If an 8k amp and 25k speaker only sounds "decent".
Then one must conclude that then either the speaker isn't worth 25k, the amp isn't worth 8k... or both.
Any 33k pairing (and of course with expensive cables, power conditioning, and iso footers on top)... that only sounds "decent"... is a joke. |
No Steve just because you have expensive gear doesnt mean that the pairing will be correct.
Take our ancedote mentioned previously we tried amplifiers from Devialet, Electrocompaniet, Chord, Manley, CJ, Thrax,Krell, and T+A to pair with the Personas.
The cheapest amps were $8k the most expensive $25k they all sounded decent the Thrax was excellent however the T+A still sounded even better.
It is all about synergy.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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So what have been the most cost effective speakers to extract their best out of? The better the speaker the higher the ceiling right. If that’s true then active speakers would be the safe bet for someone on a budget. Is the ls50 active better sounding than the passive model, I don’t think it’s wrong to expect a $35k pair of speakers to be exceptional driven by any competent front end. |
Trudat you totally miss the point. It is not that you have to use uber expensive or every tweek in the book to make the Personas sound good, the issue is that there is way more than just good you can get out of a speaker with this kind of resolving power.
Yes the 3F can sound "good" wih much less expensive electronics like we mentioned, there is a difference between passing good and excelling.
Perhaps our standards are different from yours, we walk most shows and hear all the rooms and most room barely resigister as sounding what they can sound.
Tweeks are tools used to make a system come alive, power cords, vibration isolation, room tuning are tools we use to sculpt sound until a system sounds as close as possible to live.
It can take years to tune one system until it sounds magnificent.
In the case of the Personas we went through many brand of electronics, tried a few different cable variations, tried different dacs, different servers different vibration isolation and added newer tuning tweeks like the Furutech NCF products until the system sounded as close as possible to real music.
We have the T+A gear and the Krell, the T+A noticably outperforms the Krell gear, the Krell gear is less expensive and sounds great for the money, the T+A gear just sounds far better but costs way more.
IF you hear this sytem with the Krell gear you might think what a great sounding system, when you heard it with the T+A you might think wow that sounds so much better.
It are these kinds of testing data that proves that the quest for really amazing sound is a process of trying different components until the sound becomes as realistic as possible.
We are willing to bet that you may be one of the zillion audiophiles who doesn't believe in tweeks, or cabling or whatever that these are expensive foolish toys for the gulible with out the experience of actually trying some of these devices, then again you might not.
The Critical Mass Centerstage footers are transformational devices, that makes a system sound way better it it one of the best vibration isolation devices out there.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
@audiotroy
Ah yes, my "naivity" shows... of course, if that was a real word we could debate that. I believe the word you meant to use was naivete (with an accent over the final e) or heck even naivety... or heck in plain spoken english... "my lack of experience".
Frankly, something you should hope your customers have when pushing cables, acoustic isolation systems etc... that cost damn near what the components and speakers cost.
Sure, I don't own a store but you know 35 or so years of building audio systems, components etc. Should count for something. But maybe I'm just a dolt.
Bottom line, a 25k speaker should not need a 25k amp to sound outstanding. You more or less double talk in your later post regarding the 3f, amazing enough all the Naim gear sounds great with it.
Want to see a dealer adding value to the board? Head on over to the digital board. Jimclarkstereo offering an exciting new piece and making it real easy to try.
Sure it's not a paid add, but its better than constant shilling and twisting about how everything he sells somehow outperforms the original posters question. Putting his money where his "post" is.
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Pwinson it has nothing to do with cost. The Persona 3F sound very good on a Naim Uniti Atom which is a $3k intergrated, they sound way better on a Naim Uniti Nova a $7.5k intregrated amp, and they sound so much better on the Naim NAC 272 preamp/dac and the Nap 250 a $13k combo.
Does that mean that the Naim Atom didn't sound great for the money it sounded terrific, however, the sound took on much more bass, greater dynamic impact and greater clarity with the more expensive gear.
Part of the equation is matching gear, think of it this way a $90k Porsche can be rendered nearly undriveable with low octane fuel and the wrong quality and grade of tires. Buy a Porsch be prepared to feed it right.
We have put together some very good sounding Persona systems that were not crazy expensive but with a set of speakers this resolving you can easily hear everything good and bad in the setup.
As per cost yes there are really good $5k amps however, most of the time they still leave some sonic signature that is not seen with the better gear.
