What Do You Think . . . and How Does It Work?

Nor am I surprised by your repeated attempts to bait me with allegations and accusations about my products and business.

The accusation comes from the fact that you cannot provide any EVIDENCE of the performance of your speakers. Its your own fault. Speaker companies do not like to talk about measurements, they prefer to rely on hearsay and reviews. And again you have made the assumption that I baited you. That was YOUR CHOICE. Another possibility is that it was an opportunity to try to justify yourself. You are not being honest with us. You offer a speaker that costs $7600 but cant give us evidence of what makes it superior to other cheaper speakers.It may well do what you claim it does but even then it doesnt make it superior.

You do not have the authority to hold me accountable. All you can do is repeatedly claim that I'm a narcissist. You dont hold a person with illness to account anyway. Its not a crime. You treat them with compassion and accommodate them. 

Behavior IS a choice. That’s why people are held accountable for it, unless they are insane.

Poppycock. This is not a court trial. And youre not the judge. Your diagnosis of narcissism isnt even valid. All you have done is stated your opinion about my behavior and that is fine. How would you know what part of my behavior is a choice or a disorder? 

Behavior is a matter of interpretation too and that is YOUR choice. 

For instance, I was not surprised to see you attempt "reversal", which is accusing me of the exact same behaviors you have displayed.

That is because you think you can call me out and other people cannot call you out. It is one rule for you and another for me. It is double standards. 

If you believe that people should be held accountable for their behavior  speaker engineers must be held accountable to the audiophile community.

Why dont you call out other peoples behavior when they insult me? You applauded me for not retaliating but you didnt call out their behavior. Thats double standards.

You now call it a squabble yet you were the one who insisted it WAS more important than discussing speakers. That is a contradiction Duke. I have caught you out.
You also claimed that you had chosen not to engage with me on my terms but then you continued to engage with me about my behavior.
Another contradiction. You are only unwilling to engage with me about the topic of speakers, but you are perfectly willing to spend time bullying me and calling me names. 

You claimed you had stopped reasoning with me because you cant reason with a narcissist. Yet you expect me to change my behavior. That seems highly unlikely dont you think?

Why should anybody change their behavior to suit your needs? Thats not how it works. If you dont like it you have no choice but to concede defeat and walk away. On the other hand, speaker designers should be held accountable because audiophiles pay a lot of money for their toys. It is only fair that they get what they pay for. It is fair that we are given evidence of the QUALITY of the speakers we buy. The alternative is for the speaker companies to continue cheating audiophiles. 

You ASSUME that i have narcissism. You ASSUME its a choice.You make assumptions and expect others to disprove your assumptions. Not how it works. You CHOOSE to interpret my behavior as pompous or arrogant or dismissive or contemptuous. Other people may well have a different view. It is your fault that you refuse to accept there are other interpretations of my behavior.
You refuse to acknowledge that most people do have some level of narcissism. The article i linked to confirms that. So that includes you Duke. It is therefore hardly worth mentioning because its ubiquitous.

You wont show us the CSD plots for your speakers or explain why. 
You refuse to publish the frequency response graphs or the polar response.
On your homepage you say 

We only charge a modest markup on our products

Yet you charge $7600 for a wooden box with ordinary drivers. I know for a fact that you can buy a good woofer and tweeter for well under $100 each. Audiophiles may not know that though. If much of the cost is going on the finish, then the speaker is being sold based mostly on appearance than sound quality. 

Your whole claim to fame is CONSTANT DIRECTIVITY yet it seems odd that you dont publish any independently verified evidence of this. 
You also cant explain why so many audiophiles are perfectly fine with all the speakers out there that arent constant directivity!

Why dont you just admit that you rely on hearsay to sell your speakers rather than facts? 

Many of my points apply to every speaker including the Linkwitz pluto so its not a thread hijack at all. Wrong again.

Send over your ginas to me at your cost, and i will give you a list of all the things wrong with them. I dare you Duke. i am confident i will find problems with them. The same with other high end speakers. This is the reason speakers are resold because eventually audiophiles can no longer tolerate the problems they subconsciously hear. 

PVC pipe for a speaker box is a hoax. After all the effort wilson and magico go to with their cabinets, PVC cannot be the answer. 

Linkwitz was one of the contemporary gurus of speaker design (think LINKWITZ-Riley crossover, etc). His site is full of invaluable info

i dont know any speakers made by him. The crossovers bear his name but they were WRONG. 

no

Kenjit, explain to me why it wouldn’t work??

of course it would work. It just wouldnt be state of the art. Look at all the other high end speaker companies and the great lengths they go to with their cabinets. There are no PVC speakers out there among them. Only PVC speakers out there are the cheap ones on amazon. 

