the thin wall cabinet technique - the damped, thinner cabinets are a better solution as you have to match the damping thickness to the thickness of the cabinet walls. Surprisingly, thicker walls didn't radiate less and damping drops the radiation of thin walls to a freq which is less audible.

Some might dispute this, of course, although its interesting that (a) not many manufacturers actually seem to have read the Harwood paper or followed its guidelines (b) Harbeth and now Stirling Broadcast get very positive reviews of their loudspeakers based on the technique. Stirling have gone back to the early prototype LS3/5as for their update.

I was surprised how well the P3 cabinets respond to the 'knock on the cabinet side' test.

I've just finished some 9mm MDF cabinets which have 3 layers of 3mm bitumen damping on them and they also sound very solid. They also use Jordan drivers, in this case a pair of JXR6s per cabinet in a very shallow enclosure for wall-mounting.

 

[gmonno]

Using Eikona for a Cornu Spiral

Hi all, I bought a pair of Eikona last year, but my room is not big so I'd been thinking about building a pair of Cornu Spiral, do you know them?

Here's the link :

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full...-spiral-horn-now-you-can-140.html#post3849731

To me this is a very attractive design, but do yo know how it will do with the Eikonas?

Thanks in advance

giuseppe (madrid)

 

[chrisb]

giuseppe - I'm not aware if it's been done yet, but fans of the cornus would no doubt opine that they'd work spectacularly well -you could be the first to report back on that

 

[xrk971]

Sims of Eikona in Cornu are in Cornu thread. Yes, it will have incredible bass reach in a large (34 in wide) flat (4 in) cabinet.

 

[Colin]

I'm not quite sure what the Cornu spiral does. I've seen at least one report (possibly on that thread) which indicated a very uneven response.

I have had experience of the Eikona 1 in the Jordan VTL cabinet and that sounded very satisfying I the bass reproducing 30 Hz without difficulty. It's a slim cabinet 4 inches deep) so wall mounting is a viable option. Even so, in a small room a more modest response may sound better or just as good, allowing you to make a smaller cabinet.

 

[xrk971]

The Cornu does not have a flat response granted but its signature "coloration" appears to not be objectionable, and quite enjoyable for certain genres like jazz, string ensembles, vocals, girl & guitar, etc. What it provides is a huge sound stage because the horn outputs radiate 360 deg along all edges of the speaker. It makes the speaker sound much bigger than it is.