Naim and Elac Adante, Wow

Repuluso, who is stepping on whom?

The point of our original post was to point out how and why someone who is in one camp will not be easily swayed to moving into a different camp of sound.

It is interesting how certain posters make ridiculous claims on innovation and revolutionary designs without backing anything up and it seems you don’t like our scientfic analysis of things.

The majority of the audio industry is simply repackaging or voicing.

There are very few real audio geniuses out there: in electronics:

Nelson Pass, David Hafler, David Berninig, John Curl, are true innovators, with patents and innovations to their names to name a few.

Dan Dagastino, Mark Levinson the man, Hans Ole Vitus, Harve Dartzeel and many others, never innovated anything, all their products are excellent impliementions of circuits they didn’t design with careful parts selection and voicing. Never said these products aren’t magnificent.

In terms of loudspeaker designers the true geniues are gentleman like

Peter Walker of Quad, Quad ELS 57 and 63
The founder of Kef,Raymond Cooke, too many innovations to list
Bob Carver, subwoofer design
Graham Bank Celesion Aerolam Cabinet SL 600, 700
John Bau Spica Crossover design,
John Dalquist, DQ 10, open baffle designs
Jack Oclee Brown Kef Tangerine wave guide
Laurence Dickie, B&W, Vivid,Matrix Design, Tappered tube loading

Just to name a few

Many talented designers made great speakers due to experimentation, and implementation which is 80% of the industry.

We never said x y or z is good or bad but pointed out that each design has flaws, including the Adantes, they are hardly perfect. We also pointed out that many of the products we like offer a lot of value and challenge other more expensive ones it is up to the listener to determine what they want to purchase.

If you notice many of these fanboys all make the claims that brand x is better than brand y or is the only product that is good, We point out the nature of these products.

If you look at the frequency response curves on many of these products you can see how they will possibly sound, in the case of the Vandy the measurements show the speakers are generally recessed in the midrange and slightly rolled off in treble, hence they sound the way they measure.

In the Hifi New review of the Adantes they show a spike at 10k guess what you can hear that as being a tad forward in the treble hence our comments that you need a warmer sounding solid state or tube amp.

Beryillium and Diamond drivers can be bright never said they aren’t, many paper cones and soft domes sound a bit recessed.

Recluso we know a lot about sound reproduction and we call em like we hear them.


Again for the simple summary Vandy great value for dollar 2CE and 1C sound musical wtih their own specfic set of sonics qualities good and bad,

Elac Adantes very interesting design which has some amazing qualities but requires carefull matching of it can be peaky in the treble.

Planers don’t kick and very few guys hailed as audio geniuses actually are  when compaired to the real innovators.

And if we rub you the wrong way and don’t want to work with us that is fine, we probably couldn’t teach you anything.

By the way big news flash, put a set of Isoacoustics Gia under the Adantes and it helps drain away that 10k resonance


Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Audiotroy you have departed from logic and reason into hate
your patent search is flat out wrong - there are at least 3 including dbs, aerodynamic midrange and a few other things - are some shared ? well certainly - what else would you expect from an innovator with 37 years of collaborating with leaders in Indusrty - notably Low at Audioquest, and HRS, etc..

i have some experience with innovation, technology, and the worldwide protection of intellectual property ( at the largest and best Aerospace company in the world )
saying the word composite is meaningless...you only reveal your ignorance
of course even the largest, mighty and deep pocketed firms in the world do not patent everything - google trade secret and you might learn something....

as for fanboy, perhaps....but i own and listen to some 8 or 9 pairs of speakers, including a nice set of Apogee Planar and some horns ....

i hear live music every week, have a nice high speed mobile rack, ribbon microphones and know what microphone feeds sound like...

run your product UP

dont run others down

good life lesson for ya
signing off

Sorry Tomic,

Just don’t see it that way and quite frankly there is no hate here at all. Vandersteen builds speakers that many people love but not all people find them perfect or to be to their liking. Sorry to come off as a hater, we don’t use the word "revoloutionary" lightly. Most of the audio industry is evolutionary, it pisses me off to no end when people imply that only "our product employs a genius designer" when there are many, many engineers that have really blazed some new paths.

We sell many different lines of loudspeakers and endorse them all equilly. In our minds and in our store there is no one best loudspeaker, every loudspeaker design is flawed and produces a sound that listener x will like or not like.

We sell Kef Blades, Paradigm Personas and the Legacy Aeris these are three highly rated speaker systems. We also sell ATC and Rethem and now Elac and many others. We don’t view any audio product as untouchable if we can find a better dac or amp or speaker system we happily move out the old and work with the new.

In Vandersteen’s long history his firm has come up with some excellent drivers and technologies, but how many of these are really revolutionary? An open back midrange driver is one way of making a better sounding midrange there are other ways such as the tappered tube design of Lawrence Dickie. 

Vandys balsa wood cones may be fantastic but they are evoloutionary designs. Focal came up with the "sandwich" cone as well as a few others, and they did it first. Is the Balsa wood cone better than a Focal sadwich cone of fiberglass sheeting and foam? I don’t know but both of these companies offer some high tech drivers which claim to be perfect pistons, by the way almost every major manufacturer claims their drivers to be pefect pistons.

The Devialet Phantom is almost a revolutionary product, you may not like it but it is almost a game changer except that Bob Carver did it first, in terms of his original compact subwoofers with long throw drivers and 3,000 watts of digital power, the concept of the ADH amplifier now that is novel.

Hope that clarify our arguements and we are totally okay with your love of what you own. We have different opinions on what sounds good and there are many audiophiles out there that love or loathe a particular product.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