Pal, 13' x 22' should be no problem. |
Dan, the only dealer with a set of Caravelles available for audition(that I know of) might be Tom Devuono(a.k.a. theaudiotweak) in Louisville, Ky. Tom has had a number of pairs of Caravelles go out through his doors recently. He's been a very good dealer for us for a while now, and is a good all around guy.
We do most of our business by internet sales, and we have very few dealers.
Another option would be to hook up with one of the fellows who posted reviews, and maybe one of them will be close to your location, and be willing to provide an audition for you.
Also, we expect to be in Denver again for the Denver Audio Fest, so that will likely be the next public show event where the Caravelles will be shown/demoed.
Srajan at 6moons will be receiving his pair for testing probably next week for his upcoming review also. Stay tuned. There is also a new little blurb up on 6moons about our company and the upcoming Caravelle review, that Srajan has recently uploaded. |
From our website:
Caravelle Specifications:
Frequency Response: 35 – 25,000 Hz +/- 1.5 dB
Impedance: 7 ohms
Efficiency: 89 dB
Dimensions: 9.5 W x 13 D x 16.5 H
Weight: 50 pounds each
Tweeter: One inch magnesium/aluminum (hard) dome
Woofer: Seven inch long throw Polypropylene™ cone / butyl surround with short circuit ring protection
Enclosure: Optimized Hybrid Transmission Line/Reflex Port Moulded Enclosure, 0.75 inch Poured Material™, 1.5 inch front baffle, Micro-Bearing Conductive Steel© distributed throughout rear baffle
Crossover: True Series© First Order @ 2475 Hz
Sistrum Support Platform: advanced profile employing direct attachment to Caravelle with added leveling feature located atop the Platform
Warranty: 5 years parts and labor from the date of purchase
Specifications are subject to change without notice
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Hi.
For the reductionists who want to think that everything about an audio component can be determined by a single item such as a driver, I suppose this is an interesting discussion.
For people interested in the sound quality of a speaker system, most know that drivers are only a part of it.
The Caravelles are priced, based upon our manufacturing costs, and the costs of doing business. There is no "additional markup" based on "thin air", as some seem to be intimating.
While some may seem to be of the opinion that quality drivers, which don't happen to cost a fortune, cannot be a part of a state-of-the-art speaker system, they are in for a surprise when they actually hear the Caravelle.
We look at it from a value/performance perspective, and actually consider it a testament to our overall technology implemented in these speakers, which allows performance levels which were previously thought impossible with "off the shelf" driver elements. It can be quite shocking to find how much performance is available from these fine drivers, when they are placed in the right setting, using our technology. The key to this speaker system is what we do with the drivers, and what we do with the enclosure, and the crossover, not what some parts cost "off the shelf" from a parts supplier. We tried some very expensive drivers in this design, and the ones that worked the best in our application were the ones we picked. The cost of the drivers was coincidental, and the performance with the crossover and the enclosure was primary. Think what you like, but please listen to the system before flogging us about our decision.
For those unfamiliar with our enclosure, it is by far the most expensive part of this speaker system, and is one of the key factors which allows us to produce this level of performance. The costs of these specialized one-piece composite cabinets dwarfs the costs of all of the rest of the individual parts. For those of you familiar with our company's concepts, you know why we have chosen this route. For those unfamiliar, we at Starsound use highly specialized vibration management technology to improve the sound quality of many aspects of audio and video systems, and this is our main contribution to the music reproduction world. All our products are based around this concept, and the Caravelle is no exception. As such, we placed a very strong emphasis on this aspect of the Caravelle's design and manufacture, which is truly responsible for what they sound like. Unfortunately for some, it was a costly endeavor, which cost far more than a wood or MDF box imported from another country, that would have mightily reduced the cost; but would have made the Caravelle just "another monitor" without the performance benefits that are garnering all the accolades we hear. This is the VALUE of the Caravelles, not just the PRICE. Sure, we could have made it cheap and average sounding, but we preferred to make it a top performer. To do this, we had to go above and beyond the normal way of doing things. The competitive high-end monitor speaker category is tough to beat, and it requires some innovative thinking to do it. And often, this costs money to implement properly, and it certainly did in this case.
We're not hiding anything from anybody. Our drivers, cabinet construction, specifications, concepts and ideas, and performance levels have all been mentioned and discussed at length many times on various forums. Just like in this thread, it always seems to be a "lightning rod" for controversy from some detractors. We've come to expect this.
We're letting our Caravelles stand on their own two feet(stands), and they are standing pretty tall all by themselves. This is our speaker design, that we have presented for sale on the market. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy this(or any) speaker, and it is up to the purchasers to decide what is best for them.
For those hobbyists wishing to try for more performance from the same or different drivers, in their DIY box, the drivers are readily available for them to try it. It's a free market. Any DIY builder who can beat the sound of the Caravelles with his own design and saves some money, more power to him. Consider it a challenge.
