$15,000 Speaker Does Not List Freq Response Specs

How long ago was that demo? There's a lot of speculation about what did or did not go on there and why., But in its present form, the ALS includes a supertweeter and a fast, deep reaching powered sub designed and integrated by the designer of both. Let's not forget Bob Carver's history in reinventing the powered sub several years ago.

In The Absolute Sound, Robert E. Greene's review was an out-and-out rave, which qualified it by going into some detail concerning EQ profiles, placement, and subwoofer integration options.

The ALS includes EQ for bass, upper midrange, and treble. Also, since the mid/woofers are side-firing, there should be a lot of space to the sides (no problem for Mitch's room), but it was a problem somewhat for the TAS review and I don't know how they were set up for the demo Mitch saw/heard.

Anyway, it's the October 2015 issue of TAS. It's worth picking up for a read and perhaps an email to reviewer Robert. E. Greene.

Also, given the money involved and the prospect of affordably acquiring something that can credibly play back a 100-piece orchestra at full tilt, maybe you could fly out to Washington and audition it live (if Carver is set up to do so). It shouldn't be much more than the cost of return shipping.

Can you specifically name this model? Can you provide any home speaker that actually DO provide frequency response?
Do you understand frequency response specs and how do you choose speaker by frequency response? Does it help you much if you read 20Hz...25Khz?

Czarivey - Here's a link to the exact speaker being discussed - http://www.bobcarvercorp.com/#!als/cwgy

Thanks Bill_K,

Carver Amazing speakers used to be ribbon/panel, but now they're fully ribbon. Amazing indeed.

My point was very clear that specification such as 24Hz...24KHz is useless. So why post it? Why provide something that is NEVER true? A detailed plot of speaker response measured in anechoic chamber likely not be understandable by casual consumer while typical Hz...kHz numbers are truly misleading.

I have datasheet for my Aerial 10t speakers provided by Mike Kyle after I requested it. Bob Carver is highly respectful engineer designer of consumer and professional sound won't mind sharing datasheet if requested.

Hopefully I made it clear after all.

You're right, Czarivey. Giving performance specs for the ALS is particularly difficult, as it is with any bipole or omnidirectional speaker designed to energize the listening area in a certain way. The ALS has a very unconventional driver layout:

13 ribbon panels facing front in a line array
Small ribbon tweeter at the tiptop of the array, almost 90" above the floor
22 high excursion (0.48" exc) ~4" dia. mid/woofers, eleven each facing to the right and to the left.

The included SubRosa *does* have printed specs, which includes 18-110 Hz and max spl of 110 dB.

The array is pretty unconventional, especially the side-firing dynamic mid/woofers, and which obviously rely on room reflections to work as intended. They are probably sensitive to the distance between drivers and side walls. Any setup with less than 4 feet to the side walls will probably be compromised.

Back in 2007, Ultimate A/V->Home Theater->Sound&Vision mag (operated by S'phile) did a review on the Mirage OMD-28 floorstanding towers plus matching center, surrounds, and sub. The OMD-28 is an omni and since it radiates in all directions, the tweeter as a point source is shelved down to compensate for all the room boundaries that will reinforce (i.e., flatten) the treble response.

And yet, the reviewers still measured the speakers with their close-miked "quasi-anechoic" measurements, which produced this frequency response curve with a 10+dB dip at 5Khz, which implies that the treble would be dull and lifeless, which is totally untrue. In fact, Thos. J. Norton's commentary at that point stated:

The measured responses of both the OMD-28 and the OMD-C2 are relatively disappointing, and surprisingly uneven considering the system's admirable sonic performance. However, speakers with unusual radiating patterns—dipole, bipole, and omni—are notoriously difficult to measure in an anechoic or pseudo-anechoic way that relates to their performance in real rooms. They often sound better than they actually measure, and this is certainly the case here.

Mirage's designer Andrew Welker took exception to this hamfisted handling of their flagship OMD-28, the result of years of measurements and calculations at Canada's National Research Center, and responded in part:

Judged against the accepted "flat frequency response" goal of a directional forward-radiating system, any Omnipolar design will appear down-tilted and show an apparent "excess of bass". However, any anechoic measurement, by it's very nature, will not take into account the reflected energy that will be present when the loudspeaker is placed in a listening room. An Omnipolar loudspeaker will also not follow the inverse-square law at mid and high frequencies. Both of these facts suggest that an Omnipolar speaker should NOT measure "flat" otherwise it will sound excessively bright and thin in a typical room.

And lest we take the ALS's $15K purchase price for granted, it was originally $23,500, the new price will be $17,995 and the $14,995 is a limited time offer. Considering it includes a high powered $3500 sub and room-tuning tools, that's an attractive deal.