ESS and Heil air-motion tranformer - any thoughts?

Just listened to Billy Joel At Shea Stadium Blu-Ray on my pair of AMT 1-D's. The cymbals sounded like a real cymbals with nice bite and smooth decay. The drums sounded deep and, amazingly, didn't overhand by mid-bass bloat. I go a long time without listening to these and with a truly good recording they really still can impress me. Recordings with too much bass, especially sludge-like mid-bass bloat, sound bad no matter how good the mids and highs are.

To my ear, there was always a speed differential making for poor 'blending' of the woof--an annoying discontinuity.

Good listening.
Larry

In response to Bill's post, I have heard the Adam speakers on one occasion, the $10K stand-mounted one with the powered woofers and the Heil type midrange and tweeter (I believe it is the smallest model in the Tensor series), and was extremely impressed. I was prepared for what Larry describes, but at least on first listen to me Adam seems to have done a great job, at least in this model, in minimizing that discontinuity between the midrange and the woofers. I had come in to my dealer's to hear the Wilson Sashas, which did sound very good, but the Adams had a dynamic realism to them, especially with transients, that made them sound like a live musical event vs. the Wilsons which, good as they were, sounded more like speakers reproducing a live event in comparison. I would like to listen to the Adams more to see how good they are in long-term listening, and perhaps also to the larger model in the line with deeper bass response to see if adding the last octave of bass to the speaker might highlight any discontinuity between the woofers and that remarkable performance in the midrange and treble. It could be that my enthusiasm for the dynamic realism of the speaker and the open and clean sound of the Heil drivers caused me to overlook some flaws in the speaker that ultimately might make it something I couldn't live with, but for now they are definitely a speaker that I would consider on my short list for purchasing.

I've always wondered why the AMT design did not get more attention over the years,with more designs showing them.Maybe a legal thing?

I owned the AMT Rock Monitors back in the early seventies.Sheesh,could these rock out,and with detail to spare.Those were interesting times.

No speaker of the time could do the Doobie Brothers with such dynamic aplomb and airy detail,but of course the fact that my pals were actually "doing doobies" in my room could have affected my senses -:)

Best to all

Lrsky, I identified this same problem with the two way. For me, the 3D sound of the tweeter was too good to pass up; so good, that I built 3way speakers using the ESS Heil air-motion transformer. With the help of an engineer to design the crossover, and a lot of experimentation with drivers; I got a smooth blend that is absolutely fantastic. Not recommended, too difficult.