Have a set of quicksilver on my voice of theater and work great.my lft 8b require more wattage.have talked to the owner developer of eminent technologies.he is very supportive and smart.clearly they are undervalued.as are the quicksilvers.enjoy the music stay healthy.
To Fritz, Quicksilver, and all the exceptional makers trying to get the word out
It's been a while since I've posted. When you're in the sandwich generation, life intervenes. I've not had much chance to keep up with the conversations here, but I've managed some changes in my system, including a new set of speakers from a local audio fixer and DIY genius. These new speakers are wide baffle design with JBL woofers (15") and Beyma AMT tweeters. 97db sensitivity. I've put a picture on my system page.
But I've been thinking about Fritz and Quicksilver for an odd reason. There's an interesting guy on YouTube, Andy Edwards. He's a drummer and teacher with interestingly provocative analyses of rock, jazz, and music. Recently in a video entitled "Ten things non-musicians get wrong about music," he was pointing out how the music industry tends to advance very select fractions of talented people. There is a tremendous funneling effect that excludes a huge percentage of talented people. They are better than many of the most popular musicians, but they cannot get a hearing. They have to make a living in other ways -- but they are extraordinarily talented, nonetheless. This tends to skew the public perception of what a good musician is because people hear what they hear and then celebrate it because it's what they know. Subjective bias leads to (false) objective estimations of how good musicians can be. (Take one case in point: Kazuhito Yamashita. Look him up. Staggering genius on the guitar who didn't become a worldwide phenomenon.)
This made me think about two of the pieces in my system -- Fritz speakers and Quicksilver amps. They are complete unknowns to 99% of the buying public, and if you look around on YouTube or other media, it's pretty hard to find much promotion. It's all word of mouth, and even if they did advertise, who would hear them? With Klipsch and Focal and Yamaha et al. taking up most of the available attention economy, how could their message get through?
I am so grateful to the members of this forum for helping guide me to Fritz and Quicksilver. They are the most listenable, comfortable, and high-quality gear I've owned. I've heard amazing things about other brands -- such as Audio Note -- but I'm paying for college, soon for two kids, and that just ain't happening. These are not the best things money can buy, but as value propositions, you really cannot do better, IMHO.
For those whose ears are perking up about Fritz for the first time, I have done two reviews of what I think is his better speaker, the Carbon 7 SE MKII.
Written -- https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/review-fritz-heiler-s-carbon-7-se-mk-2-bookshelf-speakers?
Video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpI6eAvc4_M
I've tried them with everything: they're tube friendly (Quicksilver, 60w); they're class D friendly (DIY Hypex-based amp, 275W); they're class A friendly (Pass XA-25, about 25-80w); they're class AB friendly (Adcom, Akitika, 60w).
I like them because if I focus in on them, they perform but if I just want them on in the background, they're lovely that way, too.
Hope everyone has a good 2025.
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To @bdp24 the first time I heard Eminent Technology LFT-8s and LFT-16s was at my local dealer using my same Quicksilver Mono 120 amplifiers. I won’t forget the listening experience because it represented its own type of sound compared to all the other AudioNote and SoundLab electrostatic speakers there. Another one of the exceptional makers, getting the word out came as a result of hearing the combination in person. If I resale my upgraded Quicksilver M120s tube amps down the road, I could only hope they would go to an ET speaker owner, either model. To this day I felt it was one of those amazing match-ups and synergies I’ve heard first hand. Makes me want to bring my personal Quicksilver amps over to the dealer to play them on the LFT-8s since I’ve upgraded the coupling caps and power caps to top shelf Mundorf & Nichicons. I bet it would sound even better than last time I heard them play with the standard amps and tubes. |
Excellent thread because of the tenor and tone of the conversation; namely, informative and gracious. As for small batch speaker manufacturers, it wouldn't be a lost effort to include Bache Audio among the talented yet often overlooked speaker designers worth discovering or re-discovering. Designer Geg Belman's Bache Audio 002 Limited full-range speakers, which I own, deserve a listen. |
I think a lot of new Magnepan owners owners find themselves surprised by that company’s speakers’ need for very high power at low impedances. I bought my first pair of Maggies---the original Tympani T-I---in 1973, and bi-amped it with an Audio Research D-75 and D-51 power amps. The original Maggie was an 8 ohm load, while all future models have been 4 ohm (dropping to 3 ohms at some frequencies). My current Tympani T-IVa’s require massive amounts of power. When I have them set up (not currently possible), I bi-amp them using a PS Audio 200w/ch amp on the two bass panels, and a Music Reference RM-200 MK.2 on the tweeter/mid panels. Roger Modjeski designed the RM-200 to do two things: 1- produce 100 watts from a single pair of KT-88’s. And 2- To perform well into low impedance loudspeakers. The RM-200 (in original and MK.2 iterations) was Michael Fremer’s reference "affordable" tube amp for over a decade. The Magnepan ribbon tweeter, by the way, is a beauty, one of the best available.
In contrast, while the Eminent Technology LFT-8b shares roughly the same sensitivity as the Maggies (83-84dB), it’s 8 ohm impedance is much friendlier to tube amps. And if you bi-amp the LFT-8b (easy to do, as it has dual binding posts, one for the woofer, another for the t/m panel), the t/m panel presents an 11 ohm load, great for tube amps. Use any old amp on the woofer (I still have an Electron Kinetics Eagle 2A, a great low frequency reproducer), and either a Music Reference RM-9 Mk.2 (using 8 EL34 tubes) or RM-200 Mk.2 (4 KT88’s), both producing 125w into 8 ohms, plenty for the LFT-8b m/t panels.
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