Many of recordings were optimized/compromised for the era's popular player like console stereo, lo-fi home stereo, boom box or even headphone stereo, and for the era's popular listeners' preferences. Those recordings have "faults" to be played by a true hi-fi system and, when played by a true hi-fi set up, often shows problems prohibiting listeners from enjoyable listening.
minbean, as you know the tsm mm is extremely continuous from top to bottom. you also know that the speakers do not have a dip in the midrange and imho, a silver cable will be a better fit with a typical speaker with a bbc style dip in the mids. the tsm mm or mx is better suited to a finely stranded copper wire like the audience au24 or cardas golden ref(litz) or even mit. these will retain the clearity and relax/flesh out the sound so more music will be able to be appreciated. for your work you may like the silver wire interface but for music appreciation you may prefer the copper wire. it is of couse, up to you. glad you are enjoying them, bobby
Dear songwriter72@, you have repeatedly said that only GMA is good because of the phase coherent crossover network and that makes me feel offended because:
1. The thread invited opinions of listeners who have listened both Callisto and TSM-MM however you never indicated you had listened both. Have you ever listened to TSM-MM carefully? I am sure you didn't
2. If your theory about crossover design is true, the world of speakers should have been divided into black and white world of design and only one side had been winners. If you are true to your theory, why don't you worship fullrange speakers rather than GMA?
3. You urge your own definition of good speakers being ones to make any music enjoyable. I think you have confusion between hi-fi speakers and musical instrument. By no way I can see similar definition any where but you.
songwriter72@, I wish I could buy what you say but your theory and opinion look far from the real world truth. I can't understand why you repeat your voices which lack necessary foundation.
Bobby, you are right! Both in sound pressure and tone, it is very continuous from top to bottom and by no way I could tell the seam between the bands. When I said "...more forgiving...", I was not really hoping to make it that way. I meant that it might be necessary for some situations I can expect. Even without more forgiving changes, TSM-MM's are truely musical. Also, they are not picky to lose musical quality of some recordings but to show the flaws of the recordings. I will still try different cables to enjoy more of what TSM-MM can do. Thanks again Bobby for the healthy suggestions.
Minbean, Never did I say ONLY GMA was good. I have not listened to the TSM, but I would expect them to sound very good....perhaps a little up front. They use excellent drivers, good cabinetry and are well designed. Fullrange speakers have more phase shift than 1st order crossovers exhibit. I am not confusing hi-fi speakers with musical instruments, I feel the job of the speaker is to reproduce what goes into it with flat frequency response, good dynamic response and phase response. As far as the recordings go, some of them have distortion, i'm not arguing that fact. All one need do is listen, right? Here's what i'm saying, and i'll try to put it as plain as possible. If your speaker has phase shift (most do) when you playback a distorted recording, the speaker's phase distortion is distorting everything that comes into it,including any recorded distortions, so your hearing distorted distortion. It's a multiplicative process, not additive. It's similar to using a distored signal coming out of a source and feeding it into your amplifier. Your multiplying distortions, except in the speakers case, your adding a different amount of time delay to every frequency, something no amplifier does. All you really know is that there are many "poor recordings" you can't play, can't enjoy. Many performances "you just don't get" You stated this in your previous thread. I had the same problem until I purchased GMA speakers. I now find myself listening to music I would have never listened to before. Why? It never connected with me on a musical level. Do my speakers mask sounds? No. I can easily pick out a ribbon mic or individual mic feeds in recordings. What they don't do is add phase distortion to already distorted recordings. THAT is why they make so called bad recordings more listenable. Can't say it any simpler than that. Hope that makes sense. I don't want to argue with you.....i'm trying to tell you why, in my opinion, some of your recordings are harsh. One way to find out is to play these harsh recordings thru some electrostatic headphones, as they have no phase shift. If the recordings are still harsh, it's the recordings. If they sound less harsh, perhaps i'm right.
