Verity Parsifal or Magico V3 or Wilson Benesch ACT

Dhaan, I used to be purely in the objectivist camp like you. I could never understand Wilsons appeal based on their measurments. Somewhere along the way I discovered that there are lots of things to like about listening to music that can not be measured and that what I look for in a speaker is not applicable to others. Let them have their fun. If someone gets joy from listening to a 'flawed' design then who are we to suggest that he shouldn't be joyful. Of course the stealth bomber stuff is marketing B.S. So is " revolutionary" in reference to a box speaker with dynamic drivers. As a disclaimer I own W.B. Chimera speakers and love their sound. My feelings are not hurt that you don't like their design or their sound ( if in fact you have heard them). I cant comment on a Japanese mags measurments of the ACTs. Whatever the ACT's measured harmonics the Chimeras sound extremly accurate to me. I am not a musician but my wife is and I have spent alot of time listening to live music including in the studio. I listen to music every single day. Yes, I too could be "foolish" or " over my head" or whatever else you want to call me. The tenor of this debate with you and audiofeil making personal attacks and impuning the motives of others because they disagree with you is unfortunate. Didn't we get into this because we love music ? - Jim

Dhaan,
Please, read my answer again. What I wrote before is that the WB's ACT cabinet uses a sandwich of composite materials w/ a high density foam core.
The ACT's cabinet is made of an internal layer of fiberglass, a high density foam (Last-a-foam) core material and an external layer of carbon fiber. What sounds-real-audio is trying to explain you, is that the carbon fiber will add rigidity to the enclosure while the high density foam will absorb unwanted resonances very fast. That is why you cannot use a thin metal sheet to replace the carbon fiber as you asked. The ACT cabinet is not just made of a thin rigid layer of carbon fiber, which would not absorb the sound, but layers of different materials. The overall cabinet thickness is around 13mm.

In my opinion, for such a small footprint the ACT's have, the unwanted resonances are very well controlled.

Thank you.

I read your posts very carefully. I object to marketing slogans like "structure instantly absorbs the energy generated from the drivers". What does this mean? You know that you do want to hear the energy generated from the front of the driver right? No to mention that Sounds_real_audio was talking about drivers back waves which is different subject all together form cabinet resonance control, which I assume is what you are talking about.
What you are describing is a typical way to build light, yet stiff structures. You get the stiffness all right but Last-a-foam is a very rigid material that will do very little, if anything, to damped vibration. One more thing you do not get with these type of enclosures is the necessary mass to damped high freq vibrations. Go ahead and tap your WB, they have a high pitch sound to them, and that is not a good thing.

I had WB Act. Maybe I had not the right amplification (ML 27.5, ML 331 and than Aronov integrated) or cabling (top of the line Siltech and Goertz MI2 and Elrod, Nordost valhalla, Shunyata powercords), but I never was able to get them properly singing. It was a nice non-offending musical sound, but it lacked body and warmth of music. I almost exclusively played on them classical music.

Here is the ultimate primer on speaker-cabinet design to deal with resonances. It is an interview with what might be the best in the industry in this regard, Andy Payor: http://ultraaudio.com/features/2007_07_01.htm