Dance of the Seven Veils

I for one can vouch for Robbo's enthusiasm

When powered by the CA50 ( they are quite fussy!), the 1SC's midrange excelled in a way that defied belief. This is from a former electrostatic owner, and one whose current speakers are reknowned for their quite superlative mids. What we heard was wide open palpable vocals, with a hint of that magic most of us are hunting.

In fact they were so good, I would consider mating 1SC's to my new bass cabinets, if, and a big if, I was using Audio Research to power them. To put these little marvels into perspective, their midrange performance can equal and even exceed the abilities of most speakers costing up to 10 times their price. What your extra money should get you is extra loudness capability, greater dynamic range, and deeper bass. It is unlikely to get you much of an improvement in the midrange. With less synergistic electronics powering them however, I would never have noticed this.

 

I have to say the CA50 was such a good match with the 1SCs that if it had a bit more power on tap, I would have snapped it up. The two components together produced music that was far better than the sum of their parts and better than they had any right to. Quite magical.

 

Tell you what Steve,

Once things have settled down over here, I would be happy to perform the comparison. In the one corner we can have your babies, in the other, my Merlins and recently dubbed "Frickin Awesome" subs. These use the (patent pending) W ideband A nti N odal K abinet construction we have been working on

You can use whatever amps you like. I will employ much digital giggery pokery For fairness, actual costs of systems will be comparable. Neutrals will be invited for tea and scones The listening room will be small so larger than life forum personalities will be unable to attend, and ego's to be left at the door

Sometime next month we might be able to arrange this if you like. Game on

 

In any case, Robbo it's generally a complete waste of time to perform this sort of A/B comparison between two different speakers. We'd tend to get so hung up in the tonal balance and other differences that we wouldn't be able to judge the mids that well anyway.

I was just making a point, that's all. Loudspeaker quality doesn't just happen by accident but is the result of its design choices.

I'm pretty sure you couldn't do better for the £425 you paid. To put things into perspective, I couldn't even supply a set of Nonsuch 4 machined MDF segments for that money.

Have you ever considered upgrading the Proacs by adding one or two separate subs? If you actively filtered the Proacs at a suitable low frequency you could get rid of the port resonances, keep the great mid & high frequency performance and improve and deepen the bass response. Just a thought.

Steve

 

"In the one corner we can have your babies, in the other, my Merlins" - I don't think my babies would work too well in the corner. Otherwise, great idea. Who supplies the tea and scones?

I can't comment on your "Frickin Awesome" subs. Best to leave this in the hands of our lawyers, don't you think?

As, I believe, some more savvy web users than me say: "LOL"

Steve

 

I'm absolutely convinced that, if you're going to have a crossover, it should be either at a very low frequency or as high as possible. The main thing is to keep it out of the mid-range where the hearing is most sensitive.

I've never heard the Verity Parsifals but, all other things being equal, they should have a pretty sweet mid-range.

Steve

 

Steve,

You have hit on the area which I would love to improve on. I have tried adding REL subs which is OK but I have never managed to get proper integration. Thats why I was so impressed with the 7V speakers with their excellent integration.

I do think the key to it would be to take out bass from the Proacs and let a sub do the work. In that way I can have increased power handling and deeper bass which are the two things I am really looking for. My guess is that the best way to do this would be to add a Tact room correction module as you can use any crossover frequency and any slope you like (merlin uses 10th order I think). Certainly worth considering, as long as I get to keep the drive and life I get out of my system atm.

Merlin, How much is the Tact 2.2 you use?

 

Robbo, if you wish to hook up something in the mean time, I have a pair of time alignable digital x/overs that will do subs no probs, your welcome to borrow em and see what you get, may point you in the right area, and see if a tact on the subs will give that total intergration mate. WM

 

Tone,

Thanks for the offer mate that would be great. Maybe we can have a play when you next come over.