songwriter wrote: "The ability to play and enjoy ANY recording is one of the primary advantages of time/phase aligned speakers. I no longer have un-listenable or un-enjoyable recordings in my collection since purchasing the GMA speakers."
songwriter, i have never heard the gma speakers. i would have to wonder about something that makes every recording sound good - knowing not every recording *is* good. if you enjoy the music and the reproduction, i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. but if your goal is to suck the marrow out of top notch recordings, and accept the deficiencies of those that aren't, i'm not sure speakers that 'make everything sound good' would be the best way to go. you tell me - how can speakers that make everything sound good be reproducing what is *really* there?
songwriter, i almost admire your single minded approach to the issue you are speaking of. and i agree partially with the thought that an accurate speaker (if done correctly) will have less sonic issues of its own to combine with those on a recording. so more recordings (even poorer ones) sound better. people have been saying exactly that about the mm and mx versions in the merlin speaker line since their inception. where you and i start to differ is when you assume the propblem is immediately with the speaker and not somewhere else. i clearly outlined what i thought was minbean's issue and it was not the speaker. and by the way, minbean does not have an issue with the tsms but you do. you continue to make assumption after assumption about something you haven't heard or tested. just like on aa where you continually accused me of having a mid band suck out until a fellow reader posted the stereophile review of the frequency plot from the 2001 vsm review. if you looked at the response relative to the musical center and 10 degrees off axis, it is still one one the very flatest responses ever shown in that magazine. you were proven wrong. if you would have listened to the product first, you would have known there was no midband depression evident. few people refine their products as i do over as long a period of time and stay dedicated to a given design. few people use the crossover components i do because of their cost and availability and even fewer use the sophisticated circuits i have developed to make these designs work as they do. it takes many years of research to make a world class product. and just so you know, i started out designing first order and phase accurate, time aligned designs and can say without a doubt that my latter merlin designs are a lot more music like and accurate. what you gain in one design you may lose in another or you may find many other things that are preferable or more important in another design. but how would you ever know unless you hear/test an item set up as it was meant to be. my speakers are not for everyone obviously and i have said this many times before. no single design can ever be. gmas are very fine speakers but they are only another approach to music making. regards, b
Wait a minute guys! I'm beginning to see this thread soon turning into a GMA vs Merlin mud-slinging contest! :-( BEFORE it degenerates into something of this sort I would like to try to abort such a deviation. Please allow me this!
Minbean: buy whatever you like. Neither I not songwriter are trying to convert you into a GMA owner. OK? I was merely suggesting that you listen to the Callisto for yourself. Just FYI, you will discover that the TSM & Callistos have more in common sound-wise rather than being different.
Jim2, Minbean: both you guys are misinterpretting/distorting the meaning of the statement "The ability to play and enjoy ANY recording is one of the primary advantages of time/phase aligned speakers". The GMA speakers do *NOT* cover-up bad recordings to make them sound good. That is *NOT* what is meant by the above statement. I think that songwriter explained quite well what he meant to write. I cut & pasted his words here again: "Here's what i'm saying, and i'll try to put it as plain as possible. If your speaker has phase shift (most do) when you playback a distorted recording, the speaker's phase distortion is distorting everything that comes into it,including any recorded distortions, so your hearing distorted distortion. It's a multiplicative process, not additive."
From my personal experience I can vouch that bad recordings sound worse/much worse when the speaker adds its own distortion. The speaker's distortion sounds the worst of all the components in the audio chain, IMHO, because the phase shift put onto the music signal varies w/ frequency (because of the x-over circuit design). IOW, *IF* the speaker's distortion was constant over frequency I believe that the bad recordings would not have sounded so bad. (it is true that the power amp's output is also freq dependent but IMHO the additional phase shift from this active circuit/power amp is much less than that from the passive speaker x-over network). The GMA speakers have very little phase shift in the bulk of the audio band hence they allow the listener to listen to all of his/her music collection with far less fatigue than most other speaker offerings in the marketplace. This is all that we are trying to convey to the other members posting in this thread. Hopefully this is comprehensible to all! :-)
I've heard the Merlin VSM-MM floor-stander. I can confidently say that the Merlin & GMA sonic signatures are close cousins more than anything else. I think that the TSM sonic signature will follow the Merlin house sound (unless Bobby has a split personality where he is making a floor-stander for home use & a monitor speaker for studio/pro use! I don't think so but I could be wrong).
