Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?
Should say "hype vs. reality" in the headline.
Coaxial speaker design has been around in one way or another for a long time. I often think I’ll be absolutely blown away by them, but in practice traditional vertical layout speakers often have sound as good, or have other features that make them sound better.
Thiel, KEF, Monitor Audio, Tekton, Seas are among the many players attempting such designs, but none has, by the coaxial drivers alone, dominated a segment of the market.
What are your listening experiences? Is it 1 coaxial speaker that won you over, or have you always preferred them?
@johnah5 Funny that you should mention the Hsu coax speaker, the CCB-8. I modified mine with an upgraded, external crossover, better wiring, internal panel damping, and high passed at 80hz, then going to a Audiokinesis subwoofer swarm. Amps are VTV Purifi mono blocks, Benchmark LA4. Remarkable! Serious definition, clarity, soundstage/imaging, dynamics. Here's a wealthy audiophile with a million dollar system that uses his Hsu CCB-8's to blow people away-
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We built our own using same values as the stock x-over, but way-upgraded parts quality- Goertz inductors, V-cap ODAMs and Miflex caps, Path audio resistors, we went nuts- would not fit inside the speaker so we mounted it in outboard box. Also lined the inside panels with "No-Rez". Driver is hard-wired to the x-over. It's amazing, a real diamond in the rough! |
Really big improvement, openness, refinement, clarity, tonal specificity. As I said the inside panels got covered in No-Rez. Removed the binding posts and filled the holes with small rubber grommets and ran the wires through to the crossovers. Placement is six feet out from the front wall, about 22 inches from the side walls, and sharp toe-in, so they cross a couple of feet in front of listening position. So, around 15 degrees off-axis. |
