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#41
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
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LS3/5a
On Feb 16, 2:45*pm, Bret Ludwig wrote:
*I know what needs to be done. Are you going to exterminate them? |
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#42
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
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LS3/5a
On Feb 16, 4:24*pm, Bret Ludwig wrote:
On Feb 16, 3:10 pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote: On Feb 16, 2:45 pm, Bret Ludwig wrote: *I know what needs to be done. Are you going to exterminate them? *****ter, you are not really that stupid, are you? Name-calling will not turn me into a neo-Nazi, Bratzi. In fact, no matter how hard you try nothing will. ;-) |
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#43
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:40:06 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote: It has a lot of problems, of which limited bass extension is one. The mid/bass driver (I forget the KEF model number) was made of bextrene, which is rather dense, which does nothing for clarity or transparency. And when you turn the volume up, it sounds as if Something Terrible Is About To Happen. B110. I used to know the folks at Transduction, Ltd, who did the handled the importation of IMF Electronics products. (If you guys are reading this, please get in touch. I still miss you.) IMF used the B110 as a midrange which increased its effective power handling and, in their biggest versions, gave it a more generous and separate enclosure. (I built a similar arrangement.) Kal |
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#44
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message I'm probably the only audiophile who doesn't care for the LS3/5a. In this day and age, most US audiophiles have probably never heard of them. It was originally designed as a near-field monitor speaker. It was never intended for home use. Agreed. It has a lot of problems, of which limited bass extension is one. The mid/bass driver (I forget the KEF model number) B110 was made of bextrene, which is rather dense, which does nothing for clarity or transparency. Never seemed to hurt the general perception of any of any number of speakers that used it as a midrange. And when you turn the volume up, it sounds as if Something Terrible Is About To Happen. That's what happens when you try to use a midrange driver as a woofer. The source of the problem you've noted is lack of XMax. From what I can read, KEF did eventually upgrade this driver to the point where its Xmax was up to modern standards for a driver this small. I used to know the folks at Transduction, Ltd, who did the handled the importation of IMF Electronics products. (If you guys are reading this, please get in touch. I still miss you.) They designed a slightly larger system using the same drivers that could handle huge amounts of power and play at very high levels without strain. They probably used modern variants of the B110 and T27. Its only problem was a bit of midrange "boxiness". (They had a small floor speaker that cost about half the price of the KEF 105, and was overall a better speaker.) Midrange boxiness - that might be the historic peak around 1 KHz that could be made to go away by tuning the crossover a bit. Small speakers have a number of real advantages, of which reduced diffraction and greater ease of postioning are two. Making a speaker small doesn't reduce diffraction, but it does change the transition frequency. As far as positioning goes, that can mean many things. In my view, very small speakers are hard to position because they lack directionality, That makes them engage the room more, which in turn makes them hard to position. An alternative view would be that because small speakers lack directional control, you don't have to aim them carefully to get sound where ever you are in the room. The cabinetry, which can be a huge percentage of the price of a high-quality speaker, costs less. Agreed. But a "serious" system that uses small speakers without a properly designed woofer from the same manufacturer is not what I would consider a true audiophile product. Agreed. You're echoing your origional quite agreeable claim that the LS3/5a was never designed for general home use. However, it could be a pretty fair match with a really small room. |
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#45
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message was made of bextrene, which is rather dense, which does nothing for clarity or transparency. Never seemed to hurt the general perception of any of any number of speakers that used it as a midrange. There are better plastics. Not to mention Kevlar. And when you turn the volume up, it sounds as if Something Terrible Is About To Happen. That's what happens when you try to use a midrange driver as a woofer. Not necessarily. Transduction Ltd used the same driver in a slightly larger enclosure, and it did not have that problem. I remember giving a demo with a huge Audio Research solid-state amplifier (about 350W/ch), and during a peak in which the amp's power meters nearly pegged, * the T2 had no problems. * It's not clear what the power meters on solid-state Audio Research amps actually measure. But one can assume that a near peak in this case must have represented perhaps 100W, at least for a second or two. Small speakers have a number of real advantages, of which reduced diffraction and greater ease of postioning are two. Making a speaker small doesn't reduce diffraction, but it does change the transition frequency. As far as positioning goes, that can mean many things. In my view, very small speakers are hard to position because they lack directionality, That makes them engage the room more, which in turn makes them hard to position. An alternative view would be that because small speakers lack directional control, you don't have to aim them carefully to get sound where ever you are in the room. I'm thinking more in terms of positioning the speaker with respect to the walls, the listener, and (to some extent) the floor. Small speakers have an advantage here. We could get into a long argument here, but it's my view that speakers tend to have broad dispersion, simply because -- ignoring the theoretical "ideal point source" -- it's easier to get broad dispersion than controlled dispersion. Agreed. You're echoing your original quite agreeable claim that the LS3/5a was never designed for general home use. However, it could be a pretty fair match with a really small room. Which -- coming back to the original point -- is what it was designed for. |
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#47
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
Bret Ludwig wrote:
It's a small speaker designed for a purpose which is not related to audiophile use at all. There are much better bookshelf speakers for much less money. The BBC specification had to do with repeatability in a given environment . I find mine extremely useful in a small room at close proximity, and have nicely aligned drivers, sitting up on the shelf above my workstation. I don't even find the lack of bass a problem for my use, and if there is a bass problem it is easy to *see* it (with grilles off). Mid and high clarity, without exaggerated sections. geoff |
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#48
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
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LS3/5a
On Feb 16, 6:22�pm, Jenn wrote:
