Hello Again,
If you don't mind, I will use this opportunity to repeat what I have said on another forum, which I hope will be helpful to all the participants.
Thought I would take a moment to shed some light on three subjects.
First, our 127dB compression claim.
1) If you put the power necessary into a traditional woofer and try to push it to 127db, it would probably blow-up long before it got there. But we don't have one driver -- we have four to share the power.
2) We actually used a set-up that could generate at least 4000 watts to test the speaker's compression point. We wore ear-plugs too. We used pulses because we didn't want to kill our neighbors, cause a brown out and also because we were trying to emulate musical peaks. Yes, running our drivers under several kwatts of power continuously would not be tolerated politely by the drivers. They couldn't survive that. But music is "dynamic" after all, hence the term "dynamic range".
3) At around 127dB and around 4000 Watts, compression was noted -- 1 watt = 91 dB; 10 watts = 101 dB; 100 watts = 111dB; 1000 watts = 121 db... you get the idea.
So our whole point again about making this claim is two-fold:
a) The speakers get to the threashold of pain long before they compress. So they will play loudly.
b) More importantly, they will handle dynamic peaks of MUSIC very nicely indeed (as sound reinforcement speakers do) and very cleanly (as top planar dipole speakers do), thus effectively emulating the live concert experience.
Second, and somewhat related is the skepticism concerning the ability of our woofers to move sufficient air to accomplish authoritative bass. Cone excursion of drivers on some of the sites referred to are as little as 6mm. We are able to attain big excursions, cleanly -- plus or minus 2 inches! So our four woofers move a lot of air. To do this, "you can't use no ordinary woofer", as my grandmother would say. Not surprisingly, we haven't. It is a very unique, proprietary planar driver with a surround that allows it to function much like a dynamic speaker -- on steroids. The magnets and supporting structure are very robust. As a result, we have a woofer that is very responsive (it moves fast) while remaining very compliant (it tracks the wave form very nicely). It has a very high QTS. The four drivers share the load so they "run cool". Even reasonably high spl levels can be maintained without loss of performance. We think you'll like what we have done, unless your the jealous type.
Third, this is not a Carver facsimile. Again, Carver's Amazing speaker (second version in particular) served as a marvelous inspiration and we have tremendous respect and gratitude for what he has accomplished. We could replicate the Carver speaker for much less money. But then it wouldn't do what the Gilmore speaker can do or sound the same either. Essentially, when compared with the Carver Amazing, every component is different.
1) The panel is Corian and essentially non-resonant. Each wieghs about 80 pounds alone.
2) The ribbon membrane is 10 times thinner and has much different topology.
3) Woofers are very different as you can see.
4) Crossover is in another class altogether as we have described earlier.
5) Even the stand, that is made especially for us by Sound Anchor, is very special.
We don't agree that we are engaged in hype and hyperbole and that our goal is the elicitation of cheap thrills. We know that these speakers are expensive compared to most, but few speaker manufacturers aspire to the same aesthetic, even though they claim that they do . For those that do sincerely aspire to achieve greatness, we believe that our speakers represent an exceptional value relative to other top quality offerings. These speakers in our opinion represent a paradigm change -- that is perhaps why some of you find the claims hard to believe. Most of you are open-minded enough though to accept the possibility that what we have created may in fact be exceptional and we thank you for your graciousness. Those who know Mark Gilmore personally know that he is respected universally for his integrity, generosity, self-effacement and knowledge. We invite you all to visit us as CES and THE-expo. Along with that we ask one favor -- for those who have so far chosen to condemn publicly a product they have not heard and don't understand, I hope that you will be able at least to listen to the speakers with an open mind and in turn be as forthcoming with your praise if you feel that it is justified.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
HB
