I was only in the large room then, and they were blaring something pretty loud. I think it was Van Halen. I don;t have anything against Van Halen or ZZ Top but hard rock makes up a small part of my listening these days. I recently had some Harbeths and felt for acoustic music and jazz they were excellent. For Radiohead, not so much. That's pretty much how I felt about the Audio Notes the first time I heard them. Did I create a false impression?
The Tonian TL-D1 that everyone considers a bargain, have a frequency response of 42Hz-40KHz. Limited bass response."
Yes the specs indicate that and I would say they are accurate. I would also say that with proper placement and adjustment of the bass port, the bass sounded like that produced by my Spendor 1/2e. Something I can easily live with.
Prior to buying my Audiokinesis speakers I looked hard a Dru Zuids and Audio Note AN/E. Logically, I always thought the Audionote would be a logical progression of my love for the Spendor sound, but with deeper bass. I will own a pair someday, but not yet.
I consider the Tonian TL-D1's a poor man's AN/E in some respects. However, you can get an AN/E kit and if you're handy put it together for around $3k. Now that would be something.
WAF is a major inhibitor for me with these high efficiency horns because I would like to target them into my wife's sunroom where the Dynaudio monitors sit relatively unobtrusively today
Mapman,concerning the WAF,the SQ H-10 horn speakers are fairly compact.Here is a review of their larger brother,the H-15:
http://www.stereotimes.com/speak030410.shtml
Also I have heard several of the single driver Omega models.While the large stand mount Superhemps were my favorite,their small bookshelf and floorstand speakers were also quite good!
I owned AN/Es (HE Kit 3s - basically equivalent to the factory SpE HE) and TL-D1s together for several months and went back and forth between them often. I think I can speak to their differences pretty well.
The Tonians are significantly faster and more open-sounding - they have a way with microdynamic finesse, esp. with percussion, I have basically not heard exceeded. Spellbinding.
The AN/Es had significantly lower bass as well as quite a bit more midbass energy. I also thought timbre was slightly better. Although the Tonians are never, ever shouty, being completely smooth and balanced, perhaps the AN/Es hemp driver gave slightly better harmonic density.
Although I preferred the Tonians for jazz I felt the AN/E was the slightly more well-rounded speaker.
Then I realized neither was really ideal for my huge room
I read some forums where the old / vintage school of high efficiency speakers - Klipsch, Tannoy, Altec, JBLs. even Audio Notes are the only way to go. On others like audiogon the newer high eff speakers - horns, Zu, Horning,Coincident, etc. are in a league of their own. I own Zu Druids but somewhat torn about which way to look next - the classics or the moderns...having not heard any of these for myself. Short of listen for myself any experience here that is beyond dogma.
Funny story - when I had a Trio audition it was so bad I felt compelled to feign death in order to escape. To make the sale convincingly I popped a drug that lowered my heart rate and respiration to almost imperceptible levels - and woke up just as the autopsy was starting!!
The Avantgarde speakers (especially the Trio) can be quite good *when setup right* and everything gels.
But the best hi-effeciency speaker - and the best speaker, period - that I have ever heard is the Cogent horn system with their field-coil compression drivers. There is no beating that system. Of course the cost is also staggering.
Since we are on the topic, I would like to ask, if anyone can comment on Tannoy Westminster Royal SE performance, compared to, let's say Avantgarde Duo, or Classic Audio Reproductions T1.3, in terms of dynamics and their ability to play rock and complex classical music.(Avantgardes and CAR are the most dynamic speakers, I've ever listened to). I've read some comments here, that Tannoys couldn't do it well.
Tvad, the Audionote speakers IMHO do not represent high efficiency speakers, although I do like them once Peter has set them up.
Mmike84, My favorite high efficiency speakers are: the Beauhorn Virtuousos and the Exemplar tractrix horns. I also thought the old Maxhorn using Feastrex drivers was excellent. I am once again out of my high efficiency and SET period and back to my modest efficiency multiple driver with fairly powerful SS amp period. What I really want is a single, one inch, full-range driver capable of 20-20k Hz speaker that is 103 db efficient. I haven't found any:)
Isn't it true in general that the higher the efficiency of speakers, the more sensitive they are (in general) to minor variations in the signal fed them?
I've always assumed that deficient setup is the reason why many do not take to Avantgardes, because they are perhaps one of the hardest designs to get set up right.
Some may take to them just due to their "avantgarde" appearance alone and not have the ears or will or ability to set them up correctly.
I'd be surprised if I would not take to their sound assuming they have been setup well. I would also not be surprised if the setup in many cases chased me out of the room.
Proper set up is key for most speakers, just perhaps to the max for a design like Avantgarde, which push efficiency specs to the limit I believe.
I've heard the Classic Audio Loudspeaker, both T-1 and T-3 many times. The recent field-coil versions are remarkable. They are faster and just as detailed as the best electrostatics, yet very relaxed, and image easily. They are also very cohesive. The beryllium diaphragms used are custom-built. The have no breakups until about 40KHz, so the speakers are exceptionally smooth, even more than the Cogent, which uses phenolic diaphragms (or at least, did the last time I heard them).
