Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?
Should say "hype vs. reality" in the headline.
Coaxial speaker design has been around in one way or another for a long time. I often think I’ll be absolutely blown away by them, but in practice traditional vertical layout speakers often have sound as good, or have other features that make them sound better.
Thiel, KEF, Monitor Audio, Tekton, Seas are among the many players attempting such designs, but none has, by the coaxial drivers alone, dominated a segment of the market.
What are your listening experiences? Is it 1 coaxial speaker that won you over, or have you always preferred them?
Really big improvement, openness, refinement, clarity, tonal specificity. As I said the inside panels got covered in No-Rez. Removed the binding posts and filled the holes with small rubber grommets and ran the wires through to the crossovers. Placement is six feet out from the front wall, about 22 inches from the side walls, and sharp toe-in, so they cross a couple of feet in front of listening position. So, around 15 degrees off-axis. |
Thank you. It's eye opening how good and how not good equipment can sound depending on the synergy of all the components. The guy who sold these to me didn't know they were a coax driver! As I think I said they don't sound good on my DK Design amp with tube preamp in it. They sound crazy good on the other system. This has been the best $300 lesson I ever learned! jh |
@tomcy6 For me: Coherent, natural sound with solid & sharp imaging, because the tweeter and mid/woofer covering the critical midrange crossover point act more like a single point source rather than a tweeter and woofer barking at you from different locations.
Yes, coherent is the word. I'd say it's a little bit like listening to a mono sound source like a single driver kitchen radio. It's a less busy sound, more laid-back and one that's easier to follow, but one that still strangely seems to have plenty of detail. As you said earlier, "Tannoys are not for everyone - you either "get them" or you don’t."
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I own some older small KEFs I use as nearfield studio monitors (and have owned some nice largeer KEFs) and they sound great. Also, I don’t think anybody should equate a single driver/whizzer cone with a true coax. I used old Altec coax stuff years ago in studios and they were superb, heard Tannoys sound great, and although I haven’t heard the new Andrew Jones MoFi speakers they’re certainly getting great reviews, and his explanation of the design is interesting. 10" speaker moves very little providing some serious loading to the tweeter. |
