New speakers unveiled from Clayton Shaw - Caladan

Hope Clayton does well. Those who say OB speakers have no bass have not heard Clayton Spaital Audio speakers or his current one and I am sure there are more upscale ones to come. I've owned box speakers and Electrostatic speakers, open baffle is like Quad ESL 63's but on steroids. It is one of the only speakers I heard where I would replace my quad ESL speakers that were rebuilt by Electrostatic Solutions in KC, I still love them even though I went OB. They image well and as far as needing some space from the front wall, all speakers do. Even my sealed box speakers the Dynaudio Confidence 5's did and 2 feet out or more they came to life. The one thing oB by Clayton Shaw Designs does extremely well is make the reproduction of the music sound like it is in your room live. Quads can do it at times, but they cannot do the spl like OB speakers.  Box speakers push sound at you, bass will be authoritative if you have the proper room or you will have bass overload, one thing OB by design eliminates by its design, bass is very fast, and detailed and can make you feel it if it is recorded that way, where box speakers give to to you all the time, when the recording should not have bass to that extent due to room build up and enforcing issues. Quad speakers and OB like a front wall with acoustic treatments, side wall early reflection points, and any room back wall defussion. But really all speakers need a good room to work in. So OB is no different than many other speakers, it's an old myth now, OBs have come into their own now, bottom end, imaging, and depth of field. The only thing that bothers me about Clayton is he starts up a company then turns around and sells it. I think this is his 3rd company now. But his designs are sound.. 

This is not a good design for a number of reasons. If you are looking for a dipole you are far better off with Maggies or ESls. All dipoles require subwoofers without exception, not just for better bass, but for cleaner midrange. Any woodworker with a moderate amount of skill could make these speakers in their sleep. I could do it comatose. I also hate BS and that video is full of it. 

We are all learning from each other.   We are all each others Guru brothers (and sisters).  We are a projection machine.  We see nothing but our own self.  When you point the finger at someone.....three are pointing back to you.  Love yourself so much that all you see is EVERYONE's beauty.

Jaytor,   Check out the two pics on the bottom of my webpage about making these and other bi-amped versions.  The first pic shows someone who has a two way speaker using two ($20 each) 12s and the planar driver.  That is not a box....it is an open baffle speaker.....with a top on it (no back).  You can see his separate baffle for the planar that can be moved up and back.  The picture of my baffle is below....it has a shelf on it.  Of course, you could make a separate baffle for say 4 12 inch woofs and next to it another baffle with a line source of planars and then physically time align the two baffles.  Two 12s is plenty of bass for me.  I will, no doubt, make a line source of 4 of the 8 inch planars down the road.....then comes bi-amping and dsp speaker eq.

I'll keep my comments to the product that Clayton delivers, which is the Caladan. Assembly took about 30 minutes per speaker, and all parts were included including a wrench and torx head screwdriver. Once assembled, the speaker baffle tilts back maybe 6 to 8 degrees....but that is of course adjustable as well with the Gaia III feet. All components appear to be those hinted at on other forums or on their website, namely:

IsoAcoustics Gaia III feet, WBT Nextgen 0703 binding posts, Jupiter twisted pair lacquered cotton wiring, US Coils air coils, Jupiter copper foil and Dayton Audio capacitors, and Dayton Audio wire wound resistors.

The maple baffle slabs that I ordered my speakers in, are 1.5" thick, very attractive and blemish free. I will post images if I can get imgpile to upload correctly.

I am leaving early tomorrow morning for vacation, so unfortunately I won't be able to get any listening impressions until I get back next Tuesday.

I am heading out of town early in the morning tomorrow, and I can't get the picture link to work.....here are some urls for pics to paste

https://imgpile.com/i/xoTwIW
https://imgpile.com/i/xoT5MP
https://imgpile.com/i/xoTh8j
https://imgpile.com/i/xoTRA1
https://imgpile.com/i/xoTTeL
https://imgpile.com/i/xoTdCx