Cheers, Neil

 

No probs sir, shall I bring the pro 50 as well?, the x/overs do indivdual level/time alignment and X/over points too. should be interesting and a bit of fun. WM

 

W-M, do these x/overs just slot in in the same way that I'm using my x/overs?

I'm having all sorts of problems getting my active filters finished. If I had my way I'd take all valve circuit designers, line them up against a wall and shoot them.

Steve

 

Steve, they 2 indivdual 1/2 or 3way units, so you can run fully active too (i used to run them that way) and they can be adapted in the same way, you 'run' the A/R unit, but the x/over slopes are fully programmable as is the indivdual driver levels and time alignment, I used to run .3 m/s to great effect in the car WM

 

Expensive?

How do I get them?

 

Tony,

Do you know what frequency the DSP is carried out at

The reason I ask is that complex processing of the signal, which is required for crossover work, does require a fair amount of horsepower, and unless implemented properly (ie at high resolutions) can have a negative impact on sound quality.

To give you an idea, most processing work and correction in studios is carried out at 48bit/384khz resolution to insure that there are no artifacts. The TacT uses the same high res rates. This kinda quality still isn't cheap

 

I doubt any of us could given the criteria that room shaking bass and concert play back levels aren't list topping priorities. Bargain of the last centuary surely.

Thanks Robbo, woud like to take you up on that offer, a return visit has been long overdue. Perhaps towards the end of this month or sometime next.

Blimey Merl, so have you moved into your new abode yet, or is everyone and everything going to take it in turns to cram into that little box room? I'm sure the chance to take a listen to your new subs (and new frontend - but I didn't really know about that ) will be equally entertaining for all who attend.

They ain't sounding too bad at all at the mo Steve, but I know there's still a bit more to squeeze out of them yet, at least as far as the midrange and treble areas are concerned. They are open, transparent and dynamic without being fatiguing, quite difficult to achieve IMO. One of my previous sets of speakers was a pair of Epos ES11s which I still have in a second system which had just one protection capacitor in the crossover as the roll off on the woofer was achieved mechanically, so I guess I must like the minimal/no crossover design myself too. My main issue with the Verity's is that they are reflex ported and don't drive my big room as much as I'd like at certain frequencies, still had the door frames rattling on one of the tracks from Aphex Twin's Druks album yesterday afternoon which was quite amusing if annoying after a while ! The active subs are gong to be put back into the system this afternoon to see what happens.

The crossovers are 1st and 3rd order, not that that means anything to me, as I know nothing about speaker design, but there's a review here that has some technical data in it which Verity don't explicitly mention on their website, would be interesting to hear your thoughts:

http://www.verityaudio.com/report.html

 

They look good to me, Henry. Although, of course I haven't heard them so can't commit.

I like their choice of using the 5" driver to handle the 150Hz to 5,500Hz range (for reasons already discussed).

Also, an 8" bass driver is perfectly adequate for most purposes. There's much nonsense talked about bass drivers. Some people say that you need 12" drivers to produce decent bass and other such rubbish. The truth is that bass is about moving air. A smaller long-throw driver like on these Parsifals or W-M's Meadowlarks or a certain (highly respected) British company's Little Awesomes is often as good or better than a 12" driver which doesn't have such cone excursion. It will probably take a much smaller box too.

Yes, shame about the reflex port. Of course it's a matter of personal taste but I prefer a sealed enclosure or a transmission line. They tend to be easier to get right, easier to place and less liable to emphasize particular frequencies at the expense of others. I think that the transient response of a sealed box is better too. Does this make me a flat earther?

It's also a pity that the mids won't stretch that extra 1/2 octave (approx) and play to 100Hz. This would give you the freedom to move the bass unit away from the mids.

Still, every speaker designer must choose his compromises and, from the specs., I'd definitely be interested in listening to these. Also, if they're designed by the same guys who did the Oracle TT then how bad can they be? Respect. :MILD:

Of course, as Robbo pointed out, much depends on the quality of the drivers and I can't comment on that.