We love the T+A gear and the $12,5k 2500R sounds amazing with the Personas, however, the $23k T+A PA 3100HV really takes the speakers to levels they just couldn't get to with the lower gear.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Pesona dealers |
@trudat: I think you mean the Parasound Halo line which many don’t believe is mid-fi at all. Anyway I do see your point and this is perhaps one of the more frustrating aspects of the high end, i.e. dealers that believe just because you can stretch/reach for a $25,000 speaker means oh sure, just lets just spend another $25,000 on a new power amp, and another $25,000 on a new pre-amp and on, hey, how about those $1500 power cords, they will really bring it all together...I mean it does seem like it never ends. But of course they ARE in business to make money. I assume you work somewhere in a business that umm, exists to, umm, make money too. So I also try to keep in mind that dealers often DO have alot of experience with different lines...so often I guess my job is to separate out what I value about the advice I receive from dealers and what I can toss aside. And again of course they're just ultimately trying to stay in business trying to make a buck, and I can remind myself I'm in charge of wallet, not the dealer. And the only person I have to please is myself.
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Trudat, your naivity shows through.
There are many speakers above $2k that will sound good with most electronics, however, most $2k to $10k speakers don’t have the same level of resolution, how do we know we sell many of them:
we sell Elac Adantes, PSB T3, Legacy Signatures, Kef R Series, ATC, Cabasse and a few others.
when you reach into the uber high resolution loudspeakers especially speakers in the $10k and above price range from Paradigm, Magico, Rockport, Rahido, and others they will not sound good on just any set of electronics, they must be matched with the right gear to sound good.
The Sopras are tuned a bit warmer and are a bit more forgiving then the the Personas, we have heard the Sopras and they are very nice speakers they don’t have the same degree of clarity nor do they image as well, they are lovely musical speakers.
As per the Focus Se wipping the floor we have them as well, and they don’;t wipe the floor over the Kef Reference line nor the Paradigm tney sound distinctly colored and veiled compared to either the Kef’s or the Paradigms, not saying that is a bad thing they are tuned to be musical.
The Focus are fantastic speakers but they are tuned warm in the midrange, a slightly recessed top end and big warm full bass, they are very easy to setup with almost anything because they don’t have the same level of clarity or soundstage specificity that the Paradigms do
In fact the Focus tend to sound better on brighter electronics
We heard Wilson XLF on Boulder with DCS and Nordost and the sound was unlististenable, we heard the less expensive Wilson Alexx with Krell and Nordost cabling and the sound was fantastic, so yes pairing is everything.
Just the same way when we tried out electronics with the Paradigms and the Polymers, we tried CJ, Electrocompaniet, Manley Labs, Devialet, Chord, Thrax and finally T+A which sounded the best out of all of these products.
A great system requires careful setup with the right matching components.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Paradigm, Legacy, Kef dealers |
@audiotroy
"Most truly high resolution loudspeakers will only come alive with the right group of components."
Says the guy who sells crazy expensive cables, iso-footers etc.
Will a better source, amp, pre-amp and ROOM make a difference, sure. But that goes for just about any speaker above 2k.
But a "great" speaker shouldn’t need uber-expensive everything to outperform a "less resolving" speaker.
Take say, a Focal Sopra 2 and a Persona 7F, and something mid-fi, say a paradigm Halo A21, and a reasonable pre-amp, similar source, room etc.
The 7f should outperform the Sopra 2 hands down at almost 2x the price, without needing uber expensive everything.
In fairness, I don’t care for either speaker. (I think the Focus SE wipes the floor with both to take speakers in your line-up).
Keep shilling bro.
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I have heard the Persona 9H and prefer it to the Vandersteens I have heard. I don't own either and have no dog in this fight.
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Speaking for the masses that will look at the measurements of a certain speaker and decide without even listening to like them or not, and there's plenty out there as this thread has shown. |
Interesting read. One of the most polarizing speakers I've kept up on in recent memory. Lot's of parallels with the older Wilson's (when David was in charge and his team used that metal dome tweeter) that everyone always claimed need the perfect electronics and cables.
Just very interesting. |
If you believe that all amps sound the same, you either have poor hearing or haven't demoed on a decently resolving system. I don't disagree with your second point though, but everyone knows my opinion of the Personas in any event.
