Pick your poison...2-channel or multi?

"When you tire of chasing your tail with MC, as you no doubt will, you will return to technology appropriate to the task."

Phil you assume so much, how do you know you're not chasing your tail right now? It took you 53 years to find the right speakers? Why haven't you checked out speakers like Tannoy and Cabasse, all of which adhere to your ideals? Tannoy has made a speaker like yours for decades! Why not a Manger Zerobox 109 which can be setup to play from 200hz to 40khz with no crossover? I would think you might have explored some of these options. But you were going to buy a Sonus Faber?

"No, Cdw, you're missing my point. Taking one accurate driver and adding another is revealing the error between them. Then do it again, and again, and again, and you begin to have slightly distinct voices. Clarity and tone are the casualties. There are no two exactly matched drivers. This is just one of the many problems with line-source loudspeakers, even in 2C."

So you prove this point to us all by purchasing speakers that has no less than 7 drivers on them each? Ok, so this aspect may not be SO important after all. And competent surround processors are quite capable of perfectly aligning the speakers, that's why there are some processors you shouldn't buy. I believe You waaaaay over state your abilities to hear differences between two drivers and overlook the transitions a single driver goes through making its own sound. A full range cone driver will likely have greater variation in tone than three seperate elements.

some Single cone problems;
1. Uneven frequency response= less Fidelity
2. The transition from 4pi to 2pi, makes the driver sound as different as two drivers and destroys tone
3. Modulation of high frequencies due to low frequency content. destroys tone and fidelity

These are just a few of the reasons most speaker designers put two to three drivers in their systems anyway. If one driver is going to sound different across its frequency band why not use two , each optimized for its bandwidth. They call it the lesser of two evils I think. This ability to hear the lack of holistic sound in multi-driver systems is all in your head as you have proven by your actions.

"Nothing on the market sounds like a Zu speaker. Honestly. Whether you like them or not, Zu speakers are their own thing."

Yes I agree. That Includes what's on the recording.

"There'd be software processing attempting to ham-handedly simulate much more complex wave behavior than the processor and speaker array would be up to."

I'm sure Jim Fosgate and Bob Stuart disagree and You have little or no idea how modern surround works and the current complexity of processing and accuracy of the algorithms. Two channel directly interferes with natural wave propagation, it is an unfortunate tone destroying side effect. That is why you still use triodes and if not those an autoformer McIntosh which dull the leading edge that is so harsh on a simple two channel system. Your whole system right down to your Denon cartridge addresses and diffuses and dulls the inherent high frequency issues in two channel. Unwittingly you have showed your hand, by doing everything you can to diffuse and soften the highs of your system. As the sources and electronics continue to improve, using only two speakers becomes the obvious liability. One day you will figure that out. In the end Phil you don't have to worry about me having the tone and fidelity in my system. You are too inconsistent to be the arbitor of tone and fidelity and if you took a second to refresh yourself you would see how incorrect these following statements sound to someone like me when we consider all that you have said and further more your actions;

"Effects, breakdown analysis, picayune critique of details. I find fewer and fewer people listening holistically or even able to comprehend what I mean by that."

(That's because you don't define it very well, because you say one thing and do another.)

"Yes, Cdw, every speaker that uses massed drivers has the same problem I outlined. It only gets worse with many speakers, and is containable with just two." "Yes, my speaker is better for a lot of reasons," "And yes, sometime you will hear what I'm talking about -- that good drivers massed draw attention to what is not matched." (and buy those speakers anyway :) "No, I haven't yet found you can add multiple drivers and achieve intended tone if the drivers are accurate. No two drivers are fully matched. Just close. Having more just makes the inconsistencies more audible and disruptive to fidelity." (so I should buy a speaker with 7 drivers each?) Magic Chipmunk No. 7!

"But that will sometime change and you'll begin paying attention to what your ears already know, that your brain has yet to assimilate. Patience." (The brain knows we hear in a primarily 360 degrees field, what more is there to know?)

"How's that done? With inventive combinations of resistors, capacitors, chokes, inductors"
(The rest of us call that an equalizer, I can't believe you have an equalizer built into your 1920 amplifiers, that's so cool! is it 5 band or 3 band?) .....doesn't that hurt "tone"?

"I don't have circa 1920 SET amps. And my speakers are phase-coherent. (proof please) I bet we can find that circuit in an old navy manual. "Monaural can have terrific tone", ( but a center channel in a system can't)

"heck let's give the MC guy 50% more! -- and 2C wins on fidelity, tone, less "unreality."" (sounds like wager time!)

"Well-made stereo works with human spatial perception in a way mono nearly completely lacks." (and 2ch mostly lacks)

Well Phil we are at an impasse, but you need to get your story straight. Because you tell me one thing and then we have to make an exception for your equipment and your choices. You don't follow what you say is true. So you discredit yourself, which is why I am confused at times.

CDw,

Tannoy, check. Years ago. Cabasse check. Menger, check. Bastani, check. Some of these do very well in certain respects and all are toneful speakers. Not much I haven't investigated and heard. I have a lot of "ins." I ended up completely outside my extensive audio industry network and found Zu. There's a reason. None of the above match Zu for essential fidelity. The strength of Sonus Faber is that the line represents "voiced" loudspeakers. Crossovers are mild and less intrusive than most. In the absence of good integrated performance from other systems, Sonus Faber's subtle voicing invariably sounds like real music in a domestic setting, and the speaker design anticipates the acoustics of domestic environments. The Cremona and above are among the best speakers using crossovers in terms of being able to represent music holistically. Zu is better still, for reasons already outlined.

