[Review] IPL s5tl

IPL s5tl

ok,
i know i've only had them up and running for a few days and they are in need of some ultimate fettling before they are at their best but they are already doing some things that are making my jaw drop so i thought i'd share and update the changes here rather than use the build thread which seems to have come to a natural stop.

on firing them up first of all they seemed a bit stiff and stilted. bass was tight - much tighter than i was led to believe from the reviews i'd seen.
after a few hours of running the bass loosened up a bit and then got bloaty and flabby - ahhh this was what i was expecting.
now, after a few days it seems to have improved a bit - it's still a bit flabby but the depth is definately what i was looking for - no it's not up there with the frikkin awsomes but then few things are and they didn;t really float my boat anyway - far too much like a wmd for my liking.
i'm going to leave them for another week and then add some wool to the tl to see if that tightens things up a bit as it says in the instructions.
so to some subjective views on pieces of music.

1) Talvin Singh - See Breeze.
this is some very fast tabla work over the top of a truly seizmic bass line. my b&w's did a credible job and my missions did the best they could but the ipl's just handle it. with the b&w's you could hear where the frequency response dropped away and parts of the bass line were strangled. with the ipl's that just doesn;t happen. a similar thing happens with the track 'bobby style' again very fast tabla work which is handled very well and a bass line that pounds away without the dropouts i've heard on smaller speakers.

2) Mr Oizo - Monday Massacre.
this track is just bass torture. not quite as randomly electronic as aphex twin or squarepusher but very electronic and very french. the bass on this one is totally electronic and if it is done right feels like it's twisting reality with it's long low bass pulses. the b&w's were good with this but their ports chuffed like buggery. with the ipl's the bass is enourmous, making your stomach feel like it's being twisted in new and interesting dimensions, good stuff.

3) Infected mushroom - Release me.
this doesn;t have seizmicly low bass but it does have incredibly fast bass and mid and trebble that gets the hair on the back of your neck standing up especially in the middle just after the cool down and the tune kicks up a gear. i heard this early on on the 1st day but the bass (mid bass though) was a bit flooby and slow however the mid and treble were great. no shoutyness to the mids - which was my major criticism of the d100's (and atc's mid dome in general) and the trebble is clean and clear without being muffled. i think this track excited a resonance in the speaker which i suspect are the wires inside vibrating against the box so i'll probably wrap them in foam or something to stop that - also the wool should help here too. other than that the neck hair test was passed with flying colours.

4) saint saens - 'the babe tune'
my god there's an organ in there......

5) Ozric tentacles - Holohedron
this is space rock at it's finest imho. with mad wandering bass lines, synths and wailing guitars transporting you to another level of consciousness. the bass actually sounded like a guitar with a definate pluck to each note that was missing on my previuous speakers. also it seemed to time pretty well too - not quite there with the missions but not far off. the synths and guitars were spot on as well.

well i'll shut up now but re-reading it i seem to have focussed on the bass performance of the ipl's - mainly due to that being what i was after. however i must say that the mid and trebble are definately in the same league and to my ears very natural and unfatiguing.
the scary thing is 1 - they aren't finished running in. 2 - the speakers are not tweaked at all. 3 - the wires are connected by push on clips to the drivers! and 4 - there is all the potential of offboarding the crossovers with better wires and components. speaker for life? i'm even more confident that this is so now.

to be continued......
cheers


julian

 

I'd definitely try adding some type of wool or other material at the exit port of the line. I have this type of setup with my TLs, and the guy who designed/built my speakers tells me this is a very important aspect because it provides the final tuning of the bass. Experiment with materials though.

Glad you like them. No other speaker makes music like a TL, simply the best in my view.

Did you know that the TL is based upon how an organ pipe works?

 

Hi Julian,

Glad you like them. No doubt they'll improve with running in but perhaps there is some truth in what the yanks say. I.e. there's no substitute for inches

 

well i've been playing with the stuffing over the past weekend and today and have come to the conclusion that i like the sound better with less long haired wool behind the bass driver. it makes the bass a little less controlled but far more 'fun' in my opinion (and if that means it null tests like shit then idgaf ). with a 'lot' in there it just seems to strangle the sound a bit although the bass is undeniably 'tighter'
i'm not sure about wadding behind the mid and in the port as yet. there still seems to be some run in going on with the mids and i'm not sure if i won't need to ply tone with ale and get him to swap some resistors as they are getting a bit 'bright' although that may also be because i've been messing with jumper cables too :newbie: still i'm going to up the wadding behind the mid a bit in a day or two and then just play with the port wadding.
they aren;t of the 'oddles of thwack' school of speakers but they have mad image depth with some tracks - some of my trance stuff is really like swimming in an ocean of sound and the bass is deep enough to play viscera rearranging fundamentals which is one of the major things i was after. i would like a little more thwack but hopefully we can sort that when the xo's get offboarded and upgraded.
the main thing is that on saturday i actually just sat and listened to music for a solid 10 hours whist idly flicking through some hi-fi comics playing album after album. now i've not done this in months so they are definately doing something right. they do seem to make my nap 250 work for a living - i've not cut it out yet but there is a noticable hardening when it's asked to work hard and this comes on quite early with the ipl's which never happened with the b&w's - still that was cranked up to 10 / 11 oclock on the pre so what do i expect?
just listening to U2's new one and it's sounding very good - nice dirty bass with the wadding taken out again. love it....
cheers


julian.