Tekton Design Moab

Back about ten years ago I visited Richard Bird, toured the factory, and heard the $95K Phoenix in his home (Were they $95K at the time; I don't recall, and I really don't care. They were expensive.) Very nice. A review never materialized, however. Also, in 2006 as a fledgeling reviewer some Melody Valve gear were among my first articles for Dagogo.com, and wow, it’s been a busy ride since then!

I will recuse myself from further comment, i.e. comment on millercarbon’s system. We obviously disagree on methods, but I’ll just wish him well in his Tekton endeavor. It does take guts to buy a product unheard. I have done so many times. I hope he is elated with the result.

(spell check wanted to insert the word "rust", as in, "I hope he is elated with the rust." Now if that would have happened, I can see the indignant responses, and seemingly rightly so.)

I think I’m done here; peace to all. :)

arctikdeth-

Why all the tweeters?
is it just a design thing?Would the array take away from a nice 6-7” midrange for guitar?

The tweeter array is a patented invention of Eric Alexander and unique to Tekton speakers. Eric is a professional drummer and speaker designer who was frustrated and trying to understand why speakers never sounded anything like live musical instruments. 

One day he had an insight. A violin string playing 440 Hz also produces harmonics at 880, 1760, etc. A whole series of harmonics that we audiophiles call harmonic structure or timbre. Each instrument has its own timbral signature. Its one way we tell one from another. Speakers smear and muddy over these details making it hard to tell one instrument from another- oh and, blurring imaging, damping dynamics, losing efficiency.   

The note we are trying to reproduce is coming from a violin string. Eric took the violin string, cut just the length that makes the tone, and found it is only about a third of a gram. Eric had the brilliant insight that speakers sound the way they do because we're asking 30 grams of moving speaker cone and coil to reproduce 0.3 grams of violin string. Of course dynamics and harmonics are going to be lost! Of course the details go missing! 

The truly brilliant part though was figuring out we don't have to use one high mass driver. We can use a lot of low mass tweeters instead. 

You asked about a nice 6-7" midrange for guitar? The tweeter array in the Moab is equivalent to a single 9" midrange driver!  

Don't look at the Moab as a 17 way speaker. That's not what it is. Viewed correctly it is a three way. Fourteen of the tweeters aren't really tweeters, they are one 9" midrange. Only the one tweeter in the middle is actually a tweeter. 

People complain these are standard off the shelf tweeters. Well, duh. That is not the point. The genius is not in building the next best super expensive driver. The genius is in understanding you want to accurately recreate the sound of something low mass, it can only be done with something low mass. 

This probably more than anything else explains why so many are in love with ESLs. Very low moving mass. ESLs unfortunately are one technical problem after another. Eric's tweeter array takes standard off the shelf affordable and easy to drive speakers and makes them sound like an ESL, only better and with none of the disadvantages. It is pure genius. 

The kicker is when Eric takes apart one of his tweeters, cuts up just the moving parts- the soft dome and the coil- and weighs them they come in at about a third of a gram. Same as the violin string! Eric now has a driver of about the same mass as the source of the sound it is trying to reproduce. So of course it sounds good!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6xMt6Wj9JE&feature=emb_logo 

Everything flows from this one design principle. Incredible detail pops out transparently, hard edges and listener fatigue vanishes, dynamics flow effortlessly, the most complex harmonic structures naturally rendered. All because Eric figured out how to make a 1" tweeter perform like a 9" midrange. Genius. 

Doesn’t the mass of all those tweeters add up?

The whole low mass driver thing is poppycock, but it gets revived every so often because it's a great sounding story: "Designer discovers something no one else has thought of!"  No one except every single line array and ESL manufacturer ever.

The last time anyone did something interesting with driver mass was with HIGH mass,  high excursion bass drivers, and even then we can see elements of this back in the Snell A series of woofers.

The answer to the magic in the Tektons (if any) as with all arrays is from the dispersion of the finished products. The mid-tweeter array is essentially a flat, coaxial design, and quite clever, and like all other such systems, the answer to the sound quality is in the dispersion, not the mass.

I'm not critiquing the sound of the Tektons, I have not heard them, and I do think the array is clever, but puh-a-leeze stop recycling old hero myths.

Thanks.

Yes I do recall my one Tekton audition at CAF a couple years back the double impacts were in a small hotel room not far from listening position but dispersion and imaging were surprisingly good for such a large speaker in tight quarters. The midrange was nice but nothing I had not ever heard before.

I’m a long time fan of Walsh style drivers and the whole wave bending shpiel for coaxing great midrange out of a single larger transducer.