Evolution Acoustics MM7 thoughts and impressions

Mike Lavigne

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this thread is a continuation of another thread started on the darTZeel forum, which morphed into an MM7 discussion. i'm answering a question from Lloydelee21.

the previous thread;
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...ower-amplifier&p=100686&viewfull=1#post100686

Hi Mike

While i have never heard the MM3s, i am curious as to how you compare the MM7 v MM3? The MM7 is certainly 'a lot more speaker'...and i have heard nothing but good things about the MM3. Thanks for any initial impressions.

hi Lloyd,

i only listened to the MM7's for about 90 minutes. there was a set of MM3's there too which i listened to. Kevin was using the same dart amp and preamp and the same cables i use, so it was quite familiar although a completely different room and the source was redbook from a server thru an unfamiliar dac. the 'final' crossover for the MM7 was spread across the floor in front of the speaker; although the final production crossover will have upgraded parts and be more solidly installed. so if anything the production MM7 will sound better.

the MM3's are overall really as good a speaker as i have heard. i've been living with them for 5+ years.

my earlier posts on the other thread get into my feelings based on this first impression. and it's just mostly that the MM7's take what the MM3's do and take everything to another level. until i heard the MM7 i would have never associated the sound of the MM3 with the word distortion. no different than how the Telos tonearm exposes other tonearms as distorted. or how master tape reveals distortion in other media. until you hear the musical message through a transducer with less distortion, you cannot assign distortion to your current reference. it's a humbling experience having one's reference blown up.

and it's like that on every sonic item on the list.

better, much more involved crossover. more clarity, more naturalness. more musical involvement.

mid range driver only needs to go down to 500hz instead of 100hz. 4 woofers added per side. more linearity. mid-bass<->deep bass transition is more seamless, more dynamic and complete. more driver surface area reduces distortion.

double the subwoofer drivers, double the power, more adjustability, subs only cover below 50hz. must hear to appreciate dynamic effortlessness and deep bass linerarity.

awesome speaker......which does not change how great the MM3 is.
 

LL21

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Wow! Great description. Thanks, Mike. I am no speaker designer, but apples to apples with the same designer, i have to imagine taking the mids down to only 500hz can be very helpful. 4 woofers...say no more...effortlessness across all the cones. And given the MM3's reputation for seamlessness, 'nuff said. Enjoy!!! Look forward to reading more about this in July...;)
 

LL21

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http://www.evolutionacoustics.com/loudspeakers/mmseven/

does this mean it is an MM3 where they have added the separate 4-cone tower subs and reworked the crossover in the MM3? are you buying the MM7 all new, or rebuilding your MM3/upgrading your MM3 to an MM7 (where the MM3 i believe is modular and can be built up from mm1, mm2 into mm3)?
 

Mike Lavigne

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http://www.evolutionacoustics.com/loudspeakers/mmseven/

does this mean it is an MM3 where they have added the separate 4-cone tower subs and reworked the crossover in the MM3? are you buying the MM7 all new, or rebuilding your MM3/upgrading your MM3 to an MM7 (where the MM3 i believe is modular and can be built up from mm1, mm2 into mm3)?

it means my MM3's are for sale, along with any other non-essential piece of gear i have.:) such as my Ampex ATR-102, my Nagra T, Nagra IV-S, a few sets of cables, my A90, and anything else i can sell to keep the wife relatively happy. i guess i'm no longer a RTR deck collector.......

no; the MM7's are not an upgraded MM3. there are common components. but the crossover is radically different, and the 4 woofers per side of the main towers are not used at all on the MM3. whether it is possible to use pieces of the MM3 to build an MM7 i have no idea, but i very much doubt it.
 

mep

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Wow! Great description. Thanks, Mike. I am no speaker designer, but apples to apples with the same designer, i have to imagine taking the mids down to only 500hz can be very helpful.

I’m not so sure about that and would like JTinn to pipe in here. Given that the combined frequency range of the human voice (male and female) is considered to lie between 80 Hz and 1200 Hz, having your midrange cross over to the bass at 500 Hz means almost 3 octaves of the human voice are going to be handed off to another driver besides the midrange and you are now splitting the voice among two different types of drivers. How seamless will that be?
 

