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

"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

""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."

There's no need for a processor in a multichannel system except, perhaps, in your head. ;-)

Kal

I also dabbled in "quadraphonic" systems for a while. I came to feel that as a concept and potential, MC should be better if money was no object anywhere in the chain: sound recording, equipment design and manufacture, my own budget. With realistic systems possible within my budget however I could always assemble a more satisfying 2C system. Perhaps, a role was also played by the sources available (LP's then, CD's now) that were/are optimized for 2C.

213Cobra: 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.

I wonder if you'd mind going down the memory lane and listing what those were at different times. The best you heard and the best you could afford.

Phil, You just have all the answers, :) I love it. "The strength of Sonus Faber is that the line represents "voiced" loudspeakers." Yeah you could call it "voiced" if you like, but I have to disagree with the desirability of the net effect of "voiced"....voiced hurts Fidelity. The Cremona's violate atleast three of your speaker "ideals" which others I listed do not. "None of the above match Zu for essential fidelity." What is Fidelity to you, certainly not the accepted definition. The Manger I KNOW beats the Zu in Fidelity, it may be the most advanced driver in the world. Zu may still sound better but that is not Fidelity necessarily. "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."

I can think of a half dozen speakers that out shine the Cremona's in the "holistic" department. Certainly all of your experience has left you confused with too many options. Fact is anyone would have purchased the Manger until you heard the Zu, but you didn't you were going to buy a Sonus faber and of course this is the inconsistency I speak of. Flip Flop, and then you found the Zu. Your audio life was saved by two full range drivers in chorus. COMPLETELY against your ideals. Shows how much you learned in all your years, you're still trial and error.

"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." I've seen the measurements in two magazines at best its +/- 4 dB from 200hz to 10khz, that is hardly what I would call ideal. You can't "hear" the actual frequency response Phil. Typical audiophile thinks he can hear stuff he can't Everybody I know has an issue with the bass, I could careless, what bothers me is the incredibly ragged off axis response and dips in critical frequency ranges. The fact the driver actually appears to have an impedance hump where it shouldn't will adversely effect phase and the "tone". This is the Druid, with just one driver.

"They have very fast rise time, are not obscuring of detail in the least."

Really, well what is it and what are THEY.....hide and seek with you all the time. As for their bandwidth, that is meaningless in my point about how you've tried to dull the highs in your system. I like how everything in your system is so perfect but what I like better is you don't know that you're dulling your highs. McIntosh amplifiers are adjusted and a bit rounded, just look at their square wave sometime. Tsk, Tsk, you should know better that too argue what you "think" you hear with someone who want facts. Its really intellectually dishonest of you to TELL me what you hear is the truth. I simply cannot share these kinds of FACTS? with you. So you're going have to do better than pronouns and supposition if we're going to elevate this conversation to a productive level. "Zu's solution is an unusually large advance", This is strictly in your (ever decreasingly credible) opinion! Because I don't see it. because the only FACTS on this speaker that I have seen, barely makes them goode. I see a hot rodded eminence driver with some clever tuning to help with baffle step compensation and other than that it appears to behave like almost every other 10" midrange one can buy. Yeah I still have to hear it but if we deal with facts not opinion, I'm going to need a great deal more information from you to support your claims. Right now those two magazines are the arbitor of my opinion because they both show similar results on your "advanced" driver. BTW this is not a disparagement of ZU, this is a disparagement of what you say the facts are and what the facts really are and your consistent misuse of the word Fidelity

"Definitions DON'T have is the even worse problem of massed crossovers."

Oh yeah, but I wonder if you know what happens when two speakers cover the same frequency spaced as they are? Do you know? They kind of crossover.

"But Definitions have greater resolution, more linear accuracy, can scale more extensively, and throw a wider usable soundstage." I love when people make my point for me; How do you think the Definitions have greater resolution and "throw" a wider soundstage? Personally I think you're just making this up from a technical standpoint, well actually I don't. I'm sure you "hear" it this way but you would would be very upset to find that the reason you like the fuzzier presentation is because the two drivers combine to actually diffuse the high frequencies. You really should do more real research because unwittingly you just made my argument that 2 speakers (ie the Zu Druid) is not as good as 4 speakers (Zu Definition). So you do prefer multichannel better. All you have to do now is spread all those speaker out a little. :) And I'm not being cute, check it out before you come back with something smug based on your complete misunderstanding of what's happening.

Man Phil, you don't know yourself very well. "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." Phil, you're like Bill Clinton, minimum? response? fast? I think you're trying to redefine these terms. The whole Denon Cartridge thing, still sticks, and once again you simply do not know what really matters in creating the "tone" of a system. "I've owned Bob Stuart's speakers in the past. He usually has at least one really good speaker at a price" This conversation is not about his speakers Equating his speakers with the entirety of his work is typical of your knowledge base, but I'm surprised you had to go there at all.

"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."

So whats the spectral content of those amplifiers? you don't even know, which is why you make a completey irrelevant statement about MC amplifiers. I could have SET MC amplifiers could I not? Do I have to use MC amps in a MC system? No I do not. BTW which tube amp is 5hz-115khz? into a resistive load, remember static amplifier performance does not equal dynamic amplifier performance! "I recall what I "knew" when I was 3 years into hifi. Time will change your perspective. You can be sure of it."
Yes it will, but because I listen to people with greater experience than myself, that actually SHOW me REAL information and let me derive my own opinion. I am already better off than you. I am not in a world of disolusion. Because to simply base all my knowledge on marketing text and hearing sessions would keep me spinning. And like you I will never know what I'm looking for.

