Florian vs. RGA

[topspeed]

The sad matter of fact is that you have not read nor understood the posts that i have written.

Guilty as charged. I only glanced over it. Your rhetoric bores the hell out of me after a few sentences.

He is lying and putting down a speaker with false facts! The fact that i said that they still work after 20 years was only as a reply to RGA's false statment about the "longterm functionality" of a Apogee speaker.

Fact: the ad states the ribbons have been replaced. Fact: YOU replaced your ribbons. Now why would anyone question their durability?

Please only reply to this post when you can prove that RGA's post were correct and that all the specialist and reviews are wrong. I would aslo enjoy it very much to have a intelligent conversation with you, unfortunalty you did not read my posts and lack the knowledge of why Apogee went out of business.

When you grow up, you'll realize the simple truth about business; you're either in it or not. If you are, you're doing it right. If you're not, find another profession. Anything else is an excuse.

[Florian]

Well if you would ask me as to why i changed ribbons instead of making stupid asumtions than you would be a lot smarter than you are today. As a tip. There are more than one type of ribbon ;-)

[topspeed]

Well if you would ask me as to why i changed ribbons instead of making stupid asumtions than you would be a lot smarter than you are today. As a tip. There are more than one type of ribbon ;-)

If your Apogee's are "world reference" speakers from the factory, why change them?

Make sure you look behind you before you start backpedalling.

[PAT.P]

My people skills are generally very good exept 2 people so far. If he stops ever mentioning planars then i will stop about his box. I recommend a word stop about planars for RGA and a AudioNote stop for me.

-Flo

Best way to stop the box and planars problem is they should have a thread only for these speaker title ESL,Planars,Alternative speaker like this it would be better for all of us .The ones that have knowledge could share their input.As for Florian none of us have a cartoon offending your speakers like you have insulting boxes.This is getting so childish .

[Florian]

HAHAH, i have offended all boxes. Funny how blind some people are. I always name my fav. box speakers. Thiel CS3.6, Genesis V, Avalon Eidolon Diamond and the Kharma 3.2fe, Infinity Epsilon, Infinity IRS 4.5 and IRS 5.....but you guys dont even read my threads as noted above.

To Topspeed: Because there is no limit, lighter drive units and a stronger magnetic field alow me to use tubes in my system and push the envelope further.

-Flo

PS: Its a good idea to make a dedicated section.

[GMichael]

HAHAH, i have offended all boxes. Funny how blind some people are. I always name my fav. box speakers. Thiel CS3.6, Genesis V, Avalon Eidolon Diamond and the Kharma 3.2fe, Infinity Epsilon, Infinity IRS 4.5 and IRS 5.....but you guys dont even read my threads as noted above.

To Topspeed: Because there is no limit, lighter drive units and a stronger magnetic field alow me to use tubes in my system and push the envelope further.

-Flo

PS: Its a good idea to make a dedicated section.

I don't feel offended. But I do keep bumping into things.

Sorry I can't join in on the argument. (I like both boxes and planners) But this is the only thread with any action.

Where the heck is everyone?

[Florian]

Also i OWN 3 boxes. One VMPS RM30 (6500$ fully loaded) and a 2700$ VMPS 626 fully loaded and a Focal JmLab SW900 subwoofer. Also own .5's Maggies and the DIVAS. But sure, i hate all the boxes. The difference is, i own them and know what they can and cant do and write about it, not some 10 minute listening session.

-Flo

[PAT.P]

HAHAH, i have offended all boxes. Funny how blind some people are. I always name my fav. box speakers. Thiel CS3.6, Genesis V, Avalon Eidolon Diamond and the Kharma 3.2fe, Infinity Epsilon, Infinity IRS 4.5 and IRS 5.....but you guys dont even read my threads as noted above.

To Topspeed: Because there is no limit, lighter drive units and a stronger magnetic field alow me to use tubes in my system and push the envelope further.

-Flo

PS: Its a good idea to make a dedicated section.

Flo I was talking about the cartoon.I also read your treads and yes they should have a dedicated section .On the diyAudio forum its seperated from the loodspeakers and benefit all of us .There the people with their knowledge share them with others that want to learn.

[PAT.P]

Also i OWN 3 boxes. One VMPS RM30 (6500$ fully loaded) and a 2700$ VMPS 626 fully loaded and a Focal JmLab SW900 subwoofer. Also own .5's Maggies and the DIVAS. But sure, i hate all the boxes. The difference is, i own them and know what they can and cant do and write about it, not some 10 minute listening session.