Anecdotally, my local dealer who runs a pair of Persona 3Fs in his second system at home says that he is done after a couple hours of listening. |
I can understand what you're saying in regards to getting high performance from a system and a lot of us truly believe buying the speakers is 95%, that all amps sound the same, that if it measures good it sounds good. I don't think it helps manufacturers like paradigm that attract the cost conscious that their $35k speakers will probably sound worse than their $3500 speakers without a significant investment in everything else in the chain. |
We went through many different power condtioners including: Running Springs, Isotek, Audience, and Audio Magic, we even tested the Audioquet Niagra 7000, the Audio Magic was by far the best sounding with our setup.
By any chance (just because I'm curious) did you try a power regen like a PS Audio type device? |
Steve with any reference grade loudspeaker you do not get the drop and plob sounds great trick.
Most truly high resoltion loudspeakers will only come alive with the right group of components.
Ask Brownsf, one of the posts which was deleted by the moderators because some negative people derailed the thread went over
Brownsf journey to get a newly purchased pair of Kef Ref 5 to sound good in his room.
We started corresponding via Audiogon which lead to a series of recommendations on an upgrade strategy designed to make his system sound really good, this included a new server, a new dac,new cables, footer for the speakers, a power conditioner and cabling and a few more tweeks.
This ultimately lead to a visit to his California home to demonstrate what we could get out of the speakers if they were working harmoniously with the right matching components.
Long story short the addition of the new server, dac, interconnects, footers, power conditioner and cablingalong with repostioning of his speakers created a system which in our opinion was more lifelike than his local dealers $300k system with YG Haileys. We kept his original ARC electronics and speaker cables.
So the key take away is great speakers require synergistic blending of components, digital sources, cabling, room tuning and accessories before you can create real magic.
Think of it this way a $200k sports car can not perform with 86 octane gas and cheap tires, no matter how good the car is.
Just put the wrong gas and subsitute the uber expensive and high performance tires the car came with with any brand of tire and see how the car performs guarantee the results wouldn’t be too good either.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
No Cotuzzi dialed in is not placement, dialed in the combination of electronics, cabling, digital, vibration isolation, power conditioning, roon tuning.
Right now we are in the process of retuing due to the addition of the Innous Statement.
When you are assembling a reference grade system everything matters.
When we were shopping for electornics to run the 9H we went through, Devialet, Electrocompaniet, Conrad Johnson, Thrax, Chord, and finally the T+A gear which sounded the best with the 9H's in our showroom.
We went through many different power condtioners including: Running Springs, Isotek, Audience, and Audio Magic, we even tested the Audioquet Niagra 7000, the Audio Magic was by far the best sounding with our setup.
Recently the addition of the Critical Mass Center Stage footers made a very noticable improvement.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona, T+A, Innous, Critical Mass dealers |
If it takes more than a few hours to get a pair of 9H “dialed in” maybe consider another hobby. Good lord. To get them in the ideal placement in any room it shouldn’t take more than a week to two of fiddling.
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You guys aren't suggesting it took 2 years to get them dialed in? I would thing your co-recommendation for the Kef Blades would come with the same qualification that the right amp is needed to make them sing. |
Yes I am planning to listen a Innuos Statement...I am from Portugal and is easy to have one in my home. Actually I have Antipodes CX + EX and I am very happy with this setup. |
Nabcs we just put out an Innous Statement the difference in musicality is huge with the Persona 9H yes this is an expensive servers just shy of $14k however once you hear one you will not believe that digital can sound this much like analog.
And yes your Triode 845 and Ayon Dac do help, from our experience the Personas need a warm sounding matching of gear to bring some additonal warmth to the sound.
The Personas do not hold anything back so if you are looking for transparency and holographic imaging, tight deep bass a touch dry, the speakers are magical.
We have spent two years tweaking our 9H demo after trying out many different electronics packages, cables, power conditioners and digital front ends till we created some real magic with the 9h.
As we said the addition of the Statement has taken the sound of the Personas into a completely different level of sound quality.
It is hard to believe that a computer server can alter the sound this much the Statement is a quantum leap over anything we have tested.
The soundstage is bigger, there is a sense of flow that is super impressive, and notes have much greater sense of sustain, the bass is better, sometimes it is spooky how realistic singers can sound.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona and Innous dealers |
pwhinson...There was definitely some incompatibility with the your room/equipment and the Personas 9H.
My room has a huge problem at 40 Hz and the DSP Arc in Persona solves that nod perfectly.
The upper octave is very even without any digital artifact (in my ears) but I know my Triode 845 and Ayon DAC helps a lot!
