Efficient speakers -- What was your journey from A to B to ?


This thread is for people who have tried a successive number of efficient speakers and are willing to relate what they learned on the way.

Here's where I am: Recent experiences with speakers and amps has lead me toward lower watt (not ultra low) amps and more sensitive speakers.

I currently am looking for a second pair of speakers to alternate with my Ascends which would play more nicely with my Quicksilver Mono 60s and my Pass XA 25. (If I found the right speakers, I could be willing to look into SET amps, etc. but that is not my quest, now.)

I am open to design -- horns, open baffle, single driver, etc. My budget is flexible but I won't spend tens of thousands. So, some options are likely not possible.

Here are the speakers I am keeping an eye out for, used, but please add to my list! 

Audio Note
Coherent Audio 
Coincident — planar magnetic tweeters
Daedalus
Fyne
Klipsch
legacy
Living Voice 
Omega
Pure Audio Project
spatial
Tannoy
Volti

Again, I'm especially interested in hearing from folks who have tried more than one of these speakers and can explain what lead them from one brand or model to the next -- and why.

Thanks!
 

128x128hilde45

Showing 3 responses by larryi

This is an interesting thread about higher efficiency speakers.  It is indeed the case that most horn systems do not have great time alignment of drivers.  However, if the speaker is designed properly, this in not really much of a problem.  The trick is to have a wide range horn driver so that frequencies from 500 hz on up to around 5,000 hz or slightly higher are handled by the horn driver.  A single driver covering this critical range will make the speaker sound coherent, clear, and the drivers can be made to sound well blended.  As mentioned above, the tricky part is getting a woofer with decent efficiency to match the other high efficiency drivers.  There are woofers that can do this and are fast enough to work up to higher frequencies, but, they do, like all drivers, have their tradeoffs--most have low excursion so they don't do truly deep bass even when they are very large in diameter, most require a fairly large cabinet, and modern versions of such woofers are hard to find.

Also mentioned above is the use of active crossover and powered woofer to mate with the more efficient driver(s).  For example, I like the Cube Audio Nenuphar Basis system that employs their fullrange driver plus a powered woofer; to me it sound more natural and tonally balanced than their fullrange only systems.

I mentioned, and so did others, the Charney Audio speakers.  To be specific, I heard their Companion model with both the Voxativ and AER fullrange driver options (they have others).  I liked both drivers a lot, but, my preference was for the AER driver.  Pure Audio Project speakers are also modular systems with different options for their midrange/high frequency drivers.  I've heard their terrific sounding speakers with both a horn-based module and a coaxial driver; both sounded very good.  I have not heard the much more expensive module utilizing a Voxativ field coil driver, but, I've heard that driver in other systems and really liked its immediate, very dynamic sound.

My very favorite high efficiency speakers are custom systems utilizing new and very vintage drivers made by Deja Vu Audio in Northern Virginia.  This is a retail store that also makes speakers, tube amplifiers (linestages, preamps, phono stages), and even DACs (no longer made for lack of suitable parts).  Their systems typically feature vintage midrange horns and compression drivers matched to modern tweeters and custom woofers (woofers made to their specific requirements).  For some of their very best systems, modern manufactured drivers that are meant to be exact copies of vintage Western Electric drivers are used and their own custom built tube power supplies are used for these field coil drivers.  Right now, their most popular custom speaker utilizes a surprisingly small cabinet to house an 18" woofer (modern, custom design), a modern bullet tweeter, and a terrific sounding Japanese folded horn and compression drivers (probably from the 1960's); this is a scary good system that is a bargain at the $35,000 price they charged.  For my particular taste, I like them much more than contemporary horn systems like JBL Everests, and Klipshorn, Volti, or even the Edgarhorn systems that I've heard.

Charney Audio and Songer Audio make very good high efficiency speakers.  Of the brands already listed above, I also like the Spatial, Pure Audio Project, Volti, and Fyne speakers.  There are even large psnel speakers with powered woofers that qualify and sound quite good (e.g. Arion Acoustic speakers.  

Mapman,

I heard the Goto speakers at the same first Capital Audiofest.  It was indeed a nice sounding horn system, but Goto systems are wildly impractical (giant, straight throated horns) in terms of size and price (more than most people's homes for just the drivers).  Goto and another company ALE make good compression drivers.  Both are companies whose engineers came from Yoshimura Laboratories (YL), a company that was itself dedicated to making drivers to sound like Western Electric compression drivers.  Goto and ALE diverged a bit from YLin that their approach to improving the compression driver meant the driver covered a narrower frequency band.  When it comes to midrange compression drivers, I tend to like older, vintage drivers, like the Western Electric, YL, International Projector Company, and Racon, and the current Japanese company G.I.P. Laboratories which clones Western Electric field coil compression drivers; I don't know of modern compression drivers that perform as well.