I was there, at Chuck’s weekend, I am not well read in here, and don’t have a following at all. I knew this when I tried to interest people into trying spring isolation, that someone as polarizing as millercarbon had to be introduced for anyone to pay any real attention.
After two days and nights listening at his home, I got some idea of millercarbon’s musical tastes. He has a large, lively room, with even less absorption than I have in a room about half the volume.
The Moabs do have cabinet colouration, (yep, British spelling, I’m Australian) and yes, the Moabs millercarbon has, in that room, with his electronics are enjoyable to listen to. Are they purist high end audio? They’re probably closer to $8k with the crossover and Townshend Isolation.
On my way up from Texas to Washington, I did stop by Viking Acoustics Santa Fe NM for a listen (thank you willgolf for the introduction) and listened to horn speakers for probably close to five hours, which were very very good. So good in fact, that if your listening room is larger than most, I will write up my impressions, perhaps someone will find of interest?
Back to the Moabs, in my opinion, for the money, to energise a room as large as millercarbons with a diminutive powered valve amp, the Moabs are a budget minded audiophile bargain.
Perhaps this is where I become controversial, Focal for example make a floorstander that has considerable cabinet resonance, that is often ignored because it’s overall presentation is pleasing to those who buy them.
Despite the resonance the Moabs actually surprised me, I wasn’t expecting them to sound as good as they did, based upon some parameters that I find important (especially the inertness of the cabinet and use of multiple drivers to deliver a coherent sound field).
My personal take was it reminded me more of a large performance hall, with a live rock band sound than the polite, and intimate, small venue that I tried to create in my small 24’ x 15’ listening room. I never play music at home at the higher levels millercarbon played some tracks at, which were still lower than many concerts I have attended, I’m more of an intimate, detailed and mellow levels music lover.
Was millercarbons system fun, exciting? Yes
Did the Moabs create an image with defined and easily discerned spatial information of the performance? Yes
Can I understand why he’d want to come home after work and sit back and listen to his system? Yes, I really can.
Does someone who eats Chinese food, find that Thai can be overbearingly spicy to the point it can eclipse the other flavours, because the focus will be on the burning sensation of the chilli? As equally true that someone used to eating Thai food regularly, might find (westernised at least) Chinese food a little bit polite, perhaps bland?
I think for someone not worried about absolute state of the art bang on accuracy, who enjoys the livelier side of music reproduction, will get the same kick out of Tekton Moabs (obviously in this case helped with substantial tweeks). He did play classical music as well, and the lack of heavy bass did reveal their capacity to image well with the array.
All of us are on some budget, and yeah, I do think they offer pleasure equal to the investment in a large listening room. I will bet however, that as millercarbon has invested in superior electronics than the Moabs can (as they stand) resolve at, he’ll eventually find something that works even better for him, as it seems, we all seem to do. They certainly provide value for money in entertainment!
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1) Was any time spent listening to
your loudspeakers? If so, what was the reaction? Yes, actually on both days my speakers were given a generous amount of time to listen to. My wife actually proclaimed that after listening to Tracy Chapman on vinyl it was the best sound she'd ever heard. I will admit when we got outside I was angry at her blanket statement and asked her if it sounded better than a live full piece orchestra at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center? She said it was her favourite reproduction of Tracy Chapman she'd heard and she's no audiophile and I must say, the Tekton Moabs with his turntable and valve amp did sound very good, lively, and enjoyable. I have a pair of speakers designed by an unknown Australian legend, using composite materials, HD3 from New Zealand which is 1.6 times denser than MDF and waterproof (used by the Australian government as public toilet walls, because it is very resilient against vandalism), a birchwood plywood baffle brace on the tweeter end of the baffle. It also has 4mm sprung steel plates laminated on the inside, with both cast iron rods and silicone filled hard drawn copper rods as side wall bracing. On the second day, my Lenehan Audio ML2 were connected to the Raven amp and his record player, and we got some time on that. I asked him if I could leave his amp in, and Jeff Smith from Silversmith Audio let me use his RCA development cables to connect my digital front end in. To be clear, I did not design these speakers, I build them from components while I was working at Lenehan Audio, building for them. I do have a reasonably good understanding of the technologies involved, and can readily discuss them. Fidelium cables - Jeff said that the cables would make a difference with hours on them or not, they had maybe three days before bouncing across America to Washington. Jeff himself wasn't too worried about the hours, it seemed his geometry, materials and design worked without needing hours to settle in, and it did sound very clean and the sound was sharp and fast. 2)
Was any time spent listening to the Moabs without the distributed bass
array, so visitors could get an idea of the Tektons without bass
augmentation?
