Tekton Design Moab


Ordered a pair just now. In Dark Gray, to which Tammy immediately said, "Oh the Charcoal is beautiful!" Charcoal sounds better than Dark Gray (even though we are talking about the same color!) so Charcoal it is!  

My beloved Talon Khorus do still sound awfully good. It will be interesting to see how the Moabs stock out of the box compare with these tweaked and modded warhorses. Both the strength, and the weakness, of the Khorus is using the 10" woofer to cover so much midrange. Its a strength because it makes for a very smooth and cohesive sound. But its a weakness because its asking a lot of such a large driver to go so high. Talon makes up for it with their isobaric design. Mounted inside and directly behind the woofer is another identical driver facing the opposite direction. The idea is this relieves the front facing driver of having to compress the air inside the cabinet. This does allow for a much faster response, and is a big reason for the wonderful music the Khorus produces. 

I have a feeling however it is no match for Eric Alexander's ultra-low mass driver array solution. Only one way to know for sure. So we will just have to see!  

 https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 
128x128millercarbon
@tvad no kidding! Eric Alexander has a lot of stuff going on in That head of his. I saw something somewhere not too long ago that he has some big announcement soon. I wonder if it’s some new speaker invention and I should’ve waited on ordering my new speakers. Interesting!
“Let’s not sell the man short”.

I agree with @tvad. He makes reasonably good sounding speakers and Moab’s should gel nicely with mc’s rest of the system/decor.
Relax facten, we're fine. McCluskey's flame thrower wasn't meant for you. The mods on the other hand would do well to listen to the little speech Barr gave at today's press conference. A lot would. Very educational. 

Well folks I just sold my Talons for $2k. Same guy bought my old Alchemist Product 8 (Tim deParavincini designed integrated), and some wire. Together with some stuff sold earlier this just about covers the Moabs. In terms of net these will be one of my least costly component upgrades ever!

Now if I can just get someone to take the vintage Technics table and Pioneer tuner off my hands I can clear out that eye sore rack in the corner. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367

Moabs can be wired 4 or 8 ohms. Planning on a Raven next year, so my next call was to them. They've run Moabs with their amps at shows and without hesitation said go 4. My experience wiring subs for different impedance has already been reported. 16 ohms was quite a bit more articulate. 8 was better than 4 but it was splitting hairs. Raven feels 4 is better, although they agree between 4 and 8 it is splitting hairs. Eric we already know likes 4. So 4 it is.




I don’t doubt that a Raven amplifier will pair well with a 4 ohm impedance. It isn’t intuitive to me as to why it’d be recommended and preferable over an 8 ohm speaker. The higher impedance is certainly an easier driven load for a tube amplifier. Ralph (atmasphere) has on several occasions convincingly made the point that there’s lower distortion present when driving the higher impedance as well.

It would be a very educational discussion between Dave Thomas (Raven) who favors the 4 ohm load Tekton speaker and Ralph who advocates (8,16 ohm) as to why they differ on this subject. Ralph makes a compelling and technically sound argument for higher speaker impedance advantages.
Charles
The only example I have personal experience with is my Dayton SA1000 and four 10" subs. With 2 identical amps and four subs I was able to wire them for 4, 8 and 16 ohms. 8 was better than 4 but it was hard to notice. 16 was definitely better than 8. Not huge but enough there was no doubt. This however is a bit different situation as its a solid state amp with one speaker connection not a tube amp with taps for 4 and 8 ohms. Raven told me its really splitting hairs between the two amps.  

I would think the situation with the Moabs 2 woofers would be very similar to the subs and 8 would be very marginally better than 4. But its close enough its one of those situations where "what do you mean by better?" If better is louder then 4 should play just a bit louder. If better is tighter more articulate then the higher impedance has a bit of an edge. If that's all we're talking about, the main difference between Ulf and Moab is the Ulf has extra mid-bass drivers. Eric said the bass from the Moab is a bit more articulate. This is probably why. 4 ohms might add just that teensy bit of warmth there. Hard to say. 

What I guess I should ask Eric is how much of that impedance change is due to the array, and how do they sound different 4 or 8 with tubes? The tech stuff Ralph knows is all well and good but I've been around the block with tech more than enough to know it doesn't always tell the tale. Listening however almost always does. The advantage I've heard in higher impedance has been in the area of making the speaker a shade less warm and a tad more articulate. In terms of articulate, speed, etc, Tekton already are compared to stats. It may well be the last thing they need is more by way of impedance. Dunno. Interesting question.