Quote Originally Posted by Pat D
You certainly manage to read a whole lot of things into a few simple remarks. Let's try to get the logic straight. To set up a list of speakers for auditioning means that I will go looking for those speakers. It does not mean that I won't listen others I come across. I would even try out the De Capos if I came across them, even if just in the hope that I could tell you what I thought of them. In the second place, I can't very well use measurements as a screening tool if I don't have them, can I? Most speaker manufacturers don't supply measurements for their speakers, but a number of magazines do give useful measurements of speakers including Stereophile, the Audio Critic, Audio Ideas Guide, Soundstage (on selected ones) and Sound & Vision. Unfortunately, their methodologies are not the same, so comparisons can be tricky.

In fact, when I was traveling, I emailed the A/N distributor asking where to go, but got no reply. So I certainly did not exclude them from my audition list, except on availability. Now, I must say that so far I have not been overly impressed with the things Peter Q. says, but he may well make some very good speakers. I am not overly impressed by the things Totem says, either, but their Mani-2 is really a fine sounding speaker.

I submit that you do not have a logical basis for relating some faults you find in speakers to their having metal tweeters. One could argue the problem is how the tweeter is integrated with the woofer/midrange. The problem there is that the tweeter, being smaller, has generally a much wider dispersion in the crossover range than the woofer/midrange does, thus producing a "flare" in the power response, to use John Atkinson's terminology.

Sorry didn't mean to read anything in but you said measurements were a screening out tool so I assumed that meant a screening out of the audition list tool.

The faults I found I never said was logical - I actually go and listen with good equipment in pretty good to very good rooms...it's experiencial basis. Not all metal tweeters are bad -- and maybe they are not bad at all by themselves - maybe you are correct and it't the implementation that is poor. SO far with few exceptions I have not heard them Implemented correctly(or the tweeter is drawing too much attention to itself).

As for Peter you will not be the first nor the last to disagreewith what he says - had i read the web-site before I heard the product I would have passed them over. The problem is I've heard his inferior SET amps and his inferior CD technology and his old fashioned inferior speaker designs - non slim line non bevelled edges to reducestanding waves etc and it bested the more expensive B&W model Nautilus with 8 top of the line Musical FIdelity power amps. So it is very very hard for a layperson not to believe what he has to say - technically inferior but it does not sound that way to me.

Of course this may also sound like the tubes versus SS debate where both sides scream accuracy versus 2nd order harmonics blah blah blah.

The prolem with all of it is is that even when the measurer at Stereophile grumbled about the De Capo he was surprised that the reviewer didn't notice this or that about the sound - UHF listens first then measures and confirms what they heard. If you don't hear it then something wasn't measured correctly - and even then what stereophile shows as a weakness was and is viewed as a huge strength of the speaker??????

I chose not to get them simply because the depth of soundstage seemed a bit imposed on all recordings - that to me was better than all the speakers using metal tweeters that added detail = distortion or adding something not on the recordings but something that sounds cool ---- for a while anyway.