Well they may be hyped, but they do look pretty interesting Erik. And unaffordable.
Extremely hyped omni directionals introduced Munich 2018
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The SB Acoustics Satori series drivers are sensational in a traditional speaker build... Not sure I’d enjoy them firing into a glamorized sewage pipe? Omnidirectional designs date back to the 1960’s and I’ve heard my share. They are fun like a moped until you ride it in the bicycle lane then quickly realize you should have purchased a motorcycle instead. |
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Interesting. I’ve seen a few pictures and video of those beasts and they certainly seem intriguing. Though being an MBL fan, I'm not sure I’m seeing anything very novel in this design. Unless I misunderstood that link, it seems to operate via a driver that flexes in a way similar to the MBL drivers. But MBL is able to do it through most frequencies, so MBL strikes me as well ahead of this design. (Again, I certainly may have missed something important). |
In terms of using plumbing for speakers, I think the venerable Seigfreid Linkwitz has everyone beat with his LX mini: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/Store/LXmini.htm |
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Well they sound kinda okay on YouTube ;0)~ Not sure about the WAF on these especially if your significant other finds out you spent over $45K on these? Seems like they just use production SB Acoustic Satori series mid-woofers in a sealed C-Clamp type design with a tweeter housed in the black spacer between driver baskets. It will be interesting to see if at USA shows they will allow playing listeners music or just demonstrate with their own? |
@erik_squires - looking at them, I think the two drivers firing into the tubes work in a similar fashion to current Ohm Walsh designs. Except for the deepest bass, the sound radiates into the room off the back of the speaker cone, the part exposed in this design, using the bending wave principle. This design has limited treble extension, so it is usually augmented. In the Ohm Walshes with a conventional dome tweeter, and here, it seems, with a flexing tube, along the lines of MBL. My concern, if I were looking for a true omni, would be the blocking of the rearward soundwaves by the tube. MBLs, Ohm, German Physiks all are designed to allow at least some of the sound to launch straight behind the omni driver. It would seem this design precludes that to some degree. As with any type of speaker design, the implementation is where it will succeed or fail. The design type itself is secondary. |
@bondmanp I think you are quite possibly right in most respects, that is, that the back of the drivers are being used, and the front are feeding into the tube which is then either an acoustic suspension of tapered transmission line. However, the "bending wave" principle of the Ohms was a little different. At least on paper. :) They claimed the drivers deliberately did NOT work like pistons at all. The SB acoustics drivers certainly do. |
<!-- Dear All,
I have been monitoring this thread for quite a while and thought you wouldn’t mind if I chimed in as the owner of BAYZ Audio, and the designer of the Courante™. Thank you very much for all of your past and future comments, regardless of good or skeptic. I can and am willing to learn from customers’ feedback.
First and foremost, @bondmanp you were 100% right, when you wrote: “As with any type of speaker design, the implementation is where it will succeed or fail. The design type itself is secondary”. Indeed, when I started working on the Courante™, I started the process with listing the design criteria from my 30+ years trials and errors experience in developing high end audio equipment, primarily omnidirectional speakers. I have had a number of iterations until I reached the current shape of the Courante™. Each iteration checked another requirement on my design criteria, until I settled with the current shape, as @audiobugged call it a “glamorized sewage pipe”. 😊 So again, the “C” shape, among many other features contributes to the performance and spatial sound reproduction of the Courante™. I understand there is no design that would satisfy everybody’s taste. As @eric_squires, the originator of this thread, stated: “I would never allow such a privacy invading product to my house. I barely tolerate a Nest thermostat”. I would like to challenge you, please come and take a listen to the Courante™, maybe the unique experience of the spatial sound reproduction in all frequency ranges will change your mind.
At the AISE 2018 Januar in Las Vegas, I have demonstrated the concept in a very rudimentary way. I built a pair of speakers in a cheap- wooden box and placed an earlier version of the BAY Radial Speaker (BRS) atop of it. As you can imagine, this demo unit didn’t check all the boxes on my original design criteria but was good enough to get the first feedback on US soil 6,060 miles away from my lab. One of the reviewers was the highly respected Brent Butterworth, Senior Contributor of SoundStage! He wrote: “The Craziest (and Maybe Best) Speaker in Vegas this Week… to my ears, the demo was even better than I’d been told. Most stunning was that the stereo image was focused, yet the sound was among the least sweet-spotty I’d ever heard from a stereo system.” https://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php/shows-events/ces-2018-las-vegas-usa/741-aise-2018-the-craziest-and-maybe-best-speaker-in-vegas-this-week
Back to another comment from @audiobugged: “It will be interesting to see if at USA shows they will allow playing listeners’ music or just demonstrate with their own.” I have a carefully selected set of demo music representing most genres. Of course, these demos are of high quality. However, I am so confident in the sound reproduction of the Courante™, that I am extending an invite to bring your own music to room 674 at AXPONA 2019 in Chicago, where I will be auditioning it. Just for your information, I have offered 30 days no questions asked full refund for my first customers, and not one pair has been returned! For me it means, that the speakers work well with customers own music.
Now a few words about the Courante’s components. One of the revolutionary technologies of the Courante™ is the Bay Radial Speaker (BRS) that is patented in US, Europe, Japan, China, and in India. There is light, vertical cylinder behind the parabolic grill cloth. The cylinder expand making the driver fully omni-directional over 20 kHz; it is NOT a monopole, nor a dipole. Its ultra-quick which is why the difficult piano harmonics are excellent: the driver decays and settles quickly allowing subtle details to emerge. The speaker is quite capable of much more demanding music with bass response in the 20-30 Hz range and capable of steady state 114 dB. Let me share with you a testimonial from Dan Foley. For those few of you who don’t know Dan, he is the President of the Association of Loudspeaker Manufacturing and Acoustics (ALMA) International; Published author of the Audio Engineering Society; and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); among other titles. Dan wrote: “… The Bay Radial Speaker tweeter is among the best I have ever heard, and it may be very well be the best in the world today…”. You really have to come listen to the Courante™ to believe it. You can see his testimonial here: http://www.bayz-audio.eu/#products
The woofers are based on the already legendary Satori with Egyptian papyrus cones. The BAYZ Audio version is modified for faster transient response to match the hyper fast BRS tweeter; the modifications are proprietary and manufactured exclusively to my order by SB Acoustics. As a matter of fact, all critical components of the Courante™ are separately patented. Tokyo Audio Show 2018 in Zephyrn room:
Please visit my website at www.bayz-audio.eu/ or see you in person in room 674 at AXPONA 2019 in Chicago. |
There has been a misunderstanding: As @eric_squires, the originator of this thread, stated: “I would never allow such a privacy invading product to my house. I barely tolerate a Nest thermostat”. I would like to challenge you, please come and take a listen to the Courante™, maybe the unique experience of the spatial sound reproduction in all frequency ranges will change your mind. There was originally a post above mine talking about something like an Alexa or Siri or some other voice recognition device. My statement here was about those types of devices which are designed to gather personal data from your home in real time. I stand by the intention in my statement. It had nothing to do with the Courante. Best, Erik |
Very cool. Very OHM or GP like. Except more people might afford OHM. Form is much like an OHM Walsh Sound Cylinder with a different style can on top. Taking on MBL? More GP like technically perhaps in that the magic driver is for the higher frequencies whereas with OHM Walsh CLS (Coherent Line Source) driver the magic is in the lower frequencies with a more conventional driver in a unique configuration and a conventional dome tweeter is also used. |