Reading Minbean's latest posts I seem to be getting the feeling that he is looking for a studio/pro monitor to debug his amplifier designs. Correct? If so, the GMA speakers are not (to the best of my knowledge) made for studio/pro monitoring use. They are meant for listening in the home environment. If minbean is looking for studio/pro monitors how about the Rogers LS3/5a or some spin-off of this model (harbeth, Sterling, etc). Alternately, a Tannoy DMT series (owned by nearly every studio in the world) will also make an excellent monitor for this purpose.
I find this issue of making all of one's recordings sound good very interesting. It is something I look for in components, but probably would not were I a reviewer or designer. However, I don't think about it as making poor recordings sound good, which could be an exercise in covering up. Rather, I think of it as extracting and communicating all the music from all my recordings. Systems that only sound good with the best recordings lead to music collections that are heavy on Brazilian female vocalists accompanied by acoustic guitars and shakers. Puke.
hi drubin, if you take a speaker that has flaws or a character of its own and combine that with a flawed recording and those flaws are embellished, you can end up with a mess. but if you take a flawed recording and play it through a neutral and accurate design, then the faults can become more listenable and the music can then be appreciated. that is the point. no one is trying to make a speaker that covers up faults. and bombaywalla, i specifically used a very soft tone so nothing could ever be taken as mud slinging and because i am a gentleman, i do not ever do this as a rule unless provoked and that rarely happens. i have respect for gma products and will not say anything against them. so why not leave a man alone who is enjoying his new purchase instead of grinding away at him. he said he was offended already, what does that tell you. here i am sticking up for my customer and not his speakers. regards, bobby
hi drubin, if you take a speaker that has flaws or a character of its own and combine that with a flawed recording and those flaws are embellished, you can end up with a mess. but if you take a flawed recording and play it through a neutral and accurate design, then the faults can become more listenable and the music can then be appreciated. that is the point. no one is trying to make a speaker that covers up faults. and bombaywalla, i specifically used a very soft tone so nothing could ever be taken as mud slinging and because i am a gentleman, i do not ever do this as a rule unless provoked and that rarely happens. i have respect for gma products and will not say anything against them. so why not leave a man alone who is enjoying his new purchase instead of grinding away at him. he said he was offended already, what does that tell you. here i am sticking up for my customer and not his speakers. regards, bobby
Bobby, that mud-slinging comment was not aimed at you by any chance! Just wanted to be clear. My post was aimed at making songwriter's comments clear as it seems that they were being miscontrued. Your last post has said the same thing in your own words. Thanks again for re-iterating. I agree w/ you w.r.t. leaving the man alone to enjoy his purchase. I would not have re-entered the thread but did so when I saw the misinterpretation of sonwriter's comments. Well, what do you know.......you got Drubin again playing doubting-Thomas & taking the same tack as some other members posting before him!!!! what, do these guys just don't want to understand???
What? Why do you say that about me Bombaywalla? I was merely offering up another way to say what songwriter is saying, and what I think Bobby is saying, in response to Minbean's position.
Ooops, Drubin!! Sorry! looks like I'm to be blamed for mis-construing your comments! LOL!
>> I find this issue of making all of one's recordings >> sound good very interesting. to me, this read like a sceptic's comment!
>> It is something I look for in components, but probably >> would not were I a reviewer or designer. I was iffy on interpretting this one too! if the component makes all my music sound good for the correct reasons, then, as a reviewer/designer, I'd seek such a product.
