Dunlavy Minimum Phase Mods


Hi Everyone,

Came across an interesting virtual system here on Audiogon. The author claims (and I believe him) to have developed minimum phase crossovers.

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/6692

It is very very rare to get to do an A/B comparison with the same speakers using minimum phase AND traditional crossover design. For instance, I can listen to a Vandersteen or Thiel, and compare them to a B&W, but that's not the same.

I'm curious if anyone has had a chance to hear them and opine as to how important this is to the final experience.

Best,

E
erik_squires

Showing 5 responses by unsound

....It was rumored that many in the business found his regular numerous returns of out of acceptable spec parts annoying.
Before I mislead you, he didn't say that exactly. Though he might(?!) have been implying it. Remember John Dunlavy was much about wave form and ergo time fidelity. In an article in Stereophile he confided that step response was his go to measurement, (I'm paraphrasing here) when the step response is good everything else will fall in place. So, hmmm?, I really don't know.

^While I agree, there is added interest in that the mod was done by an ex DAL employee.

 In one of my last conversations with John Dunlavy he said he was excited by the potential of going forward with digital active cross-overs and individual Class D driver amplification. He did say that the he still waiting for better chips to work with and that the initial offerings would necessitate high development cost that would have to be passed on to the consumer. On the plus side; once that development occurred that it would eventually and progressively cut down on the labor costs. Remember each speaker that Dunlavy made at that time was made with complex cabinets, selected and sorted parts, and each and every speaker hand tuned to model specs. He expected to be able to eventually offer better products at much lower prices.

The original Dunlavy's didn't appear require that much complexity. As for me, I find that at I consistently prefer speakers that are time coherent to those that aren't. YMMV!

Perhaps I'm missing something? Is this just supposed to be an academic exercise? It would appear to me that at great extra complexity and cost one has made what might be marginal improvements over the simpler, less expensive alternative?