That was Speaker David... forgot there are now or were two "daves" or "davids" here. Ooops.
David, the fact that you designed the 11 ohm LS3/5A (in my opinion, a superb small monitor on voice in particular) makes me think you deserve the benefit of the doubt apropos this discussion. You obviously bring considerable engineering chops to the table. Kudos.
You ask an interesting question. Since you're the engineer, let me ask it back to you...
In all your time as a speaker designer, how did you tackle "touch, phrasing and texture?"
Did you listen to a piece of music (blind-folded under DBT conditions if you must) and ever think, "y'know, I've heard what a cello sounds like in real life, but it sounds like the rosin on the bow hair is diminished... It sounds a bit too slick, like it's gliding over the strings rather than gripping them and making them resonate..." If so, you'd be listening for texture. Y'know, the unique timbral qualities that distinguish Paiste cymbals from, say, old Zildjian K's.
Or did you ever think, "Coltrane is really on fire in this passage, but I'm not hearing how he pulls his tongue back and forth in his mouth to form distinct rhythmic counterpoints to Archie Shepp who's doubling the melody here..." If so, you'd be listening for phrasing. The way pianists and vocalists and drummers and cellists and guitarists use rhythm to push and pull notes back and forth within the bar, giving them variable duration and emphasis to inject emotion.
Or did you ever think, "Tatiana Nikolayeva is just so much better at articulating Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues in a wonderfully subtle and introspective manner compared to Vladimir Ashkenazy's rather rigid and staccato presentation... She really makes the piano sing..." If so, you'd be listening for touch. It's related to the way a player alters the dynamics of their playing, giving variance to each note and breathing life into the music on the page.
Let me ask you again. How did you, David, tackle touch, texture and phrasing? What were the things you experimented with - the crossover, driver materials, cone shapes - to produce loudspeakers capable of portraying these musical characteristics to a listener? Be honest - were they even on your list of things to listen for and identify beyond the spectral and spatial?
I ask because as much as I admire PSB and the 11-ohm LS3/5A, I could never ever enjoy listening to music much on them, primarily because they lacked the ability to communicate the touch, texture and phrasing inherent in most of the music I love. If it's possible for a transducer like a microphone to capture touch, texture and phrasing in the first place, it must be possible for the transducer at the other end to play it back, no? Kevin Scott at Living Voice seems to have been able to do this. John DeVore at Devore Fidelity seems to. I'd say Alan Shaw at Harbeth has certainly nailed texture.
If you, honestly, as a speaker designer, cannot see any way in which the words "touch, phrasing and texture" might be relevant to a discussion on the design process of a transducer whose ultimate purpose it to reproduce musical performance (is it anything other?), then I fear that the likelihood of us having any sort of common ground in which to continue this discussion to be nil.
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Good point, Fatchance. Reading this thread one might come to the conclusion that anyone who likes the sound of the old W.E. stuff is an unscientific, self-deluded, nostalgic nitwit audiophool who who prefers colored sound and antique ideas. There doesn't seem to be much chance given that it might actually sound good. As good or better than modern gear. That, of course, is impossible.
DavidL, Thanks for you thorough reply, but I must disagree with you on almost all points.
Even in my limited experience with the audio "High End" I have seen and been involved in many blind tests; speakers, amps, DACs, codecs, bitrates, transformers, etc. Therefore, it can't be "zero." If my experience is even close to typical, then there must be a lot more of these tests going on.
And conversely, what you state doesn't make it true, either.
Even in my limited experience with the audio "High End" I have seen and been involved in many blind tests; speakers, amps, DACs, codecs, bitrates, transformers, etc. Therefore, it can't be "zero." If my experience is even close to typical, then there must be a lot more of these tests going on.
Some, maybe. But not all. I've heard many a hideous looking speaker that sounded wonderful or just mediocre, and many a pretty or hyped up speaker that sounded awful. Sight may have led to expectations, but those expectations were dashed at the first note. I can't be the only person this happens too.
I would advise you not to make that bet. You'd be wrong. Many of the blind visitors did not know what they were listening too, and were told about the system only afterwards. Would it be fair to do otherwise?
In many ways, yes. Not the average price Victrola, but some of the premium models - along with the Edison Diamond Disk - when properly set up sound marvelous. They do have a limited vocabulary by modern standards, but what they say, they say very well. Especially on singers, tenors and alto, as well as some horns they have a charm and life-like quality I've rarely heard from electrical reproduction. Another one of those "Surprise!" moments.