I can see that. But I've read a lot of reviews in which the reviewer says something like, "as glorious as this component sounds on great recordings like the pablum in my music collection, it will also let you hear every wart, zit, and hair out of place on less-than-perfect recordings." And we've been fed that line for decades and I think that implicit in it is the premise that this is the price one must pay for having great gear. (And conversely, buy something euphonic if you want to listed to old Beatles records.) My old Quad 57's, as musical as they were, were very very fussy about recordings and very revealing of upstream changes (also, I was younger when I had them). Ditto the Thiels I owned recently. But not so much for my GMAs, Harbeths, and ProAcs. If I were a reviewer, I might opt for that greater transparency to what is upstream. As a music lover, I think not. As an audiophile and music lover, I am perpetually conflicted.
Jim2 Again, comments I make get twisted and blown out of proportion. I did not say the GMA speakers make all recordings sound good. I said they make them more enjoyable and more listenable. Again they do this by not adding additional phase distortions to already distorted recordings. If you can't understand how this would make a poor recording more enjoyable, i'm sorry.
I want honestly to say thank you all for the contribution and time.
When songwriter72@ raised an issue about my notion of Merlin to be picky about recording, he directly implied that GMA's phase coherent design makes more music enjoyable.
Even if he did not say exacty so, his interpretation was "picky about recording must be meaning making some music un-enjoyable" and his implication was "Callisto presents more music in enjoyable way than TSM-MM not being phase coherent design.
Has songwriter72@ really compared listening both TSM-MM and Callisto to back what he believed and tried to convey? - No!
What I wanted was unbiased and fair opinion but songwriter72@'s looked pretty much biased and pushy and that made me feel uncomfortable - especially when my experience about TSM-MM is different than his implications about non phase coherent designs.
I had interests in both TSM-MM and Callisto and that was why I started this thread. I don't think it is really necessary to make comments that carry bad implications about the other side.
I think songwriter72@'s suggestion about the headphones is a good one and I appreciate for it.
Minbean, I appologize if I came across as pushy, as that was not my intention. I was, and am trying to help you find the source of your problem (hence the headphone recomendation). I'm hoping the speaker is not the problem, in all honesty. Bobby has been very helpful to customers and potential customers alike. He is one of the few designers that takes time to respond publically to customers needs and questions. That says a lot about him as a person. I respect him for that even though we don't see eye to eye.
I have been working with my amplifier to re-route feedback from "from the final out to differential input" to "from the driver stage to differential input" with a purpose to decrease the amplifier's damping factor and isolate the feedback loop from the speakers.
I have never expected such a difference!
The charactor being picky for recording dissapeared to almost none or nothing particular.
Everything is so clear, smooth and musical. And most amazingly, the speakers dissapeared completely leaving only a very compehensive sound stage. I can't hear anything like distortion if not known from original source. Now I understand what the other TSM-MM users were about to praise!
I have to do more things to clarify why this happened but it looks like the change brought the whole system almost to the level of perfection.
I applaud Bobby of Merlin for his excellence in designing the speakers and also for his enthusiasm to support the users! Thank you!
songwriter, i read this prior to your further comments:
"The ability to play and enjoy ANY recording is one of the primary advantages of time/phase aligned speakers. I no longer have un-listenable or un-enjoyable recordings in my collection since purchasing the GMA speakers."
and undertood that "ANY" actually means "ANY". i interpret "play and enjoy" to mean "sound good". i don't think i was "twisting" anything. i was just reading your thoughts. thoughts which you obviously felt the need to elaborate upon further and i appreciate your further qualifications to your remarks. take care.
songwriter72@, I did A/B according to your suggestion and honestly I could not hear any more distortion or harshness from TSM-MM than the headphones. Or TSM-MM was not interpreting music in any less enjoyable way than the headphones. I recommend you to have a chance seriously listen to TSM-MM in correct set up. I have to say that your assumption orignally had too much gap from the reality.