Aluminum, is a good material for low resonance, and great strength.

not really. it rings like a bell. 

I think it’s generally agreed in the industry that a box is the worst possible shape for a loudspeaker cabinet.

The main reasons why most are built this way seems to be consumer expectations of domestic acceptability and manufacturing convenience.

yep. We are being duped. Most audiophiles dont want to hear that though. Even ATC use box shapes and yet they are regarded as the finest speakers. It is all a hoax. 

The downside of using PVC tubes for conventional speakers include the difficulty of the manufacturing process and cost of adding adaptations for stands, speaker mounting interfaces, speaker terminal interfaces and finishes.

Its not really difficult. All you need to do is attach the tube to the driver. Takes about 2 minutes. You are wrong. 

from an engineering standpoint a tubular shape is inherently the most rigid and deflects the least under pressure than a box shape.  

It depends. A pvc tube can be bent easily by hand if you squeeze it across the width. But its harder to bend lengthways. The material matters more than shape. An mdf box is still more rigid than the pvc pipe used for the linkwitz speakers. 

These PVC pipe speakers are all hearsay. NOBODY has done any comparisons to check if a $2 PVC pipe beats a $50k high end Wilson. 6mm is a joke. Even cheap box speakers use at least 15mm mdf. Do not be duped by this cheap PVC hogwash. 

Here the thing though, cylinders, have an inherent characteristic to ECHO
and GAIN... not disappear, or blend like you want.. They're usually have pretty high mechanical distortion. Even with a lot of baffles..
Concrete pipe... ECHO, even long square tubes echo, and GAIN..

which is why im saying its not good. 

At the same thickness PVC is similar in strength to MDF

We are talking about the linkwitz pluto speakers. They are not concrete pipes. They are not 2 inch thick PVC. They are PVC pipes that are about 2mm thick. I dont want to hear any more excuses. Do you know how bendy 2mm thick PVC is? Theres nothing rigid about it 

Be fair kenjit, ATC started introducing curved slightly tapered side panels to their domestic cabinets a few years back. You can be sure they did it for good sonic reasons.

It looks like ALL their professional speakers are boxes. We all know boxes are bad. 

http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/professional/loudspeakers/

Having curves doesn't stop it being a box. Its still a box. You gain nothing from having slightly tapered side panels. Its just cosmetic. Hence they do it on their hifi speakers because appearance is important to audiophiles. 

I thought this was an interesting video about the speakers in question!  Check it out

I checked the setup. Its obviously not a state of the art system. It would be ok for background music. 

Seigfried Linkwitz was brilliant as a speaker designer.

completely disagree. There were no commercial speakers made by him as far as i know. He obviously had a few designs that were available as DIY projects but i dont know of any that stereophile reviewed. I rarely see audiophiles mention his name on forums. I hear names like B&W, Dynaudio, Wilson, Magico, Harbeth, Kef. But Linkwitz? No chance. 

But the claim was that Linkwitz was a brilliant speaker designer. You would think his speakers would be well known and sought after. That just isnt the case. What makes him so brilliant if few audiophiles care about his speakers?

The standard defense mechanism of the narcissist is contempt. You have no idea how much you reveal about yourself with your posts.  

Nobody has asked you for a psychiatric evaluation of me neither do i want one and neither can it be done online.

I suggest you stick to the topic of discussion rather than try to discredit me using an ad hominem accusation of narcissism. 

This is a speaker forum and i signed up to discuss speakers not peoples behavior or character. Narcissism is a term that was made up by a nobody. Its just a hodgepodge of different characteristics that apply to EVERYBODY. Grandiosity and superiority? Everybody has that to some extent. Who cares? At some point It was then decided by an incompetent that narcissism should be an illness! and now we hear it being bandied about everywhere.

There is no such thing as narcissism. I dont buy it. It cant be proven or disproven. It is utter poppycock. End of story. 

Anybody who is incapable of sticking to discussing the topic is the one with a PROBLEM and needs treatment. Its nothing but an ad hominem FALLACY. Duke Im still waiting for evidence to show how brilliant your speakers are. I dare you to show me. They are expensive little speakers. You have just as much onus as I do to prove yourself. The speaker industry is full of grandiose claims which are rarely proven and every new speaker that comes along is supposedly better than its predecessors! its a neverending sham that needs to be stopped. 

