Stereophile | January 2017 Issue

FrantzM said:

Why not?

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Because I haven't heard any cone system do 10 percent of that. I haven't heard any cone system come close to the good horns system or the restored apogee systems I heard. Though if Mike's system is counted cones become the winner. I would still contend that the regular Joe who cannot be a Mike would be better served by a horn or a panel.

Believe High Fidelity said:

As Andromeda pointed out and Bonzo reaffirmed is that most folks opinions based on horn design (especially in the USA) have been of very compromised designs. Honking and colorations just to get compression free sound is a big trade off and one that most people would not want to make.

This is where a proper horn design get little to no love due to the past designs turning so many people off (including me for a time).

However, I have never been closer to the music than through a horn design. But at the level to play in the horn game is VERY expensive largely due to the amount of effort needed (raw materials, lathe or 5 axis machine, big horn, etc). No matter how good a bery, ceramic, or even diamond driver may be it will never as fast or distortion free as a compression driver.

Then if you want a full horn system you need basshorns which you can't just add a robust bass driver and cabinet and get matching low end. Again cost to play it right starts to really add up.

Even with the Aries Cerat Symphonia it doesn't have the last word in bass from a 85k design. Powerful, clean and accurate, but you would be surprised how many people miss the boom they attribute to good bass which is not at all what bass should be. I would love to throw in a good sub, but I would need a bass horn to do it right and they are not cheap. A big room is also the best way to hear them for driver integration which is especially difficult for most

You owe it to yourself to give them another listen, at least to some of the good ones.

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You can get a good match with a sealed servo sub and a horn but ONLY if you position it close and in an approximately time aligned position. Most people put their subs far from the main speakers and this will never integrate properly with a horn. I put mine right next to the right speaker and a bit forward of the speaker.

Mike Lavigne said:

well......when they make a horn or panel that are truly full range and seamless top to bottom (and I mean really frikken seamless at warp 9) then we can consider those approaches. but so far you have to listen 'around' the compromises (dsp?) to consider them.

or 'settle' for where they are really good.

no offense intended.

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No matter how good your big beasts are in other ways they will never be as coherent and "cut from the same cloth" as a full range electrostat like a big soundlab or acoustat. You simply cannot blend all those drivers with crossovers to the same degree that a SINGLE large driver (or multiple exactly the same panels working in parallel). There is always some residual signature when you try to blend so many drivers in so many different chambers...always.

morricab said:

No matter how good your big beasts are in other ways they will never be as coherent and "cut from the same cloth" as a full range electrostat like a big soundlab or acoustat. You simply cannot blend all those drivers with crossovers to the same degree that a SINGLE large driver (or multiple exactly the same panels working in parallel). There is always some residual signature when you try to blend so many drivers in so many different chambers...always.

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'never' 'cannot' 'always'.

if perceptions by humans of reproduced music performance was some completely objective thing then we could possibly speak in absolutes. a + b = c. simple. but it's not so simple and there are not absolutes. and we are left to find the least compromised approach based on individual priorities. and my particular priority is true full range, in a large room, with the least compromise within my means. I think my approach is one effective way to achieve it. and for my priorities, I don't think horns or panels offer as uncompromised a way to go.

I respect that for your personal priorities, that horns do it. enjoy.

YMMV.

I'm open to someday hearing an all horn system do the whole picture for me at the level I'm enjoying or higher. I trust you view dynamic cone speakers in that same light.

morricab said:

No matter how good your big beasts are in other ways they will never be as coherent and "cut from the same cloth" as a full range electrostat like a big soundlab or acoustat. You simply cannot blend all those drivers with crossovers to the same degree that a SINGLE large driver (or multiple exactly the same panels working in parallel). There is always some residual signature when you try to blend so many drivers in so many different chambers...always.

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I too had this opinion till I heard Mike's system, and that is why I don't think his can be taken as representative of other cones. It is right to hold this opinion without hearing his system because unfortunately that's how other cone systems are. And many horns systems too. And it is not all single driver that are coherent either. Yamamura is an exception. Have you heard big Soundlabs?

amirm said:

Hehe . BTW, you should get Mike to hear the Bach organ you played for me sometime. His definition seamless and transparent may change.