-Flo

You still have lots to learn go to www.diyaudio.com and these are people that could show you a thing or two.These are people with knowledge from inside and out.

[Florian]

Well i find the cartoon funny, and everyone keeps telling me to stay cool and not to react so i dont see a problem with the cartoon. Let me make a statment right now.

There are many box speakers i do like!
There are planars i dont like, and some i like!

I just dont agree that some members keep bashing them and generalize them. I have
always say what i dont like about a specific box. But to lie about frequency responses and reliablity is just wrong.

-Flo

PS: Can we please have a section for us planar owners? There are quite a few on here.

[Florian]

You still have lots to learn go to www.diyaudio.com and these are people that could show you a thing or two.These are people with knowledge from inside and out.

I am there, i am also in the Apogee Club and the Audiocircle. I have many friends with top world equipment and i learn everyday, but there are quite a few on here that can learn from me too!

-Flo

[PAT.P]

I am there, i am also in the Apogee Club and the Audiocircle. I have many friends with top world equipment and i learn everyday, but there are quite a few on here that can learn from me too!

-Flo

Learning and the will to learn,but mostly to enjoy ourself at the same time.

[Florian]

And thats no problem but this wont ever happen when people generalize on a technology that exists in dozens of products. Such as Soundlabs, Quad, Apogee, Magnepan, Innersound, Eminent Technology, Genesis, Dali etc...

-Flo

PS: I am open for all and only speak on speakers that i personally heard for more than 30 minutes at a show. But i ask that members dont post false frequency response posts and quality claims.

[Woochifer]

Why should i take the blame? RGA postes a false statment and i have to write tons of post that obviously prove him wrong and now i should take the blame for it.

-Flo

And RGA has since deleted it, it's time that you give it a rest. Trying to continually repost items that he's already edited and withdrawn reflects a character flaw on your part since you're the one who's now doing nothing but perpetuating an argument that RGA has already walked away from. If you're trying to look like a dumba$$ who gets off on winning arguments with himself, keep it up bro, you're doing a GREAT job.

The immaturity and blind self-righteousness that you continually display on this forum seems to reach new lows every time you get on one of these tirades. No one gives a crap that you've done all of this listening and bought all of these speakers when the attitude that you continually display is so piss poor. You've got to show respect to get respect, and since it's clear that you've got none to give, that ought to answer your query as to why you're getting crapped on by everybody.

[Woochifer]

Is Apogee still in business?

Yes they are, but they're in an entirely different line of business now. They quit making loudspeakers about a decade ago, and now focus on digital amplification chips. Their chips are the primary components in high end digital amps such as the Bel Cantos.

http://www.apogeeddx.com

[topspeed]

Yes they are, but they're in an entirely different line of business now. They quit making loudspeakers about a decade ago, and now focus on digital amplification chips. Their chips are the primary components in high end digital amps such as the Bel Cantos.

http://www.apogeeddx.com

Are you sure that's the same company? If so, talk about taking an wildly different path. Sure, it's still audio, but still...

BTW, not to be a nitpicky ninny here, but I'm pretty sure Bel Canto uses the Tripath chip, itself a variation of TI's design. ICEpower by B&O is the other major player.

[Woochifer]

Are you sure that's the same company? If so, talk about taking an wildly different path. Sure, it's still audio, but still...

Definitely the same company. Their website mentions their history with ribbon panel speaker manufacturing.

Several other companies out there also use the Apogee name, one of which makes pro audio mixers and another used to make PC games (pioneered first-person shooter games like Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein 3D).

BTW, not to be a nitpicky ninny here, but I'm pretty sure Bel Canto uses the Tripath chip, itself a variation of TI's design. ICEpower by B&O is the other major player.

No prob, your info's probably a lot more current than mine. It's been at least four years since I last looked up this information, so things could have changed a lot in the meantime. Apogee looks like it's still a player in the digital amplification market, but I don't know for sure who currently uses their chips.

[Geoffcin]

Apogee looks like it's still a player in the digital amplification market, but I don't know for sure who currently uses their chips.

I think Florian has had a few of these chips installed somewhere on his person.

[Florian]

You all dont know the facts :-)
The President of Apogee died and the company got bought from ADS which found that Apogee was not financially viable. One of the designers (Leo Spiegel) turned to a different field. Thats the truth!