Just remember, the key to a good purchase is VALUE. What degree of performance are you getting for your money? An old adage states,"The bitterness of poor value remains long after the sweetness of cheap price is forgotten." We strive to provide VALUE in our products, which will stand up to the rigors of competition at the price-point in the marketplace. And that is exactly what we have provided in the Caravelle.
Nobody can please everyone, and the ones we wish to satisfy are our customers. We've revealed all about our speakers, our technology, and our company's concepts, to everyone willing to listen. Some will buy, and some will not. That's the way of the world.
Some anonymous WW2 flyer once said,"You get the most flack, when you are over the target." If that's true, then we must be pretty close right now. But, we would really prefer it if the people shooting at us would at least know what they are shooting at, before they pull the trigger. Knowing what "Driver X" sounds like in another totally different design, is no way of knowing how it sounds in ours. Perhaps if they actually listened to the Caravelles, they could actually make some meaningful comments that go beyond self-serving, uninformed conjecture. If you haven't listened to it, you don't know. Period.
In closing, I hope everyone is enjoying their audio systems, as much as we enjoy ours. We welcome questions and auditions from any interested parties, and we provide ways for them to do this by contacting us by phone or email. I'm also happy to entertain questions and respond to comments on the forum, and on this thread.
Tom Lyons
Starsound Technologies |
Dear Gendut3, I appreciate your obsession with expensive drivers. I assure you that after being an amateur hobbyist involved in speaker building for over 25 years now, I understand how this issue can become a focusing point for some.
Yes, I do use the Lowther drivers in my personal speakers, and I do like them. However, it was revealed to me again just recently at the CES show about the truth in speaker systems. Being a Lowther user and enthusiast myself, I naturally went to all the rooms using Lowther-based single-driver speaker systems. I found none of these speakers to my liking, even though some of them used exactly the same drivers that I have in my very own system, and there were no crossover parts inside any of them(single-drivers).
So, what can we conclude?
A) We can conclude that the parts of a speaker(or any system) can have a big influence on the sound of the package.
B) We can conclude that the environment(enclosure) which houses the driver can have a big influence on the sound of the package.
C) We can conclude that neither unit operates on its own, and that proper matching of the transducer to its operating environment is critical to the overall performance of the system.
Perhaps, since you have enjoyed my analog discourses in the past, we can use an analogy. In analog systems, there are transducers(cartridges) and environments(tonearm/turntable) in which the transducer operates. You may have a fantastic cartridge, and a fantastic tonearm, but if they are not properly matched, then neither operates up to its potential in sonic terms. This matching takes many forms, as we know, and there are many things that affect it, some of which are not immediately apparent to the user's eye. In some ways, it could be said that the enclosure of a speaker is like the tonearm, and the driver is like the cartridge. The enclosure must be tuned to the proper resonance for the driver, there must be energy paths provided to resolve the energy that is fed back into the enclosure by the movement of the transducer, and there must be rigidity and stability provided, so that the environment is not subjected to "unwanted movement" during the transducer's operation that would cause information loss or colorations. All of these issues are addressed in the Harmonic Precision Caravelle loudspeaker enclosure design. It is a design that is matched and properly implemented from the driver down the the Audiopoint feet on the bottoms of the stands. I hope that sheds some light for you on the importance of why we did things as we did. There are some similar things needed when dealing with transducers, at both ends of the chain.
Regarding the binding posts, which seem to be so disturbing to you, these posts were chosen for their coupling ability to the Microbearing filled rear wall of the cabinet, so that the vibrational energy is properly dealt with on the binding posts, the rear wall of the speaker, and the ends of the cables which contact the binding posts. Internal wiring is done with MicroBearing-filled Sonoran Plateau speaker cables of our own manufacture, for achieving similar purposes of vibration management in the internal speaker wiring. Just this wiring harness alone costs several hundred dollars, and this is one of the few speakers built today with a "Flagship" top-of-the-line internal speaker cabling system, and not just a flimsy set of some low cost "audiophile grade" wire. So, from the drivers back to the binding posts, and everything in-between, there are significant issues being addressed with every part in the chain, INCLUDING the binding posts, which are all chosen for how well they work in the context of the overall design of the system. There is no correlation to size or appearance of the binding post, which can be attributed to its performance in our context.
Next, regarding the question of "why did we stop at the drivers?", I already answered that question, but to elucidate further, it is because they had the proper parameters to work together with our crossover and cabinet design, to provide the electrical and sonic results we were looking for. Our designer has even been quoted as saying that normally these 2 drivers might not even be what he would want in another design, but in this design they are optimal, and work out much better than other drivers which were more costly, and "more famous".