Happy holidays Joshua. Will you be at CES?

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20k for around 2k attendance. Nope, never again.

Besides Stavros is supposed to be going to Munich this year with a full system

Well, I'm a shoe in for Munich then
I really need to hear some really good horns, and horns synergy w good tube amps, at something resembling a real world price tag
Heard the Cessaro Gammas at this yrs' show, and they were pretty impressive, but the price...
The Animas on big Traformatic SETs were just fine until AC/DC started playing...
The Vox Olympians just didn't float my boat at all...
The Horns Universum I managed to miss completely...

So Aries Cerat Symphonia horns at Munich I very much look fwd to hearing

Mike Lavigne said:

'never' 'cannot' 'always'.

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Precisely. As I said before on this thread, many audiophiles tend to be quite dogmatic in their opinions.

Another multi-driver speaker with a seamless sound: Magico M Project. If you haven't heard it, you can't judge.

Al M. said:

Precisely. As I said before on this thread, many audiophiles tend to be quite dogmatic in their opinions.

Another multi-driver speaker with a seamless sound: Magico M Project. If you haven't heard it, you can't judge.

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Definitely +1 and agree with all this....seems to be the case in extremes with SOME members of certain 'camps' including tubes, vinyl, panels and horns and the tendency to go out of one's way to make others who don't believe as you do or at least buy the equipment you buy effectively feel bad or that we must be missing something about their systems just because we have all SS, digital front-end, multi-driver systems. Give me a break really,...I also don't have the same religious, political or economic views as many,...nobody's right, nobody's wrong but I'm sure the dogmatic approach would pop up there too!

I have a healthy respect for the best of all types of components including the best panels, horns, tubes, TT, etc.....Just because a speaker is multi-driver does NOT mean it cannot be seamless (NOT an audiophile "made-up word"). For that matter there are panels out there that have multiple sections for bass, mids and highs and those that have one or more panels plus rely on a traditional bass/sub-bass driver/subwoofer to get the job done below a certain frequency; aren't they multi-driver as well???? To end any argument, grab REW, a mic, a mic pre-amp, stand, etc...run a frequency sweep from 16 Hz up to 20 kHz and note any points at which aurally, or via amplitude differences in the wave, the frequency doesn't get conveyed smoothly up from the bass to treble. This is my definition of seamless,..are there drop-outs or radical drops or spikes in amplitude rolling up from bass to treble, etc.., can you hear when things transition abruptly between drivers and other associated questions. With my 7-driver AERIS and its processor that is up for sale, I would have taken on all challengers, I suspect the new TAD R1s are going to be close to that as well save the extension difference in the deepest bass regions as it measures in room flat at 20-21Hz whereas the AERIS went much deeper; the AERIS speaker with processor was not only seamless but in extensive listening by myself and others I respect with great ears (1 cable vendor of SOTA products included), it also imaged like a point source in the room. Try that sweep from 16Hz-20kHz with a panel or horn system and let's compare graphs !!! I dare say Mike L's system not only has the best of RTR and Vinyl but it's seamless over a very broad and much deeper range than many audiophiles would ever have in their homes.

SCAudiophile said:

Definitely +1 and agree with all this....seems to be the case in extremes with SOME members of certain 'camps' including tubes, vinyl, panels and horns and the tendency to go out of one's way to make others who don't believe as you do or at least buy the equipment you buy effectively feel bad or that we must be missing something about their systems just because we have all SS, digital front-end, multi-driver systems. Give me a break really,...I also don't have the same religious, political or economic views as many,...nobody's right, nobody's wrong but I'm sure the dogmatic approach would pop up there too!

I have a healthy respect for the best of all types of components including the best panels, horns, tubes, TT, etc.....Just because a speaker is multi-driver does NOT mean it cannot be seamless (NOT an audiophile "made-up word").

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You say you are not dogmatic but quickly show you are by insisting that the word seamless has technical meaning. Mike didn't show me any evidence that this is an accepted technical term. I have read hundreds of technical journal, books, papers, etc. and don't recall anyone attempting to define and describe speaker as being "seamless." As I mention and you partially state above, this is a feel good term for audiophiles to use to say their system has achieved some kind of perfection.