The Linkwitz speakers you mentioned are no longer in production. They are certainly not well known. Not in the same way as kef atc and b&w. If they were so brilliant there would be no need for magico wilson or atc! 

Contempt is a necessity for being an audiophile! Otherwise EVERY speaker would be acceptable and the standards would never progress to a higher level. 

Long live the champion!

Kenjit ~ Perfectionist bar none 

You have attacked the character of everyone on this forum in one way or another.

You have accused me and my kind (speaker designers) of incompetence and dishonesty.

There are many problems within the industry that i have identified.
The inability of audiophiles to hear problems is in itself a problem.
All these problems involve people so it is impossible to discuss them without mentioning the people involved.

The fact that you see it as an insult rather than a problem misses the point. The fact that you attack my character rather than the arguments i make is a fallacy.

You provide no solutions or reasons to refute what i say. You have nothing to offer duke.

You attacked Siegfried Linkwitz in this thread

Wrong. I attacked his design. I cast doubt on his method of using pvc as its not really rigid which is obvious to anybody that has used it. Linkwitz himself admits pipes have other serious problems if you read his website.

Somebody claimed he was a brilliant speaker designer, and i challenged this assertion. Im allowed to. I reasonably asked why if he was so brilliant, his designs have not achieved much commercial success.
In response you cited an obscure review in stereophile, which doesnt convince me. The fact is its all opinions. There is no agreement on what tests to use to decide how good a speaker is.

The linkwitz riley crossover which bears his name is not the only game in town. Plenty of designers dont use it. Plenty of designers including b&w choose the humble first order electrical design, and b&w has still sold untold pairs of speakers.

I am primarily an audiophile rather than a designer. As audiophiles we must be sceptical. We are entitled to be, given the amount of misinformation in this hobby and exaggerated or unproven claims. The onus is on your kind to show proof.

Kenjit ~ Perfectionist bar none "

Way too easy to identify these as narcissism.

Wrong again. You’re just choosing to misinterpret what i say in order to support your nasty accusations against me. There can be more than one interpretation (eg. a joke ) and there are no nonverbal cues on here that would help you to decide.

@ctstereo

I have listened to the LXmini and own the LX521.4, I have listened to B&W speakers costing 5 times more than the LX521 and the Linkwitz design still wins.

Thats just your preference. It says nothing about how well the design performs and there is no agreement on what measurements matter when deciding that anyway, so there is no way to tell.

In conclusion, there is no evidence that the linkwitz pluto speakers are superior to conventional boxes. Its all hearsay. The driver he refers to as a tweeter is in fact a full range mini driver. It goes lower than a typical tweeter at the expense of other factors such as high frequency extension and dispersion. Distortion on the driver seems high as well. Despite all the supposed advances in driver technology the linkwitz speaker uses a fairly ordinary 5 inch woofer.
It seems odd to claim that a speaker using such ordinary parts can achieve extraordinary performance. Are we being duped by the industry into thinking that driver quality is more important than it really is?

In which case how do you explain this pair of $7600 bookshelf speakers that is described as "AK's All Time Best Performing Domestic System"
https://jamesromeyn.com/audiokinesis-speaker-models/gina/

Theres no evidence of performance provided and i see that the driver is screwed in. Linkwitz advises against this and he says that it "cannot be ignored when the goal is to design a loudspeaker of the highest accuracy."

Speaker designers need to be questioned otherwise there is nothing to stop them making any claim. 

Ive been accused of trolling and narcississm and now youre suggesting paranoia. What next? Ive just told you my thoughts on the linkwitz pluto. Why dont you respond to that instead of using an excuse to avoid discussing the real issues?

There is no such thing as falling into the trap of paranoia or suspicion. The real danger is being duped by all kinds of unproven claims which there are many of. Most of these claims are just based on the say so of the speaker companies and theres rarely any independently verified evidence. Theres every reason to be suspicious. We have to rely on the voluntary action of reviewers to obtain some measurements that ought to be provided by the manufacturers. It is shocking considering the extortionate prices.
The prices clearly have no limits yet theres no evidence that the quality goes up with price as youd rightly expect. 

However even reviewers measurements should not be relied on. They can be biased too. Measurements can vary and we dont yet have a complete understanding of the correct measurements to use. Manufacturers must be held to account and paranoia is never an excuse to avoid doing that. The loudspeaker industry has taken us for a ride for long enough and now we must demand evidence. 
We deserve it. 

Long live the Kenjit!

Kenjit~

One Linkwitz mainly discusses stamped baskets which are low cost. Two he says that if there is a resonance it must be dealt with. There are many ways to deal with resonances. Do you have proof this speaker has not dealt with them.