In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 11:45?pm, Jenn wrote: In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 9:20?am, Jenn wrote: On Feb 15, 4:08?am, John Atkinson wrote: On Feb 14, 9:05 pm, wrote: Any other LS3/5a fans here? ?Critics? I reviewed the Stirlng LS3/5a a year ago. You can find the reprint of that review starting athttp://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361/index12.html. On balance, I slightly preferred the similarly sized Harbeth HL-P3ES2:http://www.stereophile.com/standloud...93harbeth/inde x5.h tml. John Atkinson Editor, Stereophile I heard the LS3/5a speakers back in the very late 70s or maybe 1980, back when around the L.A. area there were several high-end establishments that ran out of people's homes by appointment. ?Other than the Quads, they were probably the first high-end speakers that I heard. ?I was amazed at the clarity and imaging, but of course, there was no real bass. ?I remember that this person had some slightly larger Mordaunt Short speakers that I liked better. ?I almost bought a pair of those, but ended up getting the DCM Timewindows instead as part of my first non-mass market system (with the NAD 3020 and a little Micro-Seiki TT.) That's funny...I almost bought a pair of DCM Timewindows, but would up purchasing a pair of Snell Type Js instead. This was around 1982. ?I thought the Snells were every bit as good as the DCMs, but a couple of hundred dollars less. Boon I remember looking for the Snell, but couldn't find a dealer at the time. Looking to hear the TIme Windows (after discovering The Audio Critic and reading their love of them) led me to a very interesting fellow named Randy Cooley who owned/owns Optimal Enchantment in Santa Monica. ?I think that it was called something else at the time. ?He was a hippie type of guy, super friendly. ?I listened for hours and the Time Windows seemed like magic to me at the time. ?Later I also bought an Oracle TT/Alphason arm/Dynavector cartridge from him. ?He was a neat guy and very helpful. ?Years and years later, I saw and talked to him at the Stereophile show in LA (two years ago?). We chatted and chatted like old times. ?He introduced me to Richard Vandersteen, and I liked him as well. I had a bad experience with Randy a number of years ago. �He was using a turntable on top of a really high stand (over five feet tall!), and I walked up to see what it was. �He actually told me not to breathe on the turntable. �I turned around and walked out. �To be fair, others have told me that he's a great guy. �But he blew it with me. I heard the DCMs at Havens and Hardesty in OC when I was still a teen. �The audio salesman who demonstrated them was actually blind. Nice guy, too. Do you mean Audio Today on Beach Blvd in Westminster? �THey sold Time Windows and had a nice blind guy there, and I don't remember H&H selling Time Windows, nor do I remember a blind guy there �;-) �Both stores are much missed. Wow! You're right...it was Audio Today! I used to get the two mixed up because they were so close together. I did buy speaker cable from Havens and Hardesty a few months later...Kimber 4TC. The Snell Js were bi-wireable, and I wanted to experiment. Boon |
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#49
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
Geoff wrote:
Bret Ludwig wrote: It's a small speaker designed for a purpose which is not related to audiophile use at all. There are much better bookshelf speakers for much less money. The BBC specification had to do with repeatability in a given environment . I find mine extremely useful in a small room at close proximity, and have nicely aligned drivers, sitting up on the shelf above my workstation. I don't even find the lack of bass a problem for my use, and if there is a bass problem it is easy to *see* it (with grilles off). Mid and high clarity, without exaggerated sections. geoff You folks all seem to be describing a near field monitor. As such, is the LS3/5a more useful than the M-Audio BX5b? bl |
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#50
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message "Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message was made of bextrene, which is rather dense, which does nothing for clarity or transparency. Never seemed to hurt the general perception of any of any number of speakers that used it as a midrange. There are better plastics. Not to mention Kevlar. It's not cool, but it still gets the job done - paper! And when you turn the volume up, it sounds as if Something Terrible Is About To Happen. That's what happens when you try to use a midrange driver as a woofer. Not necessarily. Transduction Ltd used the same driver in a slightly larger enclosure, and it did not have that problem. It may not have been the identically same bass driver. KEF made a lot of changes to the B110 over the years. The later ones are said to have 6 mm Xmax, which is OK for a woofer of that size. I remember giving a demo with a huge Audio Research solid-state amplifier (about 350W/ch), and during a peak in which the amp's power meters nearly pegged, * the T2 had no problems. On rap music? ;-) * It's not clear what the power meters on solid-state Audio Research amps actually measure. But one can assume that a near peak in this case must have represented perhaps 100W, at least for a second or two. You mean actual analog meters? Those are for impressing visiting firemen. I used to think that LEDs were good, but then I started looking at wave forms with my DAW. Small speakers have a number of real advantages, of which reduced diffraction and greater ease of postioning are two. Making a speaker small doesn't reduce diffraction, but it does change the transition frequency. As far as positioning goes, that can mean many things. In my view, very small speakers are hard to position because they lack directionality, That makes them engage the room more, which in turn makes them hard to position. An alternative view would be that because small speakers lack directional control, you don't have to aim them carefully to get sound where ever you are in the room. I'm thinking more in terms of positioning the speaker with respect to the walls, the listener, and (to some extent) the floor. Small speakers have an advantage here. Depends what you call an advantage. For the most part, I favor making the performance of the speaker as independent of the room as possible. That means directionality control, and that disfavors small diaphragms. We could get into a long argument here, but it's my view that speakers tend to have broad dispersion, simply because -- ignoring the theoretical "ideal point source" Agreed, let's ignore that old fable. -- it's easier to get broad dispersion than controlled dispersion. I agree with where you are headed, but I'd say it differently. It's easy to get indiscriminate dispersion, because after all, its well, indiscriminate. I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers - horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. |
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#51
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message "Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message There are better plastics. Not to mention Kevlar. It's not cool, but it still gets the job done - paper! Doped paper, perhaps. We could argue this ad nauseum, but one of the desirable properties of any cone material is "deadness". Electrostatic and planar-magnetic drivers largely sidestep this problem. I remember giving a demo with a huge Audio Research solid-state amplifier (about 350W/ch), and during a peak in which the amp's power meters nearly pegged, * the T2 had no problems. On rap music? ;-) No, actually, the 1812. It's not clear what the power meters on solid-state Audio Research amps actually measure. But one can assume that a near peak in this case must have represented perhaps 100W, at least for a second or two. You mean actual analog meters? Those are for impressing visiting firemen. I used to think that LEDs were good, but then I started looking at wave forms with my DAW. ARC was never interested in gimmickry, so I often wondered what the purpose of the output (I was about to write power-output, then removed "power") meters was. They weren't calibrated. I can only guess they were to warn the users of possible overdrive. I agree that, if you're going to have some indication of output level, LEDs are better than analog meters, but they still leave a lot to be desired, as (basically) they show nothing more than (maybe) peak clipping. It would be nice to know how much current is being drawn. Or even better, phase angle. Crown did some good work in this area. They had a system that dynamically reduced the amplifier's gain as the output transistors approached their safe operating area. (They had a way of measuring the safe operating area of output devices without destroying them. Each amp had a matched set.) They also had a circuit called the Input-Output Compartor, stuck in the feedback loop, that showed when the input