Who actually heard the Infinity IRS?


I've been looking at the very high value Arion speaker and it's called to mind a vintage speaker, the Infinity IRS.  They are not the same speakers, but honestly I never actually got to even see an Infinity IRS in real life, let alone hear one.

I'm wondering if anyone has or even owns a quad (pair would be wrong) of them could talk about the sound quality and compare to anything today.

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by bdp24

The term "ribbon" is commonly misused. The Infinity EMIM and EMIT drivers are not ribbon drivers; as noted above "EMI" denotes Electro Magnetic Induction, the "M" and "T" midrange and tweeter respectively.

Magnepan’s are often referred to as ribbon loudspeakers, which except for their fantastic ribbon tweeter (found in the 3.7, 20.7, and 30 series models, and in the old Tympani T-IV and T-IVa, the latter of which I own) they are not. Magnepan themselves don’t help by naming their entry-level model the "LRS", for Little Ribbon Speaker. The LRS contains no ribbon drivers, but rather all planar-magnetic’s.

The Servo-Static 1 and 2 does not contain ribbons, but rather are electrostatics with a dynamic woofer. The "Static" in the name is used for that reason, the "Servo" for the servo-controlled woofer.

I heard the IRS at an early Stereophile Show, demoed by Mike Kay of New York’s Lyric Hi-Fi. Unfortunately, he used all corny Audiophile recordings, which imo have little relevance to how a speaker reproduces real music.