So, to reiterate, it all comes down to how "the sum of the parts in unison" comes together in an overall sense, as to how well the performance criteria are achieved. We design according to criteria that are very different than other manufacturers, and we strive to optimize things that some other speaker makers aren't even aware of. We just do things differently, and we feel that we do things better. That's why we are designers and manufacturers, so that we can provide another way to do things that we know work better than the "usual" way. From the past history of our previous products, people should expect things to be done "differently" by us, and always be at a high quality and performance level.
We feel that we have achieved the performance levels that we were after, and it seems that the initial market acceptance and reviewer excitement is bearing out what we expected all along.
Our philosophy at Starsound is to produce high-value high-performance products which are not "me too" products, and have a "standout" character beyond the normal expectations, and this is the kind of products that we have produced for years in the audio system support categories with Audiopoints and Sistrum products, both benchmarks in their respective categories. We felt that if we were going to produce a monitor speaker, that it had to live up to the performance level that people expect from us, and still be affordable for its performance level. We had no interest in making $40,000 speakers, that might be beyond the reach of many audiophiles. We targeted the $5k price range, because it was a price which allowed us enough room to make the system of high quality with our innovations, and still be within reach of many purchasers, even though it is not a "cheap speaker".
So, that is basically it. We did the best we could do in the price category that was targeted, and achieved a level of performance that is consistent with our other "benchmark" products already in production. And we used the concepts and even the products(Sistrum and Audiopoints) in the overall design, so that we could show how these concepts and products can maximize the performance of a speaker product(even one with affordable drivers). These were our goals.
As to others' evaluations of our success in this attempt, we'll leave that up to the customers and the reviewers. We are confident that we have produced a HIGH-VALUE product that will compete well with anything at the price, and quite possibly against higher priced speakers as well.
What we want to do, is to bring high performance into people's homes at prices that will not "break the bank". This doesn't mean that they can be made for 49 cents, but they are "pinnacle" type designs, for affordable prices for that kind of performance. Really, I'd have thought that this would be well-received by the users, so that they wouldn't have to spend so much to get state-of-the-art performance. But instead, it seems to generate alot of complaints about why we didn't make it "cheaper", or why we didn't make it "more expensive". I don't know. This is the speaker system, and this is its price. That's all we can say. It will stand on what it can do at the price range. I know that there are users out there who are finding this speaker system to be a "dream come true". That's what we wanted to make for them, and for everybody who needs a top quality monitor system. We'd like to be known as the company that makes lifelike high-end sound more affordable. We want you to be happy.
Tom Lyons,
Starsound Technologies |
The speaker is excellent. The only problem is that we are having trouble keeping up with demand. Right now we are out of speakers and stands. Srajan at 6moons got the last pair out of this production run for the upcoming review.
This is a complex speaker and is difficult to manufacture. We don't just "pop them out of the oven". They might look simple, but they are hard to make. The one-piece cabinet construction is very demanding, and the piano black finish takes time, and the stands are very very hard to manufacture.
There is already a waiting period for the next production run. There is a strong possibility of 2 different versions of stands now, so that we can streamline the production. The "wrought iron" looking stand is super hard to make. They will be available, but there could be some pricing adjustments, based on the stands.
We're doing the best we can. We designed for best sound, but unfortunately not the ideal ease of manufacturability, so we can't produce them like cookies. Sound quality took precedence over ease of manufacture. We wanted only the best. This means we can't make them as fast as other designs could have been made. They are all individually hand-made right here in the US, by our factory people, with alot of care and workmanship. We have a very high threshold of quality control, and rejection and re-doing takes place if it is not perfect. This takes time.
It's a very strong contender, and at a reasonable price, but there will be a wait for them, at least in the short term. Virtually every pair out there has replaced very high end floorstanders(some costing 10 times the price of the Caravelle, with very well-known and respected names), and a few top quality monitors. The bass is probably the benchmark of depth and quality for monitor speakers, and rivals or beats many floorstanders. But even though the bass gets alot of the talk, it is the sound quality of the rest of the spectrum that is the true mark of this speaker. It produces a very lifelike sound with great ease, and has large soundstage, disappears completely, and images fantastically.
At this point, it is a "boutique" product, and the attendant waiting periods for such items exist. It's not a mass produced item.
We're working on the issue. With the demand I see right now for these speakers, it's likely that they will be in a back-ordered situation for awhile. We'll probably have to make some kind of ordering lineup, and ship in that order when we have completed units.
Basically, we're not Sony or Phillips with huge production facilities, and we are a relatively small high-end company with a line of very well made products. In the case of the Caravelle, we can't make them fast enough right now to meet this kind of demand.
If you are interested, please call me or email me to discuss getting on the list.
I wish I had a thousand Caravelles in the back room right now. But I don't.