and output voltages differed in magnitude more than 0.1% or something like that. I might add that the IOC on the K-1 amps I had never came on, but the amplifier still sounded awful. I'm thinking more in terms of positioning the speaker with respect to the walls, the listener, and (to some extent) the floor. Small speakers have an advantage here. Depends what you call an advantage. For the most part, I favor making the performance of the speaker as independent of the room as possible. That means directionality control, and that disfavors small diaphragms. The problem is that, although controlled directivity is highly desirable, it's extremely difficult to do, precisely because a uniformly directional driver has to be much larger than the wavelengths it reproduces, and such drivers wouldn't be good reproducers of those wavelengths. Small diaphragms permit broad dispersion over a wide frequency range, and are thus more "practical". Bud Fried experimented with controlled dispersion in his larger IMF speakers, but eventually abandoned it. Arny, you tend to reject planar speakers, but one of the advantages of a long "ribbon" driver is that it works _with_ the floor and ceiling reflections to reduce room interactions. Lateral problems can be handled with a bit of acoustical panelling. We could get into a long argument here, but it's my view that speakers tend to have broad dispersion, simply because -- ignoring the theoretical "ideal point source" Agreed, let's ignore that old fable. -- it's easier to get broad dispersion than controlled dispersion. I agree with where you are headed, but I'd say it differently. It's easy to get indiscriminate dispersion, because after all, its well, indiscriminate. Describing a driver's dispersion as "indiscriminate" strikes me as an example of the pathetic fallacy. I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers - horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I haven't heard the current crop of horn speakers. Klipsch made some pretty atrocious products, which have biased my view of horns for many years. (Klipsch was, in at least one way, a loony. He seemed to think that, as horn loading was the best way to design a driver, that any horn driver was ipso facto a good driver.) I'm going to ask Mr. Geddes some tough theoretical questions and see what he says. |
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#52
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
I have some friends like Earl Geddes
http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers -- horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I've browsed this article, and will return later to give it a careful reading. But I already see one fundamental fallacy -- that room acoustics _always_ swamp the sound of the speaker itself. That is, what we hear is always the sound of the room, and never the sound of the speaker. Therefore, any speaker that works correctly with the room will necessarily be an accurate reproducer. I need to read more. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. |
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#53
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
Bob Lombard wrote:
Geoff wrote: Bret Ludwig wrote: It's a small speaker designed for a purpose which is not related to audiophile use at all. There are much better bookshelf speakers for much less money. The BBC specification had to do with repeatability in a given environment . I find mine extremely useful in a small room at close proximity, and have nicely aligned drivers, sitting up on the shelf above my workstation. I don't even find the lack of bass a problem for my use, and if there is a bass problem it is easy to *see* it (with grilles off). Mid and high clarity, without exaggerated sections. You folks all seem to be describing a near field monitor. As such, is the LS3/5a more useful than the M-Audio BX5b? The midrange is phenomenally more accurate than the M-Audio boxes. The LS 3/5a was designed as a near-field monitor and it does a great job in that application. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#54
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:33:16 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote: Not necessarily. Transduction Ltd used the same driver in a slightly larger enclosure, and it did not have that problem.I I don't think so. IMF, prior to being operated by Transduction, Ltd., used KEF/Celestion drivers such as the B110 that was in the LS3/5a. Later, Transduction sourced their drivers from ELAC. They looked similar and, amazingly, performed similarly. In addition, there were many concurrent variants of the LS3/5a from different manufacturers and not all of them used the same KEF drivers. AFAIK, BBC specified the size/configuration/performance but not the actual composition. As long as it conformed as tested, it could bear the LS3/5a label. Kal |
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#55
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Kalman Rubinson" wrote in message
... On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:33:16 -0800, "William Sommerwerck" wrote: Not necessarily. Transduction Ltd used the same driver in a slightly larger enclosure, and it did not have that problem. I don't think so. IMF, prior to being operated by Transduction, Ltd., used KEF/Celestion drivers such as the B110 that was in the LS3/5a. Later, Transduction sourced their drivers from ELAC. They looked similar and, amazingly, performed similarly. At the time I knew Transduction -- 1978 through 1980 -- they used KEF drivers. In addition, there were many concurrent variants of the LS3/5a from different manufacturers and not all of them used the same KEF drivers. AFAIK, BBC specified the size/configuration/performance but not the actual composition. As long as it conformed as tested, it could bear the LS3/5a label. This is possible. We sold LS3/5as (I don't remember the brand), and they were pretty bad at playing at high levels. This isn't surprising, as they were never intended to. |
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#56
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... You mean actual analog meters? Those are for impressing visiting firemen. I used to think that LEDs were good, but then I started looking at wave forms with my DAW. I believe in some (all ?) instances LEDs require correct 'calibration'. I have an amp in which, "out of the blue", one of the 2 channel's LEDs flashed way too prematurely. It got fixed when the amp received some other repairs. I'm with the "visiting firemen" because at times looking at the analog meters I become informed of a problem before I actually notice it. "What did you say?" |
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#57
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message "Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message "Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message There are better plastics. Not to mention Kevlar. It's not cool, but it still gets the job done - paper! Doped paper, perhaps. We could argue this ad nauseum, but one of the desirable properties of any cone material is "deadness". Electrostatic and planar-magnetic drivers largely sidestep this problem. They do but they don't. The materials the diaphragms are made out of is fairly resonant, but the diaphragms are usually so thin that it doesn't matter. On the topic of paper, anybody who wants to can comment on the resonant properties of a dried pile of paper mache. ;-) I remember giving a demo with a huge Audio Research solid-state amplifier (about 350W/ch), and during a peak in which the amp's power meters nearly pegged, * the T2 had no problems. On rap music? ;-) No, actually, the 1812. Rap music can take speakers to places that no commercial recording ever took the 1812. It's not clear what the power meters on solid-state Audio Research amps actually measure. But one can assume that a near peak in this case must have represented perhaps 100W, at least for a second or two. You mean actual analog meters? Those are for impressing visiting firemen. I used to think that LEDs were good, but then I started looking at wave forms with my DAW. ARC was never interested in gimmickry, so I often wondered what the purpose of the output (I was about to write power-output, then removed "power") meters