And now for something completely different - the Linkwitz Labs Orion.
The (analog) active crossover and equalization is the best active-crossover system I've heard so far, with the smoothness, elegance, and seamless quality of the best passive crossovers, combined with the characteristic big dynamics of a multi-amped system. The 12-channel (!) ATI power amplifier, at a modest US$1799, sounded really good, with no transistor edge or hardness - of course, multi-amping reduces IM distortion by not exposing any one channel to a wideband input signal, thus reducing amplifier coloration significantly.
The bass is surprisingly deep and powerful for petite dipole system - I heard a room-filling 22~25 Hz, with no stress or strain from the pair of 10" drivers on each side. They must be low distortion indeed to do what I heard them do.
Of all the "mainstream" 87~90 dB/metre efficient speakers with Scan-Speak/Vifa/Seas drivers, the Orions are probably the best-sounding and best-engineered. They make the heavily-advertised $30,000 to $100,000 "Class A" speakers you see in the magazines sound pretty bad.
The truly surprising thing is that the OMA and the Orion have nearly the same voicing - on the slightly warm side, with no upper-midrange hardness or harshness, and balanced for classical music. And both play a lot louder, and more effortlessly, than you'd expect.
The (analog) active crossover and equalization is the best active-crossover system I've heard so far, with the smoothness, elegance, and seamless quality of the best passive crossovers, combined with the characteristic big dynamics of a multi-amped system. The 12-channel (!) ATI power amplifier, at a modest US$1799, sounded really good, with no transistor edge or hardness - of course, multi-amping reduces IM distortion by not exposing any one channel to a wideband input signal, thus reducing amplifier coloration significantly.
The bass is surprisingly deep and powerful for petite dipole system - I heard a room-filling 22~25 Hz, with no stress or strain from the pair of 10" drivers on each side. They must be low distortion indeed to do what I heard them do.
Of all the "mainstream" 87~90 dB/metre efficient speakers with Scan-Speak/Vifa/Seas drivers, the Orions are probably the best-sounding and best-engineered. They make the heavily-advertised $30,000 to $100,000 "Class A" speakers you see in the magazines sound pretty bad.
The truly surprising thing is that the OMA and the Orion have nearly the same voicing - on the slightly warm side, with no upper-midrange hardness or harshness, and balanced for classical music. And both play a lot louder, and more effortlessly, than you'd expect.
Attachments
The Emerald Physics CS1 wins another mention in the "most-improved" category. The things I didn't like about the CS2 last year are pretty much gone, and the CS1 has much better overall tonality and dynamic reach. The people at Emerald Physics told me that they replaced the (really bad) stock analog electronics of the Behringer digital equalizer and crossover with new electronics of their own design, and the system has an all-new crossover - maybe different drivers too, based on what I heard. Another gratifying surprise at this year's RMAF.
Maybe it sounds like I'm gushing, but the sound at this year's show is much, much better. Frankly, last year I was pretty disappointed - I only found a handful of rooms that sounded even halfway decent. This year there were many more, maybe 7 to 10 that were excellent, which is unusual at any hifi show.
Part of the problem is the typical nasty hotel-room sound you always get at shows, but there are times when a lot of advances move through the industry on a broad front. This year was one of those times. There were a lot of Alnico and field-coil loudspeakers, not just the single-driver models, and there were a lot of interesting turntables, too, with 3-phase AC synchronous motors and sophisticated motor controllers.
This year's RMAF had more of a "big-show" feel to it, with many more exhibitors, and attendance by the "big wheels" of the press (I saw Atkinson and Valin) and the high-end industry. More than one exhibitor mentioned that they were not going to the CES this year, which surprised me. Lots of people in the hallways too, more than I remember from last year, and more people coming early and staying late.
A really good show, professionally presented, and well-attended and enjoyed by all. Congratulations to everyone that made it possible.
Maybe it sounds like I'm gushing, but the sound at this year's show is much, much better. Frankly, last year I was pretty disappointed - I only found a handful of rooms that sounded even halfway decent. This year there were many more, maybe 7 to 10 that were excellent, which is unusual at any hifi show.
Part of the problem is the typical nasty hotel-room sound you always get at shows, but there are times when a lot of advances move through the industry on a broad front. This year was one of those times. There were a lot of Alnico and field-coil loudspeakers, not just the single-driver models, and there were a lot of interesting turntables, too, with 3-phase AC synchronous motors and sophisticated motor controllers.
