Clearwave Speakers?

I am very skeptical of inexpensive designs built around expensive SOTA tweeters these days.

THe reason is that I started out in audio with a tweeter fascination and soon realized that was a bad strategy. Why? Because very little in music occurs in the range covered by a tweeter. Tweeters contribute presence and brilliance, which is important but is an embellishment (like bass) to most of the music which occurs in the midrange. SInce most of the music occurs in the midrange, logic dictates to get that right first, then worry about the rest.

Plus, these days, there is very little that can be measured to distinguish between high performance tweeters, of which there are many. Not to say some, perhaps even RAAL, might be better in some ways, but it is very subjective determination.

SO building an inexpensive speaker around an expensive tweeter is a bad strategy in my mind.

FOr cost is no object type designs where few or no corners will be cut, that is a different story.

In the case of the RAAL, which does not cover midrange well relative to others from what I have read, the best approach in a smaller package would seem to be in a smaller 2-way monitor design probably with limited bass extension where the bass driver can also cover the midrange more effectively in lieu of the RAAL, or in a larger 3 way design that would probably also be more expensive.

I have these exact speakers, I run them with a Pass XA30.5 with a whopping 30 watts and these speakers have incredible bass, best I have ever had in my system. The high efficiency is spot on.

As an aside, the only speaker that I have heard in person that betters these are the Proac Carbon 8s at $46k per pair. Good luck!

I also own these and am quite pleased. Furthermore, I find the RAAL to be fantastic. It took some time for the Accuton's to break in, but the RAAL amazed me from the first listen and still does.

Mapman,

The Clearwave was actually designed around the Accuton drivers. NOT the RAAL. The Accutons were chosen for the open effortless midrange, speed, detail, bass slam and control. Find me a better driver than the Accutons for midrange presence. Better yet, do a search of all the speakers employing the Accutons for bass/mids and check their price.....usually in the $20k range.

The reviewer hounded on the RAAL, but maybe because he simply likes it. Who really knows? Reality is the Clearwave was designed around the dual Accutons and was originally designed and built with a silk dome tweeter. The Clearwave was not built around the RAAL, or even the tweeter for that matter. Quite the opposite. Read the review again, it was clearly the reviewer's take on his love for the RAAL, not reality of the design. Despite this, the RAAL really is that good and does warrant highlight. Just don't let it overshadow the rest of the speaker which was designed as a no-holds barred attack at state of the art.

The internals, cabinet and everything else in the speaker are anything but inexpensive. In fact I think you would find most of the internals reserved for speakers with a price tag far north of $10k or even $15k. At $7200 this speaker is not inexpensive, but not outrageous either.

I don't want to get into an uncomfortable debate, just sharing my knowledge of this fantastic speaker and I wanted to correct your assumptions.

Acurus,

Noted. THanks.

The reviewer in this case seemed off the mark to me in his approach.

I am not familiar with details of the Accuton but have heard some good things and have read where RAAL ( or perhaps even just ribbon tweeters in general) may not be well suited to a large 2-way full range design in general, ie other drivers, in the case of a 2-way design like this the bass driver(s), will be tasked to cover the midrange to a greater extent perhaps than with other tweeters?

This makes sense to me based on recollection of various designs using ribbon tweeters that I have heard over the years.

The ones using ribbon tweeters that seem to do better to me in terms of midrange presence along with the rest are smaller two ways with limited bass extension and larger 3 ways. ALso perhaps planars using larger ribbon tweeters like Magnepan, but that is a whole different ballgame.

I am glad to see that someone was able to come to the defense of the design! I would like to hear these sometime.

I have seen 3 way RAAL designs (Philharmonic speakers) that report very impressive flat frequency response. Are there frequency response charts for the CLearwaves available? That would probably alleviate any concerns somewhat in lieu of actually hearing.