In Closing

One thing I do know about your system is you prefer the multi-channel version of your speakers over the two channel one....let that be a lesson to you.


There's your sign. ;)

CDw,

So...you don't like Sonus Faber huh? Perhaps you never heard them with the right amp. You can buy the speaker at Magnolia, but you can't buy an amp there that drives them properly. No matter. I didn't buy them either. Whether you think a Manger is a fully-realized speaker is up to you. It wasn't good enough for me.

One thing to set you straight -- it wasn't the 2-FRD Zu Definition that diverted me from Sonus Faber, it was the single-FRD Druid. That was my initial Zu purchase. And if I only had room for one system, It's the Druid that would stay. I have the luxury of having 2, however.

You haven't heard Zu speakers. I can't comment on whatever graphs you've seen on Definitions without knowing them, but +/-4db isn't what you'll actually experience, unless you include the much wider amplitude variations imposed by your room, in which case no speaker measurements are worth knowing. How far off axis are you listening anyway? In my rooms, I have as much *not* ragged response dispersion as the room can use.

The Druid graph you've seen is most likely the Soundstage graph, as there is no other in general circulation that I recall. That test erroneously measured the speaker while placed in mid-air. The Griewe model essential to the speaker's bass extension and midrange linearity could not work in that configuration. It's a fundamentally incorrect test that affects the FRD well up into the midrange. Do you have an anechoic chamber at home? Please put the Druid on the floor when you test it.

It is well known among people who use Zu speakers that Zu manages the mid-range and high frequency output of the FRD acoustically by having two of them. I don't like it better than the single driver Druid. It gains something, already mentioned, and loses something too. I like it for its strengths. Yes, of course the dual FRD is elemental to its advantages and also responsible for the Definition's weakness relative to the Druid. Within current technology, it's a reasonable compromise. It's only 2 per side, not 3, 5, 7 or more, which would be worse. And no multiplication of crossovers, which would be worse still.

Until you can tell me you've heard a Zu speaker, there's nothing more to say about your critique that its FRD must behave like every other 10" driver. It doesn't and you don't know what you're talking about until you hear them. For a thorough accounting of the sonic experience of Druids and Definitions, look up the reviews on 6moons.com and Tone, among others. And watch for Sean Casey's details about his drivers. Or call him up and ask him. Read their FAQ. Get it straight from the design engineers. It's not so hard.

So you really don't know the Denon DL103D -- D, as in elliptical stylus version. I know newbies have discovered the 103 -- and more power to them, it remains a great cartridge. But the D is considerably more defined and extended, and absent what you hint must be its limits. So once again, when you have actual experience with the item in question, come back to talk about it.

I think I gave Bob Stuart credit for his professional acumen. The guy is brilliant. His speakers aren't the sum total of his work, but they do indicate the direction of his notions of tonal fidelity. If his speakers embody his principles, then in terms of tonal fidelity he is lately either regressive or emphasizing the wrong things. Sometimes brilliant people just go down a counterproductive path.

You can find a number of wideband tube amps that are ultrasonic into a resistive load, dynamically. Audiopax 88s are among them. My triode amps are Audion Golden Dream and Black Shadow, which only a brief search here would have revealed to you. Also ultrasonic, into a resistive load, dynamically. Heck, you could dig up some Julius Futterman OTLs or Atmaspheres. Go further to early Harman-Kardons. We're not all listening to McIntosh MC30s, Marantz 8Bs and Dyna Stereo 70s in the world of tubes anymore. And by the way, there was a time when McIntosh autoformer amps did have a round, undynamic, dark sound and square wave performance (to the extent that it matters) was mediocre. That time is not now. Go test an MC1201.

Correct, you can build a multi-channel system using many copies of the same amps I use. That likely would get you closer to some semblance of tonal fidelity than the vast majority of what people use to amplify MC systems, but it will be less real than stereo with appropriate speakers. We keep coming back to the original question. For $XXXX, which gets you higher fidelity, MC or 2C? Conclusively 2C, if you know what you're doing and spend the money appropriately. On the secondary questions of whether spending MORE money allows MC to outperform ANY configuration of 2C, I say no, you say yes.

You're reaching to say that because I appreciate what the dual FRD Definition gains over the single FRD Druid, that this equates to a preference for more channels. No such thing is happening. The system remains 2 channel, and my appreciation of what the bigger speaker gains is in the context of having the smaller, simpler speaker too.

I've heard the states-of-the-arts in MC, multiple times, with professionals involved. Unfortunately you've heard none of my gear or anything similar to it, so we're not really commenting on the same plane of experience and education. If listening would leave your head spinning, then there's your proof that your frame of reference is insufficient. This will change with time. It's very easy to get anchored in definitive criteria for determining fidelity if you're willing. You can't really infer from someone's measurement what's going to be exceptional, only what's going to be adequate.

I love your commitment, am amused by your dogma, and know that these things too shall pass. Measurement is not reliable as a full-scope indicator of what you'll experience in the complex acoustic domain. And SYSTEMS must be evaluated, not just components. I have enough experience with and knowledge of the long sweep of audio history with respect to putting reproduced music in the home to know in that context that in 15 years, maybe 10, you will not be a MC user and you will recall this minor exchange as anticipating your return to 2C for all the reasons I've listed.

Phil