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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?

erik_squires
herbreichert's avatar
herbreichert
34 posts
 

hello closenplay,

I promise I am not being modest. I really and truly do not understand. I asked these exact same questions of Andrew Jones when he was setting up the SourcePoint 10s in Steve Guttenberg's listening room, and his answers plus all your answers and I still don't know what is and WHERE ARE the 'acoustic centers' of the cone and either a dome or a horn-loaded-compression driver tweeter? To the best of my understanding it is a time-domain thing that is not a physical alignment of of the voice coils; but something that must be determined experimentally using some type of wide-band pulses.

As for point sources, I have never encountered one.

As for my Heretic AD614 experiences: they seem extremely coherent and musical.  

They are notable because they use a series-connected Linkwitz-Rielly crossover that is very low-power SET-friendly.  John Atkinson told me that in all his years he had only tested three speakers with series crossovers. 

As for my lifetime of coaxial experiments, I believe coaxial drivers project voices into the room with greater presence. 

That really is all I know.

 

herb

 

   

tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,588 posts
 

herb, if Andrew Jones couldn't explain it to you while setting up a pair of coaxial speakers, I doubt that anyone here can.

closenplay
54 posts
 

tomcy6  +1

lwong
10 posts
 

Love the Kef concentric speakers been using and loving my Blades and Reference 1's. There is something nice about a point source speaker that does it for me.

audioconnection
1,271 posts
 

Erik

((((Your typical 2 or 3 way speaker is neither a point nor a line source. Vandersteen may be time and phase aligned but it’s not a point source.That perfect step response in the Stereophile measurements goes out the window when you stand up. A true point source maintains it's time alignment no matter where you measure it from.))))

Erik

We have sold hundreds of these and this hasn't really been a problem because

very few of our customers critically listen while standing up.

 We simply adjust the vertical tilt for their favorite listening location

  Cheers JohnnyR

 Vandersteen dealer

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