Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

Shadorne,

Thanks, and right you are about the tweeter sized woofer voice coils of the north european drivers. Very well put.

To further my point, let me say that in addition to the Summas' reviews that more than anything else cite that speaker's unrestrained dynamics, there's another loudspeaker that I mentioned earlier, the Jazz module by Audiokinesis (Duke Lejune by the way, is the designer and is one of the nicest and most helpful posters right here on the Audiogon forum). The Jazz module is similar in design to the Summa. It has recently received a golden ear award from TAS and the word on the forums from people that have heard it is that it too excels in dynamics being able to play very loud without compression. This loudspeaker also uses pro-drivers made by TAD and Beyma. See a trend here?

It's also worthwhile to note that in all the reviews of both of these systems, people are reporting the lack of horn coloration and horn-honk from the waveguides. So, the reason I am excited (even though I haven't heard either of these two yet) is that you can finally have your cake and eat it too having the dynamics of horns with out the artifacts.

Cheers,
George

"Bear in mind mastering engineers compress the crap out of what you mostly can buy in recorded music - so you won't always achieve realism except on recordings where dynamics have been deliberately preserved"

Excellent point, very well said and perhaps a topic deserving it's own discussion under the heading "atrocities sound engineers commit during post mastering" although I have a feeling it's been discussed before.

"The Jazz module is similar in design to the Summa. It has recently received a golden ear award from TAS"

The TAS GEA was given to Duke's Dream Maker.

Kana,

Oops! Guess you're right.

Although this is the case it should also be known that the Dream Maker uses the same drivers arranged back and front in a bi-pole configuration, so it's sonic signature should be close to that of the monopole.

This loudspeaker also uses pro-drivers made by TAD and Beyma. See a trend here?

Sadly - the use of pro drivers is all but ignored - however a nice shiny aluminium driver with stunning shiny copper phase plug => that will catch the eye everytime and have audiophiles reaching for their credit card everytime - especially when the listener is reminded about how fast these small lightweight woofers are and how plodding the old dumb sound reinforcement dated big woofers of the 70's JBL crowd are....

Furthermore a big ugly black paper Volt woofer with massive 3 inch voice coil and a massive frontal ribbed heat sink which is also ugly black to help dissipate heat and reduce thermal compression and as used on PMC speakers...no that is butt ugly and so out of place among those tall slender veneered beauties...forget it...most dealers won't even carry this kind of monster!

As Jaybo puts is so well - some audiophiles hear what they see!