Good listening with the Maggies! |
pwhinson
Excellent! Good to read that you can sit back and enjoy the music w/o any digital glare. Happy Listening! |
It seems to me that differences in speakers swamp differences in amps, and introducing the even order harmonics from high end tube amps is a difficult and indirect way to try to EQ a speaker into sounding more natural. I'm listening to an entirely solid state signal path now (Mahler 2nd Symphony) and it does not seem harsh in the least.
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The digital artifact is gone. I also retubed the Aesthetix Janus tube preamp with NOS RCAs from Vintage Tube Services (high recommended) which helped alot. I still believe that the Personas were simply passing along whatever was in the signal...they are that revealing and neutral. I could never make those work in my room....because I’m easily able to pull the Maggies 5 feet into the room and still put my listening position at 12 feet I’m getting a really good smooth response from the Maggies. They measure in room slightly lumpy without dsp but I would only add some very light dsp bringing down the peaks, not punching anything up but to be honest with you they sound so good without EQ that I’m likely not to do any DSP on them. I think their dispersion pattern being more a line source (figure 8 dispersion pattern) keeps the room effects down. I have alot of depth in the room but only about 2’ on either side of the Maggies. I really do think part of problem with the Personas was their wide dispersion characteristics but problem may go deeper than that. I really respected the engineering and the build quality of the Personas. With the Maggies there is a sense of tremendous coherency across the range...the drivers blend absolutely beautifully. |
With all due respect, as a dealer for Manley Labs I think they'd appreciate it if you spelled their name correctly when promoting their gear. |
Yes Ahofer, the Kef Ref 5 did sound very realistic, you could have gotten the smaller Ref 3 same sound but smaller in size.
The difference between the two setups you heard is totally different electronics a tube preamp and a solid state amp is going to sound totally different than the integrated amplifier we demoed.
Was hoping you would swing back and then once we zeroed in on the speakers then we would have explored the range of electronics we have which includes one of the best tube preamplifiers ever made the Manly 300b preamp with a suitable matching amplifier.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
pwhinson
Nice score! on the Magnepan 20.7 loudspeakers. Keep us posted here as you massage these speakers into your room and existing system.
I would be interested to learn how much DSP is needed compared to the 9H model? Also, are you still experiencing that digital artifact/glare as previously reported?
Happy Listening! |
I heard the Kef Reference 5s at Dave’s with the tracks above, and I agree they give a very solid large orchestra presentation, and a lovely chamber music image as well.
Partly for reasons of size, they aren’t going in my LR. The Harbeths don’t quite do the scale of the Kefs, but I felt they were a bit more revealing of instrument timbre. I also thought they were better at low volume. And I will have some placement options in my apartment.
I had Maggies years ago. The image unsteadiness frustrated me, not to mention the obvious degradation problems with cats and sunshine. |
We can understand why you like the Maggies, they are much softer in the midrange, and present a much bigger overall size of image.
Personally we have been through the panel world with Quads, and Maggies and they never sounded as realistic as the best dynamic loudspeakers to us.
Do love the Maggie ribbon tweeter. You would have loved the Kef Blades which are very realistic sounding without the upper octave issues that require careful matching with the Personas.
The good thing is the big Maggies do sound wonderful for big orchesteral works.
Best speakers ever for this kind of music Scaena Line arrays, except they cost $60k.
Good luck with the Maggies Pwinson.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
Thanks for the advice but I've had Magnepans before so I'm aware that you give up a little in pin-point imaging and get slightly more diffuse images of individual instruments. I think the 20.7 and 30.7s are different animals when it comes to bass though. Its tight and deep. And I'm surprised that the image localization is frankly very very good. So the 20.7s and 30.7s are in a different ballpark I believe than previous Magnepans. They also will play sustained 95 db peaks/brief peaks to 105db, which is as loud as I will ever want them to play, and thats with a Pass 150.8. I thought I would need to go to the 250.8 but Kent at Pass said he thought the 150.8 would be fine. On the loudest peaks occasionally I get a needle on the front panel at 12 o'clock on the 150.8 but as Kent explained the amp even them is pretty much loafing along and the amp won't clip until it hits the hard right stop at about 4 o'clock. I think the Pass is helping with image localization on these speakers and is a good match. I haven't yet tried the other amp I have on them (the Aesthetix Atlas). So I'm a happy camper.
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Pwinson, the Maggies have an entirely different set of issues.
The Personas do require the right matching equipment and some care in setup, it is entirely possible that your room and matching gear wasn't right.