Tom Lyons
Starsound Technologies |
Newbee, due to the "True Series First Order" crossover network design employed in the Caravelles, the system impedance remains quite flat between 7 ohms and 11 ohms throughout the entire range. This is a characteristic of the first order series crossover design. I received this information directly from the Caravelle's designer on the phone, just now.
It remains at an effectively flat 7 ohm level up until the areas above 11-12KHz, and has a slow linear rise as it progresses upwards in frequency to the 25kHz area where it reaches 11 ohms. There are no "wild" impedance changes anywhere in the curve, so that it is very easy on amplifiers of all types. Even some tube amps with higher output impedances will not be adversely affected, because of the very stable non-reactive nature of this speaker system's impedance curve.
The first order series network has alot of advantages in sonics and in matching applications with amplifiers. Some of the potential drawbacks are that back-EMF is more possible to occur with series crossovers, and that the tweeter is potentially subjected to higher power levels because it is operating in a first-order filter(shallower slope), at lower frequencies than higher-order(steeper slope) crossovers would permit. These potential drawbacks will not be objectionable in most cases, and the advantages of time alignment and correct transient behavior, as well as the superior flatness of the response and impedance curves will be far more important aspects to most users. Additionally, if there were any woofer-specific impedance changes that would potentially endanger the tweeter, the crossover frequency would automatically shift(sliding) upwards which provides additional protection for it. This is an inherent factor in series first-order designs, and is not any kind of "switching" mechanism. The crossover point just "slides" with any shifting impedances, and the amplitude response and impedance curves remain flat. The back-EMF issue is something that most amps have no difficulty dealing with, and should never be in issue, in practice. The main factor is the sound quality, which is very coherent and seamless in nature, fast in response, and open and natural in quality.
I hope that sufficiently answers your questions about the impedance of the Caravelles. Including "pros and cons". |
Pal, most amplifiers, whether they are tube or transistor, will work fine with the Caravelles, as long as there is enough power for the 89db sensitivity of the Caravelles.
I'm sure that most audiophile amplifiers over 40 watts would do the job(at least as a "minumim"). We have been using our prototype Harmonic Precision HP-110 amplifiers on the show circuit, which are 100wpc solid state monoblocks.
Thus, I suspect that a very high quality 100wpc amplifier from other companies may be quite satisfactory in this application.
The impedance curve on the Caravelles is very flat(non reactive) and will be a very easy load on any amplifier at 7 ohms nominal, with very very little variation in impedance over the band. This characteristic would make them an excellent match with many tube amps, as well.
As any excellent speaker should do, the Caravelles will play what goes into them, from any amp you choose. Make your amp(and the rest of the signal chain) high-quality, and you'll receive the benefits of the speakers.
Speaking on a personal note here, as a Berning amp owner myself(Berning 45 SET-ZOTL), I'd love to hear what a Berning ZH-270 would sound like with the Caravelles. I'll bet that would be an unbelieveable combination.
Another possibility might be one of these new "ICE module" digital amps, or tri-path amps which are gaining alot of sonic acclaim these days. They can be affordable, too. There are alot of very good amps out there, and I don't mean to really single any out, but just mentioned some things that seem to be "all the buzz" right now. Just remember that the amp is a very important part of the signal chain, so pick a nice one. Your Caravelles deserve it.
Tom Lyons
Starsound Technologies |
Tvad, at this time the price of the Caravelles includes the pair of dedicated "latticework" Sistrum-design platforms(stands) that come with the Caravelles at the $5k price. They are designed as a package, and the stands are included in the price, as part of the package.
However, I must advise that these stands went really far over budget, and it is quite possible in the near future that we will be forced to raise the price because of this. We are contemplating a less-costly pair of Sistrum-designed stands as an alternative. The purchaser could then select which stands he wishes to purchase along with the speakers, depending upon how much he wishes to spend.
At this time, we are "eating" the difference in price, just to hold our predetermined price point for introduction. But I don't think we can do this for long. At this time, there is very little profit margin in these speakers/stands, and if we used "normal" pricing structures that included "normal" dealer markups, the Caravelles/stands would have a retail cost of nearly double what we are selling them for now.
Truthfully, the early purchasers of the Caravelles are getting a fantastic deal for the price, because of this unusual low profit/high manufacturing cost ratio. As I said, I'm not sure how long we can go on at this price point. We're trying everything possible to streamline the production to keep the cost down. Right now, with the low production and complexity and cost of manufacture, these Caravelles are essentially "custom hand made" speakers. That's why we are perpetually behind schedule on these.
If we get enough orders in, perhaps we can take better advantages of "economies of scale" in manufacturing larger numbers. This would help us to hold the price.
However, they can still be had for the $5k price including the stands. We will announce any upcoming price increases, but I'm giving a fair "heads-up" advisement about it right now. We'll keep the $5k price, but it may be with the less costly stands for that amount in the future. The fancier "latticework" stands that we have now, will likely be an option at added expense at some relatively early point down the road. |