The speaker also is easy to set up- you don't have to have it far from the walls to make it image well. It has bandwidth to 20Hz, and is about 99 db 1 watt/1 meter and 16 ohms. So you can shake the walls with a fairly small amplifier. IOW not only is this one of the best speakers you can buy at any price, but it is also easy to drive.
I'm still waiting for the worlds first field coil version of a Walsh driver based system.
Dale Harder, are you out there?
I'm assuming that could raise the efficiently level of Walsh drivers significantly to enable them be be driven optimally by more different kinds of amps, including tube amps.
In my mind, that could be an all time pinnacle in achievable sound quality, if it were possible.
I have never heard the field coil Shindo Labs LaTour speakers but have heard the field coil Feastrex drivers. Forget using them full range, but wow from 60 Hz to 20k Hz.
One side note. I think the emergence of very high quality class D amps provides a new alternative that makes it more practical for many to get the most out of less efficient, harder to drive designs in a manner that is competitive with high efficiency speakers running of similarly good amplifiation. I've gone this direction recently with my system and I think I have pretty much pushed it to the limit, or at least close to the limit of what is possible using conventional magnets. I do think powered field coils would be capable of pushing that limit significantly further if done well, though the cost would be quite high I assume.
"03-28-10: Tvad Mmike84, you never mentioned price range (or ceiling), or room size restrictions (if there are any).
Do any of these criteria matter, or is your question intended to be as broad as possible? Tvad (Threads | Answers)"
Sorry for my tardy reply. I didn't want to limit it as I'm looking for a comprehensive resource (for me and others) of all of the high efficiency speakers that exist.
However I am looking for my own purposes so I could say less than $15k, and preferably less than $10k. My room is pretty big (18x25) and open behind the listening position.
I have been considering Coincident Pure Reference or TV IV's but I'm fearful of spending that much on a speaker I've never heard (and cannot unless I am willing to go to the factory). What if I decided not to keep it? I'd lose a lot of $.
But I am by no means decided. Audio Notes, Audiokinesis, and Tonians (these were added as a result of this thread)are definitely up for consideration.
One serious limitation I have is I can only bring them out about 18" unless they are light enough they can be moved out and back. Audio notes actually prefer that (from what I've heard) and so have a real advantage. I'm going to drag my amps up to Audio Federation and give them another listen. Primarily because I highly respect the opinions about them from many of you.
Mmike84, having long ago auditioned the AudioNote SEs and having heard them sound wonderful in Peter Qvortrup's home earlier, especially in conveying the emotions of the music, I must say there is a major issue of setting them up properly. At shows, where Peter sets them up, they are always in the room corners and substantially toed in. In Peter's listening room they were not so carefully placed and not in the corners. In my room they were away from the rear wall and side walls, and I could not get anywhere near with the sounds I had previously heard.
At the last THE Show, the Audio Federation room did not sound very good until the last days and Peter's alignment.
Mapman, driving a speaker with a class D amp does not mean that you get the liveliness and emotive capability that high-efficiency speakers seem to bring. The point of HE is more than just drivability. And, while in general ICE, Tripath, and other chip amps are VERY good for the money they are still missing some of what SETs do. IME.
Most high efficiency speakers have fairly tight tolerances in the voice coil gap which makes them very reactive. The back EMF they present to amplifiers that use a lot of feedback is enough to confound the amplifier, as the feedback signal thus contains induced errors.
This is why transistors in general tend to sound shrill on horns and why horns had such a difficult road back into high end audio in the last 20 years- the bad rap of a bad combination.
However if not so much a tube/transistor thing as it is the amount of feedback used by the amplifier. Transistors do tend to use a lot more than tubes, and there are tube amps that don't use any. There are some transistor amps that don't any feedback also and not surprisingly they don't do so bad on horns.
I heard the new field-coil Shindo speaker at THE Show. It seemed to have some potential (no pun intended) but was clearly not playing the bass that you would expect out of a driver and cabinet that large. The material I played has information in the mid-20s, and my suspicion is that the Ongaku amplifiers that were being asked to play the bottom end were simply not up to the task, but its only a suspicion. When hearing any system there is always the tendency to place the blame of shortcomings where your biases lie... regardless, I think that the speaker they showed is really something to watch.
I'd really like to see how it stacks up against the Classic Audio stuff- they cost twice as much as the Classic Audio speakers do.
I'm just wondering if there is anybody out there who would recommend building a system around a SET amp to an audiophile who listens to a lot of modern popular music, like metal, synth pop, rap/hip hop, etc.
For other more acoustic forms of music solely, I might go there first, but not for those things.
My point about Class D amps is that this technology IS well suited for these kinds of music, plus it does very well with more acoustic forms as well, though maybe perhaps not to the nth degree as might a top notch SET/FULL range high efficiency speaker setup.
BTW, there is a good chance that if you are supplementing the low end of a SET based system with a high end powered subwoofer, that sub is using a Class D amplifier, not SET or even tubes in general.
Is there an generally understood start line for the handle of high efficiency in db/w?
I am seeing some speaker systems under "high sensitivity" that are not that sensitive to my understanding of it Say 93/94 db/watt. The highest I have ever seen is 118db/watt.
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