Need suggestions on bookshelf speaker upgrades

Since imaging is a top priority of NYaudio98, let me toss out a few comments.

Good imaging would include two attributes in abundance: Precise localization of sound sources, and a sense of immersion in the acoustic space of the recording.

To a certain extent, these two attributes trade off against one another. The more powerful the in-room reverberant field, in general the greater the sense of envelopment and immersion, but at the expense of precise sound source localization.

If we can introduce a fairly long delay between the first-arrival sound and the onset of a powerful, diffuse reverberant field, we can come very close to "best of both worlds". In a big room this is something a good dipole can do well, provided it's out from the wall far enough to get about 10 milliseconds' worth of path-length-induced time delay on the backwave. That calls for about five feet of "breathing room" behind the speakers. Obviously this isn't practical in a small room, and we have to get creative.

If any of you are going to be at T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach in a few days, stop by Hilton Room 920 (Electra-Fidelity) and see what is arguably the current state-of-the-art in small-room-friendly speakers that can deliver that sense of immersion and envelopment along with good sound source localization.

If the goal is approximating the illusion of a live concert, this sense of immersion is arguably a key factor. Another is good dynamic contrast. Another is that unmistakable aroma of weed. Any two out of these three should get you most of the way there.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

Hi Ctsooner,

Thanks for your kind words.

I don't want to wax too commercial here, but since you asked, I have models ranging from 2.7 grand to 10 grand. I have just started selling my most advanced models (not yet on my website) through a dealer network, but don't have any dealers in the Northeast yet.

You mentioned that you've seen a lot of new companies recently, and I presume you mean speaker companies. Imo that's the part of the signal chain where there's the most room for refinement, innovation, and the outright pushing of boundaries. So a lot of creative minds are drawn to speaker design. I've never met a fellow speaker designer who wasn't a kindred spirit, regardless of whether we were direct competitors or working totally different areas of the market.

As for electronics and cables, well I see amp + speaker + room as "a system within a system". Since the speaker is in the middle, I try to make mine compatible with a fairly wide range of amps (bang-for-buck solid state to Atma-Sphere OTL amps), and adaptable to a fairly wide range of room acoustic situations (some models moreso than others). Amplifier compatibility involves keeping the impedance curve benign and keeping the efficiency fairly high... and a side effect of that approach is, the demands on the speaker cable are a lot less. So I am far from being up to date on speaker cable developments.

Duke