Considering the New Tekton Design Encores? AND Owners Group - Experiences/Questions

@brotw

I bought the Impact monitors (3 of them for L/C/R) and loved them... best midrange I’ve ever heard in my house (In this house I’ve had MartinLogan, Maggie 2.6, B&W’s) I placed the L+R on top of my 15" HSU sealed subs... as shown here:

and for 90-95% of music, the combo shined...

but try as I might, I simply couldn’t get the gap between the mains (running full range with my BAT tube preamp, or HighPass crossed over with my Bryston) to blend "perfectly"** with the subs.

** perfectly = not distracting on specific tracks, like "You Look Good to Me" by the Oscar Peterson Trio - the acoustic/upright bass, with bow or plucked, just didn’t sound "as good as it could be" and my visit to Capital Audio fest proved it to me - I asked for that song on any system taking requests. Granted, for $2200 the Impact Monitors are awesome. And if you already have subs a total no brainer, espcially if you listen to only Rock, EDM, etc. But if acoustic bass is on the menu.... you may end up doing what I did or just go straight to "step 2"

I called up Eric Alexander at Tekton and told him what I wrote above and that I wanted to upgrade to a floor stander, but my 7’ height meant many of the full towers were out for me...

Well, turns out he had a pet project (which he may offer as a retail model) called a "Half Ulfberht" kinda half of one of these, but instead of an MTM tweeter array it’s a 7 ring like the monitors I loved. Sold. my basement listening room now looks like this:

And I am not bothering with bi-amping, the Buckeye Amps (Purifi based) class-D monoblocks I run are so good on their own, especially when fed by the tube powered Balanced Audio Technology pre-amp (I love my Bryston, but the BAT is even sweeter) but these came with 4 binding posts for bi-wiring, you can ask for bi-amping at time of checkout. Better yet, email them and ask for a callback from Eric, explain your needs - he’s been super responsive with many of us.

PS: I just looked up the Encore monitors... $3990... my Half Ulfberht’s were < $1000 more that those monitors. What you give up with this "half size" configuration vs. the "real/full Ulfberht" I linked to above: (1) sensitivity goes down by 3 (still 95-96dB @ 1w) and resistance goes from 4 to 8ohms, (2) power handling goes from 1kw to 500w.

PPS: and my subs?  yeah, still connected, but instead of @ 80hz, they take over only < 30hz and only seem to help on EDM/movies at this point. The bass from the Ulfberhts is quite good on their own. 

Your half Ulf looks good I bet they sound good.Erik know what he is doing.

@h4k4lugi 

Thank you for sharing your setup and experiences. The half Ulfberhts are a clever solution.

Fast acoustic bass is definitely a priority. I wonder if room correction would do you any favors blending the subs with monitors. Room correction had a huge positive impact on my sound even after noticeable improvements from room treatments.

Did you notice any loss of planar type sound with fewer tweeters on the half Ulfbehrts?

My guess is the full size encores would be hard to beat. Once again, I'll likely forego the 300B SET for either 805 SET Chifi or tube pre/SS class A. When the will to spend more arrives, then add subs and digital xovers.

GR Research's open baffle subs for faster bass and less room mode challenges might fit the bill. Eric at Tekton is moving that direction as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see an open baffle version of the 1812. No more box sound, fast bass and low mass transducers! A Tekton version of Spatial Audio speakers.

@jayctoy Thank you. My Impact Monitors were flat black (including the Center channel I kept) but the gloss gray on these towers is nicer.

@brotw 

1) room correction.  Yes, I ran REW pre and post the room treatments you see pictured.  My room is about 13' 4" wide and 6'11" tall and 24-28' deep (non flat back wall) which produces these room nodes (below is without EQ but with room treatments):

So in Roon, I run 3 very narrow_Q EQ bands at -6 to -8db cutting at those peak freq's.  The nice thing about Roon EQ/filters is with the swipe of a soft-switch you can A/B your music in real time.   The biggest differences are in the 45 and 95hz cuts, the decay went from 900ms to < 200 with the EQ and the GIK corner traps (I don't have those waterfall graphs on this PC)

So the 'overhang' and 'ring' got much much better with targetted EQ, but the "gap" (not in volume, but maybe in tone/phase? not sure) between the monitor's 6.5" drivers and the 15" HSUs I couldn't reconcile.

Eric said his subs sound fantastic with the impact monitors - and I believe him - but I already have two subs, which aren't terrible (the HSU ULS-15) so I didn't want more subs. And if you are in the market for multiple subs (for their benefits) 2 of these: https://tektondesign.com/product/subwoofers/2-10-sub/#color cost the same as a single basic sub at most places)

Time allowing this week, I'll re-run REW with these Half Ulfberhts and see how they compare vs. the monitor+sub tested before.

oh, about: "Did you notice any loss of planar type sound with fewer tweeters on the half Ulfbehrts?"

Can't say, I've never heard the full Ulfbehtrs (or Moab or Encore) or anything with the 7+1+7 setup.  The monitors have the 6+1 ring, and I love that setup.  As I stated above, I had ML's and full size Maggies in this very same room, with these subs even, and the Tekton midrange is just awesomely fast and transparent, but more dynamics.

BTW not sure if this voluminous thread has linked to the AVS forum post of someone figuring the tweeter ring crossover, but it's very interesting.... 

We all 'know' only the center tweeter is a true tweeter and the 
"6 round the ring" go lower (much lower, to cover the 440hz (?) string of a violin per one of Eric's youtube videos), but the AVS deconstruction noted that the left and right 2 of the 7 go lowest and the top/bottom ones (above and below the center one) go a bit higher in freq - so the high-midrange appears to be a line array by the middle 3 vertical tweeters. and below that in freq, all 7 join in (ie: the 2 left flanking and 2 right flanking also participate).  a super elegant way to get around the comb filtering assumed by "yOu h4vE sEVen tWeEters??!!??" people.