System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live


My current stereo system consists of Oracle turntable with SME IV tonearm, Dynavector XV cartridge feeding Manley Steelhead and two Snappers monoblocks  running 15" Tannoy Super Gold Monitors. Half of vinyl records are 45 RMP and were purchased new from Blue Note, AP, MoFI, IMPEX and some others. While some records play better than others none of them make my system sound as good as a live band I happened to see yesterday right on a street. The musicians played at the front of outdoor restaurant. There was a bass guitar, a drummer, a keyboard and a singer. The electric bass guitar was connected to some portable floor speaker and drums were not amplified. The sound of this live music, the sharpness and punch of it, the sound of real drums, the cymbals, the deepness, thunder-like sound of bass guitar coming from probably $500 dollars speaker was simply mind blowing. There is a lot of audiophile gear out there. Some sound better than others. Have you ever listened to a stereo system that produced a sound that would make you believe it was a real live music or live band performance at front of you?

 

esputnix

@rauliruegas, Raul, we built our systems over many years guided by our own preferences which vary to a large degree even though we agree on many aspects. On these issues I can tell you that you need to alter your opinion. I owned Apogee Divas for 6 years. A very enticing speaker that was seriously fragile and unreliable. Magnepans are much better from a durability standpoint and I think the 20.7 is even better sounding. The Scintillas could never reach realistic volume levels even with subwoofers. Apogee was right down the road from me in Massachusetts and I was in the factory on numerous occasions.

The Velodynes I owned were UDL 15s7's. The surround was foam and they all disintegrated.  I have never heard a plate amp of any type perform anywhere near the level of a powerful class A or AB amp. These were the last active subs I ever and ever will use. Turn your system up to 90 dB playing any bass heavy number and put your hand on the subwoofer. That vibration you feel is distortion. In order for any subwoofer to be competitive it has to be a balanced force design, two identical drivers in phase directly opposed to each other.  A 100 lb plate on top will not achieve the same results. Just wishful thinking. There are many subwoofer drivers with very low distortion specs. Just go to Parts express and have a look. The problem with subs is not the driver, it is the enclosure. Your servo system corrects the driver but not the enclosure. Of the commercial subs I have heard the Magicos are handily the best. I have not heard all the subwoofers out there. I have heard enough to know what designs have a chance of performing well. The problem with the Magicos for me is their size. I need to use four subs to form a line source and the Magicos are way to big. Fortunately, with digital subwoofer management and modern drivers you can make larger drivers perform wonderfully in small enclosures as long as you have enough power. I would love to use 15" drivers but again due to size I am limited to eight 12" drivers in four very special enclosures that have never been seen before. They are balanced force and stiffer than any enclosure in existence. They do not resonate at all. They are also pretty cool looking. At my current shop rate a pair will cost $50,000. That is how much work goes into them and they are passive so one would need to by amps and crossovers.  

I think your speakers are a cool design that fails in two major ways. Dynamic drivers are much heavier that the air they move. It is like trying to run a motor without a load on it. It is very inefficient and due to their uncontrolled dispersion cause more difficulty with room acoustics. Your speakers have fractured dispersion. They are point source and omnidirectional in the bass and high frequencies and line source in the midrange which controls dispersion up and down but not to the sides. All this means that the amplitude response is going to vary with distance and you are still stuck with the acoustic problems of omnidirectional speakers. 

My experience with ESLs goes back to 1978. I have owned five different versions, three of them hopelessly flawed because of bad electronics and fractured dispersion characteristics like your speakers, point source at lower frequencies and line source in the upper octaves. In order for an ESL to perform at it's best it has to be a full range dipole line source. This solidifies the image and makes them much more powerful. In order to function as full range line sources they have to extend from the floor to the ceiling, within a couple of inches. In order to produce realistic volumes with the extremely low distortion they are capable of they have to be mated to subwoofers and cross with steep curves no lower than 100 Hz. This requires digital crossovers. It can not be done with analog crossovers without significant damage to the sound. The beauty of Line source dipoles is that they do not radiate at all to the sides, up or down. They only send sound in a figure 8 pattern front and back. This make room acoustics a much more trivial problem. You only need absorption behind the speakers. The result is a very solid well defined image at all distances. There is no dynamic speaker that can match the transient response and detail of a proper ESL. The only advantage Dynamic speakers can have is size. They can be made much smaller. That is about it. 

Amazing, isn't it, how we all are able to dismiss Peter Walker's FRED (full range electrostatic dipole)? There was some wishful thinking there, rather than marketing hype, given the era. The fact remains obvious to all fans of electrostatics - they need a little help in the bass. Not much, but just enough, like a sprinkle of salt on an omelette—just enough to emphasize the taste of the eggs, not so much that it tastes of salt.

Mijostyn, I appreciate your unequivocal convictions on nearly all things audio, but don’t you think you’re a bit over the top or around the bend in subwoofers? The ONLY worthwhile design is the dipole??? Really? I do like the idea of the dipole though for its potentially compact form factor. What do you recommend? Have you ever heard a really correctly built full size transmission line woofer? For me that’s the fastest and lowest distortion bass for mating with an ESL. But can be very large. Also, if a subwoofer is palpably vibrating, could that possibly mean it’s playing bass tones, not distorting? Or do you think a sub should play bass without moving at all? I’d like to see that.

I didn’t read all the responses but here’s my $.02. Of course nothing compares to good quality live music. There are too many steps along the way to reproducing music in our home w/ varying degrees of sound degradation. 
 

For the type of music mentioned, amplified rock w/ guitar, drums, bass guitar , vocals etc, good quality horns powered by tubes is, imo, the way to go if you want close to live sound without spending a fortune on heroicly priced speakers & amps!  Unamplified  music might be better suited for paneled speakers like Magnapans or Martin Logan’s, both for reasonable $. 
 

I own & really enjoy Volti Audio Rivals. They may not be the last word in ultra fine details & crazy frequency extreme extension but for dynamics, big sound stage, very fast & open midrange,  & “live sound” in their price range, tough to beat. A good 20 watts w/ a good source is all they need to sound great. 

Dear @mijostyn : First those UDL by Velodyne came from 1989 and yes that surround foam was terrible for say the least.

You live in your " small world " of your subwoofers and nothing can touch it when the real world has several alternatives even better than Magico as Evolution Acoustics :

 

M.Lavigne owns the MM 7.

 

In the other side I owned the Scintilla mated with Entec subs and running with monobloks that puts enough current to handled and amps with over 6db headroom. I never had any troble about and I can’t know for the Diva.

Electrostatic speaker designs is not the " ultimate " speakers as a fact I listened almost all from Stax/ EMT/ ML/ Beveridge , etc, etc and the only one that like me is SL that I listened several times for long time.

Magnepan planar design is really better than your SL paired or not with subs.

Btw, my Velodyne is a way difefrent model ( no foam surrounded the woofers. ) and as I told you are heavy modified including internal bracing but I don’t " care " all those when the reality is that its measured THD is 0.5% that only the Titan is comparable.

Each designer " kills flea in his own way " be Magico, Evolution, Velodyne, HSU, Paradigm, Thiel, ML, , etc, etc.

Btw,, I agree with @lewm transmission line woofer ( everything the same ) can’t be outperformed not even by your four subs or Magico or what ever you could think. Come on mijos youa are better than that.

 

Your theory about my ADS ( that you never listened in the modified way in my samples. ) are just theory and you can be sure that your SL can’t puts you nearer to the recording than my L2030. Btw, I never said my speakers has no fail or are perfect and I know for sure are not perfect. Period.

 

Now, you can follow with lewm, don’t you think?

 

R.