Surreal Speakers: Made to order in Virginia, USA

Lewinskih01 ... I noted from your 11/29 post that you are considering DIY speakers and also mentioned the import of time alignment.

I don't know anything about Surreal or its drivers. But I have been doing a vertical learning curve on time alignment. If you think the Surreal drivers are special and might be used in your DIY project, I'd like to suggest you consider incorporating a DEQX unit in your set-up.

You can learn more about DEQX in the threads "Is DEQX a Game Changer?" and "Sloped Baffles." Also, Kal Rubinson just reviewed the DEQX PreMATE in the December Stereophile issue.

I bought the PreMATE about 2 months ago. And yeah ... it made a big difference.

I agree with Rushton's comment that speaker design entails many compromises. Classic time coherent speakers necessarily require their drivers to cover a larger frequency pass band because they use 1st order crossovers which cut over at 6 db per octave. I somewhat dubious that the drivers used in such speakers can really maintain linear performance over the larger pass band at which they are asked to perform. Also, room EQ effects can be quite considerable.

Ergo the DEQX. My speakers use a 3rd order crossover (18 db per octave) between the tweeter and midrange and a 2nd order crossover (12 db per octave) between the woofers and midrange. To put it mildly, my speakers were a time INcoherent mess, but the DEQX PreMATE tamed them very nicely. Plus, my room twisted the FR of my speakers into an acoustic pretzel. The PreMATE did room EQ correction too.

Bottom line: I think the DEQX PreMATE has helped me squeeze a lot more performance out of my system.

An Acoustic pretzel, what an image, I am having some difficulty with that. I was a little surprised but don't doubt the veracity of quality control problems with the legendary Lowthers. It has been a darling of the single driver crowd for a verty long time. The AERs look like the German answer to a single driver intense strong superbly engineered and taking no prisoners (another easy audio concept)!

Hey Bif!

We've been coming across these threads a fair amount lately. A good thing! Yes, we exchanged in the sloped baffle and the DEQX threads regarding these same aspects. I've been thinking about it for a while. And will continue doing so for a while too. Before going the DIY speaker route I want to implement DRC through Acourate, then digital crossovers and multiamped system.

These AER drivers are intriguing though, just as the dipole subwoofer section is. Accomplishing crossovers in the digital domain seems to be less of a challenge than with analog XO, from some reading I've been doing.

Cheers!

Lew ... unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure of auditioning the better time coherent speakers on the market. But I gotta tell ya, time coherence aside, room effects can smear the heck out of even the best speakers ... be they time coherent or not.

That's what I meant when I said my room effects made my speakers FR plots look like acoustic pretzels. It was like I was using two different speakers for my fronts. DEQX "tamed" my system. Perfect?? No!! Better?? Yes!!

(I am a principal so please factor my comments accordingly)
Yesterday a small group gathered to listen to the Surreals with the new AER cones which are nearly broken in. All I can say is that this is The Apparition that we all hope to catch a glimpse of one day in our audio systems. I will be sad to see these go....to any serious listener, please accept our invitation to come for a personal listening session. It is unlikely we will be returning to audio shows and we do not advertise in the audio magazines. For now, we are building these one pair at a time and selling direct.