Tekton Double Impact & Comb Filtering


Like many of you, I have been pondering purchasing these speakers but am very curious about the unusual tweeter array. I asked the smartest speaker person that I know (he is a student of Sean Olive) about the design and below is what he had to say.   

"In theory it could work, but the driver spacing means that the crossover point would need to be very low.
He is using the SB acoustics tweeter which is 72mm in diameter, center to center on the outside opposing drivers is around 5.7 inches, which is about 2400Hz. This means that combing would stop between 1/4 to 1/2 of the wavelength (between 1200-600Hz) is where the outside tweeters should start playing nice with each other.
Since he is not using low enough crossover points he has created a comb filtering monster. Now while it's not the great point source that was promised, it's no worse than most line arrays and the combing will average itself out given enough listening distance.

The MTM spacing on the other hand is ridiculous. Hopefully he is cutting the top end off on one of those midrange drivers to avoid combing."

seanheis1
So one thing can be certainly said, those speakers will color the sound, and change the music from what the artist intended.
This is not necessarily a bad thing as one can argue that hifi is getting things better than the original recording. Of course that's a preference. 

It's common for some hifi brands to voice a rising response from 2-7k to give the speaker it's over detailed sound. The "I'm hearing things in the recording that I've never heard before" is a clue that you are listening to boosted speakers. A dip in the presence zone from 7-8k helps the speakers "disappear."

IMO, this is part of the fun of hifi. If we wanted super accurate speakers, we would be talking about our Genelec Studio monitors, which were probably used in the studio by the recording engineers. But these speakers are no fun to listen to...no extra sparkles, dips, or sweetness.

At the end of the day, the recording engineers go home and listen to the sweet lies of their hifi systems.  

213runnin

1) Your post said "frequency graph" and not range or response. So that is why some people said that you are wrong about other manufacturers posting graphs. 

2) You are wrong again. 
     Tekton does include frequency numbers on some of their speakers. As an example on one, the DI. 
+/- 1dbl 70hrz - 20krz. Range 20hrz - 30krz. 
On another it is +/- .05dbl with the same measurements. 
Yes, the +/- range below 70hrz is not stated. But I highly doubt it is not in an acceptable range. 

I think what Tekton is trying to stress is that these two speakers are ruler flat in the most critical areas. 

Also l must say that you either have an agenda or are trolling because you continue to mention the Stereophile review which is about A DIFFERENT MODEL. You continue to bad mouth the design and the build. But you have NO personal experience with them. 

Look, you're not entitled to SAVE everyone from themselves. 

Just my opinion. Except the measurements. 
This idea that measurements don’t matter is nonsense from people who don’t understand them. The best kits out there always measure well. Look at the measurements done by Soundstage network at the NRC. The THD measurements alone say a lot about how clean your speakers will sound trying to reproduce massed strings and such. But nobody wants to talk about that.
Then again if all you listen to is badly recorded rock, death metal and electronica, you don’t need to worry about measurements, Cerwin Vega type stuff will do nicely.
As far as I am concerned I believe that measurements do matter...to a point.
If measurements were all that mattered then tube amps and preamps could not compete with the SS versions as they do not measure as well. Also LPs would not compete with CDs or digital files. But I would never tell someone that prefers tube equipment or LPs that they are wrong and the measurements prove it. They like what they hear and that matters. It would be nice if all we had to do is look at how something measures to know how it sounds but audio is not an exact science as some believe it is. It is complex and we think we know all that can be known. Yet we continue to find that we do not.
Just a few years ago jitter did not matter...then jitter below a certain level did not matter...both proved wrong. There are plenty more depending how far back you want to go.
Of course if something measures very poorly then it most likely will sound poorly. But NO one here knows exactly how the DI or the Ulf, etc measure, yet. And the one speaker that the nay sayers mention, the Enzo, did not measure poorly and JA said so in his overview of the measurements that he did of the speaker. Yes, it had an issue here and there but nothing that would be considered bad. And other areas were very good. So you have to look at it overall. 
213runnin, don't you own Totem Rainmaker? Check the Stereophile measurements on them. The same 12 db swing in frequency response you are blasting Tekton for (-5/+7 db). Totem's specs state +/- 3 db, which are off by 100 percent. What good are those specs? Lots of really bad cabinet resonances too. I thought that kind of coloration wasn't your cup of tea. I have never heard Rainmaker so I can't comment on how it sounds, but the measurements do not look very good. But I have heard Arro, and liked them well enough for what they do. 
I am not a Tekton fanboy. I don't own any and have only heard the Pendragon when it was being hyped. They did some things I liked, but I would not buy them based on what I heard. Does that rule out the DI or Electron for me? Absolutely not. I would have to hear them first and decide from there. Too many people have said they are really, really good for me to dismiss them out of hand. I would certainly never disregard them based on a single audition of another model of the same brand. In the same vein, I would never dismiss them based on measurements of a different speaker. That would be foolish.