I hesitate to post again but I would point out that at the time the WE drivers were developed, they had a common test that was frequently applied but is also close to unknown now.
We used a modern version of it and I thought it was very applicable and would have been for them so far as developing the best driver they could. By best, that would mean accurate as in reproducing the input signal with as few alterations, additions, subtractions or dispersion (as in spreading out in time or having different arrival times).
This goal is far more identifiable than judging faithfulness with recordings as to if /how much the last mod made it better or worse. When stuck with the subjective only, I often found that at some level of refinement, some recordings might sound a little better and some a little worse. Which way was actually better?
How often do you hear “we don’t hear like we measure”?
This is exactly right, we “hear” based on inputs to two ears form two points in space. Our brain takes the two sets of inputs and produces one image for our consciousness. If one measures the pressure that reaches he ear drums, as a speaker designer, one finds nothing recognizable or at least desirable, the ears response is full of angle dependant artifacts, comb filtering and phase shifts all of which look terribly wrong.
Even the equal loudness curves show nothing like flat amplitude response and even that changes with level.
We aren’t aware of any of that stuff, all those goofy looking angle dependant artifacts are how our brain can tell what direction the sound is coming from or how high the source is in the air or how far away the source is from us.
We know nothing else but the way our ears work and so we think of them as being simple.
We measure from one point in space because it’s easy, all you do is compare the input to output and as long as one is on axis with a simple source (so that it’s directivity isn’t included) and you account for time, it does reflect what the source is doing relative to the input.
This part is pretty easy but is very different from hearing.
My concern was making the most accurate acoustic source possible in an area where a great acoustic power is required (hard X hard).
As the size of a speaker system increases, the sound quality falls from things most don’t consider.
While one can’t easily hear crossover phase shift when modeling it and listening on headphones, that is not the same as how two or more separate drivers located in two different locations in space sound with a crossover with that same on axis phase shift. To a degree, we hear how the sound radiates as well as how loud each frequency and “when” one part was radiated vs another.
When you hear a large concert array in a slight breeze only then are you aware it radiates a complex interference pattern for example.
While Richard Heyser’s work on loudspeaker arrival and acoustic phase and his TDS analyzer and the synthesized point source radiation of the quad esl 63, are the crux of my inspiration / approach (and I am an avid listener too) we also did a sonic sanity check as these were refined and it let us see where we were relative to the competition.
My solution with the Unity and hen Synergy horns required a multi way design for acoustic power reasons, BUT if they had used this test to develop a single driver, it would have lead to the same place.
The approach is an old one that was common for electronics and analogue tape and is why I think WE might well have used it too.
Using a good measurement mic like an earthworks m-55 , one can play back a musical program through the speaker and then listen to the microphone signal.
By listening to what the speaker does through a precision microphone, one removes the things hearing with two ears cause and leaves the difference between the input and output is the “sonic alteration” the speaker system imposes..
You then record the mic with a 24/96 recorder and then play back the recorded mic through the speaker and record the new mic signal.
With a VERY good microphone and done up in the air so there are no strong reflections, every alteration you hear is the loudspeaker altering /adding /subtracting from the actual signal. If the speaker or whatever one included in a reproduction loop is perfect, then one can re-record the signal many many times .
So far as being a faithful reproducer like one expects from electronics and every part of the chain, the loudspeaker in this test is VERY MUCH and BY FAR the weakest link.
Many /most loudspeakers we did this to sound very lame just hearing the mic signal from one point in space, some can go two generations before being very colored.
With all of the things I have done to make a single source in time and space with high directivity, a speaker like an SH-50 can only tolerate 3 to 5 generations depending the music and where one says it’s obviously colored. That on a system can reproduce a square wave over a decade wide band and that knits together well enough where In spite of the “holes” in the horn, you can walk up and literally put your head into the horn mouth and you never hear anything other than the source floating somewhere in front of you, no trace of low, mid and high driver location.
Since even a cheaper measurement mic can make a nice mono recording, this kind of test is something that can be done easily a home with a decent sound card.
Since a drive like the WE is a single source in time, covering much of the hearing acuity band, I bet it would do well in a Genloss test and wouldn’t be surprised if they used something like that in it’s development as it was common place test for other parts of the chain then (and would be usable on amplifiers and electronics now too with a good recorder).
It’s funny too once you hear the sonic warts on generation one or two, you can also usually hear that artifact going back and listening straight up. Each generation is an increasing caricature of sonically “what’s wrong” with the speaker or whatever is put in the generation loss loop.
