Speaker porn

The original 801s aren't good looking by any stretch of imagination, but...... they are ones I regret selling the most. They sounded pretty good but that's not the reason why. The wood.

My pair had the most beautiful wood finish I have ever seen. The color, wood grain texture and even smell were absolutely astonishing. They reminded me of fire, where I can watch it for hours except this one I could touch. My pair even looked like it was on fire, similar to the one pictured below but better.

All the wood finishes I have seen since were more "refined", contemporary with more layers of probably more advanced lacquer coatings. Definitely more durable but somehow making wood look less "alive" and more synthetic, while that old pair of B&W felt like its wood could breath.

You could feel the grain but it wasn't too deep and rough, it was just perfect. I even bought special oil to rub it with just to give myself excuse to touch it more often .







Volti is the only one I know of to come close and these actually sound pretty good too:

 

Wondering what frequency was used to rub them the right way? ;-)

 

Was it done with long repetitious strokes with a flourish for a finish.

 

These were some fun speakers! And they sounded fantastic.

 

Spatial Audio Hologram M3



These caught my eye because I thought they were pretty. Then I noticed the drivers. These are unusual.
Type: 2-way, point source, open-baffle, dynamic driver, controlled directivity
Driver compliment: Two 15 inch mid/woofers, one wide bandwidth compression driver

http://www.spatialaudio.us/hologram-m3/

 

Those Spatials are very cool looking and their design sounds interesting as well. Anyone heard them? Cheers

 

Looks somewhat like an Emerald Physics, which had severe coherency issues IMO, but this is a different brand and hopefully they executed much better.

 

THIEL TM3 Bookshelf Speaker

 

The spatial guy did a lot of the original emerald physics speaker designs but I think mark schifter did the most recent models

 

I kinda dig this retro aesthetic...




Studio Electric Monitor w/Deco Grill

 

If you add some gold trim, it has a WH40K feel to it actually.

 

Very speaker-pornographic! Almost phalic!

 

I've heard them in an audio show, they were driven by a JOB Integrated + DAC feed from Audiobyte Hydra-Z transport. IIRC they sounded like an unmodded HD800, good dynamics, quite resolving, but had a dry midrange followed by a sharp peak in higher midrange / lower treble region. Imaging was good, but they had narrow sweet spot (off-axis audition was unbearably bright and sibilance). Listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Karajan,1972) was decent until the violins came up. Maybe it was due to the room, the front-end, or both ? The setup was like this

 

Hard to mess up the upper midrange with room, unless we're talking about sidewall reflections.

It's tricky to mate a 15" with a compression driver, because you're asking from both of them to play out of their comfort zone. A 15" will start beaming at 900Hz, that's physics and you can't really do much about it. Now, then there's the compression horn - you'd be asking it to reproduce 900-20 000Hz which is a very tall order. To go that low you need a large diaphragm driver which will naturally be challenged at higher frequencies. Usually most metal compression drivers will have nasty breakups in audible frequencies. You either do some coating magic to increase cone stiffness (without increasing weight) or engage in filtering gymnastics.

You'd need to be a very proficient designer to be able to dodge both bullets. It's an interesting design, but there are safer roads to the same destination.

Credit: I use 12" + 1.5" compression horn speakers. Took a lot of work to make them enjoyable.

 

Anybody heard the Voxativ speakers?

 

Those Voxativ Ampeggio Due look impressive, and would love to hear them.

However, for some reason their shape immediately made me think about the card-soldiers from Alice in Wonderland...

 

I hope they reconsider their house sound with the new ownership/design/manufacturing reboot - old Thiels were facemelters.

 

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Surely that is some sort of military aircraft detection system, cunningly disguised as hifi?


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