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Speed kills....

Which is why I love 'stats so much.  For myself, dynamics and leading edge transients are essential.  Are there any alternatives in terms of dynamic "boxey" type (verity?) speakers that I should listen to?  My present speakers are hales t8's (hales has been out of business a long time ago) and they are about as far away from that ideal as you can get.   I want to go in a different direction for my FINAL set of speakers.

russellrcncom
russellrcncom OP
307 posts
 
Prof: the t8's are slow when I compare them to my stax headphones. Very coherent but slow.  I guess I'm trying to replicate the stax sound but on a larger scale.   that probably  puts me in the planar camp, but space is an issue, otherwise the new maggies would certainly be something I would entertain.  The hales are17 years old and I would like to think speaker design has evolved to the point where there are now options that didn't exist previously. Would  Martin Logan's get me there?  They have a slightly larger footprint than the hales and suffer in the wife agreement dept. Is there anything else out there?

erik_squires
15,965 posts
 
 Roger Modjeski says that’s because of the extremely low moving mass of the Mylar used in ESL drivers.

It's not just mass, but the amount of force you can exert against the mass and, critically, self-damping. 

ESL's suck at the last bit of this, nor are they particularly smooth in the frequency domain. 

If you want shocking speed, glass smooth frequency response and lack of smearing you need large drivers in a well treated room. :) 
audiokinesis
2,728 posts
 

Ime Stax headphones are a very tough act to follow. What they do well, they do very very well.

In general I think the closest approaches in a loudspeaker system will be what Erik suggested, "large drivers in a well treated room." And imo those "large drivers" can be dynamic or electrostatic.

When it comes to the subjective impression of "speed", imo the factors that come into play include the frequency response; power-to-weight ratios (motor strength vs moving mass); coherence of the leading-edge of the waveform; and smooth and quick and uniform decay at the trailing edge of the waveform. Imo amp + speaker + room = a "system within a system", meaning that how the speaker interacts with the amp and with the room both matter.   This will be an over-simplification, but the amp sees the speaker's impedance curve, and the room sees the speaker's radiation pattern. 

It may not be obvious that the frequency response plays a role in "speed", but the balance of top-octave energy relative to the rest of the spectrum is closely related to our perception of "speed". Note that most speakers are beaming in their top octave, so even if their on-axis response looks good "on paper", once the reverberant energy is factored in, they are often lacking in top-octave energy, which will manifest as a subjective lack of speed. But tipping up the on-axis response to compensate can cause listening fatigue. So imo the solution involves minimizing the spectral discrepancy between the first-arrival sound and the reverberant field.

Duke

dealer/manufacturer/feels the need for speed

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,510 posts
 
Erik, there is a reason loudspeaker designers still work hard to get theirs to sound as natural (lifelike timbres, especially vocals) as the 1957 Quad ESL. Limitations yes, but not at what's most important to some music lovers. Add a pair or quad of dipole subs, and you may forget about what they don't do.
inna
7,239 posts
 
Another excellent post by Duke.
I'll just say that we don't want exaggerated unnatural speed and dynamics. Another point - do we want to correct the recording with equipment and speakers ? My position - theoretically yes, in reality - do no harm first than correct if you can.
Amp/speakers/room - delivering unit, source - driving unit. And a few wires.
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