Best new loudspeaker


I have heard many loudspeakers ,I own Magnapan , and
a Aerial 10-t . This new loudspeaker I heard at great lengths and many agree is from a new company called
NSR -Sonic Research the D-3 Sonata was absolutely killer
and they were saying the wiring and crossover are not even final as of the Jan show . parts quality is excellent in the Silver finish I saw,for a speaker under $5k to create such a soundstage presence with bass that had articulation and impact is beyond me how they do it ,I am told it is a
sealed focal lens .They will be selling by March ,I for sure will be saving my bucks, this is one loudspeaker to watch ,I am already selling my 10-ts.
audiophile1958

Showing 17 responses by shadorne

the quads unlimited quad 57 are closer to real than anything out there, period.

Time for all those speaker manufacturers to close shop and admit defeat....they will never better this 50+ year old product!

Why everyone does not own one remains one of those mysteries...
there is no mystery. no component is perfect.

Indeed....but the Quad 57 is as close to perfect as any speaker in the past or the future will ever get...right?
the only true full range electrostat loudspeaker is the Big Soundlabs which are excellent .

Indeed Big Soundlabs is what Gordon Holt used for many years until he got his current ATC SCM 50 ASL....I guess he has enjoyed many speakers over the years and reviewed more than most, however he is apparently extremely happy with these particular cones...perhaps its just the ice cream or syrup?
they do not sound like electrostatic speakers, magnepans, apogees, eminent technology speakers and other planar magnetics.

MrT,

Forgive me for being presumptuous but I do believe that you are confusing things. At least this is the only way I can reconcile your statements/preferences.

The biggest difference in all these electrostatic designs compared to almost all the cone speaker designs is NOT in the timbre but in the radiation pattern!

I think it is the RADIATION pattern of panels that is what "turns your crank".

It is entirely possible you prefer the enhanced reverberant sound field that you get from a large panel! This is perfectly understandable. However, claiming that the timbre of "all cones is wrong" is simply not supported by any science that I know of. I call this panel sound an atmospheric effect...dipoles do it also but not as significantly....it is almost magical and the sound from panels can at times be enveloping and almost three dimensional - sometimes with a distinct source between the speakers but more often not. It is also possible to hear increased emphasis in certain stringed instruments and vocals due to the later reverberant information that reaches the ears (reverberation spreads out the energy and gives the ear/brain more chance to discern things/details). In fact the sound can be highly variable depending on both placement and listening position (you also tend to get a lot of comb filtering/lobing with such large radiating surfaces and reflections, which changes the sound of long lasting notes - although the spacing between the ears generally compensates for the comb filtering and you are left with just an impression of "spaciousness" in the sound rather than a change in tone/timbre). The highly variable nature of the sound ( due to room interaction ) is why these panel designs are shunned in studios....studios want translatable and reproducible sound....they want to know exactly what a mix or master sounds like ....NOT what it sounds like in a particular room! Besides the dynamic comression from panels is just a non starter for evaluating a mix.

Of course, the acoustics that a large panel may create in your room are probably more akin to what you might hear towards the back of a large concert hall where there is a heavier emaphasis on reflected rather than direct sound ( defintely true of classical and church music compared to typical rock/pop/jazz club/concert sound). Indeed, if you only attend the ballet and opera then you will ONLY hear reflected sound from the orchestra that sits in a pit. The comb filtering (from multiple reflections of the same signal all reaching your ear but with various delays) has a marked impact on what you hear. Even a symphony orchestra which sits on a wooden floor is gaining from a huge amount of reverberant energy off the floor. Contrast this with an amplified rock group with speaker towers and of course the sound field radiation pattern is completely different!!

I propose that your beef with ALL cone speakers and you adoration of all panels (especially Quad 57) has absolutely nothing to do with timbre. IMHO, you are mixing your terms, which is understandable given the complexity of a natural sound field, the nature of audio reproduction in a room at home and the difficulty in translating your perceptions into language...
how would you demonstrate that ?

By measuring the frequency response and the distortion on axis and verifying that the impulse response is of similarly high quality. A check of the phase and impedance plot for anomalies would also help. Many speakers have low distortion. Many have pretty good impulse response - especially in the midrange and at modest levels. However very few have similar radiation patterns though and very few maintain low distortion at higher levels.
it is my experience, auditioning many cone designs that cone designs do not as good a job creating natural timbre as ribbons, electrostats and planar/magnetic drivers

Everything you prefer has a distinctly different radiation pattern from a cone. However there are many cones and many ribbons/electrostats and planar/magnetic drivers that all have their own sound/timbre.

To me you are clearly associating the driver radiation pattern, sound field and room reverberation with "timbre", which is wrong.
if there is a speaker that is a worthy competitor of electrostatics and planar/magnetics/ribbons, with respect to reproduction of timbre, using "conventional" drivers, i would want to audition it, unless i have already heard it.