I have circumstancial evidence by looking at the picture of the audiokinesis speaker. I have no reason to believe there is some elaborate method hidden inside the box that mounts the driver differently than the usual way. I have also seen pictures of many other high end speakers that just screw their drivers in and call it a day. I have no reason to believe otherwise with this speaker. 

The onus of proof is on the manufacturer. Im not the manufacturer. 
We have been taken for a ride long enough. The time has come for the tables to turn. They have got away with unverified claims for too long. 

Linkwitz says :

Often the effects due to driver mounting are deemed to be of secondary importance to the overall sound quality of a loudspeaker.

They are usually costly to remedy.

They cannot be ignored when the goal is to design a loudspeaker of the highest accuracy."

Why would linkwitz bother to mention this if it applies to stamped frames only? Most drivers are not stamped. 

Most high end manufacturers do not address these types of issues. 

The question for Audiokinesis is can he show us that the way he mounts his drivers is in fact the best way acoustically and that it wasnt just screwed in to save money and time and that the difference wasnt deemed unimportant? Did he do blind tests using one version with drivers screwed in and the other with drivers mounted differently? Or is he just making assumptions?

What evidence is there that the audiokinesis is a better speaker within the marketplace which is full of similar boxes with drivers in 'em? You would expect better performance for that kind of money no? So where is the evidence? I dont think there is any is there? There never is. 

Master Kenjit~

@glupson

There is no behavior you can discern on an internet forum especially when I only talk about speakers on here. Dukes technique has been to try to discredit everything i say by accusing me of narcissism all the while ignoring the topic being discussed.
Whats the name for that? There must be an illness that corresponds to no?

asvjerry makes a good point. We are all narcississts according to that list. The list of descriptions has been carefully fabricated so that it can apply to anybody. For what purpose? Nothing other than to label that person and use that label against them at every opportunity, to discredit them, bully them and ultimately control their behavior. It is a disgusting sham that nobody should buy into. There are plenty of shams going on within the medical community just as there are within the speaker industry. There are sham diagnoses, treatments, crooks and charlatans within the medical industry. There is less or even no regulation within the speaker industry so whos to say the situation is not even worse in the speaker industry? The single factor that seems to motivate people in both camps is money and greed. Medicine is no longer about helping people its all about profit. It is absurd to deny that money and greed does not motivate at least some within the speaker industry.

Labelling me a narcississt does not invalidate my points. It does not answer the riddles i presented to Duke. It just conveniently avoids all of it. Who is guilty of evading the discussion here me or Duke?Who is the real culprit?

hi glupson, Interesting how you ignored my questions. 

All the best,

Kenjit~

(Undefeated audiophile)

Dukes logic is to assume that I am a narcissist unless proven otherwise which is typical of the high end speaker industry where it is assumed that any claim made is true until proven otherwise. Dukes goal is to repeatedly call me a narcissist and distract you from the dirty secrets of the industry where audiophiles are kept in the dark much of the time when it comes to measurements and how much things cost. Do not be duped.

Duke sells obscenely expensive speakers costing $7600. To put that in perspective you can get a full range floorstander or active speakers for much less than that price. The Linkwitz Pluto itself is far cheaper. There is no reason what he does couldnt be done cheaper, as other manufacturers already do offer cheaper high end speakers.

He claims on his website that

"Few if any other speaker designers match Duke’s knowledge and experience Re. the ideal balance between early and late arriving signals "

This is a grandiose claim typical of narcissists. He basically claims that he is superior to every other designer. Yet Revel have been doing waveguides for years! What he does is hardly new. Worst of all theres no evidence. B&w and Magico sell more speakers than audiokinesis Im pretty sure of that. Yet he is telling us that THEY are wrong and HE is right!

Duke claims that he uses a special plywood so that

"Noise is lowered, with commensurate increase in dynamic “pop,” and without any downside. "

NO EVIDENCE

For his Crossovers:

"The result is faster transient performance, with increased detail, transparency, larger dynamic envelope, and no down side. "

NO EVIDENCE.

He charges $7600 for a wooden box with what looks like plastic cheap binding posts on the back and a woofer from a manufacturer whose speciality is in guitar speakers not high end audio woofers.
He quotes the names of four PHd’s namely Earl Geddes, Floyd Toole, Robert E. Greene, and David Greisinger. and expects to be recognized as equal to them. Where was your PHD from Mr. lejeune, Harvard or Princeton? He claims these individuals "have the most reliable and extensive knowledge base on this subject." NO EVIDENCE.

