Thinking about a Steinway Lyngdorf system

I've heard demos of the lower end Steinway Lyngdorf speakers/systems at a local dealer.  It's stunningly impressive for both 2-channel and home theater (Atmos) audio.  It's not feasible for me as I don't have the space for their proprietary  amps/components, but it would be my first choice if I had a dedicated home theater room or if I was looking to use DSP to get off the audio system building merry-go-round.  

op we heard the steinway sstems at several audio shows not impressed and this is a verry expensivw system

we heard the aurion audio apollo system at capitol audio fest this is a full range line array of proprietary amts drivers with a pair of diapole subwoofers

the use the trinov processor for a preamp dac crossover and for room correction 60k for the speakers and they bow away speakers for 200k and they are 105db efficient so a tiny tube amplifier is all you need

so this system uses the same elements that you like in the steinway system

https://www.arionaudio.com/speakers

these are amazing sounding loudspeakers

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect nj

Lol

@audiotroy Is there any chance you sell the Arion Audio speakers?

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Current system not doing it for you? It looks really nice and well set up.

@mcroth I love the system I have, the PS Audio BHK Amps are very good with their hybrid tube design and I love ½ of my Paradigm 9hs the tweeter and mid drivers are wonderful but I had to replace the low end with the JL 113 subs and they buzz, I've got 20k of power regeneration and 2x filters the subs still buzz and the BHK preamp is simply to noisy, PS Audio has replaced it twice. I have 30 or so speakers in my listening room and one system is dead quiet but sounds not as warm and inviting the other system is more analytical. I know the home system is not as accurate but it sounds better, I'm also very tired of replacing all those stupid tubes, I feel like as soon as I put them in they start to degrade and where do I step in and say ok now replace them. I'd rather send money on my last system what ever that may be.

The Paradigm 9H do not have enough bass? I heard them once but it was low volume on non bass heavy music. I just imagined their bass to be amazing compared to most speakers available. 

Here is Peter Lyngdorf discussing his companies approach to surround speakers. He says he doesn’t see much value in going fron 12 to 16 speakers. Thanks you Peter! I am NOT going to upgrade to a 15/16 channel processor because what he says in this video makes perfect sense.

Breaking down the model B:

@mofojo You would think the 9hs would have a ton of bass the speakers really punch above their weight, hybrid design, beryllium tweeters, with large beryllium mids, and 4 woofers with balanced opposing frames and 2700W peak but in my case no, I bought them new and was always disappointed in the bass, although they have a tone sweep button in them and when I push it the room shakes but I can't get that sound out during music. Oh well. I've never heard better meds and tweeters, the 9hs are the first speaker I've hear that actually use a near field deflector that actually worked, high frequency beryllium tweeters always sounded harsh (Focal) but these didn't, I bought the 9hs assuming the bass would be great I have 4x Bs for my surround sound speakers they are wonderful, I should have simply used those as my main speakers and spent the money somewhere else.

@kota1 thanks for the info, Peter L is quite the designer, I have a Lyngdorf 60.2 I think it's there best processor and at 15k$ it 10K less than the Steinway and it seems to do more but it doesn't have the network connectors for the "system" I'm such a sucker for everything working together. I did buy an Naim "class A" am and a Focal Stella headphone setup that I don't like either, thought they would go together since they are the same company. 

@kota1 I think where Peter L is possibly a bit wrong about not having a center channel is that so much dialog is 100% sent to the center and music sounds good with the lead in the center, if you don't have a center channel but only rely on a center image created by L and R you won't hear anything if the mixer sends important parts the the CC. In theory you only need 2 speakers we only have 2 ears. 

@donavabdear , I am very familiar with their processor. It has been antiquated for quite a while now. Their equipment is severely over priced. You can do much better for less money.

The best processor/preamp on the market is going to be the DEQX Pre 8 which is going to be released shortly. It has way more flexibility and 4 crossovers. You can really go to town with that. Get a Parasound JC 1+ and you can drive any speaker ever made. It is eons better then the class D Amp in the Steinways.

If you want Dipole Speakers you should get Magneplanar 20.7s.  If you want to go up from there then Sound Labs.  Then you get the added benefit of line source speakers that project power better and throw a larger more life like image. They also interact with the room less limiting the need for extensive acoustic treatment.

@donavabdear 

I can appreciate that his company might not offer a strict cc speaker so I kind of took that for what it was. I realize that the CC is non negotiable in my HT.

Strange looking speakers.  Openings for sound to come out of speakers is quite small.

I would go listen to the new $37K MC Audiotech Forty-10 Loudspeakers too before buying these speakers. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYL4TCP6NDQ

 https://ckarchive.com/b/27u2hoh3p97o

 https://www.mcaudiotech.com/products/

 They just came out with the all new $25K MC Audiotech TL-12's too 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXw--j-NDo

@mijostyn Thank you I appreciate your experience.

@rick2000 Interesting speakers, hope they do well.

@donavabdear 

Did you pull the trigger on these or something else since you started this thread?

