What speaker gets the bass most right?

Kal Rubinson said:

Well, mine were not subs but the low end of an integrated 4way system that began as an IMF TLS80 clone which was informed by the Wireless World articles of Siegfried Linkwitz.

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Was that when Bud was bringing IMF into the US?

Bud was a very interesting man with some very strong opinions. It had to be first order series crossovers with TL bass. In reallity, very few of Bud's speakers had what I call true transmisson line loading. He was using some type of quasi-transmission lines. Building a true transmission line is much more complex and expensive than building a six-sided box. They tend to be very big and very heavy. However, given today's speakers that weigh over 300 lbs per channel, it's all relative.

MylesBAstor said:

Was that when Bud was bringing IMF into the US?

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Yes but I mostly was in contact with John Wright in England because I had corresponded with him earlier about the A+D arm. Bud was, indeed, an entertaining guy and I visited him twice in PA but he wasn't as home-constructor-friendly as John was.

A friend of mine resurrected an HQD system of a common friend's dad a couple of years ago. It does has its faults but I have to say it can still sound extremely beautiful. Amps are all vintage Quad IIs and Eicos.

I had the chance to listen to IRS IIIs and the owner was playing track 7 of Paramita so loud I had to leave the room in fear for my hearing. Jadis as well as Mullard88 were there too. Yes, the bass was extraordinary.

MylesBAstor said:

Do you think you'd have the same feeling about the HQD system if you heard it today? Sometimes we look at things with rose colored glasses and if we heard it today, me thinks that it might sound horribly colored and non-linear

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I was only referring to the bass, that was excellent.

But you have a valid point on the whole system. My friend had big trouble assembling it, but he was never pleased with it - great bass, great medium and great treble, but poor integration between the sections. It could not play complex music, only simple acoustical pieces with a few instruments. When he got everything working, he sold it ... I was lucky as I got the ESL57!

mep said:

Bud was a very interesting man with some very strong opinions. It had to be first order series crossovers with TL bass. In reallity, very few of Bud's speakers had what I call true transmisson line loading. He was using some type of quasi-transmission lines. Building a true transmission line is much more complex and expensive than building a six-sided box. They tend to be very big and very heavy. However, given today's speakers that weigh over 300 lbs per channel, it's all relative.

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That's an understatement. Did you ever get Bud's three question quiz?

JackD201 said:

A friend of mine resurrected an HQD system of a common friend's dad a couple of years ago. It does has its faults but I have to say it can still sound extremely beautiful. Amps are all vintage Quad IIs and Eicos.

I had the chance to listen to IRS IIIs and the owner was playing track 7 of Paramita so loud I had to leave the room in fear for my hearing. Jadis as well as Mullard88 were there too. Yes, the bass was extraordinary.

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Yes, dynamics was something Arnie valued. Remember several years ago getting to hear Arnie's Gen 1s at Lyric being driven by the big Jadis. I had to leave the room to save my hearing too

Kal Rubinson said:

Yes but I mostly was in contact with John Wright in England because I had corresponded with him earlier about the A+D arm. Bud was, indeed, an entertaining guy and I visited him twice in PA but he wasn't as home-constructor-friendly as John was.

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A+D arm?

MylesBAstor said:

A+D arm?

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Audio+Design was the more elegant predecessor of the KMAL arm.

I heard an HQD system, modified from the original, perhaps 10 years after the first. I had grown some in my breadth of experience in the interim, and had personally switched from Infinity QLS to Magnepan. IIRC, setting up the HQD was a huge PITA, requiring testing and alignment rarely done then, and the sweet spot was actually fairly small despite the size of the system. The modified version I heard used stacked Quads and numerous Decca tweeters to provide a better sound stage, and additional 12" drivers to better fill the region between the big Hartley's upper end and the Quad's lower range. In the end, despite the incredible overall effect, I felt the sound from other, smaller speakers was actually better, and the measured impulse response confirmed the HQD's difficulty in providing a seamless blend top to bottom. I must note the first version I heard was in a much larger, dedicated sound room, and acoustic engineering probably played a part in that system's sound; the second system was in a smaller room -- too small, perhaps.

Around then (early 80s, I think) I first heard B&W 801's, and saw some of the R&D that went into their designs (they were showing off their new laser interferometry system used to view cone modes and breakup, among other things). Speakers like Dayton Wright, Magnepan, the new Quads, Beveridge etc. were around and I felt they generally sounded better and were much easier to set up (and drive) than the HQD despite it's impressive components.