This year's RMAF had more of a "big-show" feel to it, with many more exhibitors, and attendance by the "big wheels" of the press (I saw Atkinson and Valin) and the high-end industry. More than one exhibitor mentioned that they were not going to the CES this year, which surprised me. Lots of people in the hallways too, more than I remember from last year, and more people coming early and staying late.
A really good show, professionally presented, and well-attended and enjoyed by all. Congratulations to everyone that made it possible.
Attachments
I spent a fair amount of time scanning the manual, the schematic, and looking at the circuit board, and there are a lot of HP/Tektronix details in the circuit.
Just a few examples; the op-amp board has an elegant synchronous-tuned 3rd-order Gaussian lowpass filter at 140 Khz to protect the op-amps from RFI and slewing; the ground-plane layout looks good from the viewpoint of RFI susceptance and power-supply transient response, the power supply uses a pair of inductors to current-limit the pulses going into the PS capacitors, and the electrical filter shape for the midrange would be fiendishly difficult to do passively - a pair of asymmetric humps on both sides of the passband with the large hump towards the bass end.
Most active-crossover speakers are just slapped together with stock 24 dB/octave slopes dialled in on the Behringer or similar gizmo and the resulting sound is rough, disjointed, and fatiguing. Sorry, no cigar.
Good speakers need to lot of fine-tuning to get the right phase complementarity in the crossover region and driver-response sloping to remove the dominant colorations from the driver. This is standard practice with a quality passive crossover since the Seventies (thanks to Laurie Fincham of KEF), but still not that common in the active-crossover world. Linkwitz takes the rigor required in the best passive-crossover practice and applies it to a fixed, analog crossover with the minimum of user adjustments - and the end result is a lot better than you'd expect from glancing at the schematic.
I don't much care for opamps or solid-state amps, but I must admit the sound in the Linkwitz room was one of the best at the show - and those small hotel rooms were a difficult environment to contend with.
Just a few examples; the op-amp board has an elegant synchronous-tuned 3rd-order Gaussian lowpass filter at 140 Khz to protect the op-amps from RFI and slewing; the ground-plane layout looks good from the viewpoint of RFI susceptance and power-supply transient response, the power supply uses a pair of inductors to current-limit the pulses going into the PS capacitors, and the electrical filter shape for the midrange would be fiendishly difficult to do passively - a pair of asymmetric humps on both sides of the passband with the large hump towards the bass end.
Most active-crossover speakers are just slapped together with stock 24 dB/octave slopes dialled in on the Behringer or similar gizmo and the resulting sound is rough, disjointed, and fatiguing. Sorry, no cigar.
Good speakers need to lot of fine-tuning to get the right phase complementarity in the crossover region and driver-response sloping to remove the dominant colorations from the driver. This is standard practice with a quality passive crossover since the Seventies (thanks to Laurie Fincham of KEF), but still not that common in the active-crossover world. Linkwitz takes the rigor required in the best passive-crossover practice and applies it to a fixed, analog crossover with the minimum of user adjustments - and the end result is a lot better than you'd expect from glancing at the schematic.
I don't much care for opamps or solid-state amps, but I must admit the sound in the Linkwitz room was one of the best at the show - and those small hotel rooms were a difficult environment to contend with.
Lynn Olson said:
You thought so?
Really?
What were you listening to?
My first thoughts were that the drivers had distinct voices, and you could hear right where they crossed over, and my wife leaned over and said that's a nice mid, but you can sure tell where it changes to the high or low driver.
Not even in the same leauge as the BD...
We both also thought the x-overs were great in Linkwitz Orions, but details really were pretty obscured on complex material compared to some other systems...
She said they drove her crazy, and couldn't listen to an entire song...
What always amazes me @ these things is how different people hear the same things differently.
Maybe we spent too long as musicians, and listen "differently" to the "wrong" things?
serenechaos said:
The tone of your post notwithstanding, there is no such thing as 'bad show sound'. Unless something is truly terrible (improperly designed speakers driven into distortion or with major speaker-based FR anomalies), it's best to chalk it up to show conditions. Often they're thrown together based on business reasons (hey, we can show with last year's amp of the year!) or the rooms just don't work with the speakers.
OR your ears are tired. When I go to shows, I spend a lot of time outside, as much as a third of the day, just getting my ears refreshed. This was a great aspect of CES prior to the interior days- the outside based hotel had plenty of space to relax your ears. VSAC this year was a very small show, and there wasn't the usual 'mad dash' to cover everything, so had lots of time to rest ones ears there, too.