was. They weren't calibrated. I can only guess they were to warn the users of possible overdrive. Or, they looked kewl. ;-) I agree that, if you're going to have some indication of output level, LEDs are better than analog meters, but they still leave a lot to be desired, as (basically) they show nothing more than (maybe) peak clipping. It would be nice to know how much current is being drawn. Or even better, phase angle. Now that SS amps easily capable of driving 2 ohm loads are common, the whole reactive speaker load issue has largely become moot. Yes, a 2 ohm load line passes through zero current and voltage at the same time, but the other places it goes will give heartaches to amps that don't do well with reactive loads. Crown did some good work in this area. They had a system that dynamically reduced the amplifier's gain as the output transistors approached their safe operating area. Actually, that's what classic SOA limiters do. (They had a way of measuring the safe operating area of output devices without destroying them. Each amp had a matched set.) Matched set not needed. They also had a circuit called the Input-Output Compartor, stuck in the feedback loop, that showed when the input and output voltages differed in magnitude more than 0.1% or something like that. I might add that the IOC on the K-1 amps I had never came on, but the amplifier still sounded awful. It must have been broken. The opposite is true of some modern amps. Their clip lights come on and the amp still has like 0.02% THD @ 20 KHz. The trigger circuit is just that hyper-sensitive. I'm thinking more in terms of positioning the speaker with respect to the walls, the listener, and (to some extent) the floor. Small speakers have an advantage here. Depends what you call an advantage. For the most part, I favor making the performance of the speaker as independent of the room as possible. That means directionality control, and that disfavors small diaphragms. The problem is that, although controlled directivity is highly desirable, it's extremely difficult to do, Controlled directivety with direct radiators can be approximated by using more drivers each covering a narrower frequency range, such as was done in the NHT 3.3 . precisely because a uniformly directional driver has to be much larger than the wavelengths it reproduces, and such drivers wouldn't be good reproducers of those wavelengths. If you get say 90 degree controlled directivity, its pretty much good enough. That does not require a driver that is "much larger" than the wavelength it reproduces. Small diaphragms permit broad dispersion over a wide frequency range, and are thus more "practical". Dispersion of 90 degrees is problematical in many candidate listening rooms. Bud Fried experimented with controlled dispersion in his larger IMF speakers, but eventually abandoned it. The "do it right approach" involves waveguide speakers, known as "horns" to the great unwashed. Arny, you tend to reject planar speakers, ?????????????? but one of the advantages of a long "ribbon" driver is that it works _with_ the floor and ceiling reflections to reduce room interactions. It's not the ribbon, its the effective length of the diaphragm. People have built line arrays and carefully controlled the phase of the drive to each driver, with some pretty amazing results. This approach is costly, even by high end audio standards, so not many high end speaker manufacturers have tried it. Lateral problems can be handled with a bit of acoustical panelling. Actually, it takes quite a few square feet of that in a typical midwest listening room. We could get into a long argument here, but it's my view that speakers tend to have broad dispersion, simply because -- ignoring the theoretical "ideal point source" Agreed, let's ignore that old fable. -- it's easier to get broad dispersion than controlled dispersion. I agree with where you are headed, but I'd say it differently. It's easy to get indiscriminate dispersion, because after all, its well, indiscriminate. Describing a driver's dispersion as "indiscriminate" strikes me as an example of the pathetic fallacy. Call it what you will, but in the real world it makes a lot of trouble. I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers - horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I haven't heard the current crop of horn speakers. You are missing a blessing. Klipsch made some pretty atrocious products, which have biased my view of horns for many years. (Klipsch was, in at least one way, a loony. He seemed to think that, as horn loading was the best way to design a driver, that any horn driver was ipso facto a good driver.) The SOTA of drivers with waveguides has proceeded many helpful miles since Paul's heyday. I'm going to ask Mr. Geddes some tough theoretical questions and see what he says. I believe that the general take in Detroit that if you can come up with a sensible tough theoretical question, Earl's the guy to see. |
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#58
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers -- horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I've browsed this article, and will return later to give it a careful reading. But I already see one fundamental fallacy -- that room acoustics _always_ swamp the sound of the speaker itself. No fallacy. That is, what we hear is always the sound of the room, and never the sound of the speaker. Excluded middle, anybody? Therefore, any speaker that works correctly with the room will necessarily be an accurate reproducer. No. But, any good speaker that works well with the room it is in is miles ahead of the common alternative. I need to read more. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Enjoy. |
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#59
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:33:03 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote: "Kalman Rubinson" wrote in message .. . On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:33:16 -0800, "William Sommerwerck" wrote: Not necessarily. Transduction Ltd used the same driver in a slightly larger enclosure, and it did not have that problem. I don't think so. IMF, prior to being operated by Transduction, Ltd., used KEF/Celestion drivers such as the B110 that was in the LS3/5a. Later, Transduction sourced their drivers from ELAC. They looked similar and, amazingly, performed similarly. At the time I knew Transduction -- 1978 through 1980 -- they used KEF drivers. That may have been the transition from the old IMF production under John Wright to the later ones that used the ELAC drivers. I do not recall the dates for the transfer. Kal |
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#60
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
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LS3/5a
In article
, wrote: On Feb 16, 6:22?pm, Jenn wrote: In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 11:45?pm, Jenn wrote: In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 9:20?am, Jenn wrote: On Feb 15, 4:08?am, John Atkinson wrote: On Feb 14, 9:05 pm, wrote: Any other LS3/5a fans here? ?Critics? I reviewed the Stirlng LS3/5a a year ago. You can find the reprint of that review starting athttp://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361/index12.html. On balance, I slightly preferred the similarly sized Harbeth HL-P3ES2:http://www.stereophile.com/standloud...s/1293harbeth/ inde x5.h tml. John Atkinson Editor, Stereophile I heard the LS3/5a speakers back in the very late 70s or maybe 1980, back when around the L.A. area there were several high-end establishments that ran out of people's homes by appointment. ?Other than the Quads, they were probably the first high-end speakers that I heard. ?I was amazed at the clarity and imaging, but of course, there was no real bass. ?I remember that this person had some slightly larger Mordaunt Short speakers that I liked better. ?I almost bought a pair of those, but ended up getting the DCM Timewindows instead as part of my first non-mass market system (with the NAD 3020 and a little Micro-Seiki TT.) That's funny...I almost bought a pair of DCM Timewindows, but would up purchasing a pair of Snell Type Js instead. This was around 1982. ?I thought the Snells were every bit as good as the DCMs, but a couple of hundred dollars less. Boon