FWIWFM - Don

The concept of "bass" seems to be one that for audiophiles is like that "huge fish that got away" with weekend fishermen--the talk of incredible bass extention and pants-flapping, etc., seems inflated to me, because clothing flapping doesn't start to happen until almost 150dB SPL at frequencies BELOW 20Hz. Many audiophiles seem to be impressed when they can reach full orchestral levels. I've seen a lot of commercial subs. I've seen a few home brew systems too. And I've auditioned a few large pipe organs. None of them gave me the terrifying sense of 'end of the world' that I was looking for. Of course, not necessary for music, but music isn't the only thing I do with audio. I record a fair amount of pyrotechnics and other natural and man-made hyper-sonic sound sources. So needing 150dB at subsonic frequencies becomes a necessity of accurate reproduction of certain of these recordings.
I've been on a thirty-year mission to find the ultimate bass, but the obsession grew into a sickness of extremity in the last decade. In 2006, I discovered the Bassmaxx ZR18 drivers. Thinking in customary terms, I assumed these would be an evolutionary improvement over previous LF drivers I had been using. I foolishly bought four of them, thinking that would be 'adequate'. When I received them, and started free-air testing, I observed construction more akin to a D-9 Caterpillar Bulldozer than a woofer. The air pistons are a rigid RohaCell (kevlar, fiberglass honeycomb, 1/4" thick, weighing 300gms). The motor assembly is a 5 horsepower, neodymium-powered, high efficiency drive with over 3" of linear travel. Putting these into cabinets that utilize aspects of Hemholtz resonator physics, with a 1/4" of travel, these cabinets are producing 133dB @16Hz with very little input power. Most people can't take it when I play something with very deep bass and start pushing the volume up a little beyond background levels. It's funny to see a big, strong, man, with a look of abject terror on his face as he darts out of the room. And the shame of it was that I didn't get the volume up to what I call 'demo' level. I was just warming up. When I'm listening to pop or disco 'music', the SPL in the lower frequencies is around 129dB when the 'signal present' LEDs on my QSC power amps begin to flicker on peaks. Most people start to run and hide when I hit 119dB on a demo. Even war veterans who've seen combat duty can't take it. I'll admit it's taken me some practice to tolerate it. At low frequencies, it becomes hard to breath. My friends complain of chest pain, difficulty breathing (when playing the organ pedal tone at the intro to Also Sprach Zarathustra) and some just say "enough!" as I begin to ramp up the volume. Usually about when it starts "snowing" in here (ceiling starts grinding itself into dust and dropping billions of pieces onto us. I literally have to clean the room after a session, because dust has fallen everywhere. And you know it's bad when I am alone, because I took a walk with a sound level meter one evening on June 30, 2006, and measured 97dB SPL, 1/4 mile down the road, when the lower (24Hz) bass note was played in a certain Korean pop tune I was using for demo material. That was through concrete walls and through the ground itself, which could be felt vibrating outside the house. I haven't been able to demo that for anyone in person because everyone says "enough!" before I really get going.
There is bass, and there is destruction.

Mark (Basspig) Weiss said:

There is bass, and there is destruction.

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Indeed Mark, and nobody knows that better than you!

--Ethan

Keeping the thread on track , I believe the question was not how to produce the best bass but rather, which full-range speakers have the best bass. The discussion is not around subs or general bass reproduction.

amirm said:

Keeping the thread on track , I believe the question was not how to produce the best bass but rather, which full-range speakers have the best bass. The discussion is not around subs or general bass reproduction.

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maybe we need a thread that asks whether your bass reference is a live acoustical instrument, a movie soundtrack, or destruction of some sort---only pick one!

I was in this situation a while back. My WP7/WATCH just wasn't cutting the mustard to what I was having to work with. I started mastering for FIM and as you know, Winston like dynamics. One week I'm faced with having to reproduce the impact of a very large Chinese bass drum. The next week I had to reproduce the authenticiy of a volano eruption. Go figure.. I went to several Chinese performances where the bass drum was prominent. I struggled to recreate that in my room. I knew that I needed to move a lot of air and very quickly. Also volcano eruptions have 8-10Hz content. The only speakers I've had in my room that can realistically reproduce those demanding items are the Evolutions. I took a couple of the discs that I mastered with sub drops, volcanos and drums around to the last RMAF and CES. There were only 2 speakers that I though did a good job. Unfortunately they had over 600 w/p/c pushing them. They got the bass right... but nothing else.

Bruce B said:

I took a couple of the discs that I mastered with sub drops, volcanos and drums around to the last RMAF and CES. There were only 2 speakers that I though did a good job. Unfortunately they had over 600 w/p/c pushing them. They got the bass right... but nothing else.

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Why is it unfortunate that these speakers had 600 w/p/c pushing them?

Your speakers have 1000 w/p/c pushing the woofers, does that make them very unfortunate?

devert said:

Why is it unfortunate that these speakers had 600 w/p/c pushing them?

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Extra cost. I only have 100 w/p/c amps

MylesBAstor said:

Yes, dynamics was something Arnie valued. Remember several years ago getting to hear Arnie's Gen 1s at Lyric being driven by the big Jadis. I had to leave the room to save my hearing too

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Yep, Arnie loved dynamics and bass - but mostly of the Mahler orchestral sort. Once, we had a demo with the Genesis 201's and I was playing Deep Purple loud - he had to leave the room because he complained that I was hurting his ears. His major complaint was that for rock, you only really need 28Hz, just plenty of it.

Most of the large Genesis models from the Series 3 to the Series 1 will plumb the depths to below 20Hz. The servo-control drives the woofers to constant acceleration for low distortion. I was first inspired to own a pair of Genesis after listening to an IRS V in Malaysia. Then, a pair of Gen-I in Singapore.

Now, I'm going nuts and a little overboard with the latest Genesis 1.2 - twenty-four 12-in woofers (4-times the IRS V), nearly 9000W of servo-controlled bass amplification. You'll still have to supply the amplification for the midrange and tweeters.

If you can call a four tower system a full-range loudspeaker, IMHO the Genesis 1.2's have the most accurate bass, but need a huge amount of space to get it going right.