So, try not to be so confident in your perceptions, the dynamics of showing a hifi rig with only a day or less to set up and tune, and with potentially unknown gear (Oh no, we forgot a CDP, let's borrow one!) can really screw the pooch. And oh yeah, let's not forget the SPL wars. Many great speakers just don't sound good quiet, just as many don't sound good really loud. And the show tends to favor the loud ones, since everyone winds up turning it up to drown out the HT demo across the hall. And all these variables are compounded by different listener preference, different material being played back at different volumes, different listener positions, etc.
It's much more complex than can be simply stated as a value judgement.
<sigh>
For a dose of reality please book a visit at your local recording studio and look what your music passes through before it gets to your CD or vinyl record.
All the pots, switches and op-amps in mixing desks, all kinds of utilitilarian cables.
The RMAF starts to become bigger and bigger and crappier and crappier to me. Sorry, but increasing BS and exotica just like all the other shows.
http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2008/the_music_gun/
http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2008/101108marigo/
I change the placement of my speakers, or move them from one room to another, or even visit someone with the same speaker (but different room and ancillary equipment) and they sound sufficiently different. I also have the luxury of listening in near complete silence.
I don't know how anyone is supposed to come up to externally valid conclusions in a room with handful of other people milling about and nextdoor. I would be surprised if anyone at the show could pick a speaker that they could keep on a long term basis.
At least with a car show there is not pretense of how they might perform. You really need a test drive in your own environment...
For a dose of reality please book a visit at your local recording studio and look what your music passes through before it gets to your CD or vinyl record.
All the pots, switches and op-amps in mixing desks, all kinds of utilitilarian cables.
The RMAF starts to become bigger and bigger and crappier and crappier to me. Sorry, but increasing BS and exotica just like all the other shows.
http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2008/the_music_gun/
http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2008/101108marigo/
I change the placement of my speakers, or move them from one room to another, or even visit someone with the same speaker (but different room and ancillary equipment) and they sound sufficiently different. I also have the luxury of listening in near complete silence.
I don't know how anyone is supposed to come up to externally valid conclusions in a room with handful of other people milling about and nextdoor. I would be surprised if anyone at the show could pick a speaker that they could keep on a long term basis.
At least with a car show there is not pretense of how they might perform. You really need a test drive in your own environment...
Tastes and impression differ, particularly under show conditions. Alexander had a difficult challenge chasing out a 180~250 Hz bump in the response, and some other source of a hardness in the sound between 3 and 5 kHz. I know the drivers he is using, his crossover was well-thought-out, so the remaining sources of coloration come down to unfavorable room interaction and unknown quality sources.
Next year, he'll be doing what we did at Audionics - pre-assemble a complete system (including all wires) in a hotel-sized room back at the factory location, and then bring enough parts to do a complete field repair and modification at the show site.
Interaction of the polar pattern of the speaker with the tight confines of the room is always a tough matter in small hotel rooms. Unfortunately, the $2600 cost of the small rooms is more like $3500 to $4000 for the limited selection of larger rooms - and most of them are already "grandfathered in" by exhibitors that picked the same good-sounding rooms years ago. So most exhibitors, particularly the first-time exhibitors, are stuck with the small rooms, and have to make do under trying circumstances and very tight time schedules.
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to optimize the same speaker for a typical domestic living room and a hotel room - the environments are just too different. Speakers with unusual polar patterns are at particular disadvantage here, along with any speaker larger than a minimonitor. The common practice of "borrowing" power amps and music sources from other exhibitors makes the whole thing even more chancy and random - for better or worse, power amps and music sources do not sound the same, and there's not much correlation with price.
Having set up demos in hotels myself for several years running, and helped others over the years, I know how random the results are. That OMA had pretty respectable sound, for a first-time product, and a first-time exhibitor, is like getting a hole-in-one in golf. I did this for many years for Audionics (I was the one tasked with collecting the equipment and setting up the room) and it never happened to me - we were always twiddling around with the setup on Saturday morning and losing customers while the door was closed to visitors.
I like Wally Malewicz' approach - use bi-amplification with parametric equalization for the bass channel, and a quality passive crossover for the mid-high channel. That's what he does to individually optimize his speakers for his customer's homes, right down to making 1/2 dB adjustments in the critical 160 ~ 500 Hz range. Linkwitz also had the option of electronically trimming his speaker to the room, and I'm sure he did so.
As for a "classical music balance", many exhibitors have these annoying music servers with no option for playing the visitor's own CD's or records. Worse, typical show music is very sparse and minimalist-recorded, so it is impossible to get an idea of how the system sounds with ensemble music, particularly music that only has so-so recording quality (either historical or just not very well recorded). I was booted out of more than one room because the exhibitor didn't consider my recordings "good enough" for their system.