minbean, thank you for the new information. if you had watched me closely for many years i have had the preference for amplifiers that are less damped/lower feedback and actually run my joule vzn 100s with the feedback off or the berning in the lowest feedback setting. when you have a speaker like the merlin that is so uniform from top to bottom a damped amp/wire or source will choke the tone to a degree. if a speaker has the bbc style dip, the mid depression relative to the bass being up by comparison calls for a damped amp for control. even changing the wire to a more finely stranded copper cable will sound like you have extended the bandwidth extremities because you have relaxed the mid band. keep me posted and enjoy! thanks, bobby at merlin
hi songwriter, you and i are actually much closer together than you might think. i am very sure that the gmas were a complete revelation to what you had before and i am glad that you have found them. you obviously enjoy them tremendously and be sure, that they are a great product. as a designer, i must look at all relative issues and not fixate on one over another. you might be really shocked to know exactly what my feelings are on phase and time alignment. i can tell you i share much of your belief but i will not go into that here. i just think there are more important issues that need to be dealt with if the phase and time issues are dealt with in a comprehensive manner. that is why, when ever i did a seminar i asked those attending what their personal preferences in reproduced sound were. i found it was a mixed bag that was constantly changing. for that reason, i feel strongly that until you hear my speakers playing music the way they were designed to be used or see them tested, you are relating assumption based on preconception. it may be true that you still won't enjoy them as much as your gmas but you know what? i'll bet you like them more than you thought you would. they have other stregnths to consider. in the past you have gone after a number of my customers and upset them with aggressive comments/behavior. volker in va on audio asylum was another occurance like this one. here the professor said he likes the explicit nature of the vsm and you took it to mean that the speaker was flawed. you cared not that he was listening too much in the near field and used silver wire on them. again the comment of using the headphones as a comparison tool. i specifically recommend not to do these things but guess what, he likes/prefers it that way. it was and is, his taste. the same went on here with minsoo. does not matter how he has them set up or what he is using on them...it is the speaker that is wrong. i hope this that this can finally be put to rest songwriter. it is good to feel so strongly about a thing, but not to be a pest. these speakers are used by many as a reference tool for many things and it is not because they are flawed. they are very continuous and show great contrast without being bright (if set up as i suggest). they have a very wide bandwidth and sound like music. again, i think you would like them. regards, bobby
My previous post disappeared from this thread. My guess is that when I mentioned marketing technics, someone was offended. The true audio enthusiast will seek out the best speakers they can afford, whether it takes travel to find them, if you want the best, you will go. I did this in October, 2004 and heard many very good speakers, including the Merlins, but when I heard the GMA Callisto, I knew they were special and purchased a pair. They are still special. The Merlin's may be special to you. The point is to go LISTEN. I was sure when I started my search, I would come home with one of the big name brands. Listen for yourself and your search may be over.
hi elsneb, i saw your post and replied to it. my guess is that the moderator removed them both because he/she felt we were going off topic. when someone says negative things about a product that they have never heard and i stick up for the customer and the product, that is not marketing. it is my right to defend the wrong. never forget that minsoo said he likes the tsm and that he was offended by this. now, who was doing the marketing? as i have said hundreds of times before, my speakers aren't for everyone. and by all means, enjoy your gmas, elsneb. regards, bobby at merlin
Just a comment on the last half of this thread so far...
When comparison shopping for a great new piece of audio equipment, you know it when you hear it. Sometimes, it's siren song can make you leap even if your pockets aren't fully ready to catch you :) That said, it seem after a few post in, that Minbean was probably smitten with the Merlins. Other than report our individual experiences with a given pproduct, who are we to say what will tickle his fancy (did I say that)? Although some may describe us as the "GMA cult", we don't want to seem to exhort our favorite speakers with relentless, "Jehovah Witness" vigor. It's, just as the Witness', we found a good thing and want everyone to know about it!!!
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