Best,
Tom Danley
We used a modern version of it and I thought it was very applicable and would have been for them so far as developing the best driver they could. By best, that would mean accurate as in reproducing the input signal with as few alterations, additions, subtractions or dispersion (as in spreading out in time or having different arrival times).
This goal is far more identifiable than judging faithfulness with recordings as to if /how much the last mod made it better or worse. When stuck with the subjective only, I often found that at some level of refinement, some recordings might sound a little better and some a little worse. Which way was actually better?
How often do you hear “we don’t hear like we measure”?
This is exactly right, we “hear” based on inputs to two ears form two points in space. Our brain takes the two sets of inputs and produces one image for our consciousness. If one measures the pressure that reaches he ear drums, as a speaker designer, one finds nothing recognizable or at least desirable, the ears response is full of angle dependant artifacts, comb filtering and phase shifts all of which look terribly wrong.
Even the equal loudness curves show nothing like flat amplitude response and even that changes with level.
We aren’t aware of any of that stuff, all those goofy looking angle dependant artifacts are how our brain can tell what direction the sound is coming from or how high the source is in the air or how far away the source is from us.
We know nothing else but the way our ears work and so we think of them as being simple.
We measure from one point in space because it’s easy, all you do is compare the input to output and as long as one is on axis with a simple source (so that it’s directivity isn’t included) and you account for time, it does reflect what the source is doing relative to the input.
This part is pretty easy but is very different from hearing.
My concern was making the most accurate acoustic source possible in an area where a great acoustic power is required (hard X hard).
As the size of a speaker system increases, the sound quality falls from things most don’t consider.
While one can’t easily hear crossover phase shift when modeling it and listening on headphones, that is not the same as how two or more separate drivers located in two different locations in space sound with a crossover with that same on axis phase shift. To a degree, we hear how the sound radiates as well as how loud each frequency and “when” one part was radiated vs another.
When you hear a large concert array in a slight breeze only then are you aware it radiates a complex interference pattern for example.
While Richard Heyser’s work on loudspeaker arrival and acoustic phase and his TDS analyzer and the synthesized point source radiation of the quad esl 63, are the crux of my inspiration / approach (and I am an avid listener too) we also did a sonic sanity check as these were refined and it let us see where we were relative to the competition.
My solution with the Unity and hen Synergy horns required a multi way design for acoustic power reasons, BUT if they had used this test to develop a single driver, it would have lead to the same place.
The approach is an old one that was common for electronics and analogue tape and is why I think WE might well have used it too.
Using a good measurement mic like an earthworks m-55 , one can play back a musical program through the speaker and then listen to the microphone signal.
By listening to what the speaker does through a precision microphone, one removes the things hearing with two ears cause and leaves the difference between the input and output is the “sonic alteration” the speaker system imposes..
You then record the mic with a 24/96 recorder and then play back the recorded mic through the speaker and record the new mic signal.
With a VERY good microphone and done up in the air so there are no strong reflections, every alteration you hear is the loudspeaker altering /adding /subtracting from the actual signal. If the speaker or whatever one included in a reproduction loop is perfect, then one can re-record the signal many many times .
So far as being a faithful reproducer like one expects from electronics and every part of the chain, the loudspeaker in this test is VERY MUCH and BY FAR the weakest link.
Many /most loudspeakers we did this to sound very lame just hearing the mic signal from one point in space, some can go two generations before being very colored.
With all of the things I have done to make a single source in time and space with high directivity, a speaker like an SH-50 can only tolerate 3 to 5 generations depending the music and where one says it’s obviously colored. That on a system can reproduce a square wave over a decade wide band and that knits together well enough where In spite of the “holes” in the horn, you can walk up and literally put your head into the horn mouth and you never hear anything other than the source floating somewhere in front of you, no trace of low, mid and high driver location.
Since even a cheaper measurement mic can make a nice mono recording, this kind of test is something that can be done easily a home with a decent sound card.
Since a drive like the WE is a single source in time, covering much of the hearing acuity band, I bet it would do well in a Genloss test and wouldn’t be surprised if they used something like that in it’s development as it was common place test for other parts of the chain then (and would be usable on amplifiers and electronics now too with a good recorder).
It’s funny too once you hear the sonic warts on generation one or two, you can also usually hear that artifact going back and listening straight up. Each generation is an increasing caricature of sonically “what’s wrong” with the speaker or whatever is put in the generation loss loop.