It didn't take me 50 years to find the right speaker. I've always found the most natural and holistic-sounding speaker for music available at any given time and within what I was willing to spend and accommodate. Zu's solution is an unusually large advance, which is why it is notable and commonly not understood by people who haven't heard Zu speakers. If you think you've heard Zu because you've heard other FRDs, you're mistaken.

I have Zu Druids along with Definitions in two separate systems. There is no question that Druids, using only one FRD, present a note more holistically than do the Definitions which use two FRDs. But Definitions have greater resolution, more linear accuracy, can scale more extensively, and throw a wider usable soundstage. Nothing is perfect so there is a trade-off to each advantage. Fortunately for me, I have both, so I can listen to each according to whim. More to the point, what my double-FRD Definitions DON'T have is the even worse problem of massed crossovers. So I accept one pair of FRDs per side as this is still more direct than most systems, and when I want the special intimacy of no driver duplication, I have my Druids system. If you research my posts here, you will find that I have consistently raised this difference as distinguishing these speakers from one another.

The sub-bass array in the Definition does use 4 drivers each. As a practical consideration, a simgle 18" driver might be better, but the packaging is not domestically friendly. Given the relative lack of defining transient information below 40Hz where the sub-bass array is active, I can accept the massed drivers compromise there. Still there are only two channels, which is the correct number, given current acoustic understanding, technology and software processing. And associated signal shaping is at an absolute minimum.

Two channels can generate interferences, true. It's way true for MC too. Neither is perfect. But this defect is less tone-destroying than multichannel processing by a long shot. It really doesn't matter to me whether Bob Stuart, Jim Fosgate or anyone else disagrees with me. I've owned Bob Stuart's speakers in the past. He usually has at least one really good speaker at a price and the rest are fatiguing and unlistenable. In fact I'll go so far as to say that Bob Stuart -- a highly competent sound professional -- nevertheless knew more about tone 20 years ago than he does today, if I were to judge by his products.I like the *idea* of Bob Stuart's speakers -- especially the more recent digital and process-oriented offerings -- more than the speakers themselves. I do understand MC processing and especially am intimately familiar with software and processors. Today, none of this is up to the task of contributing to fidelity, only in elevating selective perceptual effects.

This is an interesting notion you raise, claiming that my system is designed to soften highs, transients, detail, etc. However, in terms relative to other gear, it's an uninformed and mistaken assertion. I have multiple pairs of tube amps. One pair is very wideband, flat 5Hz - 115kHz, better than many solid state and certainly MC amps. They have very fast rise time, are not obscuring of detail in the least. But they are highly capable at delivering the whole note, not just the superficial suggestion of it. My other amps are flat about 5 Hz - 35kHz, and while they are triode amps, they do not have even a trace of the slow round sound people who have limited experience with tube amps assume defines the genre. My speakers are, as you know, quite wideband as well and extremely revealing of detail along with tone. And then there's the Denon phono cartridge. You think it has dull high frequency response and truncates detail. Hmm....I suppose you've never used one. Moreover, this tells me you think that all variants of the Denon DL103 sound the same. Again, you'd be mistaken to think so. I use the DL 103D, which isn't sold these days, but I had the foresight to buy an ample reserve. In short, your comments demonstrate you've not heard Zu speakers (I asked and you haven't answered) and now I also know you have zero familiarity with the rest of my systems. Also apparently McIntosh autoformer amps are outside your direct experience as well. I suppose you can only hear so much in three years.

Uneven FRD frequency response? True in lesser FRD systems. Not true for the Zu FRD. Again, when you audition it, then you can comment from an informed perspective.

4pi>2pi causing inconsistent driver behavior? See above.

Modulation of high freqencies due to low frequncy content? Well, we disagree on whether you can judge tone, but again, see above. This ain't just any old whizzer cone FRD.

Oh...all electronics use circuitry to amplify. Yes! My single ended amps use much less of it. No, it doesn't destroy tone relative to vastly more complicated circuits. They preserve tone. However, there's always room for improvement. I'm always open to something better.

Top to bottom, everything I've outlined is present in my system configuration. Highly-refined wideband and simple circuits, wide-response, fast, articulate sources, and speakers built around a uniquely wide-range, neutral FRD that uses a minimum number of drivers to achieve their bandwidth, response, resolution and natural tone.

I recall what I "knew" when I was 3 years into hifi. Time will change your perspective. You can be sure of it.

Phil

Phil wrote: "Two channels can generate interferences, true. It's way true for MC too. Neither is perfect. But this defect is less tone-destroying than multichannel processing by a long shot."
This argument is a canard. There is no additional processing in true multichannel; tsimply, there are more channels handled in the same way as the two in stereo.

Kal

Kal...glad everyone doesn't buy into Phil's eroneous theories.

"There are more channels handled in the same way as the two in stereo." Well, there is that little defect too. How many multi-channel schemes are there? There's a reason every one of them requires a processor somewhere in the chain. Stereo puts it all in the medium and in your head.

Phil