@lewm thank you for relaying your experience with the IMFs. I smiled when reading you reacquired your incredible homegrown pair.
Bud (Irving M.) Fried was one of the true pioneers in audio, and a lion of this industry. Doubtless you know, but after WWII, he brought over the Lowthers, then the Quads, the Decca cartridges, introduced companies like Dynaudio, KEF, etc. to North America. They certainly don’t make them like Bud anymore.
I actually became close with Bud, and am blessed that he gave me his own personal loudspeakers a few months before he passed away in 2005. They are a Valhalla System ** plus ** with standard C satellites with true TL midrange and not the D (8"), but the O (10") subwoofers, and obviously more than a couple of other upgrades. Bud felt more than happy when I talked about TL midrange being much more important than the lows, as many forget he coined the phrase that 85% of the music lies in the midrange.
Anyway, not to understate true TL bass... Other than perhaps the single pair of correctly implemented Ohm A loudspeakers with their 18" full-range drive, the O subwoofers produce some of the most impressive bass I’ve come across, though they sound VERY different. I’ve personally watched more than a few bass freaks come as close as it gets to jumping out of their skins playing the beginning of a Fiona Apple track. Needless to say, that’s a heck of an introduction to TL, and certainly fuels the conversation from there
Bud (Irving M.) Fried was one of the true pioneers in audio, and a lion of this industry. Doubtless you know, but after WWII, he brought over the Lowthers, then the Quads, the Decca cartridges, introduced companies like Dynaudio, KEF, etc. to North America. They certainly don’t make them like Bud anymore.
I actually became close with Bud, and am blessed that he gave me his own personal loudspeakers a few months before he passed away in 2005. They are a Valhalla System ** plus ** with standard C satellites with true TL midrange and not the D (8"), but the O (10") subwoofers, and obviously more than a couple of other upgrades. Bud felt more than happy when I talked about TL midrange being much more important than the lows, as many forget he coined the phrase that 85% of the music lies in the midrange.
Anyway, not to understate true TL bass... Other than perhaps the single pair of correctly implemented Ohm A loudspeakers with their 18" full-range drive, the O subwoofers produce some of the most impressive bass I’ve come across, though they sound VERY different. I’ve personally watched more than a few bass freaks come as close as it gets to jumping out of their skins playing the beginning of a Fiona Apple track. Needless to say, that’s a heck of an introduction to TL, and certainly fuels the conversation from there