grey9hound,
Thanks for your further assessment of the Tektons. I read the reviews, and can say that your comments are the most useful, in part due to the honest tone set by WC on this thread. I agree with you that anyone considering dynamic speakers at any price should be mindful of the Tektons. I also endorse your ideas about room correction, even though I never tried the Lyngdorf. I will go a step further, and now reveal my most controversial idea yet, which will earn HOWLS of protest and derision by many sanctimonious purists here. Drumroll....
The absolute necessity of an equalizer. I have been using my $600 Rane ME60 equalizer for 23 years now for both recording and home listening. It is a stereo 32 band 1/3 octave from 20 to 20,000 Hz, with each of 32 bands adjustable from minus 12 to plus 12 dB. The newer model has a choice of 2 curves centered on any band and another adjustment of minus 6 to plus 6. It is old fashioned analog but widely adjustable as you can see. I started recording my orchestra without the EQ. The hall is a medical school small auditorium, and the stage a small boxy affair not designed to fit an orchestra, but just a lecturer and a few things. When the conductor noted that my recording sounded heavy and dead, I then tried the equalizer, cut the overblown bass and boosted the highs. All very tastefully done, not with the aid of instrumentation, just by ear. After that, everyone was astonished at the clarity and impact. Nobody accused me of sound manipulation or thought the sound was artificial. At home for playback of commercial recordings that are usually recorded to give a more distant perspective than the close one I prefer (although the commercial perspective is still much closer than a typical audiophile likes who goes for the midhall sound), I boost the highs which makes the more laid-back recorded perspective sound more like the exciting sound I hear from being on stage immersed in everything. This works because high freq are the ones most drastically lost due to distance, so I compensate. Also, when I play my violin, the sound under my ear is MUCH more detailed than most any listener hears from a distance. I can skillfully equalize most recordings of solo violin to sound like what I hear under my ear. Your sound preferences may differ from mine, but you can experiment with the equalizer to get the sound you like. If anyone says that all this is manipulating sound and making it arbitrary or artificial, I say you all are doing just that with flavoring your particular soup with different preamps, cables, cartridges, different tubes, caps, fuses, etc. Most manipulations of sound are by speaker designers who make their personal choice of colorations and tradeoffs that THEY like. The next biggest sinners are recording engineers with their arbitrary choices, especially with processed rock/pop music. For ultimate sonic thrills, sit with me on stage or hear an outdoor unamplified performance up real close. Aside from that, which is what we are all forced to do with our commercial recordings, adjust the playback with the equalizer to what you like. For those of you who respect my sincerity, I can assure you that small tweaks of the EQ sliders will make much more of a difference in the sound than the differences between many amplifiers. If I were a shady audio salesman, I can get the customer to like any particular amp best, depending on a subtle EQ adjustment, all tastefully done to make it not obvious. Without my Rane EQ, there is no amplifier at any price that will give me the musical satisfaction I would get with the EQ and many modest amps. I still appreciate the better accuracy of a better amp, but this still is using the amp WITH the EQ. Another benefit is that my Rane has a volume control which enables me to get rid of the preamp. At the time I got the Rane, I was using the Spectral DMC gamma preamp, but the Rane electronics set to flat (no EQ use) was more revealing and transparent than the Spectral, so I happily dumped the Spectral. Bypass tests showed that the Rane is very transparent. Go try to find a totally transparent line stage preamp, but the point is moot because I consider the EQ a necessity to get the sound you really want. The only sacrifice I make is that the Rane is not a control unit, so I have to unplug to get another source. For those who feel that a preamp is necessary to get better dynamics (although they will admit that transparency and information retrieval is sacrificed more than a little), that's OK, just insert the EQ either before or after the preamp. You'll still get the benefits I describe here.
Thanks for your further assessment of the Tektons. I read the reviews, and can say that your comments are the most useful, in part due to the honest tone set by WC on this thread. I agree with you that anyone considering dynamic speakers at any price should be mindful of the Tektons. I also endorse your ideas about room correction, even though I never tried the Lyngdorf. I will go a step further, and now reveal my most controversial idea yet, which will earn HOWLS of protest and derision by many sanctimonious purists here. Drumroll....
The absolute necessity of an equalizer. I have been using my $600 Rane ME60 equalizer for 23 years now for both recording and home listening. It is a stereo 32 band 1/3 octave from 20 to 20,000 Hz, with each of 32 bands adjustable from minus 12 to plus 12 dB. The newer model has a choice of 2 curves centered on any band and another adjustment of minus 6 to plus 6. It is old fashioned analog but widely adjustable as you can see. I started recording my orchestra without the EQ. The hall is a medical school small auditorium, and the stage a small boxy affair not designed to fit an orchestra, but just a lecturer and a few things. When the conductor noted that my recording sounded heavy and dead, I then tried the equalizer, cut the overblown bass and boosted the highs. All very tastefully done, not with the aid of instrumentation, just by ear. After that, everyone was astonished at the clarity and impact. Nobody accused me of sound manipulation or thought the sound was artificial. At home for playback of commercial recordings that are usually recorded to give a more distant perspective than the close one I prefer (although the commercial perspective is still much closer than a typical audiophile likes who goes for the midhall sound), I boost the highs which makes the more laid-back recorded perspective sound more like the exciting sound I hear from being on stage immersed in everything. This works because high freq are the ones most drastically lost due to distance, so I compensate. Also, when I play my violin, the sound under my ear is MUCH more detailed than most any listener hears from a distance. I can skillfully equalize most recordings of solo violin to sound like what I hear under my ear. Your sound preferences may differ from mine, but you can experiment with the equalizer to get the sound you like. If anyone says that all this is manipulating sound and making it arbitrary or artificial, I say you all are doing just that with flavoring your particular soup with different preamps, cables, cartridges, different tubes, caps, fuses, etc. Most manipulations of sound are by speaker designers who make their personal choice of colorations and tradeoffs that THEY like. The next biggest sinners are recording engineers with their arbitrary choices, especially with processed rock/pop music. For ultimate sonic thrills, sit with me on stage or hear an outdoor unamplified performance up real close. Aside from that, which is what we are all forced to do with our commercial recordings, adjust the playback with the equalizer to what you like. For those of you who respect my sincerity, I can assure you that small tweaks of the EQ sliders will make much more of a difference in the sound than the differences between many amplifiers. If I were a shady audio salesman, I can get the customer to like any particular amp best, depending on a subtle EQ adjustment, all tastefully done to make it not obvious. Without my Rane EQ, there is no amplifier at any price that will give me the musical satisfaction I would get with the EQ and many modest amps. I still appreciate the better accuracy of a better amp, but this still is using the amp WITH the EQ. Another benefit is that my Rane has a volume control which enables me to get rid of the preamp. At the time I got the Rane, I was using the Spectral DMC gamma preamp, but the Rane electronics set to flat (no EQ use) was more revealing and transparent than the Spectral, so I happily dumped the Spectral. Bypass tests showed that the Rane is very transparent. Go try to find a totally transparent line stage preamp, but the point is moot because I consider the EQ a necessity to get the sound you really want. The only sacrifice I make is that the Rane is not a control unit, so I have to unplug to get another source. For those who feel that a preamp is necessary to get better dynamics (although they will admit that transparency and information retrieval is sacrificed more than a little), that's OK, just insert the EQ either before or after the preamp. You'll still get the benefits I describe here.