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Ribbon & ceramic, love them?

Just came back from the Stereophile show, was it fun.

As transparency and detail become the dominant factors in high-end audio, more and more speakers are using ceramic or ribbon drivers to add that last bit of extension and quickness. They are very fun and impressive to listen to, but they seem to sound more like electrostatic or ribbon everyday. One reason I stayed away from electrostatic or ribbon was their lack of "body", live music, even a small trumpet, moves more air than most of those speakers can handle. So are we gaining detail and transparency at the expense of losing emotional impact especially consider the price of admission?

What's your experience?
semi
twl
3,251 posts
 
IMO, paper is the preferred material for cone drivers.
labtec
189 posts
 
My observations were similar, except I don't think it's just the type of driver material. I think speaker designers in general are primarily voicing there speakers for the utmost in detail, transparency, and dynamics.

This is not necessarily a bad thing and, actually, is quite smart business-wise since those characteristics sell speakers in the usual short audition time frame. However, too many seem to go for these attributes at the expense of coherency.

My particular beef is expensive speakers with all these state-of-the-art drivers not integrated properly. I won't name names, but here's an analogy for a recently reviewed megabuck speaker I heard at the show. Imagine listening to a 5.1 surround system with all the speakers right in front of you and the speakers are from different manufacturers. To their credit, all the individual speakers in this analogy would be very high quality, but still the presentation was not very coherent.

Most speaker-makers will tell you, anything more than a 2-way design takes much more time to integrate and get right. In short, I'm saying that many manufacturers are good at putting a bunch of super high quality drivers in a rigid cabinet to yield plenty of detail, dynamics and transparency. What I'm also saying is that much fewer take the time or have the expertise to integrate the drivers properly and produce a truly coherent sound. It's one of the reasons why 2-way speakers from Totem and Merlin usually amaze people at shows for sounding so good compared to the many incoherent bohemoths.

Sorry if this deviates from the intended thread topic.
muralman1
1,527 posts
 
I was there (at SF) too. I'm with you Labtec. It was a first time for me for a lot of big name speakers, and I was very dissapointed.

I liked the Totems, and Quads. Best of show, IMHO, was the room/amp/speaker/CDP, in that order, at the Cabasse room. It is the first set up I would ever consider, outside my own system.

As for ribbons, I enjoy good body, with the highest definition, listening to my old technology Apogee Scintillas.
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