Tekton Double Impacts

+1 @craigl59

Hey David,

Here's my take on take on the comparison between the standard Ulfberth speakers and the Ulfberth Be speakers.  I went over to Ezra's house with five recordings I use to get my take on a piece of gear that I'm reviewing for my own pleasure or professionally.  Both the T+A and the ULF Be's had been playing for close to 100 hours, which should be good enough time to burn-in to get a realistic take on the performance of speakers.  I'm still amazed how well they image in spite of Ezra's relatively small acoustic space.  However, the speakers still are five and a half feet off the front wall, two and a half feet off the side walls, with a slight toe-in and his listening chair is about eight to nine feet from the front of the speaker.  I do get a deeper, higher, and wider sound-stage with my ULf's, but my acoustic space is vastly, in all dimensions, larger then Ezra's space.

1)  On my musical selections played at dB levels that I consider to be the "sweet spot" regarding dynamics and the size of the instruments stays at a realistic proportions I could not hear a difference between the two speakers.

2)  Both Ulf's, along with the DI SE's, are complete pure conduits that put out exactly what you put into them.  I did hear a difference in the sound of the system driving the ULF Be's. However, I don't believe the Ulf Be's were more revealing/transparent then the standard Ulf's.

3)  Eric did share with me that the Be tweeter being a hard dome device compared to the Scanspeak silk soft dome tweeter will measure more perfectly flat at dB levels of 120 or more then the soft dome.  However, I never listen to any music that loud, so theoretically the Ulf Be's would play more clearly at those hugh dB volume levels with less break-up/distortion.

4)  I did not notice any differences in micro-details/transparency or a lowering of the noise floor.

5)  I could not pick-up any significant  differences in over all speed or dynamics between the Ulf/ULF Be's. 

So, both are world reference level speakers.  If there is any overall difference in performance, I could not tell between using the standard Ulf's in my system vs. the Ulf Be's in Ezra's system.  The differences I heard would be attributed to the acoustic space and driving them with very different electronics upstream gear.  

@kristofa regarding our conversation about the paint flaking, I was wrong. It is not the spray adhesive at all. It is as you say as a result of moving the speakers with the grills on and worn by the staples. My fix will be a sharpie on those little spots!
Greg

@teajay  Terry, thank you for sharing your thoughts on today's listening session. Your comparative points between the two versions of the Ulfberths are helpful! I've got to make that trip to Chicago and hopefully have the chance to listen to both of your systems. 

Any word on whether you will be getting one of the newer versions / variants in for a review within your space and system?