Florian vs. RGA

[topspeed]

If you add something to this post, please explain why you are stating false facts on purpose and 2 minutes later erase your repsonse and edit it?

-Flo

Because RGA is more mature than you are. He's a fanboy. No big deal. You're so egomaniacal that you'll defend to the death a company that has been out of business for how long now? Their speakers still "function after 20 years" you say? What kind of obtuse logic is that? I've got Missions from the early '80s and my dad's AR's from the 70's are still making fine music. That proves nothing.

If you want proof of concept, all you have to do is see if the product is still being made. The market doesn't lie. If the product is good, regardless of price, it will be bought. I'm not saying the Apogee's aren't everything you claim they are, and to be honest I don't care. What I am saying is that you can talk yourself blue in the face defending Apogee and you still won't be able to refute that the vast majority of people disagree with you. That is a fact. How do I know?

Is Apogee still in business?

[Florian]

The sad matter of fact is that you have not read nor understood the posts that i have written. If you would have read them, then you would know that my problem is that he "lies" and posts "false" information about a speaker manufacturer. Let me repeat that, just for you. 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.

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.

-Flo

[noddin0ff]

Ah, those halcyon days of respectful disagreement...too bad money can’t buy civility.

[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.

[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.