The current fashion in "mainstream" high-end audio is for systems with bass exaggeration in the 20~60 Hz region, and quite a lot of boost in the 2~8 kHz region - the old "boom-and-tizz" of years gone by. It sounds thrilling and exciting on vocalist-with-piano-and-bass-player and close-miked audiophile jazz and blues, but really terrible on symphonic and choral music, and also makes non-audiophile recordings nearly unlistenable.
Most of the mainstream systems at this year's show, as in years past at the RMAF, VSAC, and CES, had this kind of "audiophile" balance, with an extra bonus of breakup in the 3~5 kHz region - this is so common it is ubiquitous, and hard to avoid. The magazine reviewers are so clueless they describe the breakup as "detail", and consider it a positive attribute, which is why we hear more of it than 10 years ago. When you combine the HF peaking of a typical studio condenser mike with the bright, hard, metallic sound that is now fashionable, you end with systems that can only play "audiophile" recordings.
Next year, he'll be doing what we did at Audionics - pre-assemble a complete system (including all wires) in a hotel-sized room back at the factory location, and then bring enough parts to do a complete field repair and modification at the show site.
Interaction of the polar pattern of the speaker with the tight confines of the room is always a tough matter in small hotel rooms. Unfortunately, the $2600 cost of the small rooms is more like $3500 to $4000 for the limited selection of larger rooms - and most of them are already "grandfathered in" by exhibitors that picked the same good-sounding rooms years ago. So most exhibitors, particularly the first-time exhibitors, are stuck with the small rooms, and have to make do under trying circumstances and very tight time schedules.
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to optimize the same speaker for a typical domestic living room and a hotel room - the environments are just too different. Speakers with unusual polar patterns are at particular disadvantage here, along with any speaker larger than a minimonitor. The common practice of "borrowing" power amps and music sources from other exhibitors makes the whole thing even more chancy and random - for better or worse, power amps and music sources do not sound the same, and there's not much correlation with price.
Having set up demos in hotels myself for several years running, and helped others over the years, I know how random the results are. That OMA had pretty respectable sound, for a first-time product, and a first-time exhibitor, is like getting a hole-in-one in golf. I did this for many years for Audionics (I was the one tasked with collecting the equipment and setting up the room) and it never happened to me - we were always twiddling around with the setup on Saturday morning and losing customers while the door was closed to visitors.
I like Wally Malewicz' approach - use bi-amplification with parametric equalization for the bass channel, and a quality passive crossover for the mid-high channel. That's what he does to individually optimize his speakers for his customer's homes, right down to making 1/2 dB adjustments in the critical 160 ~ 500 Hz range. Linkwitz also had the option of electronically trimming his speaker to the room, and I'm sure he did so.
As for a "classical music balance", many exhibitors have these annoying music servers with no option for playing the visitor's own CD's or records. Worse, typical show music is very sparse and minimalist-recorded, so it is impossible to get an idea of how the system sounds with ensemble music, particularly music that only has so-so recording quality (either historical or just not very well recorded). I was booted out of more than one room because the exhibitor didn't consider my recordings "good enough" for their system.
The current fashion in "mainstream" high-end audio is for systems with bass exaggeration in the 20~60 Hz region, and quite a lot of boost in the 2~8 kHz region - the old "boom-and-tizz" of years gone by. It sounds thrilling and exciting on vocalist-with-piano-and-bass-player and close-miked audiophile jazz and blues, but really terrible on symphonic and choral music, and also makes non-audiophile recordings nearly unlistenable.
Most of the mainstream systems at this year's show, as in years past at the RMAF, VSAC, and CES, had this kind of "audiophile" balance, with an extra bonus of breakup in the 3~5 kHz region - this is so common it is ubiquitous, and hard to avoid. The magazine reviewers are so clueless they describe the breakup as "detail", and consider it a positive attribute, which is why we hear more of it than 10 years ago. When you combine the HF peaking of a typical studio condenser mike with the bright, hard, metallic sound that is now fashionable, you end with systems that can only play "audiophile" recordings.
Attachments
I think you're misreading my post...badman said:
I didn't think, or say the Oswald's Mill Audio horn system sounded bad.
In general, I thought it was a nice, warm system to listen to.
The real point was " how different people hear the same things differently."
My wife and I went back in that room different times, listened to different types of music, and always had the same impression-- that the individual drivers had nice tones, but they were so distinctly different, and the crossover points were so obvious, that it was a distraction.
Someone else posted what I read as pretty much hearing the opposite thing ("Superb crossover integration - absolutely seamless and natural-sounding...").