I remember looking for the Snell, but couldn't find a dealer at the time. Looking to hear the TIme Windows (after discovering The Audio Critic and reading their love of them) led me to a very interesting fellow named Randy Cooley who owned/owns Optimal Enchantment in Santa Monica. ?I think that it was called something else at the time. ?He was a hippie type of guy, super friendly. ?I listened for hours and the Time Windows seemed like magic to me at the time. ?Later I also bought an Oracle TT/Alphason arm/Dynavector cartridge from him. ?He was a neat guy and very helpful. ?Years and years later, I saw and talked to him at the Stereophile show in LA (two years ago?). We chatted and chatted like old times. ?He introduced me to Richard Vandersteen, and I liked him as well. I had a bad experience with Randy a number of years ago. ?He was using a turntable on top of a really high stand (over five feet tall!), and I walked up to see what it was. ?He actually told me not to breathe on the turntable. ?I turned around and walked out. ?To be fair, others have told me that he's a great guy. ?But he blew it with me. I heard the DCMs at Havens and Hardesty in OC when I was still a teen. ?The audio salesman who demonstrated them was actually blind. Nice guy, too. Do you mean Audio Today on Beach Blvd in Westminster? ?THey sold Time Windows and had a nice blind guy there, and I don't remember H&H selling Time Windows, nor do I remember a blind guy there ?;-) ?Both stores are much missed. Wow! You're right...it was Audio Today! I used to get the two mixed up because they were so close together. I did buy speaker cable from Havens and Hardesty a few months later...Kimber 4TC. The Snell Js were bi-wireable, and I wanted to experiment. Boon I like H&H a lot. You probably know Dick's site: http://www.audioperfectionist.com/index.html |
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#61
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers -- horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I've browsed this article, and will return later to give it a careful reading. But I already see one fundamental fallacy -- that room acoustics _always_ swamp the sound of the speaker itself. No fallacy. That is, what we hear is always the sound of the room, and never the sound of the speaker. Excluded middle, anybody? Therefore, any speaker that works correctly with the room will necessarily be an accurate reproducer. No. But this is what Dr. Geddes' article implies. He says his Summa Cum Laude system (a _bad_ name for a speaker -- it lends itself to vulgar jokes) is perhaps the best speaker in the world. But he gives no justification for this, other than the claim of "correct" room interaction (most of which makes sense to me, and I don't disagree with -- the section on room reflections fits with what I think I understand about such things, and is worth studying), and the overall flatness and smoothness of the speaker's measured response. But he never says anything about the system's drivers. His is basically an enhanced/extended Klipsch point of view -- if you get the dispersion right, the speaker must necessarily "sound good". Though one would expect a speaker with the measured response of the Summa Cum Laude to be at least pleasant-sounding (I'd be flabbergasted if it _weren't_), it doesn't automatically follow. The reason I'm so emphatic on this point is that most (if not all) the people in this group have never heard a plasma speaker. I have. When I worked at Barclay Recording & Electronics, Dr. Alan Hill twisted our arms to carry the Plasmatronics -- which, 30 years ago, cost a startling $8000/pair. Dr. Barclay was an avid live recordist, and we played his master Nagra tapes through the Plasmatronics. To quote Herb the K (in another context) -- "Everything else is gaslight." It is the only speaker I have ever heard that actually sounds REAL -- as if you're actually hearing live sound. * Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes... The Plasmatronics used French bextrene mids and woofers that weren't within light-years of the performance of the ionic driver (which worked from 700Hz up). And the discontinuity was audible. But -- the difference in sound quality was plainly -- grossly -- audible in a room full of other loudspeakers, none of which (including the Plasmatronics) had been designed to work "with" (or independently of) a room. If Dr. Geddes had a chance to hear the Plasmatronics, his view of the relative importance of the "absolute" quality of a speaker versus the way that quality is degraded by room acoustics might find itself being adjusted a bit. Quite a bit. Simply put, the absolute (and relative) quality of speaker systems _is_ audible in rooms with "decent" acoustics. This isn't to say that further improving the room acoustics towards some ideal, or paying more attention to some of the points that Dr. Geddes raises, wouldn't further improve the sound. But listeners don't prefer planar speakers simply because they interact "differently" with the room. Dr. Geddes really needs to address this point of the quality of the drivers in the Summa Cum Laude. What are they, and why were they selected? Inquiring minds want to know. Dr. Geddes also makes a statement that brings into question his listening ability and judgement. ** "CD [constant-directivity] is a well know[n] design criteria [sic] for large venue systems, but it is almost nonexistent in home high-fidelity loudspeaker systems. There are two reasons for this; pistons and size. Piston sources can never be CD and CD simply cannot be done in a small area. It takes space and area to control sound radiation and there is simply no way around this fact. Hence, for sound systems in small rooms, bigger really is better. Somehow it just seems obvious that the larger speakers of the past sounded better than the multitude of mini-cubes and tower speakers of today. Small speakers do have their place, but not as sources for critical listening in a well designed room. Virtually all small speakers are omni-directional. It’s easy and inexpensive, but completely wrong for a small room." I assume the kind of "larger speakers" that are so obviously better sounding are of the Bozak ilk. These had (by modern standards) large drivers with poor dispersion, and sometimes included vertical arrays of mids and/or tweeters. Such speakers have a wonderful "in-your-face" quality -- you crank up the volume and you are submerged in the sound. Great fun. But when you listen critically to such speakers, with good program material, it's obvious that the modern speakers Dr. Geddes is so quick to decry are more-accurate reproducers. They simply sound more like the signal that's fed into them. They can also be insufferably insipid-sounding, but that's, perhaps, another issue. (They needn't be. B&Ws are both accurate and non-insipid.) Perhaps I'm being unkind in saying so, but Dr. Geddes doesn't seem to be very interested in the absolute fidelity of his speakers. He does seem to be the sort of designer who fixates on one thing, and thinks if he gets it right, he's gotten everything right. His paper conveniently overlooks the gorilla in the room -- LEDE. LEDE reduces or suppresses early reflections, while allowing the listening area to be filled with long-delay reflected sounds. Why is altering the speaker to fit the room necessarily better than the opposite? Dr. Geddes doesn't discuss the relative merits and demerits of his system and LEDE, nor are there any comparative listening tests. Though I appreciate the paper's conversational style, it isn't particularly well-written and suffers from typos and other problems. But, any good speaker that works well with the room it is in is miles ahead of the common alternative. Dr. Geddes' point of view seems to be that a speaker that doesn't work well with the room is, by definition, _not_ a good speaker. I have no argument with Dr. Geddes' technology -- it seems to achieve the desired ends, and they are, in and of themselves, good ends. I am simply saying that the kind of directional playback he advocates is _not_ more important -- or even _as_ important -- as the basic fidelity of the system itself. Nor is it a guarantee of accurate sound reproduction. * I was speaking with Dr. Barclay the other day, and the Plasmatronics came up. His opinion was the same as mine, and had not changed in 30 years. ** Even if he _is_ a bad listener, that doesn't invalidate the design of the Summa Cum Laude. |