We have proper technical terms for speaker performance but because we have not studied those, or shun the science behind sound reproduction, we run off with these terms which cannot be verified in any reasonable way. So it becomes a wild west with everyone saying whatever about their own system.

To end any argument, grab REW, a mic, a mic pre-amp, stand, etc...run a frequency sweep from 16 Hz up to 20 kHz and note any points at which aurally, or via amplitude differences in the wave, the frequency doesn't get conveyed smoothly up from the bass to treble. This is my definition of seamless,..are there drop-outs or radical drops or spikes in amplitude rolling up from bass to treble, etc.., can you hear when things transition abruptly between drivers and other associated questions.

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I am confident that by that test every member here will fail to meet this criteria. Room response will generate variations in low frequencies that has nothing to do with the speaker. Above transition frequencies reflections cause huge variations in response. And at any rate, you have two ears and no single microphone can capture what they might be hearing it.

With my 7-driver AERIS and its processor that is up for sale, I would have taken on all challengers, I suspect the new TAD R1s are going to be close to that as well save the extension difference in the deepest bass regions as it measures in room flat at 20-21Hz whereas the AERIS went much deeper; the AERIS speaker with processor was not only seamless but in extensive listening by myself and others I respect with great ears (1 cable vendor of SOTA products included), it also imaged like a point source in the room. Try that sweep from 16Hz-20kHz with a panel or horn system and let's compare graphs !!! I dare say Mike L's system not only has the best of RTR and Vinyl but it's seamless over a very broad and much deeper range than many audiophiles would ever have in their homes.

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You talk about using measurements to determine whether a system is seamless but then declare Mike's system as such without seeing one??? Let's have Mike post that and see if your or his hypothesis is correct.

Meanwhile I did a search for Aeris speaker and this one popped up: http://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/floor-standing/legacy-aeris-floorstanding-speaker-review/



I also searched for TAD but could only find the response of CR1: http://www.stereophile.com/content/...-loudspeaker-measurements#WrkFSVO1GrQ1mc7m.97



Which one is seamless and why?

amirm said:

(...) Which one is seamless and why?

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I do not know and I really do not care. However google finds around 550 occurrences of the word "seamless" in the Theabsolutesound site, around 450 in the Stereophile one and around 300 in the WBF site, all with a similar meaning and used by people who manage to communicate effectively between themselves. I have used it several times with the same meaning others use it - seamless blend between the speaker units, that can show subjectively in different ways. It seems it is good enough for me and many others in high-end forums.

microstrip said:

I do not know and I really do not care. However google finds around 550 occurrences of the word "seamless" in the Theabsolutesound site, around 450 in the Stereophile one and around 300 in the WBF site, all with a similar meaning and used by people who manage to communicate effectively between themselves. I have used it several times with the same meaning others use it - seamless blend between the speaker units, that can show subjectively in different ways. It seems it is good enough for me and many others in high-end forums.

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+1

NorthStar said:

If life was seamless for everyone in the human's history, smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps or spaces between one part and the next, it would be a splendidly cheerful Christmas every single day for the last many billion years since man and woman were invented and deposited on this planet Earth from this galaxy of the universe.

@ Kal, was the BeoLab 90 seamless?

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microstrip said:

I do not know and I really do not care. However google finds around 550 occurrences of the word "seamless" in the Theabsolutesound site, around 450 in the Stereophile one and around 300 in the WBF site, all with a similar meaning and used by people who manage to communicate effectively between themselves. I have used it several times with the same meaning others use it - seamless blend between the speaker units, that can show subjectively in different ways. It seems it is good enough for me and many others in high-end forums.

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Seamless

Seamless

Seamless

...303!

Great replies guys,....agreed on all counts. Besides all those mentions of the word seamless in the various audio publications, there is yet another mention of it in a technical whitepaper entitled "Coaxial Speakers: Separating Facts from Hype" 'Another Frazier Whitepaper' that contributes the following DEFINITION for the word seamless as it pertains to audio speaker design;

Seamless Crossover....
"to make the crossover transition undetectable (inaudible and unmeasurable), not just on axis, but also at all angles..."

'Seams' psorry could not resist) Seems like someone out there in the speaker design world thinks this word exists and has meaning and further is associated with a design goal for audio speakers.
There are many other examples out there of this being a notable concept to people who know a hell of a lot more than I do. It is definitely possible that I have this all wrong and I am reading and
trying to learn from others who are just as wrong or misguided as I could be.

Amir: I respect the rigor with which you go about this and frankly I tend to treat this as (what it is for me) a true hobby/passionate pursuit to listen to great music. i don't claim to know all the answers.
I do virtually 100% of the time write/speak exactly what I mean to convey and tend to choose words carefully. No one's perfect after all and I do 'flub' up frequently, but at least the goal is there . I read
my post before sending and just re-read it. I did not 'insist' anything nor was I dogmatic; specifically I gave what I think of in terms of a definition of seamless for audio. Apologies if it was confusing
and you thought it was a proclamation. You'll note also that there is more than a bit of latitude/tolerance for error in what I wrote, i.e. be careful to allow for reasonable levels of variance, etc...nothing is perfect and no speaker
will every be perfectly flat in measured amplitude at every frequency throughout its spectrum. If I don't 'get' all the academic nuances here forgive me but I am a realist and think that what we hear can
still be perceived (and in fact) be seamless to certain tolerance of error to meet the requirement.

That graph on the AERIS is one I've seen before. Two things should be noted; (1) the tests were conducted with the 'Wavelaunch' processor which is a XILICA pro studio DSP (model 4080 I believe). The
XILICA could easily have been utilized to further improve the performance of the speaker in the room to where that measurement graph would have indicated better performance than even what was shown.

That graph did not show the effects of using Wavelet and its full EQ; would be interesting to see that graph out of the same reviewer as well...

(2) the review noted that the AERIS was the flattest loudspeaker he had ever measured or something to that effect; that's worth noting...

As far as Mike's room and speakers, my gut tells me that we all have something to learn from his system and the MM7 design; I have no vested interest in saying so and could likely find others that fit the same criteria.
All this without seeing a graph because frankly, it's more about what I hear than empirical "stuff"....

Just a rambling mess from an audio-nut...

NorthStar said:

If life was seamless for everyone in the human's history, smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps or spaces between one part and the next, it would be a splendidly cheerful Christmas every single day for the last many billion years since man and woman were invented and deposited on this planet Earth from this galaxy of the universe.

@ Kal, was the BeoLab 90 seamless?

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I'll answer if you tell me what you mean by seamless.

Kal Rubinson said:

I'll answer if you tell me what you mean by seamless.

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Exactly. The word must always be qualified; for example, as in 'seamless frequency response' (linear-to-the-ear), or 'seamless driver integration' (I can't tell from which point certain frequencies emanate), etc.

Mike Lavigne said:

'never' 'cannot' 'always'.

if perceptions by humans of reproduced music performance was some completely objective thing then we could possibly speak in absolutes. a + b = c. simple. but it's not so simple and there are not absolutes. and we are left to find the least compromised approach based on individual priorities. and my particular priority is true full range, in a large room, with the least compromise within my means. I think my approach is one effective way to achieve it. and for my priorities, I don't think horns or panels offer as uncompromised a way to go.

I respect that for your personal priorities, that horns do it. enjoy.

YMMV.

I'm open to someday hearing an all horn system do the whole picture for me at the level I'm enjoying or higher. I trust you view dynamic cone speakers in that same light.

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1) I was only talking about 1 priority, coherence and I was challenging you that there is no way your multi driver speakers are as coherent and seamless as a full range electrostat.

2) I didn't mention horns at all

You set up two strawmen; full range reproduction and horns and basically talked completely around the real point.

Now back to the point; seamless and coherent means that you can never, ever hear that the sounds do not come from a specific driver. Nothing to call out from a cabinet resonance driver breakup etc. Are your speakers truly time coherent? Have you seen the data?