Ok - but it isn't an issue of timbre. Gordon Holt used the big Soundlabs for many years - he now uses ATC SCM 50 actives - I suggest you start there. I expect the radiation pattern and room interaction will still be quite different from the big Soundlabs, however, the "TIMBRE" of both is of very high quality.

I suspect you may not be able to get past the differences from room interaction / reverberation and sound field from a short listening session (you have preconceived expectations). However, if you were to acclimatize and give it a few hundred hours then you might think differently. Leading classical audio engineers certainly do not have a problem with the timbre of these cone speakers, however, I would add there are many other good cone designs too....if you took the time to acclimatize I think you would find there is not such a "great divide" as you insist.

Are all tubes bad? Are all SS amps bad? Is all CD redbook sound bad? Is all vinyl inherently bad? Is all 5.1 HT sound bad? Is all two channel music bad? Are all horns bad?

IMHO - NO.... all of the above can sound excellent... given the right choices and room setup.
i find that ultimately, panels come closer to my experience of listening to live unamplified instruments.

When you continually state that all cones have fundamentally wrong timbre is where I tend to get cross-threaded. I have, however, absolutely no problem with the above statement - panels, setup correctly - well out into a room, can sound absolutely awesome! I tried to explain how the larger radiating surface of a panel will excite the sound field and room reveberation in a fundamentally different way (especially a panel that radiates forwards AND backwards)... this will make a sound field that is much more like listening at the back of a hall - higher proportion of reverberant energy will reach your ears than from a conventional cone speaker setup.

However you continue to insist that it is a fundamental "coloration" or timbre problem with all cones - as if it were some scientific principle, like Force= Mass times Acceleration. I simply do not believe that coloration or wrong timbre can be behind someone disliking 1000 audiophile quality cone speakers (wow that is a lot of auditions - there must have been a few extremely good ones in that mix - and yet they ALL had wrong or inferior timbre?).

Lets face it - I believe you prefer the way panels radiate and excite the room - that is what I believe is at the heart of your issue with "point source" speakers or cones. Otherwise I can't see how anyone could be so categorical about the inferiority of 1000 cone speakers versus practically ANY panel/electrostat/ribbon.
timbre is one of several components of music. it is most important to me

MrT,

timbre is old french for a "drum" or close to "timbanon" in greek...

Do you seriously consider the Quad 57 or a stack of them or any electrostatic/planar/ribbon the last word on reproducing tympani or a full drum set?

Please confirm that, in your opinion, the timbre of a drum set is also "least inaccurate timbrally" when played back with any electrostatic/planar/ribbon - better than any of 1000 audiophile quality cone speakers that you have auditioned?

....just curious how far you are willing to go in your extreme viewpoint on "timbre"? However, I fear I am already on the ignore list - just like Ralph ;-)
Try the Orions (I own a pair) - they have a very similar midrange but don't suffer from panel limitations.

I have not heard them - but I agree that this design will definitely sound closer to MrTennis's prized Quad's than most conventional box speakers. Of course, I have been shouting to the rooftops about radiation patterns, for some time already!.

It is the way the lower half of the midrange behaves that is so distinctive about the sound of these designs compared to conventional boxes. Without going into technical details MrTennis should hear a very spacious sound (correctly placed) with the odd note of an instrument jumping out at you - just as it does in a concert hall due to the dimensional/room effects.
yes i will assert that any electrostatic, WITHIN ITS FREQUENCY RESPONSE BANDWIDTH, will create the sound of an instrument, in a manner more realistic than any cone design.

(in the above quote the capitals were added for emphasis)

Hang on ....you are now adding a huge caveat to your previous categorical statement that almost any electrostat/ribbon/planel speaker will sound better timbrally than any of 1000 audiophile quality cone based speaker designs.

I don't think that any test would prove anything except you prefer by far the sound field from a large transducer surface over "point source" designs. To me this is a perfectly reasonable position to adopt....they inevitably sound different and excite the reverberant field in a fundamentally different way.

since this experiement has not occurred you and i are engaging in probabilistic statements. such a test is not definitive, because it is possible that two listeners may differ in the outcome of such a comparison. do you have any ideas ?

By calling your own arguments "probabilistic" and by adding a big caveat, you are actually undermining your own previously categorical position....but I don't really care about that....you are welcome to worship electrostats/panels/ribbons and I wish you well in this area and many years of listening pleasure, I don't doubt they sound much better to your ears/preferences and it would be ridiculous for me to insist you are wrong to like what you like.

