Speakers using ceramic drivers....differences?

Hey Albert,

Breaking in the Coltranes is more or less like breaking in all speakers - a hundred hours or so to relax, and 6 months or so to get to the steady-state.

They do bass very well: they go very deep and are well-damped in a natural manner. Similar to the big Wilsons w/o the low/mid bass hump. Similar to the Vandy 5 (given the right amplification) but more tuneful and with higher resolution (if I remember correctly).

We haven't ever heard them evidence compression or distortion. We do not play them all that loud here - they are currently in a very live room, but at our usual digs they have been played quite loud). Note that these speaker's sound is very tightly controlled, not a big and open or relaxed sound (though we haven't yet tried big tube amps like your VTLs!). However, this does not mean they are over-damped - in fact it is this perfect balance that so beguiling. They reproduce notes in a very realistic manner - w/o any hint of compression or reluctance (though they do benefit from and were designed to be close to the front wall - not for bass augmentation but to add a bit of glow(?) to the midrange and to widen the soundstage).

Can't tell you how many times I have run from system to system after playing a CD on the Coltranes - seeing if the other systems do as well using *their* approach to sound reproduction (usually they do, but in their own way). This is not to be hyperbolic but to emphasize that we have 3 very different SOTA speaker systems here (horns, stats, cones) - all very good at what they do - and the interesting thing is that they all do it differently.

The U1s. We are remodeling and we left the Soundlabs and the Edge Refs at the house - safely wrapped up - with the plan being to finish the demo room #2 in about 6 weeks. It has now been 5 months and counting. Tick tick tick... But yes, once everything is finished there we will have the U1s, wired internally with Valhalla cable, hooked up to the Refs (and using Walker High definition links - which is about the extent of our tweakage on these speakers to date). When we get back we are also planning on putting the Walker in a central location so that all 3 systems can use it as a source using some not-quite-but-almost ridiculously long interconnect. Otherwise we will go crazy(ier) trying to pick which system gets the 'table....

Glad we could tempt you :-)

Enjoy!
Mike

Anybody heard anything from Venture Audio?

Interesting thread and very informational. I hope Albert can keep us up to date on his findings.

The Martin Designs have caught my attention for a while now and very much wish to read more about it. Of course, being an amateur saxophone player, the name Coltrane certainly gets my attention. I have the Kharma 3.2s and I feel that ceramic drivers are a great compromise between the most detailed metallic based drivers and the warmest paper derived drivers. I do subscribe to the idea that there is a sonic signature that can be heard no matter how hard it is to detect. A metal mouthpiece will always sound different than a rubber mouthpiece.

With that in mind, I would venture to think that since the Coltrane uses ceramic drivers as their bass drivers, they would have better uniformity of voicing and tonal texture than the Kharmas that uses Nomex-Kevlar. But ceramic drivers, for all it's advantages as a midrange driver would inherently have disadvantages as a bass driver. For one thing, speaking from instrumental terms, you want your bass notes to have warmth. In order to achieve this warmth it is often important to dampen the higher harmonics so more of the lower harmonics can be heard. With that in mind, I would suspect the Kharma bass driver to be better at reproducing this desired bass quality. In the midrange and up, you want enough detail to allow enough of the lower harmonics through to round out the sound but in the bass, in a way, you want less detail since upper harmonics would actually obscure detail.

Mike. It's easy to say that one is more real, neutral and detailed. But how did this impression come about? On what basis do you base this by? If one without the knowledge of saxophone, is to hear Stan Getz and Coltrane back to back, I would venture to think that Getz would seem more "real" due to the warmth of Getz' sound, even though it's a matter of having a different voice. With that said, I can't agree more about other speaker systems doing things differently.

I forgot to add all this is just my thinking derived from my general observations from listening to drivers of different materials. I just get the feeling that ceramic bass drivers will reproduce some bass instruments better while the Nomex-Kevlar will produce other bass instruments better. I see the ceramic driver as quicker and probably with better articulation while the Nomex will provide more oomph in the process. I mean some people aren't exactly happy with the Kharma's bass performance so I can see how some people would prefer it in this case. I would love it if someone can help shed light as to the correctness of my theories :D