-Flo

[RGA]

I editied my post about 5 minutes after because I knew it would fall into a mire of arguing. Nevertheless my comment on Apogees' 30hz was taken directly from the Apogee Acoustics spec sheet. An ex poster hear Skeptic kept saying his AR9 was dead flat at 20hz but I have the original AR sheet on the AR 9 which states 28hz- 3db.

I have directly heard the Apogee Duetta sig and I was unimpressed with its bass response and it's fatiguing lower treble upper mid noise and lack of lifelike dyynamics. I like the holographic stage and the big sound but all in all for the money they were to me a rippoff. And that was YEARS before I ever even heard of Audio Note.

And if one is going to get on Peter Q for his comments well firstly -- he's a manufacturer of a different approach just as any boxed speaker maker is so of course they're going to be biased to the sound they think is better.

Peter owned several of these speakers and was a dealer in the UK. He buys many of the best competitors speakers to see what they're doing right (in his view) and determining if there is something to improve.

This is what he stated on AA on and around June 12, 2004

"I am serious, alright!

Ask anyone who has heard my system over the past few years, it [AN E] will play organ notes so deep you will need the toilet to relieve yourself after the first few bars, assorted percussion instruments have both the sparkle, punch, depth, pressure and energy reminicent of the real thing, provided the recording is up to the job (try the Sylvio Gualda, Erato Recording, Percussion II, especially the Xenakis piece on side one).

I had my friends (Bjorn Borja and Jan Paus) from SEAS visiting Wednesday, and Bob Neill from Amherst was here Monday/Tuesday this week as well, they heard it, and so will you if you care to drop by.

It was done with a parallel SET 2A3 amplifiers as well with no more than 8 watts from the 1930's single plates.

Your Apogees have separate coil woofers?

The Scintilla never measured more than about 40 Hz when I had them and they needed a billion watts to give any impression of bass energy, at least as far as my definition of real bass goes, they died very quickly from metal fatigue when pressed hard with a big amplifier for a couple of hours.

The square area needed from panels to give any really low bass depth is considerable, and the Apogees just don't cut it here, I am sorry to say."

"You are just assuming that because the cabinet is undamped (because we told you) that the colouration you perceive comes from the speaker, this kind of uncritical and unsupported conjecture is what has driven the pursuit of better audio round in circles for years.

I recommend that you read Leonard Norwitz's and my piece on the Comparison by Contrast evaluation method, this should give you some idea why I am saying what I just said above.

Ribbons and electrostatics have lower diaphragm mass that may be hard to argue against on a pure pound for pound basis, however what is hard to dispute as well is that they are driven by the most anaemic magnet fields and have so little room to "move", which makes their dynamic ability completely unacceptable, not to mention the fact that their load behaviour is more than a little cruel to the poor amplifier, to add further insult to injury the bandwidth efficiency is laughable and their resulting real world frequency response interesting to say the least (in this regard I recommend a quick study of Harry Ohlsons analysis of the panel speaker principle in several of his books), so how you can find them "better" is difficult to see, at least a good dynamic driver in a decent box offers some meat on the bone dynamically.

In my view we need to remove a great deal of colouration from the recording and reproduction chain in order to be able to say with any certainty where the best of the traditional dynamic speaker problems truly begin, but suffice to say that removing the dynamic energy to get rid of colourations by a combination of low efficiency (most electrostatics, ribbons and I am afraid also most dynamic speakers) or poor coupling to the air in much of the frequency area (electrostatics and panels in general) is not an improvement, it is just another blind alley from which the industry will take years to find it way out of, once it has realised that it is actually there.

Combining a dynamic woofer with a smaller panel or combination of panel and ribbon falls foul of the fact that you need drivers with a very similar sonic signature across the frequency range to sucessfully negotiate most music and get a harmonious and homogenous overall result and an integral part of this is to use drivers that have a similar dynamic ability for a start.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup "


"I think you would be horrified if you ever heard any of your favourite Infinity or Apogee speakers (I have owned or tried them all!) subjected to the CbyC method against what we consider good, but that is for another day.

I have been around for long enough to have tried pretty much every state of the art solution that has been offered, I still own a Beveridge System II, ESS Transar, Siemens Klangfilm system, several Snell Type A models and one of two more, and have over the years worked on and modified practically every vintage speaker system made and what that has taught me is that the reason panel speakers live in the shade commercially is for good reason, their limitations are simply too glaring for the cold light of the wider market.

You may like them, but that does anything but make you "right".

