Yogiboy, the dipole subwoofer towers can be purchased separately.
Tonykay, sorry you're taking a cynical perspective. I'm just another audiophile who's followed the evolution of these speakers from this small VA company for several years. Others should hear them. |
Mofimadness, I asked Surreal Speakers to give me a summary
of their current pricing and received the following reply:
"With the Tangband drivers, the cost is $16,900 plus shipping. In the new version with the German AER field coil drivers (the version you heard yesterday) the cost is $32,550 plus shipping. We have a few lightly used demo versions which can be had at a discount. Anyone who's interested in learning more should contact us directly through our website. We encourage interested listeners to make an appointment to hear these in person. To help make an audition more practical to consider, we will credit a purchaser's reasonable cost of travel for an audition against the purchase price." |
Thank you, Ralph. The speakers performed very well with your Atma-Sphere S-30 driving the monitor section (135hz and up). The entire set up makes for a very attractive "small footprint" system that delivers full frequency range, dynamic sound. Prokofiev's "Lt. Kije" on RCA was delivered with authority. |
Pops, thanks for sharing your experience with them. The pair at Capitol Audio Fest had the Lowther drivers with field coils. This newer version uses the AER drivers from Germany for even better sound quality. Color me very favorably impressed. |
Mechans (Steve), I've listened to these speakers in all their iterations over the past couple of years. The key was finding something that will drive the 1 ohm load presented by the woofer array. Ralph (founder and engineer who designed these) determined that a high output switching amp allowed him to get the results he was seeking to achieve while doing so at some reasonable cost.
The Crown 4002xti at 1,000 wpc has been a decided improvement over the custom Class G amps they started with (and still offer). The additional virtue offered by the Crown is extensive control over choices and combinations of crossover point, rate of filtering, EQ, signal delay and other factors that help the driver arrays match most effectively to a given room's acoustics. This is not a trivial virtue. I've been told that you can move further up the Crown line and there may well be alternatives from other manufacturers that one could substitute. They key in making another choice is also finding something that allows you to control so many of the frequency and phase characteristics.
If you get an opportunity to listen to these speakers, ask Doug to let you hear some different control profiles he's experimented with for the crossover. It's mind-blowing for this non-engineer to hear the differences.
|
Yes, it is, Russ. I think you heard it with the Tangband drivers. They then moved to Lowthers with field coils, which were very good and this is what they showed with at CAF. But Lowther (manufacturer) couldn't provide consistent quality and reliability. With the new German AER drivers, they've made a very substantial further improvement: much higher build quality, more resolution, and more natural sound. |
Hi Joe, nice to hear from you! Thanks for adding your comments about hearing these speakers at CAF this past summer. |
Lewinskih01, time alignment is certainly one benefit of the single driver. Another is that it is truly a point source for all of the sound beyond 135 hz - imaging is very precise. The AER drivers are very well made - expensive, but you're getting what you paid for. But what makes these speakers truly special is the design of the woofer array covering below 135 hz. The AER drivers are very fast in their rise and fall times. The woofer array is able to mate seamlessly with the top end - and yet can be thunderous when called upon.
At the same time, I've heard quite a few single driver speakers and would not recommend any of them. This is the first full range implementation using a single driver for the top that I've found close enough to my listening priorities to consider bringing into my own system were I in the market for a new speaker.
If you're a DIY person, consider buying the woofer array from Surreal Speakers and then playing around with your own monitor design to mount on the woofer. You can have the same fun that Doug and Ralph have had with literally hundreds of hours of listening and re-adjusting to get things right. That's a part of our hobby, right? LOL.
Best wishes! |
Lewinskih01, "Do you think the improved imaging - a key design goal in my case - is driven by being a point source more than being time-aligned?" In my experience, time alignment, phase and point source are factors in getting great imaging from a set of speakers. A good starting point with a mult-drive system is probably keeping the cross-over as simple and phase aligned as possible, e.g., a 6db per octave Butterworth. There are sooooo many variables and trade-offs. For example, some of the most precise imaging speakers I've ever heard are the original Avalon Eidolon speakers, but this is a three-way speaker with a complex crossover from which Neil Patel has created a bit of magic. There is no single path. |