@kota1 The main sales person from Steinway came to the house and listened to my sound system. He gave me a few good notes but I don't think the Steinway system is for me, everything is proprietary I would have to get rid of all my equipment. He gave me some pointers about Room Perfect but it didn't make much difference, I guess that means my room is good already. Best

@donavabdear

Sounds like a win/win, nice to know you got a good room.

BTW, my active speaker journey continues, got a pair of DefTech W9 active on the back porch, a pair Paradigm Active Shift A2 on the desktop, a single active A2 in the kitchen. The Deftechs are small and sound huge, even on the porch with 0 acoustic treatments, can’t believe the amount of bass they throw. Also added a third active sub on my back wall, off the floor midway between the floor and the ceiling, posted a pic. The Sony dac has been a great addition, I have my streamer, CDP, and DAP connected to it and set it to remaster everything in DSD. Nice upgrade to typical streaming. The headphone amp of it sounds great too, now I need to upgrade the headphones. Can you recommend a balanced pair?

I've never heard the Steinway system, but I can say I lust after their gorgeous remote control!

@prof I cleaned my Steinway grand for the first time yesterday, I was amazed at the craftsmanship every part of it was perfect.

@kota1 You'll appreciate this, the Steinway salesmen goes all over the world listening and talking to people about very expensive sound systems, we talked about how I felt it was so important to have the amps, crossovers, and speakers designed for each other and that Steinway was the only company that did that in a complete way, you can't even insert a normal speaker cable or interconnect every single piece of the system is designed by Lyngdorf / Steinway. He did say that there are problems with amps in the speakers because of the vibration and they don't even want you to put the equipment on the wrong material. They took a piece of equipment with long cables (network cables) and set it on 5 different types of material like glass wood stone and such and each material sounded different. This guy form Steinway was not an audiophile that was into esoteric accessories with non scientific tendencies, in fact he said the engineers at Steinway / Lyngdorf are all old school scientific and numbers people they are testing all the time. 

@kota1 I would really like you to tell me how you are remastering in DSD? Are you using it as a playback format from other formats, or are you getting DSD originals? I'm probably misunderstanding, how would copying to DSD make anything sound better? 

@donavabdear 

The Sony TAZH1ES has a DSD remastering engine:

according to Sony “combines a high-performance DSP (digital signal processing) and FPGA (field-programmable gate array) to convert any signal into DSD128 signals. It was designed based on the know-how garnered from Sony’s 8-times oversampling and Extended SBM (Super Bit Mapping) technology for professional recorders.”

see page 28 in the manual:

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/4598/45982541M.pdf

From the webpage:

Convert any source to DSD

Personalizing sound with the new DSD Remastering Engine. Offering double the conversion accuracy of previous models, the new DSD Remastering Engine let you convert all PCM music sources into DSD 11.2 MHz. The technology uses FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) to convert any signal into the DSD sound format.

https://electronics.sony.com/audio/audio-components/hi-res-audio/p/tazh1es

@kota1 Thank you. Why doesn't everyone use DSD, SACD, I would worry that there will be no equipment to play it back on in the future. When I started in the studios 2 inch audio tape and even 2 inch video tape. You really can't playback any 2 inch video tape now and it was the ultimate cutting edge format in its day. Reminds me of the huge underground caverns that the government use to hold records they did a study and ended up using paper and ink for holding records, In Hollywood there are sealed vaults that you put your old master movie in usually on film and mag for the sound, won't be able to play that back soon either. Apple ruined the pursuit of quality in the entertainment industry in place of convenience, sad.

@donavabdear

You know the guy running PSAudio loves DSD (I think he has a label). I think all of these hirez formats have withered because of lack of demand. I don’t see a lot of Spotify users switching to Tidal or Quboz to get hirez. As for Apple they changed the industry overnight when they launched spatial audio as the recording and mixing studios have been converting to support that format in droves. I use Tidal for my atmos streams, for some reason apple just had a different tone on my rig, a bit brighter. 

See:

https://www.mixonline.com/tag/atmos

Can you recommend a balanced headphone for me? I could get the matching Sony’s but thought it would be good to check out a few. I have never been a headphone guy.

@kota1 I really didn't like my headphones when I first got them and a Naim HP amp. What was wrong was I didn't burn them in long enough they sound great now. I have the Focal Stellia they are comfortable and are closed which is what I wanted open headphones don't make a lot sense may as well use speakers. Sony makes great headphones, Sennheiser HD-25s are a little dark but are comfortable very consistent and the industry standard for production sound, the more expensive Sennheisers sound bad to me I never liked them. I would say go with some very good Sonys they should be set up for your amp perfectly. I did listen to many very expensive headphones at the last audio show and they were very different sounding and the power amp requirements were very different. 

Thanks, I am thinking over the ear but they also have in ear monitors in the signature line:

https://youtu.be/ySNab0IBf-4

https://youtu.be/wWfYh3S5izQ

I would say definitely buy the normal headphones, I bought some in ear phones 1500$ by Sure and they sounded good but simply didn't have any air at all, I think in ear phones are useful in very noisy situations but for normal listening they are missing the air around the musicians.