"Long excursion drivers are only needed because designers for commercial reasons need small size enclosures, they represent such a severe compromise that they can hardly be considered, based on any serious merit, certainly not when we talk high quality, linear excursion is the least of the problems, variations in the magnetic field due to the large movement of the voice coil, cone break-up etc. are at least as problematic.

The older drivers represent a far better example of how a driver should be made to work when made to suit less commercial size and cost requirements, the fact that the old enclosures were resonant and less well made should not be held against the drivers of that time.

You need far more and much wider experience to be able to make the sort of sweeping statements you make, one way would be to join the audio industry circus yourself and test whether your theories "float", but as you may already know only Quad, ML, Soundlab and Magnepan have managed to stay alive making panels and if your expressed preferences are anything to go by then neither of them made or make the best, so draw your conclusions and make your decision from that."

June 03, 2004
"Let's put this to bed once and for all, Mount Everest has a resonance frequency, low yes, but it still resonates.

We can therefore reasonably conclude that everything resonates, there is no such thing as a speaker with no box (popular as the concept may seem, you have to mount the drivers in something, even if it is a panel driver), so we have essentially two choices,

1.) Build a box that minimises the resonant behaviour by applying mass, which does nothing useful in most cases, because whilst a lower resonance frequency at lower amplitude may look great on a waterfall graph, the reality is that it prolongs the amount of time the resonant energy is present, which leaves it present for long enough to disturb the replay.

In addition, damping is "stupid" in the sense that it removes both the sounds you want and the ones you are trying to get rid of.

2.) Build a cabinet which has a fast enough recovery time to stay within the human ear's time constant, that is, be close enough to the original note, to be indistinguishable by the human ear.

Method no. 2.) is much much harder to apply, as working out how to RAISE the resonance frequency and shorten it towards inaudibility requires hundreds of hours of experimentation AND does provide beautiful waterfall graphs with which to present your latest resonance removing technique as another breakthrough of "innovation" with which to sell next years crop of speakers with.

All our measurement methods and conventions dictate that making the cabinet heavier is better, unfortunately the truth is that it is a convenient, but poor way of solving the problem."


And Flo -- you can take him up on his challenge as you live in Europe no?

"While we are on the subject of cheating physics, why don't you study Harry Ohlson's work on panel speakers and then decide who is cheating physics and who is deluding themselves.

I for one would happily put a pair of AN-Es against the Klipsch corner horns and even more so any pair of Apogees, I should be living in Switzerland sometime next year, so I will be close enough to you to do just that.

Horns have great leading edge speed, but generally lack the carry through energy of the complete note, on piano this is particularly apparent, the difference is off course only there if the rest of the system has the ability."

But why not go the Speaker forum at Audio Asylum and ask him whatever you wish if he has the time to reply he will.

This post was about the sound of the Duetta -- if you like them great but for the music I listen to -- my Wharfedales do a better job -- and interestingly have meat on the bones bass that the Duetta seriously lacked. My Wharedales are rated to 40hz and despite thier problems were more musically enjoyable and alive sounding with real balls than the Duetta could muster. I never heard any other Apogee speakers because the press said this was the best one.

[cam]

I think Florian has had a few of these chips installed somewhere on his person.

Thanks Geoff, It has been along time since I fell off my chair laughing. That's one of the funniest one liners I have ever heard. I'll try and top that one day.

Hey Flo, I'm not laughing at you, but come on man, admit it, that was funny.

[Geoffcin]

Thanks Geoff, It has been along time since I fell off my chair laughing. That's one of the funniest one liners I have ever heard. I'll try and top that one day.

Hey Flo, I'm not laughing at you, but come on man, admit it, that was funny.

Good to know theres' at least one guy here with a sense of humor.

[kexodusc]

Nevertheless my comment on Apogees' 30hz was taken directly from the Apogee Acoustics spec sheet. An ex poster hear Skeptic kept saying his AR9 was dead flat at 20hz but I have the original AR sheet on the AR 9 which states 28hz- 3db.

Just speculation on my part, I don't think I've ever heard the AR 9, but I've heard speakers that measure approximately 30 Hz -3 dB that will acheive in room response down to 20 Hz or so. Room gain is great. Depends on the measurement techniques, I guess. I always say, who listens to their music in an anechoic chamber though?

"Long excursion drivers are only needed because designers for commercial reasons need small size enclosures, they represent such a severe compromise that they can hardly be considered, based on any serious merit, certainly not when we talk high quality, linear excursion is the least of the problems, variations in the magnetic field due to the large movement of the voice coil, cone break-up etc. are at least as problematic."