I don't recall so, and the first day I did use the bass array with my diminutive stand mounts in his much larger room. There's simply no way my pair of 6.5" bass drivers supported by a port were ever going to energise a room of that size, with any sort of authority. Any cabin gain that is realised in an appropriately sized listening room for my speakers certainly wasn't going to work here. They are tiny but mighty, just not a large room solution. The array in my perspective did not hurt the overall presentation, and yet, I will admit I didn't get to hear it without DBA though. Honestly though, I had no problem with the mc sound, perhaps as another had stated it wasn't the critical listening regime that a reviewer would make over months of assessment, we had a weekend to have a listen, get impressions and it was supposed to be fun - not work. A totally funny moment was when Mike Levine (oh and when I do get time, I'd like to write about our visit to his place) went to place the back of his hand on Chuck's Moabs to discern the cabinet's involvement in the overall sound. Though he was gentle (this guy by the way is a totally classy bloke) the speaker did yield with compliance at his hand gesture, he quickly reacted to try and stop it toppling over, but as he did put his hands either side to attempt to cradle the large speaker, it rocked back the other way. And so he was moving back and forth, exactly in tune with the rocking of the speaker. The room burst with laughter, nothing was harmed, and Mike was a totally good sport about it - yes speakers on good sprung isolation are compliant to the touch, which is a major reason it works so well actually. Welcome to the wacky world of Townshend Audio, springs and such! The Focals - They were traded in, I will have to ask for the actual model though. Mike ran a sweeping white noise signal through them, and I heard multiple nodes where the cabinet rang out. This is absolute high end audiophile testing, this is not to say they don't sound good or present well. These are $16k speakers in Australia, with from what I recall, good reviews as well. I'm not here to disrespect Focal owners, just conveying my experience. The Focals were traded in twice, the second owner bought Lenehan Audio ML5. I will get back with the model, soon as I ask my old employer. |
Off on some tangent here eh sport! You seem bitter! Did Rick’s balanced & complimentary reflection on your speakers/system, which folks were reacting to , fall short of the glowing review you think was warranted. It sure seems that way since you decided to state his supposed personal business intentions, thereby insinuating that his post was nothing more than an attempt to focus on his speakers for future benefit. Pretty low!
- Facten
rixthetrick,facten- Rick, thanks for your informative, genuine, non-self serving and balanced posts. No surprise though, as you always post that way "Non-self serving"! He fell for it! They all fell for it! Well done, sir!
- millercarbon
I believe millercarbon is reacting to having been called a shill, and that I have in fact indicated to him that I would like to build speakers again, speakers designed by Mike Lenehan in Australia, built here in America. Pretty much like everyone else here, MC posts his positive preference to his speakers of choice (common). From comments I have read, it is his frequency and excitement for them which has ruffled some feathers. So it is true that I have desires and plans to build and sell, a not yet fully designed, still in development (in very early development actually) pair of composite, skinned with American hard woods, highly inert cabinet, with premium drivers (most likely the 4Ohm version of the Purify 6.5") with a top tier 1 inch chambered textile dome tweeter. Possibly next year, if all goes well (fingers crossed) as a direct sales, low volume, high end speaker. There are no plans to build and sell models of my present pair of stand mount speakers, and it’s not possible to do so, as the materials used are no longer available (Laminex HD3). My ML2 stand mounts weigh 90+ lbs each, the new design will be somewhere near that region - assuming a suitable tweeter to compliment arguably the least distortive midbass driver available globally. I do not believe that millercarbon is a shill, passionate and interested in sharing is not disingenuous, despite opinions on sound and build quality of his speakers of choice. I have presented openly my ambitions, hopes and desire to build again in the future. If I am considered a shill, that’s okay, but I still don’t have anything for market - yet. Mike Lenehan is the guy that designed these - (I will not be building these either by the way) https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/review-lenehan-ml-1-monitor |
I just deleted my last post, because after thinking about it and talking it over with a friend, we both came back to the strong opinion that it's more likely that clipping caused high frequency distortion and that clipping is what tore your driver/s up.
