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ESS and Heil air-motion tranformer - any thoughts?

These seem like interesting speakers, has anyone on this board had any experience with the ESS line of speakers?

A.M.T. description:

"The Heil diaphragm, made of soft, quiet mylar to reduce background noise, is bonded with conductive aluminum strips. It is equivalent in surface area to a conventional cone type eight inch midrange driver, but is accordion-folded down to a compact one-inch band for better point source dispersion. The low mass diaphragm is suspended in a massive magnet structure concentrating an intense magnetic field around the diaphragm.

When a signal passes through the aluminum strips, the bellows-like motion of the folded "pleats" squeezes air out five times faster then the air motion of a conventional cone driver. The virtual "instant acceleration" provides high definition, crisp transients, and overall spaciousness with superb dynamic range. This type of performance distinguishes the heil from all other transducers."

http://www.essspeakers.com/
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dangcaonguyen
206 posts
 
I just bought a pair of ess amt 1b, and like them so much. The only concern is the high is a little grainy. Any thought? If you are having the same model, where do you set the mid and high adjustment? Thanks
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dbphd
1,628 posts
 
I had a pair of what I recall being ESS Heil AMT speakers: about four feet tall with a removable cover for the top. I thought they sounded very good driven by my Marantz Model 18 receiver. It was when I got the notion of using them with my TV that things went awry. Even having the speakers in the same room with the TV caused distortion of the picture that required deGaussing. IIRC the period of use was late 60s to late 80s.

db
tuong9906
30 posts
 
Had a bookshelf pair around 1978 to 85, with a rear passive driver to augment the 8" bass on the front. The Heil tweeter is very efficient and clear sounding, great for dull LPs and cassettes of that era. The woofer is flabby but can play very loud, great for parties. It can compete very well with the huge Altec Lansing or JBL of that decade.
audiofeil
4,011 posts
 
Adam Audio from Germany is using a variant of the Heil in its' speakers.

I'm very interested in anyone's direct experience with this company specifically the Tensor series.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
I just encountered a new speaker company, GoldenEar Technology, that features its own nicely refined take on the Heil throughout its product line.

The company's founder and chief designer is Sandy Gross, who was a co-founder of Polk Audio in 1972 and Definitive Technology around 1990. You can especially see some family resemblance between GoldenEar's Triton 2 Tower and the Def Tech Mythos, but the GoldenEar uses the new Heil tweeter and costs 40% less than the Mythos.

I heard them at a high end audio open house at my local high end store just a couple weeks ago. Co-founders Sandy Gross and Don Givogue introduced the speakers while Stereophile's John Atkinson played 24/96 digital masters from his laptop. At $2500/pair list these speakers are stupid good and neutral. Bass extension goes down to a claimed 18Hz thanks to each speaker having a 1200 watt built-in amp to drive twin 5x9 bass drivers assisted by even larger passive radiators. It makes amp matching much easier.

The front baffle is only 5" wide, so imaging and soundstage are particularly good. They also make a selection of L-C-R and surround speakers featuring their "folded ribbon" tweeter in a D'Appolito array.
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