dracule1 and dasign,
I never owned any Apogee speaker, but heard them enough at dealers to reject them without further consideration because of their dull sound. The major factor in any panel dipole speaker is sufficient distance to the front wall. The Apogees I heard had plenty of distance in back of them, although I don't remember them being toed in. Toe-in is most important, and in those days I didn't realize how critical toe-in is. I don't like to disturb anyone's setup out of respect, but I am simply able to get a good idea of the effect of toe-in just by moving in front of the speaker as I listen to the tonal balance in mono. Apogees just didn't have good implementation of ribbons. I will keep an open mind about the Alsyvox implementation of planar magnetic technology. It is a pity that Apogee went under. Many wealthy audiophiles think that something isn't any good unless it is expensive, so Alsyvox may be capitalizing on that attitude by pricing their products very high. Good ribbon or electrostatic technology is not expensive, and doesn't require R&D as much as dedicated dynamic drivers with low distortion such as Magico is doing.
I heard the original ML CLS. It was vastly inferior to the CLX in the HF. The CLS was an example of the inferior design I have referred to--large curved panels. The CLX uses a narrow curved panel for the mids/HF and a larger but still modestly sized flat panel for the lower range. The narrow curved CLX panel has less time smearing than the faulty geometry of the large curved CLS panel was. WC is realizing that the larger Neo panel has rolled off HF compared to the CLX. The Neo has a more bassy type of tonal balance.
Yesterday I played violin in a church orchestra, the Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs devoted to performing large choral works. We did Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a big piece with lots of percussion, plus baritone, tenor, soprano solo singers. I sat about 30 feet from the percussion section on the other side of the stage. The startling clarity of the metallic instruments like cymbal, triangle, chimes and even the tightness of the mid bass from the tympani drum which had the impact of a metal hammer banging an anvil, was in stark contrast to the woolly DULL veiled sounds from most audio systems. At my distance, most of the percussion sound was no higher than 85 dB, although there were probably instantaneous peaks of 100 dB which were rare. The extreme clarity was not because the HF were any more brilliant than I am used to, but because the rest of the freq range was equally fast and coherent with the HF. The whole thing was crisp, fresh air. This can only be revealed by an electrostatic speaker of the highest quality implementation which conforms to the principles I have spoken about. I have an open mind to see what implementations may come from ribbon or planar magnetic designers, but forget about dynamic drivers. Dynamic tweeters can be SOTA, but more massive dynamic midrange and LF drivers are hopelessly inadequate to keep up with the speed and low distortion of tweeters. And forget about large powerful amps which have more devices than low powered amps and tend to have higher distortion as the price to be paid for more power. The objective is quality, not quantity. Anyone who says otherwise should just do the listening and participation that I do, instead of hanging out with audio salesmen who have interests in selling high priced gear and may have little musical training and experience.
If anyone wants to meet me at the next concert 4 PM Dec 16, we are doing the Handel Messiah at the Princeton, NJ Universalist Church at 50 Cherry Hill Rd off Rt 206. I sit at the 2nd stand in the 1st violin section. I always welcome people to sit with me in the orchestra to experience what I am talking about, although the place may be packed for this wonderful great event.
I never owned any Apogee speaker, but heard them enough at dealers to reject them without further consideration because of their dull sound. The major factor in any panel dipole speaker is sufficient distance to the front wall. The Apogees I heard had plenty of distance in back of them, although I don't remember them being toed in. Toe-in is most important, and in those days I didn't realize how critical toe-in is. I don't like to disturb anyone's setup out of respect, but I am simply able to get a good idea of the effect of toe-in just by moving in front of the speaker as I listen to the tonal balance in mono. Apogees just didn't have good implementation of ribbons. I will keep an open mind about the Alsyvox implementation of planar magnetic technology. It is a pity that Apogee went under. Many wealthy audiophiles think that something isn't any good unless it is expensive, so Alsyvox may be capitalizing on that attitude by pricing their products very high. Good ribbon or electrostatic technology is not expensive, and doesn't require R&D as much as dedicated dynamic drivers with low distortion such as Magico is doing.
I heard the original ML CLS. It was vastly inferior to the CLX in the HF. The CLS was an example of the inferior design I have referred to--large curved panels. The CLX uses a narrow curved panel for the mids/HF and a larger but still modestly sized flat panel for the lower range. The narrow curved CLX panel has less time smearing than the faulty geometry of the large curved CLS panel was. WC is realizing that the larger Neo panel has rolled off HF compared to the CLX. The Neo has a more bassy type of tonal balance.
Yesterday I played violin in a church orchestra, the Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs devoted to performing large choral works. We did Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a big piece with lots of percussion, plus baritone, tenor, soprano solo singers. I sat about 30 feet from the percussion section on the other side of the stage. The startling clarity of the metallic instruments like cymbal, triangle, chimes and even the tightness of the mid bass from the tympani drum which had the impact of a metal hammer banging an anvil, was in stark contrast to the woolly DULL veiled sounds from most audio systems. At my distance, most of the percussion sound was no higher than 85 dB, although there were probably instantaneous peaks of 100 dB which were rare. The extreme clarity was not because the HF were any more brilliant than I am used to, but because the rest of the freq range was equally fast and coherent with the HF. The whole thing was crisp, fresh air. This can only be revealed by an electrostatic speaker of the highest quality implementation which conforms to the principles I have spoken about. I have an open mind to see what implementations may come from ribbon or planar magnetic designers, but forget about dynamic drivers. Dynamic tweeters can be SOTA, but more massive dynamic midrange and LF drivers are hopelessly inadequate to keep up with the speed and low distortion of tweeters. And forget about large powerful amps which have more devices than low powered amps and tend to have higher distortion as the price to be paid for more power. The objective is quality, not quantity. Anyone who says otherwise should just do the listening and participation that I do, instead of hanging out with audio salesmen who have interests in selling high priced gear and may have little musical training and experience.
If anyone wants to meet me at the next concert 4 PM Dec 16, we are doing the Handel Messiah at the Princeton, NJ Universalist Church at 50 Cherry Hill Rd off Rt 206. I sit at the 2nd stand in the 1st violin section. I always welcome people to sit with me in the orchestra to experience what I am talking about, although the place may be packed for this wonderful great event.