I am simply trying to get you to recognize that the major difference between ALL cones and ALL Electrostats/ribbons/panels is the different sound field they create and the different room reverberant field that they excite; therefore what you are describing as "less inaccurate timbre" from any of your prefered designs is incorrect. To me there are good bad and terrible timbre speakers in all of these camps and a particularly lousy electrostat will certainly not sound "less timbrally inaccurate" then some of the best cone speakers (even though the sound field and reverberant field is bound to be different).

IMHO, if we wanted to explore the most accurate timbre then the discussion would inevitably involve headphones rather than speakers => this allows you to get rid of the effect of the room and work with very light weight transducers working in an extremely linear operating range that far exceeds what can be done with any speaker today. Unfortunately this means the sound appears to be in between one's ears and is therefore very far from a realistic presentation even if it can be the most accurate.
i find it hard to believe that dispersion is the only variable accounting for differences in a speaker composed of cones as compared to a another speaker which has none of them. can you suggest a way of demonstrating this ?

It may be hard to believe but in the grand scheme of things when comparing 1000's of cones to all the panel/electrostats/ribbons out there then the radiation pattern is really what sticks out like a "sore thumb" as the one big difference overall.

Sure there are other differences and surely different transducer materials will make different spesakers sound different...but we are talking 1000's of speakers - so in general it is the raditaion pattern that is what remains markedly different.

I expect that Mirage or other omnidirectional or dipole speakers might be closest to the panel sound...although a large surface causes beaming in the forward direction (something cone speaker manufaturers try to avoid by using multiple sized cones for each frequency band) so perhaps horns (which can have a controlled directional sound) might be closer.

Perhaps Duke can suggest a speaker that you should try that will be closer to what you hear from panels - not that you may like it more ...but just to demonstrate that cones can be made to sound much more like large surface panels if configured in a certain way...

i have never noticed a note jumping out at me. perhaps, it is because my favorite location is the last row orchestra.

The reason certain notes jump out at you when listening to more of reverberant field compared to a direct sound field is because reverberations all arrive at your ears with multiple delays...this causes cancellation and reinforcement of one note viz a viz another. It is similar to the trick that can be used to make sound appear all around you from a stereo speaker by feeding it out of polarity signals. Reverberations can occasionally change the way a particular note on an instrument sounds in some cases it can lead to accents on the notes that the musician does not intend - increasing their audibility noticeably. The audio spectrum will look like a comb...with "suckouts" whereever there is reverberant cancellation. Our ears can compensate for this quite well being placed 6 inches apart as long as they receive different amounts of cancellation. In general a comb filter is well known to make the sound seem spacious and encompassing... like a flanger on the guitar (electronic comb filtering by adding delay). It is also well known that a delay or a strong primary reflection produces a comb filter. The key to understand about a delay comb type filter is that is affects harmonics too - we can and do hear it even with instruments and all their harmonics - unlike a single notch filter or the odd uncorrelated reflection it will affect timbre!

In general this happens with all bass from ALL speakers (except soffit mounted ones) because the bass is omnidirectional anyway and therefore first reflections off the wall behind the speaker will interfere with the forward radiating direct bass signal heard by the listener.

Speakers that radiate BOTH forwards and backwards in the midrange (like dipoles or panels) will have this comb filtering strongest in the direction of the listener as reflection from the wall behind the speaker and forward radition of the panels combines.

Next time you listen to a highly reverberant sound in a room - say from panels with midrange frequencies reflecting off the back wall - try and listen for these effects - it is quite pleasing with an impression of spaciousness - the odd note will usually stick out because your two ears are at the same distance from the speakers AND the wall behind the speakers....in this case the difference between the sounds received by the two ears cannot be used to compensate because there is NO difference as reflected and primary sounds arrive precisely at the same time at each ear. So although the ear/brain is extremely clever, in these rare cases we are unable to separate timbre from reflection effects; this is also the case with ALL bass notes, which have long wavelengths and where 6 inches (between ears)is simply not enough to hear a different sound and compensate.

Ok - so may be this is all too complicated. Here is the EASY way to think of it. Just imagine that you have FOUR speakers and not TWO in your room playing your stereo music. One speaker set is real. The other is the "virtual speakers" that you would see if the wall behind the speakers was a MIRROR. Now before you laugh...this is ACTUALLY what happens acoustically with ALL speakers in the bass and even more so with those that radiate forwards and backwards equally in the midrange - the wall IS AN ACOUSTIC MIRROR unless it is treated. So you are actually listening to FOUR speakers not TWO - no wonder this throws a deep soundstage...

Here is a very simple explanation Cancellations from reflections

This long winded discussion proves nothing as to what sounds better or what people like most! Education and enlightenment in our hobby is more important that "my Dad is bigger than your Dad" purile discussions.

