GMA Callisto VS. Merlin TSM

songwriter wrote: "The ability to play and enjoy ANY recording is one of the primary advantages of time/phase aligned speakers. I no longer have un-listenable or un-enjoyable recordings in my collection since purchasing the GMA speakers."

songwriter, i have never heard the gma speakers. i would have to wonder about something that makes every recording sound good - knowing not every recording *is* good. if you enjoy the music and the reproduction, i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. but if your goal is to suck the marrow out of top notch recordings, and accept the deficiencies of those that aren't, i'm not sure speakers that 'make everything sound good' would be the best way to go. you tell me - how can speakers that make everything sound good be reproducing what is *really* there?

songwriter,
i almost admire your single minded approach to the issue you are speaking of. and i agree partially with the thought that an accurate speaker (if done correctly) will have less sonic issues of its own to combine with those on a recording. so more recordings (even poorer ones) sound better. people have been saying exactly that about the mm and mx versions in the merlin speaker line since their inception.
where you and i start to differ is when you assume the propblem is immediately with the speaker and not somewhere else. i clearly outlined what i thought was minbean's issue and it was not the speaker. and by the way, minbean does not have an issue with the tsms but you do. you continue to make assumption after assumption about something you haven't heard or tested. just like on aa where you continually accused me of having a mid band suck out until a fellow reader posted the stereophile review of the frequency plot from the 2001 vsm review. if you looked at the response relative to the musical center and 10 degrees off axis, it is still one one the very flatest responses ever shown in that magazine. you were proven wrong. if you would have listened to the product first, you would have known there was no midband depression evident.
few people refine their products as i do over as long a period of time and stay dedicated to a given design. few people use the crossover components i do because of their cost and availability and even fewer use the sophisticated circuits i have developed to make these designs work as they do. it takes many years of research to make a world class product.
and just so you know, i started out designing first order and phase accurate, time aligned designs and can say without a doubt that my latter merlin designs are a lot more music like and accurate. what you gain in one design you may lose in another or you may find many other things that are preferable or more important in another design. but how would you ever know unless you hear/test an item set up as it was meant to be.
my speakers are not for everyone obviously and i have said this many times before. no single design can ever be. gmas are very fine speakers but they are only another approach to music making.
regards,
b

Wait a minute guys!
I'm beginning to see this thread soon turning into a GMA vs Merlin mud-slinging contest! :-(
BEFORE it degenerates into something of this sort I would like to try to abort such a deviation. Please allow me this!

Minbean: buy whatever you like. Neither I not songwriter are trying to convert you into a GMA owner. OK?
I was merely suggesting that you listen to the Callisto for yourself. Just FYI, you will discover that the TSM & Callistos have more in common sound-wise rather than being different.

Jim2, Minbean: both you guys are misinterpretting/distorting the meaning of the statement "The ability to play and enjoy ANY recording is one of the primary advantages of time/phase aligned speakers".
The GMA speakers do *NOT* cover-up bad recordings to make them sound good. That is *NOT* what is meant by the above statement.
I think that songwriter explained quite well what he meant to write. I cut & pasted his words here again: "Here's what i'm saying, and i'll try to put it as plain as possible. If your speaker has phase shift (most do) when you playback a distorted recording, the speaker's phase distortion is distorting everything that comes into it,including any recorded distortions, so your hearing distorted distortion. It's a multiplicative process, not additive."

From my personal experience I can vouch that bad recordings sound worse/much worse when the speaker adds its own distortion. The speaker's distortion sounds the worst of all the components in the audio chain, IMHO, because the phase shift put onto the music signal varies w/ frequency (because of the x-over circuit design). IOW, *IF* the speaker's distortion was constant over frequency I believe that the bad recordings would not have sounded so bad.
(it is true that the power amp's output is also freq dependent but IMHO the additional phase shift from this active circuit/power amp is much less than that from the passive speaker x-over network).
The GMA speakers have very little phase shift in the bulk of the audio band hence they allow the listener to listen to all of his/her music collection with far less fatigue than most other speaker offerings in the marketplace.
This is all that we are trying to convey to the other members posting in this thread. Hopefully this is comprehensible to all! :-)

I've heard the Merlin VSM-MM floor-stander. I can confidently say that the Merlin & GMA sonic signatures are close cousins more than anything else. I think that the TSM sonic signature will follow the Merlin house sound (unless Bobby has a split personality where he is making a floor-stander for home use & a monitor speaker for studio/pro use! I don't think so but I could be wrong).

Reading Minbean's latest posts I seem to be getting the feeling that he is looking for a studio/pro monitor to debug his amplifier designs. Correct?
If so, the GMA speakers are not (to the best of my knowledge) made for studio/pro monitoring use. They are meant for listening in the home environment.
If minbean is looking for studio/pro monitors how about the Rogers LS3/5a or some spin-off of this model (harbeth, Sterling, etc). Alternately, a Tannoy DMT series (owned by nearly every studio in the world) will also make an excellent monitor for this purpose.

I find this issue of making all of one's recordings sound good very interesting. It is something I look for in components, but probably would not were I a reviewer or designer. However, I don't think about it as making poor recordings sound good, which could be an exercise in covering up. Rather, I think of it as extracting and communicating all the music from all my recordings. Systems that only sound good with the best recordings lead to music collections that are heavy on Brazilian female vocalists accompanied by acoustic guitars and shakers. Puke.

hi drubin,
if you take a speaker that has flaws or a character of its own and combine that with a flawed recording and those flaws are embellished, you can end up with a mess. but if you take a flawed recording and play it through a neutral and accurate design, then the faults can become more listenable and the music can then be appreciated. that is the point. no one is trying to make a speaker that covers up faults.
and bombaywalla,
i specifically used a very soft tone so nothing could ever be taken as mud slinging and because i am a gentleman, i do not ever do this as a rule unless provoked and that rarely happens. i have respect for gma products and will not say anything against them.
so why not leave a man alone who is enjoying his new purchase instead of grinding away at him. he said he was offended already, what does that tell you.
here i am sticking up for my customer and not his speakers.
regards,
bobby