Best,
Tom Danley
I didn't realize it was a discussion. I thought you were lecturing me on the nuances of musical performance and how they should be central to the speaker design process.
What strikes me in this whole thread is that people are looking for or describing a speaker with some magical revelatory properties, that adds a level to the experience that no other speaker can.
What happened to the notion of speakers being neutral conduits for the recording (which is hopefully a mirror of the original performance)? I get nervous when some speaker reveals aspects that no other speaker can.
The BBC LS3/5a is relevant to the Western Electric discussion. Longevity and an appealing story have given it legendary status, but nobody at the BBC viewed it that way. They were positively bemused by the furor the unit made in the audiophile market. They viewed it as a professional tool, adequate for making evaluations of microphone placement (voice only) for cramped outside broadcast vans. They weren't all that neutral and HiFi Choice (the original HiFi Choice) was less than impressed, but, year by year, the legend grows.
Like W.E.?
David S.
Aren't they? At the risk of making myself look like an idiot - if I haven't already - how did you tackle touch, texture and phrasing when designing speakers? It's a simple question, Dave, one you in fact posed in the first place.
Honestly, it's fine for you to say they weren't ever priorities for you. You can even blame it on economies of scale, or that you boss was a cloth-eared capitalist pig, or that you have no idea what I'm talking about. Any of those would be fine with me. But it would be nice to hear where you stand on those sorts of things and offer an opinion on why you think some speakers communicate those aspects of musical reproduction and some don't.
Oh, so that's what makes Kevin Scott, John DeVore and Alan Shaw's speakers play music - because they're magical..! Is that what you think they have up their sleeve as designers that you don't? Magic? Really? I would have though a man who had some history with the BBC monitor would be able to acknowledge the contribution of other talented speaker designers without denigrating their efforts and labeling them as heretical zealots dabbling in the black arts.
And no one so far as I can tell has mentioned they're looking for a speaker with magical revelatory properties. We're simply discussing speakers that deliver the emotion and intent of the artist when listening to music. In case it's not obvious to you, many, many speakers fail to do this. The whole WE thing came up because there's a very legitimate question in asking whether scientific progress has really progressed things any. David, in answer to that question there are a few of us prepared to stick our necks out and say, "sure it has, but what the hell happened to the music?" (I mean, the bath-water was a little dirty, but that baby didn't need to end up on the pavement did it?)
Oh, I think that concept is alive and well. I can go to a thousand speaker manufacturer websites who all claim their speakers - because of their diaphragms and spectral waterfall plots and digitally optimized crossovers - are all faithful to the original recording. There's entire magazines devoted to this exact principle. Neutrality. Transparency. Fidelity.
Well, I've owned two of the better examples of those (ProAc Studio 100's and active ATC's) and they did that whole "being neutral conduits for the recording" thing just fine. I even mixed a couple of albums on the ATC's. But playing back music? Not so good.
There's really no need to be nervous. Just the need to acknowledge that many, many of us have tried and spent countless thousands of our hard earned money on products engineers have sold us, based upon proven double blind testing methods and AES white papers that - according to scientific measurement - are the bees knees. (Why else would you be making them - profit?) Only for us to sell them, wondering why the hell the experience of listening to music is an emotionless furrowed-brow-beating exercise in trying to get optimal placement for a superior spatial holographic soundstage.
David - I just don't care about those things anymore. I did. Once upon a time. Listening hard to make sure the hi-hat stayed still in the soundstage without moving around due to phase anomalies was one of my favourite pastimes. Buying ECM and Reference Recordings. Keeping my head in the sweet spot. Moving furniture to avoid flutter echoes.
I gotta tell you - it was the most selfish, introspective, missing-the-boat-completely thing I've ever done. I'm a music lover. My wife is a music lover. My kids are music lovers. We listen to Adele and Emmy Lou Harris and John Zorn and the Mars Volta and Autechre and Ferenc Fricsay conducting Beethoven and Kodaly. We all play instruments. I've played music since I was eight-years old, and produced, mixed and mastered a bunch of records. I buy CD because I can find music that will never be released on vinyl. I buy vinyl because it sounds more like music than the CD's do. I have a bunch of music stuffed on my iPhone for plane trips.
None of that qualifies me to dispute what the venerable Dr. Toole wrote. Neither does it qualify me to disregard what you've been involved in designing over an illustrious career.
But Dave, I just don't like or want a speaker that's a "neutral conduit for the recording". I've tried them, and they suck at playing music. I hate to offend you, but I'd much rather own a speaker that made me happy or sad or angry or ecstatic than one that gets the Floyd Toole tick of approval.