This pretty much sums up my beliefs. There are a few exceptions were longer excursion may be desireable, but the pissing contest it's becoming isn't about sound quality, that's for sure.

1.) Build a box that minimises the resonant behaviour by applying mass, which does nothing useful in most cases, because whilst a lower resonance frequency at lower amplitude may look great on a waterfall graph, the reality is that it prolongs the amount of time the resonant energy is present, which leaves it present for long enough to disturb the replay.

This last sentence isn't always true. It's probably not true as much as it is true. Big assumption being made here is that the shifted energy has the potential to always be disruptive. A lot of the energy is pushed beyond perception and can cause no disturbance. I think at times though he has a good point. Interesting thought.

In addition, damping is "stupid" in the sense that it removes both the sounds you want and the ones you are trying to get rid of.

This isn't completely accurate either. At least not if we can assume that any unwanted loss as a result of damping is already calculated into the design before choosing how to damp. Most of the spectrum is unaffected by damping anyway. It's not as simple as saying damping takes away both good and bad. "Over"-damping does, I suppose, which might be a problem many people have with a lot of speakers today. But just to say damping is bad is irresponsible. There's stuff outside of the box that contributes to damping too.

[RGA]

kex --

Agreed on your points but these were simply layman answers to people on AA. Hes was pressed interestingly enough on two major points and he addressed them in another post. One of them was the issue of damping as being "stupid" as you note here -- but the answer was a year later to a different person.

I think his ascertion of shifted energy uis precisely that it is difficult and it requires a lot of work to get it right. It is far easeir to create a speaker and then just damp the hell out of it. I heard a big Canadian speaker the other day and was distressed by how completely DEAD it sounded -- it's been a while to be frank since I've been listneing to other speakers and what I heard was boxy muffled (despite a metal tweeter) and the vocal band sounded like someone threw a wet towel over the proceedings.

As to your point about oom gain - fully agree which is why Peter in his room may not be getting as good a result from the Apogees as someone else might. But then both speakers have to deal with the same rooms.
I think it isn;t so much the bass anyway but the kind of sound that is created. I can't see Tina Turner Rock albums going much under if ever under 40hz -- It is the drum work on many of these kinds of albums that have shown up the weaknesses in most all panels I've heard (except the big ML's but I notice they admit their panels don't do it so they NEED a big old boxed woofer to actually make CREDIBLE realistic bass. Good for ML to recognize the probalem and blatenly admit it for all to see. Big cone woofer.

The problem they have had in the 13 or so years I've heard them is they fall into Peter's noted trap that the the drivers are not of remotely the same dynamicly or a sonic signature match and they just don't mesh properly. Indeed Klipsh has similar problems in that the treble band sounds like it's thrown at you while the bass sort comes around after the fact. Klipsch is called bright, B&W big old metal driver and none of them integrate -- you always hear a suckout in practically every model OR an audible handoff between drivers.

The apogee I heard didn;t get away from being a speaker because as much as the holographic presentaion is "cool" it doesn't sound natural - and after awhile that would be fatiguing to me.

The thing is when I went to AN it was not because they did anything the blew me away...and that was in itself what blew me away. Lastly, an interesting experiment my dealer does with Audio Note J or E is when they are demoing them against anything else they carry they level match with an SPL. Once the person has decided the two sound the same in level -- it is revealed that the AN was actually several db lower...that is why the 705 in my comparison was so frustrating. I would listen to beethoven's Moonlight Sonata with a big expansive full bodied piano with excellent decay and then on the B&W with Much bigger bryston amplifiers I had to turn the volume UP and Up and UP to try and get back what was completely lost...and of course that ends up being futile because the louder I went it then goes into small box compression mode and thins out.

This is why I recommended speakers like PMC in that even though they need a small room and a nearfield listening position man could those things belt it out rock well etc. it may not be my cup of tea going that kinda sound route but if that;s what people like then a transmission line ballsy speaker like these just trounce the 705 like little girlie man speakers -- and the the PMC is cheaper for heaven sake -- and you can turn em active. TB2 versus 705 and I sit in wonder on this one. But the 705 is perty and the TB2 looks like a boring box with a boring name that doesn;t sound like a famous German Car company.

[RGA]

Further Kex -- just some other interesting things that the adds fuel to Peter being comparatively in left field. Lots here for him to be attacked on know doubt but let's just purge it from the system -- This is fairly long so get a Sleeman's Honey Brown and a nice cigar and have a good read or laugh etc.