Mike Lavigne

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I’m not so sure about that and would like JTinn to pipe in here. Given that the combined frequency range of the human voice (male and female) is considered to lie between 80 Hz and 1200 Hz, having your midrange cross over to the bass at 500 Hz means almost 3 octaves of the human voice are going to be handed off to another driver besides the midrange and you are now splitting the voice among two different types of drivers. How seamless will that be?

to be clear, i'm not exactly sure where the woofer and mid-range cross over.....i think it's around 500hz.

it does not matter where you cross it over, it matters how well you execute that crossover and the performance of the drivers. and looking at the graph of the whole frequency spectrom, and then hearing the speaker, it is very well executed. you have -4- 11" ceramic matrix woofers per side. with all that cone area, no driver needs much excursion, therefore your precision is extrordinary, it's an easy load for your amp, and distortion is vanishing. you can match the precision of the ceramic mid-range....and you end up with a completely seamless and alive mid-bass to deep bass transition.
 

mep

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Mike-I disagree that it doesn’t matter where you set your crossover points. Most speaker designers try and keep crossovers out of the human voice range as much as possible. If 500 Hz is the correct crossover point to the bass driver, over 3 octaves of the human voice will actually be handled by the bass driver. Besides an electrostatic speaker or a planar magnetic, you are probably never going to get 80 Hz to 1200 Hz out of a cone/dome midrange driver, but you certainly don’t have to crossover the midrange driver so that more octaves of the human voice are going to the bass driver than what the midrange driver is covering. And if you really are crossing over at 500 Hz to the midrange, that means that just slightly more than one octave of the human voice will be covered by the midrange driver.
 

rbbert

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Mike-I disagree that it doesn’t matter where you set your crossover points. Most speaker designers try and keep crossovers out of the human voice range as much as possible. If 500 Hz is the correct crossover point to the bass driver, over 3 octaves of the human voice will actually be handled by the bass driver. Besides an electrostatic speaker or a planar magnetic, you are probably never going to get 80 Hz to 1200 Hz out of a cone/dome midrange driver, but you certainly don’t have to crossover the midrange driver so that more octaves of the human voice are going to the bass driver than what the midrange driver is covering. And if you really are crossing over at 500 Hz to the midrange, that means that just slightly more than one octave of the human voice will be covered by the midrange driver.

I have always subscribed to this belief. Like so many things, though, the implementation may matter more than the theory; I just don't know.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Mike-I disagree that it doesn’t matter where you set your crossover points. Most speaker designers try and keep crossovers out of the human voice range as much as possible. If 500 Hz is the correct crossover point to the bass driver, over 3 octaves of the human voice will actually be handled by the bass driver. Besides an electrostatic speaker or a planar magnetic, you are probably never going to get 80 Hz to 1200 Hz out of a cone/dome midrange driver, but you certainly don’t have to crossover the midrange driver so that more octaves of the human voice are going to the bass driver than what the midrange driver is covering. And if you really are crossing over at 500 Hz to the midrange, that means that just slightly more than one octave of the human voice will be covered by the midrange driver.

Kevin has personally designed many speakers; including the Von Schweikert VR11, VR9SE, VR7SE, VR5SE and all the Evolution Acoustics speakers. none of those are said to be muddy in the mid-bass....or lacking clarity for vocals. you question the theory of the design, and i respect that on some level you may have a point. however, this very thing you are talking about is the thing that these speakers absolutely hit a homerun on, and that is an astonishing clarity and seamlessness.

so there we are.....
 

mep

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Mike-maybe the midrange is really not crossed over at 500 Hz to a bass driver. It just seems odd.
 

LL21

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Although the absolute full range theoreteically is wide, i understand the voiced speech of a typical adult male will have a fundamental frequency from 85 to 180 Hz, and that of a typical adult female from 165 to 255 Hz. The fundamental frequency of most speech falls below the bottom of the "voice frequency" band as defined above. I am no speaker designer, but perhaps this helps?
 

mep

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Loydd-The FR you have stated above are not accurate for either a male or female singing. You copied what Wikipedia stated for male and female voices talking.
 

jtinn

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I’m not so sure about that and would like JTinn to pipe in here. Given that the combined frequency range of the human voice (male and female) is considered to lie between 80 Hz and 1200 Hz, having your midrange cross over to the bass at 500 Hz means almost 3 octaves of the human voice are going to be handed off to another driver besides the midrange and you are now splitting the voice among two different types of drivers. How seamless will that be?

All I can say is you need to listen and answer the question for yourself.
 

jtinn

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Perhaps it would be a good idea to get the actual specification for the crossover point before we lambast the design...

Lee

Lee, good point, but it for this very reason I never post our crossover points. The only thing that matters is how it sounds. People can speculate all they want, but there is no way they can tell you how it sounds by reading specs.
 

RBFC

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Lee, good point, but it for this very reason I never post our crossover points. The only thing that matters is how it sounds. People can speculate all they want, but there is no way they can tell you how it sounds by reading specs.

Agreed about the sound and implementation of the crossover. I felt that much discussion, mostly negative, was premature since only Mike had actually heard the speaker.

Lee
 

Mike Lavigne

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Agreed about the sound and implementation of the crossover. I felt that much discussion, mostly negative, was premature since only Mike had actually heard the speaker.

Lee

agree.

and since these will unlikely to ever be at a show, very few people will ever get to hear them.
 

LL21

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Loydd-The FR you have stated above are not accurate for either a male or female singing. You copied what Wikipedia stated for male and female voices talking.

Got it...thanks. In any event, would love to hear the Evolution Acoustics someday. the test is in the hearing.
 

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