It does explain why Audio Engineers do NOT use dipoles/panels! These engineers are trying to create effects, such as spaciousness, through judicious reverb and delay and mixing tricks...the last thing they want is a dipole speaker doing the very same things in an uncontrolled fashion in the room. So not surprsingly they often listen in near-field with cone speakers.

Notice I did not say what is better sounding...just trying to explain fundamental differences as to why things sound so different to your ears, MrT - that is all.
I must admit MrT, I thought you meant best too - especially given this statement

the quads unlimited quad 57 are closer to real than anything out there, period.

"anything out there, period"

In my simple mindedness I equated your "criteria" of being "closest to real" as the Quad 57 being defacto "the best", period. (Throw a heavy dash of perception into the criteria if you like...no problem)

Furthermore MrT, you implied to me, and probably others, that given this "closer to real" metric: ANY electrostat/ribbon/panel will BEST any of 1000 audiophile quality cone speakers that you have auditioned.

In essence MrT, you ARE saying there is a "best" for this particular perceived criteria (by your ears), which is "the real thing" or a live performance.

Surely this is the single most important criteria in sound reproduction for the majority of audiophiles? Yet now you are back peddling and saying NO - you didn't mean best at all - and to each man his own!

If I were a psychiatrist, I would probably conclude that MrT has the preconcieved notion about Quad 57's sounding the most like the real thing...better than any of 1000 audiophile quality cone speakers. This notion also applies in general to any Electrostat/Panel/Ribbon speaker viz a viz a cone. Therefore, even a new ML speaker will be perceived as sounding better than ANY cone speaker regardless of whether MrT has actually heard it or not!

Therefore, I propose that you don't need to audition anymore speakers MrT => you already KNOW what will sound "most like the real thing" or "least inaccurate timbrally". This Panglossian attitude towards all Electrostats/Ribbons/Panels is actually quite charming and I think that these and your other statements are keeping you well amused. No harm in that. And I do agree that, properly implemented and installed, these speakers can and do sound awesome. Peace and I wish you many more years of happiness - perhaps with advances in science (my domain) you may reach another 66....it certainly won't come from Panglossian thinking alone - although Doctors do say that an optimistic attitude really helps!
i wish they would remove the word "best" from the english language, as it engeneders arguments.

Exactly...becuase to yourself you see everything as an argument....instead myself and others are trying to concentrate efforts on furthering knowledge and understanding in this hobby by trying to explain things, as best we can, and not without some errors and prejudices no doubt...but nevertheless in the interests of moving forward - we try our best.

The way I see it - you have a been offered a fine choice.

Either
1) Chose to learn about the acoustical, electrical & physics science and psychoacoustic science of hearing in enough measure to to gain a moderate understanding of this hobby and the issues that you comment so passionately about {clearly like many of us you love this hobby, you have vast practical experience however I suggest that a deeper understanding could increase enjoyment enormously!)
2) Stick with your "mantra" ..."there is no best", "there is no best"..."nothing can be compared meaningfully or even discussed because to each his own"..."Om Mani Padme Hum!"

It is up to you now. I do not see this as a "joust" at all...there is NOTHING to be won....except perhaps on one hand, enlightenment for everyone concerned or, on the other hand, continued propagation of misleading concepts or just plain useless uninformative mantras or platitudes....statements with little or no explanation.

FWIW the answer to life the universe and everything has already been solved a while ago and the answer is 42.
That replication is either faithful in the areas that matter, or not. Now as to which areas matter and how much - well, that would be a topic rich with diversity of opinion.

Agreed - this type discussion might be worthwhile but it requires a certain minimum of understanding. Clearly, different aspects are more important to some people than others. For this very reason audio engineers can prefer cone speakers whilst audiophiles can prefer Quad 57's. Neither is wrong in their views when they both say "my speaker sounds better to me"...they value differently what is important.

For some, accurate dynamics, realistic loudness levels and minimizing the affects of room interaction are much less important than the room acoustic ambience and reverberant low intensity sound field with a broad, deep soundstage.

The Sonic Circle is an attempt to address this problem intelligently rather than purile arguments.

However, I suspect the Sonic Circle is incomplete as I struggle to see where Panels/Ribbons/Electrostats fit in...anyone have some ideas....to me they have that rare quality in that they blend features from several dimensions of the Sonic Circle, they are certainly precise in some aspects of the sound but they have an emotional flare too in terms of ambience...?
Speakers made today are made for HOME THEATER!

So true. Small satellites with a bandpass subwoofer or tall narrow elegant ported speakers with small woofers and both designs capable of highly impressive one note bass. Modern audio has made such huge advances!!

In the seventies the drivers and crosover made up much of the cost of the speaker.

Thankfully today we have advanced to the point where the expensive veneer and styling has become the most important and expensive line item in a speaker.

Fortunately A'goners know this and we shun the HT forums....