Dear Layman,

Correct, the fact that we do not use damping in our speaker cabinets does not make them "singing boxes" at all, what it does is not slug the sound or give the sound excessive "enertia".

Damping is a two-edged sword as you rightly say, and I think that as speaker manufacturers start looking at making more efficient speakers they will have to re-invent ways of distributing the energy from the drivers in a different way that just applying mass, mass and more mass.

In our cabinets we distribute the energy from the drivers by use of different materials and strategically positioned internal dividers or strenghtening blocks, it is done in such a way as to raise the resonance frequency (this is the EXACT opposite of what happens when applying weight) and thereby to shorten the time constant between the original waveform and its subsequent resonance so it is short enough asto be indistinguishable to the ear, in other words we let the cabinet release the energy as fast as possible rather than hold on to it and release it later at lower ampliitude as happens in a damped cabinet.

The benefit is overall improved efficiency (upto nearly 1 dB) and a sound that is far less restrained by the cabinet in a way that heavily damped cabinets are not.

To make this design philosophy possible and effective a designer cannot use drivers with high mass, long throw or large diameter, they are simply too "slow" and release too much energy into the cabinet, so rather than seek a piston effect, I seek a "pressure resonator" behaviour with minimal cone movement.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup

Dear Layman,
Boxes have been unjustly condemned because they have generally been badly designed, made from unsuitable materials or are the wrong shape.

Just because 90% of what is out there is deeply compromised, why condemn everything?

The box offers greatly improved load behaviour which allow size to be reduced making the whole thing domestically acceptable and viable.

I say, let's keep the box, but use it according to the laws of physics (meaning wide baffle and shallow depth) to reduce difraction and internal cancellation effects.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup
Dear Morricab,
So what it really comes down to in your world is how things measure, not really what they sound like.

The best woofers of the past had much lower distortion and higher efficiency than most of the current crop, power handling was not an issue in the 1950's because amplifiers were low power, so we have not moved forward in any way, and anything that needs "attenuation" or equalisation cannot be right to start with, so that negates the whole design.

I already have the ideal cabinet shape and it makes the lively drivers "sing" just fine, the AN-E is now available with an improved and external crossover AND with a 98dB efficiency without loss of bandwidth or load behaviour, so I see little reason to spend valuable research and development time on improving the boxes.

Nothing flies in the face of the "retro image", as I do not seek to do anything that is retro, but by its very nature audio in its 100 year or so history has created solutions at some stage which have more permanence and viability than later solutions and this is what I prefer to do, use the best solution for each problem without regard for whether it is a new or old solution, or a mix of new and old.

To me the end result is what matters, I could not care less about fashion or reigning technological dogma, because at the end of the day only time sorts the wheat from the chaff and in the regard the value of vintage tube amplifiers keep rising, so making tomorrows classic means more to me than todays flash in the pan "hot property".

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup

Dear Soundmind, [known here as Skeptic]

Strangely, I think we are broadly in agreement here.

I sympathise with your disdain for most of passes for product development in audio, because the vast majority of it bears less resemblance to R&D and appear more as visual design exercises to attract short term attention rather than long term value in sound quality terms.

The fact of the matter is that audio is not a good place to make money or even develop a career, it is exceptionally hard work for very little real return and most smart and capable people will seek employment in a field that pays as much as possible with the minimum amount of hassle, or enter fields that are "fashionable", which I suppose no-one can blame them for, but not everyone put money and career prospects before what they are passionate about, most practicing musicians, instrument makers and a few audio designers fall into this latter category.

What I find really problematic about your comments is that they are such a completely blunt "instrument" which taint everyone who makes audio equipment with the same brush, regardless of whether they fall into one or the other category and this leaves most people with the impression that we are already "there" which could not be further from the truth.

Audio is immensely interesting, but you have to look for the challenges, because superficially all the "problems" are under control, so to find them one needs to start with discovering the fact that most so called development done in the past 30 or so years has had more to do with broading the market through a combination of convenience of operation, minituarisation, portability and cost cutting, improving sound quality in any material way hardly appears on the menu, unless one counts "the same sound" at lower cost as an improvement, which in most cases it has not been, mainly because the improvement was in measured performance, not in sound.