We had some trade in Maggie's here and they suffer from a number of different issues:
1: The soundstage is big but very diffusive
2: Image size if too large for smaller ensemble groups and singers the Maggies make the people appear too large
2: Dynamics aren't very good
3: Bass response isn't that tight and deep and matching with subwoofers doesnt eleviate the dynamics issues unless you roll off the bass to the panel.
4: They don't play that loud
5: They are very inefficient.
Get a pair of Kef Blades they are less bright then the Personas and a bit more forgiving, the midrange is spot on for classical, they have fanastic punchy bass, and they play loud.
Ask Brownsf and his threads we tuned for him a set of Ref 5 and he is 99% classical and his system sounds spot on like you are in front of a large orchestra.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Kef, Paradigm Persona dealers |
So I decided to give up on the Persona 9Hs and they're going back. I do think alot of technology went into this speaker and I think part of the problem might be my room. They certainly do alot of things right but I just found myself having to do too much to accommodate what I felt were flaws in the speaker and it never sounded quite right on large orchestral music which is the vast bulk of what I listen to. I'm going with Magnepan 20.7s. |
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I couldn’t convince myself to buy the 9h even at the sale prices. Instead I bought a used pair of DSP8000’s. The correction available from the speakers is limited in comparison to what the 9h offers, but is clearly useful and the more popular user adjustable speakers become hopefully the more available and cheaper. Not set and forgot, but adjusting on the fly for different recordings is really easy to get used to and I hope paradigm extends arc to more models
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pwhinson
Much Thanks! for the follow up. I believe that your system has plenty of warmth and the mid-range was perfect ( not too forward nor too recessed). I will say that the 9H throws a larger mid-range to my ears.
Happy Listening! |
ahofer: what was the exact audition track? |
In the end, after two listening sessions, I was pretty sure that I would find the 3Fs fatiguing in long listening sessions. What was intriguing was the way I could hear the wood and bow of the viola in one of my audition tracks. But in my own listening the Harbeths were even more revealing, with a much less fatiguing sound, solid bass and a stunningly realistic sound of voice and small ensembles. So Harbeths it is for me.
chacun à son goût
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Just purchased an Accuphase E650 for my Personas....works very well....lots of power for the mids and tweeters, and the powered woofers take care of themselves....very smooth. |
@jafant, there is a sense with regard to the "digital" sound I was experiencing that sounded like I was getting more of the reflected sound the microphones were picking up than the direct sound on orchestral works during quiet portions. I don't know if that's part of the frequency response aberrations of this speaker (all speakers have them) or if its simply higher resolving than my Thiels which are quite (as you know) highly resolving themselves. Right now I'm listening using a Woo Audio WA2 as a preamp and it really gets us 80% there in terms of bringing that midrange forward a bit and getting rid of that glare/excess of reflected sound (I'm not sure how else to describe it). Its a great sound. Unfortunately its not really practical for me to use the WA2 as a preamp because it has no remote and I'm also having to use single ended interconnects and I'm getting a tiny bit of hum...not sure if its a ground loop or not...I may trip to lift the ground on one or more components as an experiment. I really think the system deserves a better preamp. I could try rolling in a couple of NOS 12AX7s into the Aesthetix preamps to see if that would warm the Aesthetix gear up a bit (that would only cost me a couple hundred dollars). The Aesthetix uses solid state rectification I believe, probably a high quality HEXFRED type circuit. I'm also going to switch in a Prima Luna preamp and see if that equals or betters the WA2 (it should)...the Prima Luna has tube rectification and generally speaking I think tube rectification on a tube preamp sounds better than SS rectification based on what I'm experiencing now and in the past. |
Pwinson,
you should also look at cabling, and power conditioning what about room tuning any treatments? Can you post pictures of your setup?
What cables are you using? Are you using power cables? Are you using power conditioning? Vibration isolation can also make a huge improvment.
As we have said time and time before the Personas are very rewarding loudspeakers when used with the right stuff.