Not so much over driving the drivers, sending them heavily distorted signals that were not musical in waveform. Brutal and sharp electrical signals can be generated during clipping, certainly with a reasonably high powered amp, and less attenuated into a high sensitivity circuit will do damage easily.
An analogy to what clipping is like for a driver, might look like revving an engine hard, and dropping the clutch violently, then hitting the brakes and doing it over again in rapid succession.
It doesn't need to be high frequency initial signal to produce high frequency distortion, with abrupt polarity swings.
Believe it or not, often amplifiers pushed with less current potential can be the cause of more damage. It may seen counter intuitive, but it's the limits of the output, that can't complete the soft upper and lower roll of the sine waves, by simply truncating them (clipping) that produce sharp and fast changes in the signal to the motor assembly (electro magnet).
Sorry to have kinda jumped into your thread about the MC Moab weekend, it was still about Tektons though. I hope you don't burn anything else up, that's not fun at all.
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@jayctoy - seems to me you're a good sport, good to interact with you.
In other threads, I have mentioned the possible pitfalls of swapping out drivers into a speaker and how it may (more often than not) disrupt the linearity of the output.
Often a good design will use crossover frequencies that take into account the frequency response of the drivers themself, using strengths to hide weaknesses and breakout in response. It is truly an art to match speakers (drivers), as all are compromised in some way or nother, and to engineer the very best out of them.
In fact, it's often not the best stand alone qualities of the drivers, but the unique pairing that happen to resolve well, where blending the responses with such finesse where they actually sound as though there is no seam between them in the soundfield - that's real talent.
By swapping out a driver, perhaps an even better quality driver (sound quality, not build) it can upset the frequency response and the cohesive response of the voicing of the speaker. It's dependent on the design of course, a lesser design is less prone to losing quality sound, and well, heck there's nothing to say you can't just get lucky!
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@phcollie - that thread would have been my preference to discuss the MC weekend, and I feel a little guilty about doing it in here.
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Do they feed you good ribs at any/all of the audio shows?
Shhh Chuck, don't mention your fabulous new (Polish designed, made in UK?) turntable.
@three_easy_payments - I understand the contention, however despite this, not all of your listed points are entirely accurate though. Some behavior could use modification, and I get my wife on my case over my own annoying behavior, sometimes I even recognise that she actually is correct.
However I will say that often, or more often than not, there are some real gems out there from the little guys, the not well known players. And some really do stack up, in the World of performance, against the heavily advertised big names. Surely even you will concede that?
@tomic601
Horse dewormer with help can attempt to fix all that, with blood thinners to help with micro blood clots, I mean, if you can't get access to the made for human version.
Red blood cell
Rouleaux, it's a crazy World.
Amazingly some of the highest level doctors are losing their minds to ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy theories that jeopardise their licenses, terrible the mental sickness obviously brought on by the pressures of this terrible global pandemic.
PRC are not the enemy, remember that please.
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@chorus - rule out Italy too then?
As well as Austria,
Andorra, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (with Liechtenstein, as you mentioned),Nippon, and the Vatican?
Often the people owning businesses you'd deal with today, weren't either born or in any position to change government policy.
@oldhvymec - my guess is you'd have to measure it from some sort of standardised sweet spot, which is not possible, as it's going to be room dependent in that case. The Tektons I heard are a larger room solution, just like all loudspeakers are room volume ranged, specific designs.
The array is a species that's harder to categorise, enjoyment factor may just be the metric that needs to be measured on this beast.
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Just deleted my two posts asking millercarbon about his new turntable, found out by following tsushima1 right to it.
Yeah, I mixed two conversations together, I'd had a conversation the same night and was discussing briefly or rather being introduced to products by a Polish guy living in England.
British designed turntable.
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Are you using a pre amp?
What, or where is the volume controller in your system?
It's kind of unusual that by raising the volume, you reduce a bad noise, that might be an indication of the volume attenuator introducing noise.
Have you checked your volume device, if it's the culprit, you can possibly clean or just outright replace it with something better?
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@jayctoy
even a single stereo volume controller, whatever it may be, has to equally attenuate each channel individually.
Just because it’s uniformly controlled by the same physical device, whether it is by reducing it through resistance, or another form of control, every channel will have an individual and distinct attenuation.
Two channel or home theater multi-channel, each circuit is actually individual - unless it’s mono.
I am not saying I am right, in that I have absolutely solved the issue. It may be a bad valve, it just seems that when you changed the volume, the issue wasn’t attenuated along with the volume, it corrected it.
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