This legacy has left most designers with an overly simplified view of what is good and what is bad engineering, take transformers for example, they were vilified by most of the larger commercial enterprises in the 1960's primarily because cost considerations had driven the quality of many transformers down to an unacceptable level, so whilst it is true that a badly designed or matched transformer sounds absolutely dreadful, a custom designed unit fit for its purpose using good materials, is a far better solution that anything else, but to reach this conclusion you have to really wade through masses of "scientific proof" that they are not and most designers are creatures of some degree of convenience and thus avoid transformers everywhere they can, even where their use is essential.

Science was in this regard used as a way to distort the real truth, and if one studies the history of audio going back to its infancy, it quickly becomes obvious that sound quality is mostly coincidental to the proceedings and the "real" work that has been done in audio reproduction has concerned itself primarily with improving measured behaviour with little or no crossreferring to the resulting sound. As a result most of the good sounding technologies and solutions were weeded out as measurement technology improved and our understanding of how to manipulate the end result followed in its footsteps in the relentless search for better - cheaper.

Because most designers do not listen to their creations, nor do they listen to music with any real interest or passion and that prevents them from looking outside the envelope of convention, because they are rarely, if ever, presented with the sonic results of their choices which help reinforce the above.

In another posting you mention that the contentions on our web site are "rubbish" mainly because I decribe the speaker cabinets construction as similar to that of a musical instrument.

The cabinets are designed to resonate, there are no materials which do not in this situation, what we do in contrast to all other speaker makers is use the opposite of damping, by careful choice of materials and internal divider bracing, we instead try to raise the resonance frequencies and shorten them to make them indistinguishable in time for the human ear to hear them as separate from the "first sound" from the driver.

I recognise that this is not the conventional method, but does that make it wrong?

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup


Lastly
I am glad you responded to my post, it seems to me that your objections can be broken down into two main areas,

A.) The fact that I use the word "instrument" to describe the resonant behaviour of our speaker cabinets.

May I say that I have sympathy for your objection to the use of the word "instrument", because it is not actually a good description of what we are doing, which is really to design the cabinet and its internal bracing to move all resonances up in frequency to either mutually and simultaneously cancel out, remove standing waves and/or shorten the time the resonance is present sufficiently to bring it to within the human ear's perceptive level of direct sound, i.e. so there is no discernible difference in arrival time as far as the ear is concerned between the direct sound from the driver and its immediate cabinet resonance.

Whilst this is no new science like ADR (atomic dielectric resonance), I would respectfully venture to say that this is a new concept, whether it is revolutionary is really not for me to say, what I can say is that it is a very time consuming process to get the cabinet to behave itself in this regard and therefore does not lend itself to quick model changes.

B.) The fact that I largely disagree with and therefore reject what is passed as scientific theory in speaker design in particular (although to be honest I have largely the same problems with pretty much every other area of current audio science) stems from a number of experiences which clearly demonstrate that current science, if that is what you wish to call it, is a complete farce, just to give you a couple of quick examples,

a.) A few years ago, using the industry standard MLSSA 7 speaker measurement system I matched up a pair of our AN-E speakers, to the same curve we get from our reference AN-E and lo and behold they sounded completely different, FROM EACH OTHER! Many attempts were made to get the system to produce a pair of speakers which were close enough within the pair (bear in mind that I was using the same drivers) to be acceptable to the ear, all were more or less unsuccessful.

The measurement test system I have developed with my engineers is capable of making a reference standard pair of identical speakers every single time, as long as it is recalibrated every 2 - 3 hours to compensate for inevitable temperature variations during the day.
b.) Using our system I have measured a number of highly regarded speakers from several major manufacturers mainly to check the matching within pairs, many of these manufacturers use MLSSA in their final tests, as proof of quality and consistency.

I hold the view that in order for a pair of speakers to reproduce an even moderately reasonable facsimile of a stereo recording within normal room conditions, they must under specific test conditions (reverberant room at some off axis microphone distance) at least be sufficiently acoustically identical to have a response within say 1-2 dB (+/- 0.5 - 1 dB) across their bandwidth (our speakers are hand calibrated to be within well below 1 dB full bandwidth within a pair), so how did the "competition" fare?

Some better than others but generally quite badly I am afraid, the worst example I found was a major UK manufacturer whose highly acclaimed laboratory reference loudspeakers had a variation at one frequency of close to 9dB (+/- 4.5 dB), although the average I observed was in the order of 4 dB at several points over the frequency range of the speakers I tested, this degree of consistency or should I say lack of consistency (?) is deeply problematic in my view.