Yep. I once upon a time had to sell them. They sold like hotcakes because we got to pitch them as being "fantastic on voice" and "so easy to integrate into the room". They were incredibly flawed everywhere else, and needed an amp with an astounding amount of current to get them going, but they did do something - okay, one thing - right. I almost bought a pair of Spendor LS3/5A's before going for the ProAcs.
But that was 20 years ago. I left the hi-fi industry and spent many a disillusioned year wondering why I hardly listened to music anymore. And then I realized the problem wasn't me. It was years of positioning speakers in quarter-inch increments along the far wall in order to get Brothers in Arms to image just right.
I'm glad to say I haven't looked back. Except to history and the lessons I might learn from it if I have an open mind. Like the possibility that those WE folks and their compression driver and horns and whatnot may have inadvertently made not only incredibly progressive scientific breakthroughs, but that the musical results of those findings are the exact things missing from most contemporary speaker design and manufacture.
I'm sure there are great box speakers out there. I think the Living Voice and Devore and Harbeth ones are great. But they can't and never will do what a great compression driver and its horn can for musical enjoyment. Not ever.
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Clarity
OK then. Since I have no chance of obtaining a WE system, I'll just stop listening to what I do have. Thanks for your help.
OK then. Since I have no chance of obtaining a WE system, I'll just stop listening to what I do have. Thanks for your help.
REALLY?????????? Nuff said about your "objectivity" on all the other counts that came before this ludicrous statement Have fun blathering on and on . I don't care what you have to say anymore. SHEESH.
Well, this is getting awful cranky.
It shouldn't be. Those old speakers were good. They were designed from basic principles by the best engineers available and for the purpose of filling a large hall with natural sounding dialogue and they did that very well. For that same reason they sound very good reproducing music. They make you sit up and pay attention.
That's because they have a formant, just like a good singer or stage actor and it makes everything sound affecting because it makes you pay attention. It happens to be a beautiful one: not too forward; not too buzzy. It makes even ordinary voices and instruments sound better than they are and great ones even greater. When these speakers are set up nicely in a room that comfortably seats fifty or a hundred people and are fed clean, modern signal, it doesn't matter how big the music is, it doesn't sound too loud.
In the long run, however, I don't want to listen to the formant from the speaker but the one that comes from the singers and instruments without that intermediation.
To DavidL: Don't underestimate the amount of good sound there is in old recordings or even the ability of the best old equipment to reproduce it. Old acoustical recordings of powerful singers preserved a pretty accurate copy of the signal the performer laid on them. Modern day equipment can remove a remarkable amount of spurious artifacts from these recordings and produce a fine musical experience. The performers were very aware they were at a historic moment and that generations later folk would be listening. They took that seriously and did their best.
It shouldn't be. Those old speakers were good. They were designed from basic principles by the best engineers available and for the purpose of filling a large hall with natural sounding dialogue and they did that very well. For that same reason they sound very good reproducing music. They make you sit up and pay attention.
That's because they have a formant, just like a good singer or stage actor and it makes everything sound affecting because it makes you pay attention. It happens to be a beautiful one: not too forward; not too buzzy. It makes even ordinary voices and instruments sound better than they are and great ones even greater. When these speakers are set up nicely in a room that comfortably seats fifty or a hundred people and are fed clean, modern signal, it doesn't matter how big the music is, it doesn't sound too loud.
In the long run, however, I don't want to listen to the formant from the speaker but the one that comes from the singers and instruments without that intermediation.
To DavidL: Don't underestimate the amount of good sound there is in old recordings or even the ability of the best old equipment to reproduce it. Old acoustical recordings of powerful singers preserved a pretty accurate copy of the signal the performer laid on them. Modern day equipment can remove a remarkable amount of spurious artifacts from these recordings and produce a fine musical experience. The performers were very aware they were at a historic moment and that generations later folk would be listening. They took that seriously and did their best.
A lot of good points and grist for the mill to be found in this thread with the exception, of course, of comments whose sole purpose seems to summarily dismiss points of view simply because they aren`t shared.
I`m not a fan of compression drivers simply because my experience has been limited, thus far, to overly attenuated metallic multi-cell horns that make my ears bleed. From what I`ve managed to ascertain from others I haven`t been exposed to a properly executed set up, so given the opportunity to listen to another iteration, I have to keep an open mind, at the very least.