I thought it may have had something to do with what (the particular albums) they were listening to.
A luck of the draw kind of thing, or this system works better for this type of music kind of thing.
Like the Festrex--they were great for some things, fell apart on others.
Robert
One of the reasons I am so cheery about this year's RMAF is that the tide may be turning; although still a small minority, I heard more musically-balanced systems at this year's show than any time I can remember at previous shows (including the CES).
It's significant that the high-profile new introductions this year - OMA, CAR T1, RAAL, and several others - have designers who believe in traditional balances, and not the boom-and-tizz sound of the mainstream. This is a really good sign for the industry, and I hope the trend continues.
Maybe the hard and metallic sound of iPods is finally waking people up and making them ask for something better. By the way, I was very pleased to see that Wadia is making a gizmo for $379 that extracts the digital output of your iPod and sends it on to a high-quality external DAC of your choice. I have a 5th-generation iPod myself, and the Wadia gizmo makes it a pint-sized music server that should sound as good as a decent-quality CD transport.
It's significant that the high-profile new introductions this year - OMA, CAR T1, RAAL, and several others - have designers who believe in traditional balances, and not the boom-and-tizz sound of the mainstream. This is a really good sign for the industry, and I hope the trend continues.
Maybe the hard and metallic sound of iPods is finally waking people up and making them ask for something better. By the way, I was very pleased to see that Wadia is making a gizmo for $379 that extracts the digital output of your iPod and sends it on to a high-quality external DAC of your choice. I have a 5th-generation iPod myself, and the Wadia gizmo makes it a pint-sized music server that should sound as good as a decent-quality CD transport.
I also thought the OMA and the CAR T-1 were the best sounds of the show. Duke @ Audiokinesis with his Planetarium Betas + Swarm were also very good. The Feastrex were quite nice (I liked the 9s better than the 5s if only because of the 5s sounded like five-inch drivers), but I can't fathom spending that much on fullrange drivers and still need to build subs.
I know diddly about analog, but there seemed to be some very nice turntable setups, and the master tapes from The Tape Project I heard were sublime.
Regards,
John
I should mention, full disclosure and all, that I use a pair of Bill Woods' 1000hz conical horns. Bill did the technical heavy-lifting for the OMA speakers.
I know diddly about analog, but there seemed to be some very nice turntable setups, and the master tapes from The Tape Project I heard were sublime.
Regards,
John
I should mention, full disclosure and all, that I use a pair of Bill Woods' 1000hz conical horns. Bill did the technical heavy-lifting for the OMA speakers.
Member
Joined 2004
Lynn Olson said:
People will Always judge on what they hear on an audioshow. No matter how bad the acoustics in the room are. I really believe it's unnatural / impossible for humans to not judge what they hear. Some audiophiles even brag they have the magic ability to hear true the acoustics and still make a proper review.
I am quite curios as to what is wrong acoustically in the RMAF rooms. Flutter echo, flexible walls eating bass or big surfaces of glass?
With all due respect, they're not voiced for classical. They rock harder than anything I've heard (if you add a sub for loud deep LF response beyond the dipole limitations), play acoustic music as realistically as anything I've heard, present human voices as flawlessly as I can imagine, and so on. They're voiced for accuracy. It just so happens that they work very well with classical music too. See why I wasn't unhappy to give up the eXemplars for Orions, Lynn?Lynn Olson said:
- Eric
hi Robert
i have never heard the RAAL Ribbons, heard however other Ribbons in combination with direct radiating speakers. Last year i had also to decide what tweeter to use with a midrange compression driver. I did read already about the RAAL's, and had also some conversations with Aleks over the phone. Jonathan Weiss also told me the RAAL sounds better than the Coral's. Finally i decided to go for the Coral horn tweeters. You seem to confirm what i suspected. Ribbons do not sound dinamic enough, the sound character is different, and integration is difficult. Beside the sensitivity mismatch, and low horizontal dispersion.
Nobody mentioned NNAcoustics from Serbia. And Evanui Signature. How did they sound ?
Angelo
That's interesting. I thought the Orions were awful, easily one of the worst at the show. On one orchestral piece, I and a friend of mine couldn't run out of the room fast enough when the violin section came in. A real assault on the ears.
On the other hand, there were a pair of speakers in the Santa Fe Audio room with plasma tweeters that were to die for, but expensive.
Everything that used a RAAL ribbon sounded good, and the CAR field coil speakers in the large room were great, having the advantage of using Michael Stahl's fantastic digital front end.
John
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