There are hundreds of speaker manufacturers out there Duke. Your speakers are rarely mentioned on this forum or others. Your speakers have not achieved mainstream success. It is a niche product that requires you to sell a few pairs at high prices. The grandiosity doesnt match with reality.

Kenjit, if your questions are so brilliant and so vitally important, why isn’t everyone clamoring in outrage for me to answer them?

because nobody seems to care about your designs when there are other less expensive ones out there. 

Incidentally, i just found an article that confirms my suspicion that narcississm pretty much applies to everybody. 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201408/8-ways-handle-narcissist

it says 

A tendency toward narcissism is present in everyone, to more or less of a degree

Ive also pointed out above, Dukes behavior which is narcississtic. 
He fails to acknowledge this. 

Its ok to be a narcissist Duke. Being a narcissist is probably a good thing anyway when it comes to speaker design. It helps you to strive for PERFECTION. Can we now go back to discussing the topic of speakers? Promise, no more insults?

Kenjit~

Undefeated Champion bar none 

Duke has no authority to set the conditions for this forum. Narcissists are not excluded from here are they? 
People with disabilities have just as much rights as those without. 

Are you actually offering to change YOUR behavior, or only asking me to change mine?

How dare you expect a person with a disability to simply change? Disability is not a choice. 

People have a right to know when they are dealing with someone whose behavior is toxic. And I will out you.

Nobody has any right to know about a persons disability, its not their business. If a person does have a disability it is not toxic. The disabled community has fought to secure their rights and equal opportunities for a long time. We are protected against discrimination by law. You will not take that away from us Duke. The onus is on you to accommodate us. 

I have chosen to give you a taste of your own medicine.

Great idea. Lets call out all those with disabilities and give them a taste of their own medicine. Lets victimise them, harass them and remind them of how toxic they are to society. Lets discredit EVERYTHING they have to say on the basis of their disability. Lets just eliminate them off the planet so that only people that meet the standards DUKE lejeune sets are allowed to remain. 
That way we can CONTINUE TO HIDE THE DIRTY SECRETS WITHIN THE SPEAKER INDUSTRY and protect those that run it. 

• The speaker industry has swindled thousands of audiophiles over the last few decades using the same techniques. 

• We have been sold speakers that DONT WORK. They end up being resold because they are not good enough. The used market for ultra high end speakers is just as active as for low end speakers. 

• Measurements are rarely published. When they are, they may be exaggerated or even false. 

• The high end industry is unregulated. If i was in charge, the Kenjit standards (TM) would never be met and i would shut down most of these so called speaker companies. 
• Unemployment would rise within the speaker industry 

• Any claim can be made and is assumed true until proven otherwise

• Speaker designers have no clue on what the correct method or goal is of speaker design.

• Speaker designers are not required to be qualified. Its like going to a doctor or dentist who is not qualified. 

• The reviewers are chosen so that MOST speaker reviews are positive. Nobody would want a negative review published. Any negative aspects of a speaker are overlooked or downplayed. Only 5 star reviews accepted!

• Speakers are tuned to the designers ears, not OURS. 

• CONSPIRACY to suppress OLSONS research (1950s)

• In the year 2500, speakers are a thing of the past. 
• Music transmitted wirelessly directly into brain. 1hz to 30khz possible. 

• Researchers of acoustics will discover old internet archives from the year 2020. 
• Kenjits ideas and papers are scrutinized by Professors of acoustics
• Kenjit infinity baffle loading technology is found to be correct
• Kenjit speaker design is manufactured and tested by engineers and found to work

•  Kenjit is declared greatest Audiophile champion of all time BAR none.  

Duke has repeatedly used the accusation of narcissism to avoid talking about the points i raised. This is not only a fallacy but its also a form of harassment. He believes I suffer narcissism and treats it as a problem that i need to be shamed for. The reality is, he needs help to learn how to cope with his own emotions when dealing with people with narcissism. Then he will be able to respond to my points about the TOPIC instead of freaking out and losing his temper. This is a speaker forum not a forum for discussing peoples illnesses. Duke should mind his own business and stick to the topic. 

He says he wants to give me a taste of my own medicine. What good is that going to do anybody? Is it a punishment?

Duke has already lost the argument anyway because he has used insults as a way of evading the topic. Anybody who cant see that needs help too.

I have nothing left to prove. Ive made my points and if he wants to respond i will continue the discussion. 

Master Kenjit~ 

@cd318

have you heard the plutos?