Enjoy.
Steve

PS: Sounds like your door frames need upgrading. Will you go for the Mana frames or Hutta C37s? Don't forget of course that if the doors themselves are hollow then you should fill with sand or lead shot. :anal:

 

Steve, with regards to the drive unit employed by Verity, you might like to look here http://www.flexunits.com/

The unit in question is manufactured by Audio Technology in Denmark. Formerly known as Skanning, these are quite exeptional units, considered by many to be the finest the industry has to offer (yes better than Bandors ).

Few companies can afford to use them in commercial products, although Verity are joined by Peak Consult and Rockport here. The old Sonus Faber Extrema also used a Skanning midrange unit. Per Skanning's father was the founder of Scanspeak and Dynaudio so there is pedigree here. All the speakers I have heard using AT drivers share a quite superb midrange.

Now as for the rest of your post, I'm afraid it suggests a limited grasp of the effects of cone distortion and power handling to me. Starting with your assertion that an 8" drive unit is every bit as good as larger units with less cone excursion, this is simply untrue. Yes bass is about moving air, but with long cone excursions, the likelyhood of decreased linearity and hence increased distortion is high. Very high cones excursions are neccessary with these units to create adequate SPL's at low frequencies (due to the amount of air that needs shifting). Increased distortion is the unfortunate byproduct. Using a large cone area to generate bass allows for less excursion, greater efficiency and and usually higher SPL's. The only drawback is an increase in moving mass, but with high quality doped paper cones and large lightweight voice coils, (which don't require extensive stiffening due to the relativly low excursion) , this is no longer an issue. Larger cone areas will also drive the room better at low frequencies, given their closer approximation to the wavelengths they are attempting to reproduce.

As you are fond of saying, it's all about compromises. And, with attention payed to controlling group delay in vented enclosures, they can perform well. If anyone can explain to me how you can get high SPL's at low frequencies from a small drive unit in a small sealed enclosure, I would be interested. Room interaction is certainly less predictable with ported enclosures I agree, but here a little tweaking should give good results.

If you have read the specs on the 5" AT driver, you will see that it's capable of going down to 42hz. With any drive unit, you will get better distortion figures and greater power handling by not driving it full range. Most of the world's finest speakers employ drive units that operate over a small percentage of their published bandwidth. Take a look at the Avalon Eidolon and the JBL 9800 K2 for just a couple of examples.

This brings me to my point. You drive the Bandors full range. Additionally, you choose to use small bass drivers in compact sealed enclosures. The drawback to this approach is outlined above, namely low power handling and maximum SPL. From speaking to some who have listened to your babies, this appears to be a critisism. For small scale work at sensible levels, your approach is probably excellent. But I would be surprised if they were able to bring the ceiling down a la WM. I would use a sharp HP at about 275hz on the satellites, and employ sorcery to integrate the subs below that, with a HP in the sub at say 30hz to reduce distortion.

But as you say, it's about compromises.

Cheers

 

Well merlin, that's certainly put me in my place.

My speakers must sound awful after all. Clearly the upgrade I need most is to my ears. I think I'll design myself a good 2-way in a rectangular box. I'll get rid of any deficiencies using digital electronic wizardry. Thanks for putting me right.

By the way, why stop at 12" drivers? Surely a good old fashioned 5 foot diameter drive unit will give an even closer "approximation to the wavelengths they are attempting to reproduce". What, cabinet too large for your room? No problem, just bung in a good organic futon bed, coat the frame with C37 and live inside the speaker.

Steve

 

Shhhhh! Don't let Lim hear you!

 

Steve it wasn't meant to and I'm sorry that you took the post in that manner, rather than debate the points raised in a considered response.

I am simply disappointed that you applied your thinking to other designs rather than take, what was meant as creative critisism as a form of useful input.