Gilmore Audio planars revealed

I just thought I would write down my personal experiences since I currently own a pair of Carver Amazing Platinum IV speakers (whew! that's a mouth full).

I have owned my Carvers since the latter 90's (about 1996-7), I can't really remember and haven't bothered to look for the sales slip. Before owning these speakers, I had owned speakers from M&K, Vandersteen, Beveridge, Rectilinear, Allison, B&W, Infinity, Altec, Martin Logan, and probably a few more that I can't immediately remember. I can honestly say that other than the Beveridge and Infinity IRS Betas, I have not heard a more impressive speaker than the Carvers. Not to say that they do everything right, but for the price, I know that there are no better speakers. That is why I still own them, in mint condition, with the Carver Silver 9t amps (not the greatest, but they work really well with the speakers).

The Caver woofers are really skimpy. The magnets are very tiny however, they are one of a few speakers that I have know that do not need a subwoofer to fill the last octaves of sound. They are really dynamic. True, they need a lot of power just to get them going but when they get going, WOW!!!

I say this in hopes that we may understand that even if the Gilmore speakers are offshoots of the original Carvers, they may just live up to the claims made by the manufacturer. I know that the woofers on the Carvers move an incredible amount of air. The excursion (due to their abnormally large diameter surround) is really incredible. You may also want to make reference to some of the Carver subwoofers currently available.

As Lugnut says, I too am willing to wait for the results to be posted. We will just have to wait and see. However, because of my personal experience with the Carvers, I am more open to the claims being made than most.

Time will tell.

I may be in the minority on this one, but excluding the center channel my design training suggests to me that these speakers are aesthetically challenged. For almost $20K they could have spent a little more attention to designing a front plane with more visual interest and a stand with some flair. The existing stand looks like welded erector set parts. As it is now these speakers bear some resemblence to Martha's old kitchen counter top.

Ouch!

Apologize for what, o sellerwithintegrity? For pointing out that your claims for these speakers might be a tad overblown?

I have speakers using dynamic dipole drivers for the bass so I have an idea what the tradeoffs are, although dipole bass is as good as it gets. If you want a better idea yourself, examine this site carefully:

www.linkwitzlab.com

Regarding the excursion, here is a link to the subwoofer with possibly the highest excursion out there, the Adire Tumult.

http://www.adireaudio.com/diy_audio/drivers/adire/tumult.htm

Notice the very large roll surround that is clearly visible? The Tumult has a 1.5 inch xmax. Your magic woofers are claiming 2 inch. So the surround should be even bigger.

Without the big, flexible surround the cone cannot move in and out by the required amount, since the surround allows the movement to take place. It's quite simple really.

You can tell even from the poor quality photos on the Gilmore site that the surround is nowhere near enough to allow that kind of xmax. Of course, if you care to have the woofers Dumaxed for us and post the results I will eat my words and even say sorry.

http://www.dlcdesignaudio.com/dumax.htm

You may also notice the very large motor on the Tumult, handy to control the cone at those kind of excursions.

The weak motors on the Gilmore drivers are, you stated, to raise the Qts. Presumably to create a low frquency rise in the response to counteract dipole roll off so you don't need active EQ? This is valid design decision but has its own tradeoffs as noted here:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/faq.htm#Q34

As for the SPL question, I would simply invite anyone who is interested to download the following spreadsheet and plug in the numbers themselves.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/spl_max1.xls

The path difference is half the baffle width, in this case 450mm.

The answer I got for four 12 inch drivers with a 25mm xmax is 98dB at 25Hz. Just for giggles, keep adding drivers until you get to 127dB. You'll find you need 100 of them.

Of course, the 'so-called expert' who designed this spreadsheet might not know what he is talking about. In which case I suggest you contact Seigfried Linkwitz and tell him yourself. I assume the name is familiar?

You made the claim "The Gilmore speakers, especially the model 2's, can play bass louder and cleaner than any other dipole or planar for sure and any home audio dynamic speakers we know of."

I find the dipople/planar part of this statement at least plausible, but the second part less so. Any other home audio dynamic speaker?

That's a heck of a bold statement. Price no object?

Finally, to suggest that the height of a line source doesn't matter is rather strange. Anyone who has listened to the Newform R645 speaker or other similar ribbon speakers can tell you what happens when you either stand up or sit too low. The treble rolls off.

To avoid this, your ear needs to be within the range of the ribbon, which may be a problem with the Model 3.

As I said earlier, I'm sure these speakers sound great. But to make all these hyperbolic claims taints them with a strong whiff of snake oil.

Have a lovely day.

Yes, there was a typo. Total excursion is 2 inches, which is plus or minus 1 inch, not plus or minus 2 inches. It's as simple as that. A number of people on the forum figured that out by themselves. I wanted to make sure that it was clear. That' what people with integrity do -- they admit when they are wrong and stand firm when they believe that they are right.

Yes, that pricing is correct. Sorry, but I was not permitted by the moderator to state the price. I tried to answer the forum earlier. We are able to offer that price because we will be selling them predominantly through home-based showrooms, rather than through the traditional dealer network -- otherwise they would have to be priced even higher. We hope to have a national network of these home showrooms in the near future. Eight should be open before Christmas.