Vandersteen Speakers.. Are All Other Speaker Makers Doing It Wrong ?

A lot of people think so.  It just depends on what is important to you.  I'm never selling my Thiels.  I can't be sure that I like them because of the time/phase coherence but I have no interest in changing.  There's a lot of discussion of this on the Thiel thread.  The theory is that when the wave gets to you in its correct form your brain doesn't have to do a bunch of work to fix the distorted signal, and you can just relax and enjoy.  

@holmz Said!

^nice^ - Theil , Dunlavy, Spika ?

No JBL!

Mike

I don't think Mr. Vandersteen even remotely implied his speakers are the only ones "correctly" done. He knew late Jim Thiel and John Dunlavy also designed speakers with the same philosophy. When I started this hobby, I auditioned Vandersteen 2Ce and Thiel CS 2 2 among several other brands. Frankly, I didn't have to pull my hair off to settle on Thiel 2 2 and I could have easily chosen 2Ce as well. Tie breaker was Thiels has a cabinet and I didn't feel comfortable handling a speaker without a cabinet. I like to take this moment to Thank my local dealers in Denver area including Soundings, Listen Up, etc. 

I was also fortunate to visit Dunlavy Audio Labs in Colorado Springs and those speakers were really well done and way out of my price range 🤣. Again, the late John Dunlavy followed a similar philosophy as Richard Vandersteen and he was also into measurements. He emphasized that a speaker should meet all the measurements first and rest follows afterwards.

Time/phase corrected speakers are not easy to design and needs careful balance of science and art and in this case music.

When you listen to such speakers, theory is that when the wave gets to you in its correct form your brain doesn't have to do a bunch of work to fix the distorted signal, and you can just relax and enjoy. @jon_5912 

I couldn't have said it any better.

When I auditioned the 2ce sig iii last year, I found the Vandys to sound good, but too dark for my tastes.  I wound up buying Magnepan 1.7i.  I've been very happy with the Maggies.

The question is of course in reference to loudspeakers with multiple dynamic drivers and crossovers.

Electrostatic, magnetic-planar, and ribbon designs can be a different kettle of fish. For instance:

- The QUAD 63 gained notoriety for---amongst other attributes---the ability to recreate a square wave, which requires extremely good---close to perfect---time coherency.

- The Eminent Technology LFT-8b features inventor/designer/builder Bruce Thigpen’s Linear Field Transducer, a push-pull magnetic-planar driver which he employs to reproduce all frequencies from 180Hz to 10kHz, with NO crossover! The midrange (LFT) to tweeter (a ribbon) crossover at 10kHZ is symmetrical 1st-order, as is the 180Hz LFT to dynamic woofer.

On the other hand, Magnepan’s crossovers flip the polarity (180 degree opposite each other) of the various drivers in most of its’ models. Few Magnepan owners have heard---or are even aware---of the ET LFT-8b, but it is considerably superior---imo---to the MG1.7i, and about the same price ($2499/pr).