We have a client using the Persona 9H with the T+A HV series integrated amplifier and we did a comparison of his Steinway playing a piece vs the system reproducing the same piece, the system was very close to the sound of the the live piano.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers
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pwhinson
Good to read that you are continuing to experiment with the 9H loudspeakers. Did you ever figure out that electronic digital glare/sound during playback? Happy Listening! |
Enjoying the 9Hs today doing some experimenting with different amps. Specifically the Prima Luna Duologue Integrated which I find too muddy in the midrange as an integrated, however when I feed the HT passthrough on that amplifier with a different tubed preamp, its a different story, opening up the midrange nicely. Tubes may be the answer here. I had been running my beloved Aesthetix preamps, feeding that to the Pass, and still just getting too much clinical detail on classical music. Running the PL as the poweramp and setting it for either triode mode or ultralinear...both sound extremely good and both I think are rolling off the highs a bit which with these speakers may be a good thing. I also have a Woo Audio W2 lying around usually doing headphone duty for my Beyerdynamic Tesla headphones but that little puppy can also be used as a simply little OTL preamp (there’s a switch on the back for converting it from headphone use to preamp use). So for the past hour I’ve been listening to the WA2 feeding the power amp portion of the Prima Luna preamp and getting good results. Next I’ll try using the WA2 as a preamp feed the Pass X150.8. I have found that even subtle changes in the system (and these are not subtle) have very observable results one way or the other once again pointing to the fact that these are very highly resolving speakers. Another 9H user has been posting he's had good luck with SET amps (fairly powerful for SET) driving the 9H's really well, such as the Line Magnetic integrated. |
@audiotroy Thanks. Since that rear wave is out of phase with forward facing wave (am I correct on that?), I did wonder whether that rear wave is cancelling out bass waves that make their way to the rear of the cabinet creating a cardioid dispersion characteristic which you see some manufacturer's attempting. Could that be at work also? Paradigm oddly doesn't say much about it other than describing the rear drivers as "vibration cancelling."
@contuzzi Really just about any large scale orchestral music recorded on BIS with large amount of brass. The brass should be shrill but not so shrill that they no longer sound natural....since I'm in a concert hall at least twice a month with a real symphony orchestra playing standard repertoire I know what live performance sounds like (to me anyway YMMV), and although there's a definite shrill sheen to brass that borders on a speaker that pumps up that level by 4-5 db is going to make those peaks sound TOO metallic and too etched. I DO believe the Personas do that because its what I hear but using only about 5-10 degrees of toe in does help mitigate it somewhat. Still when it happens it doesn't sound "right" to me because it doesn't sound like the brass sound live in a concert hall.
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The rear bass drivers based on their design are vibration cancelling by working in concert with the front drivers.
The purpose of them is to provide additonal bass output and to vent the rear bass wave around the rear of the speakers to better allow for the correction curve to work optimally.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers
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@pwhinson can you let me know what tracks you found “bright” on the 9H? Preferably stuff on Tidal or Qobuz. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful or insulting and I apologize for doing so. I’d like to hear which songs in particular you feel are bright. |
I used to be in the camp that a tweeter didn't even have to be auditioned to know how it sounded based solely on the material of the dome, but I listen first now because i've been proven wrong a few times. listening to speakers that sounded so good I couldn't even guess which driver a particular note was coming from let alone guess the material of the tweeter dome. I suppose the less radical the design the easier, safer, path to good sound, but speakers like these may have the potential to surpass them all, if you know what you're doing. |
I’m with twoleftears on these points.
1) I love the sound of an orchestra live - it’s never shrill even though there’s a lot of high frequency information.
2) one set of my speakers has a metal dome tweeter and I’ll never make that mistake again. I can’t tame it no matter what changes to electronics and cables I’ve made. Metal and tweeters are a bad combination in my experience.
3) early DGG - heck most any recording by Deutsche Grammophone is nearly unlistenable. It’s too bad because there were some really great performances that were very poorly recorded. I have a recording of Mahler’s 5th by DG that is so unbelieavably bad, it’s a wonder they ever released it. Do those guys actually listen to these things when mastering? Maybe the tweeters were blown out in the mastering room. It was a gift from my dad, or I would have returned it!
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I disagree. In the concert hall I've never heard massed violins playing fortissimo sound shrill.
But I do hear that on a number of recordings and through a number of speakers.
Early DGG digital recordings are particularly guilty of this. I've never found a metal domed tweeter that completely avoided this--the beryllium that Salk uses came close, the different one used by Fritz even closer.
Needless to say, recording+speaker effects can be cumultative.
Long live soft domes!
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My dealer, i've probably said this already, could probably make my logitech speakers sound stunning so i'm not surprised I didn't find the 3f or 7f bright. detailed and extended for sure. I also wonder about the credibility of reviewers and if their reviews deserve all the respect they're givin. The lenses might be nothing more than liability protection from children licking the BE drivers? they don't seem to harm the sound and if I had an extra $10k laying around I would have already bought my pair. anybody |