The ability to entertain the possibility of being pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised would seem to be integral to maintaining some level of objectivity in this discussion of new vs. vintage speaker technology.
It`s hard not to be awed by the sheer sight of the WEs (a psycho-acoustical effect)and for now, at least, I`ll have to take the word of those who`ve heard these beasts that they are the cats-pajamas. But it`s obvious, even to me, that the engineering that went into them was top-drawer.
I tend to think that for all the computer aided designs, sophisticated measuring systems and construction techniques and materials available today. I simply don`t hear enough significant advance in sound reproduction that a half-century or more of technological progress would suppose.
I've watched musicians argue endlessly over the merits or perceived deficiencies of new and vintage acoustic and electric guitars, oboes, drum kits, pianos, organs, brass and reed instruments. Their debates mirror this one in many respects.
The finest contemporary instrument builders seem to strive to engineer their products by acknowledging past engineering best practises and attempting to recreate the sonic quality or playability of certain classic designs, or in some cases redefine it.
I know musicians that absolutely won`t touch anything but the very best or most expensive instrument, be it vintage or new, terming anything other as unplayable or beneath their skill level.
But I much prefer their opposite, the musician willing to attempt to coax music out of the most humble instrument...and just possibly, be surprised.
I`ve heard a few DIY speaker builds using vintage drivers in very modest looking cabinets that have pleasantly surprised me, as well as some newer Tangbands and as a result.... the game`s afoot!
I`m not a fan of compression drivers simply because my experience has been limited, thus far, to overly attenuated metallic multi-cell horns that make my ears bleed. From what I`ve managed to ascertain from others I haven`t been exposed to a properly executed set up, so given the opportunity to listen to another iteration, I have to keep an open mind, at the very least.
The ability to entertain the possibility of being pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised would seem to be integral to maintaining some level of objectivity in this discussion of new vs. vintage speaker technology.
It`s hard not to be awed by the sheer sight of the WEs (a psycho-acoustical effect)and for now, at least, I`ll have to take the word of those who`ve heard these beasts that they are the cats-pajamas. But it`s obvious, even to me, that the engineering that went into them was top-drawer.
I tend to think that for all the computer aided designs, sophisticated measuring systems and construction techniques and materials available today. I simply don`t hear enough significant advance in sound reproduction that a half-century or more of technological progress would suppose.
I've watched musicians argue endlessly over the merits or perceived deficiencies of new and vintage acoustic and electric guitars, oboes, drum kits, pianos, organs, brass and reed instruments. Their debates mirror this one in many respects.
The finest contemporary instrument builders seem to strive to engineer their products by acknowledging past engineering best practises and attempting to recreate the sonic quality or playability of certain classic designs, or in some cases redefine it.
I know musicians that absolutely won`t touch anything but the very best or most expensive instrument, be it vintage or new, terming anything other as unplayable or beneath their skill level.
But I much prefer their opposite, the musician willing to attempt to coax music out of the most humble instrument...and just possibly, be surprised.
I`ve heard a few DIY speaker builds using vintage drivers in very modest looking cabinets that have pleasantly surprised me, as well as some newer Tangbands and as a result.... the game`s afoot!
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Good, glad to hear it. 😀
I don't understand at all what objectivity has to do with it, would you care to explain?
When you have actually heard one of these old systems in good trim, then you can come back and tell us all how "ludicrous" it all is. That might be objective. We'll be waiting. Until then, it all just conjecture and bluster on your part. If you don't like the sound of the top notch vintage gear, that's fine, tastes differ - but at least give us a reasonable explanation of why you don't like the sound. Is that too much to ask?
Why do you think it's such a back & white thing? The old W.E. (or whatever) are great, therefore nothing else is with listening to?
If that's the way people think, no wonder there is such audio angst.
Where do you guys come up with these crazy notions?
I am using a WE 597a replica (GIP) field coil tweeter on my system at the moment. It is playing from 4khz upwards (6db cut). I love the sound. I've tried a few tweeter drivers (RAAL, GOTO, FOSTEX) before, but these GIPs really suit my musical taste. Next step is to try get some WE555 replica drivers.
Highly recommend the all who have not heard any WE gear to experience it! May be suprised, may not 🙂
PS. Music choice is quite important I think. Playing some Fat Boy Slim or Beastie Boys through a WE system probably won't be useful?
Highly recommend the all who have not heard any WE gear to experience it! May be suprised, may not 🙂
PS. Music choice is quite important I think. Playing some Fat Boy Slim or Beastie Boys through a WE system probably won't be useful?