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#62
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message "Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message I have some friends like Earl Geddes http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Cum%20laude.pdf and another less well known who strongly favor waveguide speakers -- horns to the unwashed. The actual sound of their systems is the best testimony to the validity of their technology. I've browsed this article, and will return later to give it a careful reading. But I already see one fundamental fallacy -- that room acoustics _always_ swamp the sound of the speaker itself. No fallacy. That is, what we hear is always the sound of the room, and never the sound of the speaker. Excluded middle, anybody? Therefore, any speaker that works correctly with the room will necessarily be an accurate reproducer. No. But this is what Dr. Geddes' article implies. Implies would be a good choice of words - it suggests that one could read the article and obtain other meanings. ;-) He says his Summa Cum Laude system (a _bad_ name for a speaker -- it lends itself to vulgar jokes) is perhaps the best speaker in the world. He's never said that in my presence, or the presence of other signficant people in Detroit. ;-) But he gives no justification for this, other than the claim of "correct" room interaction (most of which makes sense to me, and I don't disagree with -- the section on room reflections fits with what I think I understand about such things, and is worth studying), and the overall flatness and smoothness of the speaker's measured response. In my view, his speaker system has considerable merit because it does have an intelligently-designed radiation pattern. Geddes probably has an exceptionally good handle on what a good radiation pattern is, and how to design waveguides to obtain it. But he never says anything about the system's drivers. The unique technology is the waveguide that he puts in front of the compression driver. Everthing else is pretty much off-the-shelf. His is basically an enhanced/extended Klipsch point of view -- if you get the dispersion right, the speaker must necessarily "sound good". I would say that Earl believes that if you get the radiation pattern and power response right, and low nonlinear disstortion and good efficiency and power handling, you've got a lot of goodness. BTW, getting the radiation and power response right implies getting the on-axis response right. Though one would expect a speaker with the measured response of the Summa Cum Laude to be at least pleasant-sounding (I'd be flabbergasted if it _weren't_), it doesn't automatically follow. They are. And, they are tolerant of differences in rooms. In his home, he has a pair in a sparsely-furnished room with a hardwood floor and plaster walls. He has 3 more (LCR) in a room with very carefully-designed acoustics. The reason I'm so emphatic on this point is that most (if not all) the people in this group have never heard a plasma speaker. I have. I have to. I heard a pair at Dr. Hy Kichalsky's house. Hy was the founder of The Audiophile Society (of Westchester County). When I worked at Barclay Recording & Electronics, Dr. Alan Hill twisted our arms to carry the Plasmatronics -- which, 30 years ago, cost a startling $8000/pair. Dr. Barclay was an avid live recordist, and we played his master Nagra tapes through the Plasmatronics. To quote Herb the K (in another context) -- "Everything else is gaslight." It is the only speaker I have ever heard that actually sounds REAL -- as if you're actually hearing live sound. * Hy's Plasmatronics sounded very good, too. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes... The Plasmatronics used French bextrene mids and woofers that weren't within light-years of the performance of the ionic driver (which worked from 700Hz up). And the discontinuity was audible. They were very complex, esoteric tweeters aside. But -- the difference in sound quality was plainly -- grossly -- audible in a room full of other loudspeakers, none of which (including the Plasmatronics) had been designed to work "with" (or independently of) a room. That's impressive, but in the larger context I don't and can't know exactly what it means. If Dr. Geddes had a chance to hear the Plasmatronics, his view of the relative importance of the "absolute" quality of a speaker versus the way that quality is degraded by room acoustics might find itself being adjusted a bit. Quite a bit. Or not. To me a relevant experiment involved moving a variety of better speakers around to a number of listening rooms, and of course listening to them in each room. The group conclusion was that the speakers tended to sound more like the rooms they were in than any unique identity that the speakers had. Of course, different speakers, different rooms, perhaps different conclusions. But the result involved enough different rooms and speakers that it was very convincing. Simply put, the absolute (and relative) quality of speaker systems _is_ audible in rooms with "decent" acoustics. I don't think you can fix a miserable room with a good speaker. I do think there are some rooms that are so miserable that no general-purpose speaker can sound good in them. I know that in most rooms, most speakers sound different and some are preferable than others. I know that if you change the room a lot, or pick a different room, your favorite speaker of the same lot may be a different speaker. And, I know that certain speakers that are inherently highly tailorable can sound amazingly good in really bad rooms. This isn't to say that further improving the room acoustics towards some ideal, or paying more attention to some of the points that Dr. Geddes raises, wouldn't further improve the sound. Agreed. But listeners don't prefer planar speakers simply because they interact "differently" with the room. I don't see planar speakers as panaceas, and I don't see preference for planar speakers or a certain planar speaker as being some sort of audio IQ test. OTOH, the right Magnapans, the right room, and the right music can be quite a treat. Dr. Geddes really needs to address this point of the quality of the drivers in the Summa Cum Laude. What are they, and why were they selected? Inquiring minds want to know. The drivers themselves are not exceptional. They are good drivers and they are competiviely priced for what they are. Geddes favorite kind of magic would be the design of the waveguide (horn) for the upper-range driver. Dr. Geddes also makes a statement that brings into question his listening ability and judgement. ** "CD [constant-directivity] is a well know[n] design criteria [sic] for large venue systems, but it is almost nonexistent in home high-fidelity loudspeaker systems. Agreed. There are two reasons for this; pistons and size. Piston sources can never be CD and CD simply cannot be done in a small area. Wide range CD speakers are necessarily large. It takes space and area to control sound radiation and there is simply no way around this fact. Right, and if you are in a really small room, you probably want to go down the near field or even headphones road. Ironically, Geddes did a lot of his early development of his ideas and technology for a certain large automotive manufacturer. His ideas were not always ideally applicable to that context. Hence, for sound systems in small rooms, bigger really is better. Somehow it just seems obvious that the larger speakers of the past sounded better than the multitude of mini-cubes and tower speakers of today. I think someone is taking a swipe a Bose, which is not a bad thing to me. ;-) Small speakers do have their place, but not as sources for critical listening in a well designed room. Virtually all small speakers are omni-directional. It’s easy and inexpensive, but completely wrong for a small room." Again, that is particularly true if the small room is rather reverberant. BTW, any reader of this post should note that the quote from Geddes ends right here. I assume the kind of "larger speakers" that are so obviously better sounding are of the Bozak ilk. I don't think so. I think arl might be thinking of something like Altec A-4s, or some of the large JBL Pro systems designed for monitoring. These had (by modern standards) large drivers with poor dispersion, and sometimes included vertical arrays of mids and/or tweeters. Such speakers have a wonderful "in-your-face" quality -- you crank up the volume and you are submerged in the sound. Great fun. Well, the vertical array of tweeters does sound like the bigger Bozaks, but that's you talking William, not Earl. But when you listen critically to such speakers, with good program material, it's obvious that the modern speakers Dr. Geddes is so quick to decry are more-accurate reproducers. But that's a comparison to the large speakers of your choice William, not Earl's. Perhaps I'm being unkind in saying so, but Dr. Geddes doesn't seem to be very interested in the absolute fidelity of his speakers. He does seem to be the sort of designer who fixates on one thing, and thinks if he gets it right, he's gotten everything right. That would be your perception William, not the Earl Geddes I know. His paper conveniently overlooks the gorilla in the room -- LEDE. LEDE reduces or suppresses early reflections, while allowing the listening area to be filled with long-delay reflected sounds. LEDE is yet another idea that is good in some circumstances, but LEDE is not a panacea. I know what Earl's preferred design for a listening room is, and no way is it LEDE. Controlled directivity is also a good idea, but it has more generality. I comes closer to be a panacea, given that the best solution always involves a room with the best possible acoustics for reproduction of music and spoken word. Why is altering the speaker to fit the room necessarily better than the opposite? I don't think that Earl is making that dicotomy. Dr. Geddes doesn't discuss the relative merits and demerits of his system and LEDE, nor are there any comparative listening tests. He can't touch every base in a relatively short paper. Though I appreciate the paper's conversational style, it isn't particularly well-written and suffers from typos and other problems. Earl's a classic engineer in this regard. Brilliant prose is not that valuable to him. But, any good speaker that works well with the room it is in is miles ahead of the common alternative. Dr. Geddes' point of view seems to be that a speaker that doesn't work well with the room is, by definition, _not_ a good speaker. How can that be wrong? I have no argument with Dr. Geddes' technology -- it seems to achieve the desired ends, and they are, in and of themselves, good ends. Agreed. I am simply saying that the kind of directional playback he advocates is _not_ more important -- or even _as_ important -- as the basic fidelity of the system itself. I think you've added an omission that is not really there. Earl thinks that the basic fidelity of the system is based on the things I listed before, headed up by power response and directionality. Nor is it a guarantee of accurate sound reproduction. There are no guarantees. ;-) |
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#63
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
But -- the difference in sound quality was plainly --
grossly -- audible in a room full of other loudspeakers, none of which (including the Plasmatronics) had been designed to work "with" (or independently of) a room. That's impressive, but in the larger context I don't and can't know exactly what it means. What I intended it to mean was that the difference was plainly audible, despite the less-than-ideal listening conditions.. Or not. To me a relevant experiment involved moving a variety of better speakers around to a number of listening rooms, and of course listening to them in each room. The group conclusion was that the speakers tended to sound more like the rooms they were in than any unique identity that the speakers had. That hasn't been my experience, but I've never done such and experiment, and I've often treated the rooms I've lived in. There is no question that a bad room will swamp the subtleties of any particular design. Simply put, the absolute (and relative) quality of speaker systems _is_ audible in rooms with "decent" acoustics. I don't think you can fix a miserable room with a good speaker. Of course not. That isn't the point. My point was that in a "decent" room, significant speaker differences _are_ audible. I do think there are some rooms that are so miserable that no general-purpose speaker can sound good in them. I've heard rooms so bad that I wonder whether Dr. Geddes' design would work. (Untreated basements come to mind.) You still have to dampen the room some. But listeners don't prefer planar speakers simply because they interact "differently" with the room. I don't see planar speakers as panaceas, and I don't see preference for planar speakers or a certain planar speaker as being some sort of audio IQ test. OTOH, the right Magnepans, the right room, and the right music can be quite a treat. JGH used to claim that dipole speakers were _more_ sensitive to room placement, and this made them easier to get "sounding right" -- if you spent the time adjusting them. I don't know if that's generally true. The original Maggies could be spectacular in their rounded-off way, but as they got more accurate, they became less pleasing (to me). And they're not true planar speakers, anyway. (Honesty compels me to admit that one of the reasons -- though hardly the principal one -- I don't care for Maggies is that I don't like the way they're marketed or sold, nor do I care for the religious beliefs of the people manufacturing them.) Dr. Geddes really needs to address this point of the quality of the drivers in the Summa Cum Laude. What are they, and why were they selected? Inquiring minds want to know. The drivers themselves are not exceptional. They are good drivers and they are competiviely priced for what they are. Geddes favorite kind of magic would be the design of the waveguide (horn) for the upper-range driver. Dr. Geddes also makes a statement that brings into question his listening ability and judgement. ** "Hence, for sound systems in small rooms, bigger really is better. Somehow it just seems obvious that the larger speakers of the past sounded better than the multitude of mini-cubes and tower speakers of today. I think someone is taking a swipe a Bose, which is not a bad thing to me. ;-) No argument, but he wasn't. JGH -- the only reviewer who saw through the 901s, and attacked accordingly -- was remarking to me the other day just how spectacularly spacious they could sound when mounted near the ceiling. Bose has popularized the "mini-cube" more than anyone else. I've never heard them, and am not sure I want to. "Small speakers do have their place, but not as sources for critical listening in a well designed room. Virtually all small speakers are omni-directional. It’s easy and inexpensive, but completely wrong for a small room." Again, that is particularly true if the small room is rather reverberant. I wouldn't disagree, but this raises the issue of whether you should damp the room acoustics. But when you listen critically to such speakers, with good program material, it's obvious that the modern speakers Dr. Geddes is so quick to decry are more-accurate reproducers. But that's a comparison to the large speakers of your choice William, not Earl's. No offense, but he should have named names. Are the JBLs, et al, still considered highly accurate speakers? I don't think so. His paper conveniently overlooks the gorilla in the room -- LEDE. LEDE reduces or suppresses early reflections, while allowing the listening area to be filled with long-delay reflected sounds. LEDE is yet another idea that is good in some circumstances, but LEDE is not a panacea. I know what Earl's preferred design for a listening room is, and no way is it LEDE. I didn't claim it was a panacea. I said that it was an approach that attempts to do the same things Dr. Geddes' approach does (suppress early reflections, surround the listener with long delays, etc). It therefore needs to be discussed. Why is altering the speaker to fit the room necessarily better than the opposite? I don't think that Earl is making that dicotomy. I got the impression he was. Regardless, LEDE forces consideration of that dichotomy. Dr. Geddes doesn't discuss the relative merits and demerits of his system and LEDE, nor are there any comparative listening tests. He can't touch every base in a relatively short paper. Then he should write a longer one! grin But, any good speaker that works well with the room it is in is miles ahead of the common alternative. Dr. Geddes' point of view seems to be that a speaker that doesn't work well with the room is, by definition, _not_ a good speaker. How can that be wrong? Because there are many excellent -- ie, accurate -- speakers that aren't designed to work _with_ the room. In order to get good sound, you have to treat the room, set up the speakers carefully, etc. I am simply saying that the kind of directional playback he advocates is _not_ more important -- or even _as_ important -- as the basic fidelity of the system itself. I think you've added an omission that is not really there. Earl thinks that the basic fidelity of the system is based on the things I listed before, headed up by power response and directionality. He doesn't discuss it in the paper. And I find this critical, as he is claiming the Summa Cum Laude is "perhaps" the world's best speaker. |
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#64
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
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LS3/5a
On Feb 17, 10:17�pm, Jenn wrote:
In article , wrote: On Feb 16, 6:22?pm, Jenn wrote: In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 11:45?pm, Jenn wrote: In article , wrote: On Feb 15, 9:20?am, Jenn wrote: On Feb 15, 4:08?am, John Atkinson wrote: On Feb 14, 9:05 pm, wrote: Any other LS3/5a fans here? ?Critics? I reviewed the Stirlng LS3/5a a year ago. You can find the reprint of that review starting athttp://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361/index12.html. On balance, I slightly preferred the similarly sized Harbeth HL-P3ES2:http://www.stereophile.com/standloud...s/1293harbeth/ inde x5.h tml. John Atkinson Editor, Stereophile I heard the LS3/5a speakers back in the very late 70s or maybe 1980, back when around the L.A. area there were several high-end establishments that ran out of people's homes by appointment. ?Other than the Quads, they were probably the first high-end speakers that I heard. ?I was amazed at the clarity and imaging, but of course, there was no real bass. ?I remember that this person had some slightly larger Mordaunt Short speakers that I liked better. ?I almost bought a pair of those, but ended up getting the DCM Timewindows instead as part of my first non-mass market system (with the NAD 3020 and a little Micro-Seiki TT.) That's funny...I almost bought a pair of DCM Timewindows, but would up purchasing a pair of Snell Type Js instead. This was around 1982.. ?I thought the Snells were every bit as good as the DCMs, but a couple of hundred dollars less. Boon I remember looking for the Snell, but couldn't find a dealer at the time. Looking to hear the TIme Windows (after discovering The Audio Critic and reading their love of them) led me to a very interesting fellow named Randy Cooley who owned/owns Optimal Enchantment in Santa Monica. ?I think that it was called something else at the time. ?He was a hippie type of guy, super friendly. ?I listened for hours and the Time Windows seemed like magic to me at the time. ?Later I also bought an Oracle TT/Alphason arm/Dynavector cartridge from him. ?He was a neat guy and very helpful. ?Years and years later, I saw and talked to him at the Stereophile show in LA (two years ago?). We chatted and chatted like old times. ?He introduced me to Richard Vandersteen, and I liked him as well. I had a bad experience with Randy a number of years ago. ?He was using a turntable on top of a really high stand (over five feet tall!), and I walked up to see what it was. ?He actually told me not to breathe on the turntable. ?I turned around and walked out. ?To be fair, others have told me that he's a great guy. ?But he blew it with me. I heard the DCMs at Havens and Hardesty in OC when I was still a teen. ?The audio salesman who demonstrated them was actually blind. Nice guy, too. Do you mean Audio Today on Beach Blvd in Westminster? ?THey sold Time Windows and had a nice blind guy there, and I don't remember H&H selling Time Windows, nor do I remember a blind guy there ?;-) ?Both stores are much missed. Wow! �You're right...it was Audio Today! �I used to get the two mixed up because they were so close together. �I did buy speaker cable from Havens and Hardesty a few months later...Kimber 4TC. �The Snell Js were bi-wireable, and I wanted to experiment. Boon I like H&H a lot. �You probably know Dick's site: �http://www.audioperfectionist.com/index.html- Actually, I didn't! Thanks for the link! Boon |
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#65
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
I'm damned if I am going to read this long thread which can only be
circular, starting at where the LS3/5A is a nearfield monitor as William says, and perforce ending with nothing more being expected from a nearfield monitor than what it is intended to provide, which is *not* high levels of headbanging bass. But I do want to make the point that the LS3/5A was for a long time a cheap alternative for classical and especially early and chamber music lovers, and even more particularly for lovers of the human voice, who could not afford horns from Lowther or electrostats from Mr Walker. The LS3/5A should be honoured for that and not measured against perverse standards retrospectively applied. Any old idiot can be snide with 20-20 hindsight -- but ask him to design a better speaker for the same money which isn't the size of my Impresario http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/K...Impresario.jpg and watch him fall flat on his face. Now let us honour famous speakers and true. Andre Jute Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/ "wonderfully well written and reasoned information for the tube audio constructor" John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare "an unbelievably comprehensive web site containing vital gems of wisdom" Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review On Feb 16, 1:40*pm, "William Sommerwerck" wrote: I'm probably the only audiophile who doesn't care for the LS3/5a. It was originally designed as a near-field monitor speaker. It was never intended for home use. It has a lot of problems, of which limited bass extension is one. The mid/bass driver (I forget the KEF model number) was made of bextrene, which is rather dense, which does nothing for clarity or transparency. And when you turn the volume up, it sounds as if Something Terrible Is About To Happen. I used to know the folks at Transduction, Ltd, who did the handled the importation of IMF Electronics products. (If you guys are reading this, please get in touch. I still miss you.) They designed a slightly larger system using the same drivers that could handle huge amounts of power and play at very high levels without strain. Its only problem was a bit of midrange "boxiness". (They had a small floor speaker that cost about half the price of the KEF 105, and was overall a better speaker.) Small speakers have a number of real advantages, of which reduced diffraction and greater ease of postioning are two. The cabinetry, which can be a huge percentage of the price of a high-quality speaker, costs less. But a "serious" system that uses small speakers without a properly designed woofer from the same manufacturer is not what I would consider a true audiophile product. |
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#66
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.tubes,rec.music.classical.recordings
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LS3/5a
"Andre Jute" wrote in message
... The LS3/5A should be honoured for that and not measured against perverse standards retrospectively applied. There's nothing perverse about pointing out that the LS3/5a wasn't a very good "living room" speaker 30 years ago, which should have been obvious to any critical listener. (I realize I'm implicitly criticizing JGH, who's a good friend, but I have to say it.) I didn't like them then, and said so. And, as I pointed out, Transduction showed that you could make a much better speaker with the same drivers, if you were willing to use a slightly larger cabinet. |
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