So my contention is that if the most regarded and used design & test/measurement validation system, which is widely used by a fairly large industry, produces an end product (in this case loudspeakers) which is this inconsistent and this far from what is claimed then there has to be something seriously wrong somewhere and there are several possibilities, none of which are very attractive, one of them being that the science used is pretty useless to put it bluntly.

The sad end result is that the consumer is duped into buying something which is not what he thinks it is, despite the fact the product is backed by the press, the main science community and who knows who else in this industry.

Unlike food, off course, bad sound does not make you ill, it just makes you disinterested in music and also unlike food, we can live without music in the end equation, which at least to some extent explains the rapid decline of so much real music.

So here is my main "beef" with audio science; it does not recognise that our ears are vastly superior to any measurements and the real problem is that conceptually audio measurement theory has not been upgraded since Edison formulated the main problems with his invention in the 1880's (!!),
Noise
Distortion
Bandwidth
And the fact that these three are still the only criteria used combined with the fact that they cannot be improved endlessly with sonic improvement as a result, should have prompted the committed audio scientists to establish better criteria.

Especially considering the fact that there was a point as early as in the late 1940s when all three had already been reduced to levels where the engineering community should have started looking for more complex and therefore sonically more valid ways of correlating what is measured with what is heard, sadly by the late 1950's all the issues were hijacked by the marketing departments in various emerging large players, whose need for simplistic figures to use as proof of "better sound" needed ever lower noise and distortion and wider bandwidth and the ways these were achieved did not much matter, no matter how bad they sounded, because that was not a major part of the agenda.

So in my view, audio science has produced little or nothing of genuine sonic value since the 1950's apart from lowering prices, although there was a brief period in the 1970s where interesting things happened in loudspeaker design (Beveridge, Plasmatronics and the Heil full range speaker the ESS Transar, primarily), but they disappeared pretty quickly and left no trace on the overall picture.
I equate what has happened in the audio industry to what has happened with much of the food we eat, the degree of interference and contamination is on par with the untruths that science has espoused about how much healthier and more nourishing everything has become, when the real truth is that whilst much has improved, these improvements have largely to do with availability and price rather than nutritional quality, not entirely different from the situation with music reproduction.

Now to answer your direct questions,

1.) A violin enclosure is designed as a mechanical amplifier, as are all string and most other natural musical instruments for that matter, this is quite different from what our speakers are designed to do as I explained above.

2.) If the box vibrations decay fast enough to be within the ear's ability to separate direct sound from its box main resonance, then you will hear Stan Getz as he played and was recorded without interference in the way that you mention, which is what the AN-E will comfortably produce if used in a suitable system.

3.) You are simplifying and misinterpreting what I have said, imaging, soundstage and such like are either in the recording or they are not and there are precious few stereo recordings (and no monos!) where this information is present, especially after 1971 when multi-miking – multi track recordings really took off at which time recordings became a studio construction with little semblance to reality, properly designed reproduction equipment should show this and not try to re/deconstruct the content of the software to match expectations which have more to do with visual than aural presentation.

It is easy to demonstrate that much of what the general public, or should I say audiophile community(?) focus on is not real imaging or sound staging, it is a construction of the equipment to the detriment of important tonal, timbral and dynamic qualities, speakers are now designed to focus and image rather than for accurate tonal balance or even flat frequency response, all to the detriment of music.

A true scientist is someone who studies the subject broadly, observes and learns from his experiences and experiments, and engages his critical faculties when it comes to learning from my peers.

All I can say is that I have studied much of the accumulated body of knowledge and unfortunately found that one has to go back to around and before the 1950s to find anything that has any real relevance to sound quality, the improvements since have more to do with marketing, miniturisation or improvement via cost saving (an oxymoron in my view) rather than what I would say are genuine improvements overall.

Go to an AES conference and see for yourself, it is now a forum for manufacturers to promote their latest products and ideas rather than a place where likeminded engineers exchange new ideas and promote improvement that is not necessarily “cost efficient” or the latest technology, in an industry as commercialised as the one I am in submitting ones finding for peer review as you suggest serves no purpose, because if what you have to say runs counter to what the main body of science believes to be correct it will either be ignored or discredited.

At the end of the day I base my concepts and designs on what I perceive to be sonically better and having owned and listened to a large body of what is out there over the years I feel I have some experience.

In addition my company has a very substantial and ambitious R&D program and probably spends a larger proportion of its turnover on research than any other audio company anywhere, unfortunately gestation time is quite long on projects and products researched like this, so much of the work done and the discoveries made have not come to market in the form of products yet, so watch this space over the next year or two.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup