CES and THE Show 2014

Ultimist

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We'll be posting over 1000 photos, as usual, on Ultimist, but we have a few dozen photos up on the Audio Federation Blog, along with commentary, and as a teaser here are some more photos of the 'way lots of cool stuff' that was at the smaller but really quite good shows this year:

IMG_0604-thiel-tt3-speaker-small.jpg
The new Thiel TT3 speaker on static display. The smaller new Thiels sounded quite good.

IMG_0652-graaf-gm-400-amplifier-small.jpg
The Graaf GM 400

IMG_1021-walker-proscenium-black-diamond-turntable-small.jpg
The Walker Proscenium Black Diamond turntable. Been awhile since we saw Walker at CES... This was in the Perfect8 room

IMG_0730-yg-acoustics-hailey-speaker-small.jpg
The new YG Acoustics Hailey speakers

IMG_0571-vandersteen-7-speaker-with-amp-small.jpg
The Vandersteen 7 speaker with their new high pass water-cooled amplifier
 

Ultimist

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Jan 22, 2013
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More photos [can only upload 5 at a time...]

IMG_0621-transrotor-turntable-small.jpg
Transrotor turntable.

IMG_0311-meridian-speaker-cutaway.jpg
Meridian speaker cutaway

IMG_0973-soundlab-speakers-with-wavac-amp-small.jpg
WAVAC amps on SoundLab speakers (side view). This sounded good.

IMG_0796-magico-the-ultimate-speaker-rear-small.jpg
Rear of the static display of the $600K Magico 'The Ultimate' horn speaker. Awesome fit-and-finish

IMG_0723-astell-kern-loudspeaker-small.jpg
Prototype Astell and Kern speaker. Excellent separation and control.
 

microstrip

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Thanks for the pictures of the SoundLabs - I would never expect to see them with WAVAC amplifiers using the 833 tube!
 

Ultimist

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I knoooow! It was a shocker. But it absolutely worked. I think we both thought it was in the top two or three sounds at the shows.
 

MylesBAstor

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I knoooow! It was a shocker. But it absolutely worked. I think we both thought it was in the top two or three sounds at the shows.

Did nothing for me. If your head wasn't clamped in a vise, the imaging sucked and the instruments were stuck to the panels. Not to mention there was zero, read nada depth. SS was two dimensional. Also what happened to the upper octaves?
 

Ultimist

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Interesting...

Some background.

We were SoundLab dealers for 6 or 7 years before we amicably went our own ways about 5 years ago. We have no relationship to WAVAC; not having a lot of success when we auditioned them and hear them at shows. We have no intention to start relationships anew as we are too freaking busy to tie our shoes it seems these days.

We are all about the sound. As we become more and more familiar with this industry [12 years now as dealer, importer, publisher, etailer, and curmudgeon (me!)], we have come to realize that we are in the minority. Most opinions you will hear are not based on sound but rather based on brand strength, advertising expenditures, appearance, technology, history, friendships, business relationships, and storyline. Not saying this is terrible but it does make for a wide range of opinions and performance characteristics out there.

We do not like a lot of the sound at shows. But when we do we feel it is important to speak up. Among all the loser sounds someone did a good job. They should be roundly and publicly applauded in our opinion.

Our perspective on SoundLab is from the point of view of an ex-dealer who at one time wanted to sell a boatload of them to people because they really are an excellent sounding single driver speaker for seriously not a lot of money in today's marketplace.

Typically people try to put inferior sounding [even if perhaps well-designed] solid-state amps on these speakers. These kinds of amps fail even more miserably at reproducing music on SoundLab speakers than they do on box speakers because the SoundLabs, and electrostatics in general, are so revealing. The SoundLabs are very revealing of just the types of flaws that that typically abound in these kinds of amps: overly aggressive note attacks [or artificially rolled-off attacks] and overly quick decays, leaving little time for the notes themselves. Combined with these kind of amps characteristic leanness, this makes the presentation harmonically barren and a difficult listening experience for the unconverted.

We tried many, many amps, from about $5K to $140K, on these speakers. If we were to pick a winner based on these experiments that is currently available and reasonably priced we would pick the Sanders amp. No relationship to this guy either except that he lives [last we heard] somewhere up in the woods about 50 or 60 miles south of us.

The MSB amps, seemingly one of the better solid-state amps out there, which were on the SoundLabs upstairs on floor 4 is a good example. All the details were there. And maybe the imaging and soundstage depth was excellent. I don't know because it did not sound like music. There wasn't the rushing swell of the notes and hypnotic decay that we get from real music. There wasn't the harmonic content that real music has. Because of the way the notes are deformed by the amps, there is not that continuousness, no natural flow of one note to another, that like you would hear when you hit two notes on a musical instrument one after the other. It fundamentally just isn't as engaging as a music reproduction should be, and sounds more like a very high end tinny-sounding radio.

Fine I guess if you are going to put them in a mancave and treat them as some sort of laboratory experiment [what can I say, electrostatic and panel speakers are cool. Single drivers are cool. Box-coloration-free sound is cool].

Getting tubes to work well on the SoundLabs has been the holy grail - its is all about getting these awesome speakers to sound more like real music [we first heard and picked up the SoundLab line at the Tuscany at THE Show 2002, when they were on those inexpensive powerhouse of a tube amp - called.... anybody? We forget the name of these. The brand folded soon thereafter. Ah. Remember now. Wolcott.]. But most tube amps hated being put on these speakers. It.. was.. often... very... scary.

This has been the state [albeit slightly exaggerated] of the SoundLab speaker universe.

But the factory has been slowly but steadily improving the efficiency and design of the speakers, from even before we went our separate ways, and now we have the Majestic 945PX [or 845PX, but looks like the 9's to us].

Before we talk about potential problems lets talk about what was right about the sound of the WAVAC-powered SoundLab system at THE Show 2014.

In this particular room I only heard the digital. I was walking around half the time and in the sweet spot several rows back the other half. Neli [I think she heard the analog], and sat out of the sweet spot [yes, yes, I usually am smart enough to sit off center as well, but I just wanted to luxuriate and get the full impact of the SoundLabs finally sounding wonderful].

* First, there were harmonics. Not overly done but enough so the brain did not have to spend a lot of cycles adding in harmonics that it knew were AWOL in the sound of your typical SoundLab speaker on solid-state amp sound. This meant the brain could relax a little bit and listen and enjoy the music more. It was rich, colorful and nuanced. The best we have heard from a WAVAC amp BTW.

* Second, there was excellent control of the notes. This meant that a) the attack and decay were much more lifelike, more round and finessed, like real notes, than what we had heard previously on the SoundLabs [and, better, in fact than the vast majority of the rooms at the show]. It also meant that the notes had more authority; they were more solid and substantial.

* Third, there was excellent separation. Separate notes stayed separate [as much as can be expected given the sources. We heard relatively complex music, but not, unfortunately, full on orchestral music].


These 3 characteristics by themselves put this room in the top sounding rooms at the show. These characteristics, combined with a reasonable frequency spread and reasonably linear response to frequency and dynamics, is what turns sound into music. Quite rare for systems to be this good [whether at shows, in dealerships or in people's homes].

OK. So to your comment:

"Did nothing for me. If your head wasn't clamped in a vise, the imaging sucked and the instruments were stuck to the panels. Not to mention there was zero, read nada depth. SS was two dimensional. Also what happened to the upper octaves?"

Even if the things he implied by these general accusations were true, it would STILL be in the top sounds at the show [though I somehow missed the big Focal room and the Estelon room was locked the few times I went by there - doh! thank goodness it is anatomically difficult to kick oneself - both rooms which were in his top 3 rooms].

Let's look at these one by one:

1. Head-in-a-vise. These are curved panels, not flat, so there is not inherent head-in-a-vise issues like the flat panel speakers out there [considering most people listen to their systems alone and in the sweet spot, this is usually not a problem. I listen with my wife ... sometimes :) .... so head-in-a-vise does not work for us].

I am not sure how wide the sweet spot was. I would guess about 6 feet side in a large room like this. Just guessing. These speakers have 30 degrees of curvature. If you want a wider sweet spot you can order your speakers with 45 degrees of curvature.

When I was walking around I certainly did not hear any instruments being stuck to the speakers or LRC [left, right, center] effects. This does have a tendency to annoy me as well, so, yeah, don't want this kind of behavior.

2. Soundstage depth. Have to admit we are not soundstage depth junkies, although a lot of our friends are :) As long as we can get a realistic soundstage with room for musicians and instruments to be more or less correctly sized [smaller speakers obviously have problems, as do close-miced instruments and voices] we are good. Yes, of course, we want deeper soundstages for orchestras and music like Radiohead [which plays with the depth of notes all of the time to wonderful and fun effect].

3. Upper octaves missing. I think MylesBAstor is pointing out that the part of the Soundlab panel that generates high frequencies is above ear level. These were taller SoundLabs [7 feet?]. We get a lot of our directional cues from these frequencies, and this is probably the root cause of at least some, if not most, of the issues Myles had in points #1 and #2.

In my photos of the SoundLab speaker base, the lows are at +0, mids at +0 and Brilliance at Max. This is good. But this is a huge room [see added photo]. In-room response will be much flatter in a smaller room with more reinforcement in the highs [and lows] depending on the liveness of your room. What we did here at the store a lot, because some of our rooms are also relatively big [but not this big!] is tilt the speaker, which normally tilts up a little, so that it tilts down a little, pointing the entire speaker to the level of the listener's ears.

That said we did not have any problems with the directional cues or 'higher octaves' in this room. Probably because this is a 'show'.

Excepting , you know, the ENIGMAcoustics super tweeter rooms, most rooms at the show weren't showing off a heckuva lot of air.

So many rooms add damping and power conditioning to purposely roll off the treble as much as possible at shows. It is so easy for things to sound bright and harsh and for listeners. Listeners have a heightened sensititivity to those frequencies because they are tired, because they are listening so intently, and probably for lots of other reasons.



*** Anyway, great sounding room. And this is why we thought it was in the top 2 or 3 rooms this year. Raises the bar for both SoundLab and WAVAC at future shows [just sayin'... :)]. One of our original goals [which have evolved since then] for our dealership was to present the best of the 3 major speaker technologies for our visitor's listening pleasure: cone drivers in boxes, panels (typically electrostatic), and horns. With this system the panel has caught up to the other two technologies. May the competition continue.
 
Last edited:

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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Interesting...

Some background.

We were SoundLab dealers for 6 or 7 years before we amicably went our own ways about 5 years ago. We have no relationship to WAVAC; not having a lot of success when we auditioned them and hear them at shows. We have no intention to start relationships anew as we are too freaking busy to tie our shoes it seems these days.

We are all about the sound. As we become more and more familiar with this industry [12 years now as dealer, importer, publisher, etailer, and curmudgeon (me!)], we have come to realize that we are in the minority. Most opinions you will hear are not based on sound but rather based on brand strength, advertising expenditures, appearance, technology, history, friendships, business relationships, and storyline. Not saying this is terrible but it does make for a wide range of opinions and performance characteristics out there.

We do not like a lot of the sound at shows. But when we do we feel it is important to speak up. Among all the loser sounds someone did a good job. They should be roundly and publicly applauded in our opinion.

Our perspective on SoundLab is from the point of view of an ex-dealer who at one time wanted to sell a boatload of them to people because they really are an excellent sounding single driver speaker for seriously not a lot of money in today's marketplace.

Typically people try to put inferior sounding [even if perhaps well-designed] solid-state amps on these speakers. These kinds of amps fail even more miserably at reproducing music on SoundLab speakers than they do on box speakers because the SoundLabs, and electrostatics in general, are so revealing. The SoundLabs are very revealing of just the types of flaws that that typically abound in these kinds of amps: overly aggressive note attacks [or artificially rolled-off attacks] and overly quick decays, leaving little time for the notes themselves. Combined with these kind of amps characteristic leanness, this makes the presentation harmonically barren and a difficult listening experience for the unconverted.

We tried many, many amps, from about $5K to $140K, on these speakers. If we were to pick a winner based on these experiments that is currently available and reasonably priced we would pick the Sanders amp. No relationship to this guy either except that he lives [last we heard] somewhere up in the woods about 50 or 60 miles south of us.

The MSB amps, seemingly one of the better solid-state amps out there, which were on the SoundLabs upstairs on floor 4 is a good example. All the details were there. And maybe the imaging and soundstage depth was excellent. I don't know because it did not sound like music. There wasn't the rushing swell of the notes and hypnotic decay that we get from real music. There wasn't the harmonic content that real music has. Because of the way the notes are deformed by the amps, there is not that continuousness, no natural flow of one note to another, that like you would hear when you hit two notes on a musical instrument one after the other. It fundamentally just isn't as engaging as a music reproduction should be, and sounds more like a very high end tinny-sounding radio.

Fine I guess if you are going to put them in a mancave and treat them as some sort of laboratory experiment [what can I say, electrostatic and panel speakers are cool. Single drivers are cool. Box-coloration-free sound is cool].

Getting tubes to work well on the SoundLabs has been the holy grail - its is all about getting these awesome speakers to sound more like real music [we first heard and picked up the SoundLab line at the Tuscany at THE Show 2002, when they were on those inexpensive powerhouse of a tube amp - called.... anybody? We forget the name of these. The brand folded soon thereafter]. But most tube amps hated being put on these speakers. It.. was.. often... very... scary.

This has been the state [albeit slightly exaggerated] of the SoundLab speaker universe.

But the factory has been slowly but steadily improving the efficiency and design of the speakers, from even before we went our separate ways, and now we have the Majestic 945PX [or 845PX, but looks like the 9's to us].

Before we talk about potential problems lets talk about what was right about the sound of the WAVAC-powered SoundLab system at THE Show 2014.

In this particular room I only heard the digital. I was walking around half the time and in the sweet spot several rows back the other half. Neli [I think she heard the analog], and sat out of the sweet spot [yes, yes, I usually am smart enough to sit off center as well, but I just wanted to luxuriate and get the full impact of the SoundLabs finally sounding wonderful].

* First, there were harmonics. Not overly done but enough so the brain did not have to spend a lot of cycles adding in harmonics that it knew were AWOL in the sound of your typical SoundLab speaker on solid-state amp sound. This meant the brain could relax a little bit and listen and enjoy the music more. It was rich, colorful and nuanced. The best we have heard from a WAVAC amp BTW.

* Second, there was excellent control of the notes. This meant that a) the attack and decay were much more lifelike, more round and finessed, like real notes, than what we had heard previously on the SoundLabs [and, better, in fact than the vast majority of the rooms at the show]. It also meant that the notes had more authority; they were more solid and substantial.

* Third, there was excellent separation. Separate notes stayed separate [as much as can be expected given the sources. We heard relatively complex music, but not, unfortunately, full on orchestral music].


These 3 characteristics by themselves put this room in the top sounding rooms at the show. These characteristics, combined with a reasonable frequency spread and reasonably linear response to frequency and dynamics, is what turns sound into music. Quite rare for systems to be this good [whether at shows, in dealerships or in people's homes].

OK. So to your comment:

"Did nothing for me. If your head wasn't clamped in a vise, the imaging sucked and the instruments were stuck to the panels. Not to mention there was zero, read nada depth. SS was two dimensional. Also what happened to the upper octaves?"

Even if the things he implied by these general accusations were true, it would STILL be in the top sounds at the show [though I somehow missed the big Focal room and the Estelon room was locked the few times I went by there - doh! thank goodness it is anatomically difficult to kick oneself - both rooms which were in his top 3 rooms].

Let's look at these one by one:

1. Head-in-a-vise. These are curved panels, not flat, so there is not inherent head-in-a-vise issues like the flat panel speakers out there [considering most people listen to their systems alone and in the sweet spot, this is usually not a problem. I listen with my wife ... sometimes :) .... so head-in-a-vise does not work for us].

I am not sure how wide the sweet spot was. I would guess about 6 feet side in a large room like this. Just guessing. These speakers have 30 degrees of curvature. If you want a wider sweet spot you can order your speakers with 45 degrees of curvature.

When I was walking around I certainly did not hear any instruments being stuck to the speakers or LRC [left, right, center] effects. This does have a tendency to annoy me as well, so, yeah, don't want this kind of behavior.

2. Soundstage depth. Have to admit we are not soundstage depth junkies, although a lot of our friends are :) As long as we can get a realistic soundstage with room for musicians and instruments to be more or less correctly sized [smaller speakers obviously have problems, as do close-miced instruments and voices] we are good. Yes, of course, we want deeper soundstages for orchestras and music like Radiohead [which plays with the depth of notes all of the time to wonderful and fun effect].

3. Upper octaves missing. I think MylesBAstor is pointing out that the part of the Soundlab panel that generates high frequencies is above ear level. These were taller SoundLabs [7 feet?]. We get a lot of our directional cues from these frequencies, and this is probably the root cause of at least some, if not most, of the issues Myles had in points #1 and #2.

In my photos of the SoundLab speaker base, the lows are at +0, mids at +0 and Brilliance at Max. This is good. But this is a huge room [see added photo]. In-room response will be much flatter in a smaller room with more reinforcement in the highs [and lows] depending on the liveness of your room. What we did here at the store a lot, because some of our rooms are also relatively big [but not this big!] is tilt the speaker, which normally tilts up a little, so that it tilts down a little, pointing the entire speaker to the level of the listener's ears.

That said we did not have any problems with the directional cues or 'higher octaves' in this room. Probably because this is a 'show'.

Excepting , you know, the ENIGMAcoustics super tweeter rooms, most rooms at the show weren't showing off a heckuva lot of air.

So many rooms add damping and power conditioning to purposely roll off the treble as much as possible at shows. It is so easy for things to sound bright and harsh and for listeners. Listeners have a heightened sensititivity to those frequencies because they are tired, because they are listening so intently, and probably for lots of other reasons.



*** Anyway, great sounding room. And this is why we thought it was in the top 2 or 3 rooms this year. Raises the bar for both SoundLab and WAVAC at future shows [just sayin'... :)]. One of our original goals [which have evolved since then] for our dealership was to present the best of the 3 major speaker technologies for our visitor's listening pleasure: cone drivers in boxes, panels (typically electrostatic), and horns. With this system the panel has caught up to the other two technologies. May the competition continue.

We are all about the sound. As we become more and more familiar with this industry [12 years now as dealer, importer, publisher, etailer, and curmudgeon (me!)], we have come to realize that we are in the minority. Most opinions you will hear are not based on sound but rather based on brand strength, advertising expenditures, appearance, technology, history, friendships, business relationships, and storyline. Not saying this is terrible but it does make for a wide range of opinions and performance characteristics out there.

Would you care to clarify how your above quote specifically relate to my show comments? You seem to be inferring something. Is there something that I don't know?

You know Brian W. is a Soundlab dealer and has a huge amount of experience with the speakers? In fact, sets them up at shows?

Hey everyone has their opinion and outside of one or two rooms, basically only listened to analog. Being a ML owner, I am intimately familiar with working with curved panels. That said, curved panels don't eliminate that sweet spot.

Have to say that it wasn't just me but several other people in the room commented on the same issues. As we all know, a lot also depends on which show day one hears a system. Things break in, exhibitors futz with things both good and bad, etc. that usually why try to hit every room at least twice during the show. Most of my listening, since things weren't working when I hit the room in the PM on day 1, was on the last day.

Re: WAVAC. These amps can sound great and can sound bad. Much with the WAVACs depend upon matching them to the right speaker. (I spent a bit of time with the biggies years when my mag reviewed the amps.)
 

Ultimist

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Jan 22, 2013
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Sorry the post was so long. It was not so much a challenge to your perceptions as an extremely general response to your concerns so that future surfers can read exactly why we think this was an exceptional system. That there were fundamental, important things that this system was doing very well.

People should also be reminded that imaging and soundstaging are typically, 99 times out of 100, minor setup issues, and that if there were in fact sometimes problems with this system in this regard we are sure that, based on past experience, minor changes to the setup would remedy them.

Hey everyone has their opinion ...

We're not relativists ourselves. We think there is, in the fact-based universe, good, bad, and great sounding gear [and combinations of gear]. This is above and beyond just personal preferences. Over the last 10 years or so we have posted many models on the blog that try to objectify what good sound is, and how personal preferences fit into the puzzle.

We see that you are a fitness trainer! How cool is that. We spend way too much time in the gym; I think Neli would live there if they would let her. :)
 

microstrip

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Did nothing for me. If your head wasn't clamped in a vise, the imaging sucked and the instruments were stuck to the panels. Not to mention there was zero, read nada depth. SS was two dimensional. Also what happened to the upper octaves?

Myles,

I own SoundLabs. Your description is exactly how they sound after being disconnected from powered for a few days before a few hours of being polarized.

My first close experience with SoundLabs was long ago, when they were distributed in the UK by Audiofreaks and I helped a friend importing a pair of A2's. At that time it was a lot of trouble and expense, we went through many certificates and documents to get them. After a long wait the huge boxes arrived and I helped my friend taking them out and connecting them to his system. I have to say he almost cried when we switched them on. So much money and effort for such anemic, thin, glassy, colored and glued to the panels sound? During that evening we tried everything - cables, amplifiers, sources. Nothing helped. But next day they sounded much better - louder, more detailed, with plenty of depth, and above all, the whole soundstage had left speaker plane. And a few days ago, it was really a great sound.

I went through a similar situation when I changed the panels of my A1's for the new recently arrived non burned in A1 Pxs - but at that time I had previous experience with them and burned in them for a few days with the Purist Audio CD enhancer - a great advice of Albert Porter - before I moved them in my listening room for serious listening.

Anyone going to listen for SoundLabs must be prepared for either some of the best or some of the worst sound in his life - IMHO they are not a medium level performance speaker - they are almost bistable, with no intermediate states.
 

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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Myles,

I own SoundLabs. Your description is exactly how they sound after being disconnected from powered for a few days before a few hours of being polarized.

My first close experience with SoundLabs was long ago, when they were distributed in the UK by Audiofreaks and I helped a friend importing a pair of A2's. At that time it was a lot of trouble and expense, we went through many certificates and documents to get them. After a long wait the huge boxes arrived and I helped my friend taking them out and connecting them to his system. I have to say he almost cried when we switched them on. So much money and effort for such anemic, thin, glassy, colored and glued to the panels sound? During that evening we tried everything - cables, amplifiers, sources. Nothing helped. But next day they sounded much better - louder, more detailed, with plenty of depth, and above all, the whole soundstage had left speaker plane. And a few days ago, it was really a great sound.

I went through a similar situation when I changed the panels of my A1's for the new recently arrived non burned in A1 Pxs - but at that time I had previous experience with them and burned in them for a few days with the Purist Audio CD enhancer - a great advice of Albert Porter - before I moved them in my listening room for serious listening.

Anyone going to listen for SoundLabs must be prepared for either some of the best or some of the worst sound in his life - IMHO they are not a medium level performance speaker - they are almost bistable, with no intermediate states.

I can certainly buy that since MLs need 24 hrs to come back after being disconnected. I'm sure that applies to all estats.

Of course all bets are off if they're new and exhibitors bringing brand new gear to the show happens more often than you think.
 

Peter Breuninger

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I would love to hear a great SL setup as I mentioned. Isn't there a guy in NJ, I think his name is Ralph who has a big surround set up?
 

BruceD

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I would love to hear a great SL setup as I mentioned. Isn't there a guy in NJ, I think his name is Ralph who has a big surround set up?

What?--you mean you never once entered Ray Kimber's demos at the shows?--strange I would've thought

BD
 

puroagave

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...Anyone going to listen for SoundLabs must be prepared for either some of the best or some of the worst sound in his life - IMHO they are not a medium level performance speaker - they are almost bistable, with no intermediate states.

I owned A3s for number of years, they're basically slightly smaller A1 but no less easier to drive. the best sound I got were from a pair of krells (ca early '90s). I could never get them to fully develop with tube amps, with the 'right' amp they could sing. the best all-round speaker I ever owned.
 

puroagave

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I would love to hear a great SL setup as I mentioned. Isn't there a guy in NJ, I think his name is Ralph who has a big surround set up?

you have the right amp those kma-400s would be awesome driving a set of SLs. see what you can do, pull some strings and get a review pair :b
 

Peter Breuninger

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They need this much power?

also, (Bruce) I've heard the SLs in the Isomike rooms, but I've never heard them in a well thought out home studio set up. Years ago I heard a pair at Art Tedeshi's in Denver and they were very good on small group jazz.
 

microstrip

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They need this much power?

also, (Bruce) I've heard the SLs in the Isomike rooms, but I've never heard them in a well thought out home studio set up. Years ago I heard a pair at Art Tedeshi's in Denver and they were very good on small group jazz.

Peter,

There were several iterations in the backplates (crossovers) of the SoundLab's with different impedance curves, and the recent PX stators and medium/treble toroid transformer improved sensitivity by a couple of dBs. But the answer is yes, they love power. I used them with Krell MCX750's for some time, bass was really fantastic, great slam and "speed", everything was very defined, but preferred tubes. By far the best match I had with them was the VTL MB750's. Although my preference goes towards tubes, some people preferred the Krell's. Although it is just unconfirmed audio gossip, I was told that Dr. Roger West at some time had them with Krell's. They sound very good on jazz, but if the amplifier has power enough and they "couple" with the room they are also impressive with symphonic music, as they manage to convey the full power of the orchestra dynamics towards the listener.
They can ask for a lot of bass treatments to avoid excess of bass if you are not free to put them in their preferred position in the room and by modern standards they are not the more neutral speakers, they show a vestige of "panel" coloration compared with a XLF or Aida.
 

Peter Breuninger

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Microstrip,

You have piqued my curiosity. Very good write up, thanks.
 

Brian Walsh

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I would love to hear a great SL setup as I mentioned. Isn't there a guy in NJ, I think his name is Ralph who has a big surround set up?

Yes, Ralph Glasgal. But if I were you I wouldn't base my opinion of Sound Labs on his system, which is rather odd to put it mildly.
 

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  • What’s Best Forum is THE forum for high end audio, product reviews, advice and sharing experiences on the best of everything else. This is THE place where audiophiles and audio companies discuss vintage, contemporary and new audio products, music servers, music streamers, computer audio, digital-to-analog converters, turntables, phono stages, cartridges, reel-to-reel tape machines, speakers, headphones and tube and solid-state amplification. Founded in 2010 What’s Best Forum invites intelligent and courteous people of all interests and backgrounds to describe and discuss the best of everything. From beginners to life-long hobbyists to industry professionals, we enjoy learning about new things and meeting new people, and participating in spirited debates.

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