My Take on the Tekton Array, Experiences to Date


Based on my albeit disparate (different rooms and systems) experiences, as a reviewer of 14 years, and having built hundreds of systems with a wide variety of genres of speakers including arrays and panels, this is my succinct initial critique of the Tekton array technology. I have enough experience with large speakers of many genres that I can grasp the operation of different designs, including arrays in a straightforward manner. If you wish to see the speaker systems I have reviewed, see my bio and reviewing history at Dagogo.com.

I spent an evening at a new friend’s home hearing his setup with the Tekton Moab speakers. Nice, plenty of positive things to say. However, it was quite obvious that the array adds convolution to the imaging, especially with more complex music. Voices are split in prismatic fashion and I could hear the grouping of drivers’ contributing to that. It does have a more stringent sound, and does not excel in that system at warmth, even though a relatively recent AR preamp and Pass 30.8 Monos were in use. The bass was ok, but certainly not overwhelming in terms of impact or tonality. For $4K some good scale, acceptable presence and impact; reminded me of a low to mid line Magnepan or Vandersteen, a bargain, but with idiosyncrasies. Before I get to my critique, the obvious benefits of the Moab are large scale it has inherently as a big tower, the respectable bass and LF at the price point, and the grandeur of the center image, which is a faux recreation of panel speakers’ splayed center of the sound stage.

The interesting thing is what happened when the owner visited my home and heard my new to me as of two months ago Wharfedale Opus 2-M2 Monitors with the Legacy Audio XTREME XD Subs. In terms of relative soundstage as regards seating position and speakers, my perspective is that the Opus cast as large a soundstage due to the much closer seating position (approx. 2x closer) as the Moab. Frankly, for all the tweeters purportedly giving the Moab such incisiveness, not really. The 3" soft dome of the Opus 2-M2 to my ears in this system was much more precise and elegant, without the smearing of the multiple drivers’ launch. Tonally, I prefer the Wharfedale/Legacy combo from top to bottom. Dynamics favored the bookshelf/sub combo, too.

My new friend’s reaction? Incredulity, stating several times he could not get over the sound quality of the setup. He grokked at the price of the used pair of speakers. From my experience hearing two Tekton speakers now, both times in close succession (one time at a dealer just across the hallway at a show, and the other the same evening in my room following the visit to hear the Moab) to each other, the 3" soft dome of the Wharfedale is more exquisite than the array of tweeters of the Moab, and sacrifices nothing in terms of soundstage when the seating position is forward. I pursued the Opus 2-M2 to achieve a similar result as a pricey ATC or PCM speaker with similar soft dome mid, but at substantial savings. I succeeded brilliantly, based on several previous listening experiences with such speakers. I’m rather more excited about this development than the refurbishing of the pair of Ohm Walsh Model F speakers I worked on last year about this time. I could cough up the Ohm speakers without much problem, but wouldn’t dream of giving up the experience of the Opus and Legacy Subs.

This is not a definitive assessment as I have not conducted direct comparisons in my own room. My opinion could change substantially were I to do so. Am I shocked that the Moab owner was gobsmacked at the performance of the Wharfedale bookshelf speakers and Legacy subs? No. I rather enjoyed telling him that the Opus 2-M2 is a lower end speaker system for me. :)

Imo, a person has fundamental ignorance of the performance characteristics of different genres of speakers if they suggest, or worse boast, the Tekton array of tweeters has better refinement and precision than other genres of speakers when it comes to imaging. Anyone who understands design knows you can’t splay the image with multiple drivers and achieve superior coherency simultaneously. And, no, I do not care what claims are made about it; I have heard the effect twice in near term comparison to dynamic speaker systems, so fans and makers can claim what they wish, but I go with my ears and comparisons, of course with the same music selections.

I have refrained from commenting at length about the Tekton signature until I heard it again. I was absolutely correct in my initial assessment of the Tekton monitor I had heard at AXPONA about two years ago. At that time I sated the Tekton tweeter array did not have the precision, density and purity of center imaging of the Ryan Speaker bookshelf in the room nearby. I had the precise same experience between hearing the Moab and the Opus 2-M2. When I have the same experience twice, I am confident that I am locked in on the reality of the differences of the genres of speakers.

I’m neither for, nor against Tekton. It’s a different flavor of speaker. As I said about two years ago after the experience at AXPONA, the design will have its idiosyncrasies, as do all genres of speakers. Fanboys may rail, people who have moved on might concur. Whatever. I have zero interest in arguing my impressions. I will not call them conclusions, as that would require a direct comparison. Would I think anything significant might change in my assessment. No, I do not. But, I’m experienced enough and not so presumptuous that I would expect no chance of it.

douglas_schroeder

Your a self fulfilling accident in the making. A slow motion train wreck. Please, continue to derail this thread since you're doing such a smash bang job of it.

More projection and irony at it's finest. The three people I have seen at the heart of getting the most threads derailed and deleted here in my 20 plus years are Geoffkaitt, Georgehifi, and you. You are in some some truly fine company there. The worst of the worst. 

 

 Pretty sure most post from MC never bring your names up. At least that I can remember.

Since when does it excuse one's behavior when a name isn't brought up? You can't be that obtuse. As for control, I have tons of it. I just respond to idiots posting and that upsets you? Does that mean you're fine with his postings and it isn't until I say something about it that it upsets you? 

We've been through this many times and yet most of you still fall back on the same lame excuses. Pitiful.

The three people I have seen at the heart of getting the most threads derailed and deleted here in my 20 plus years are Geoffkaitt, Georgehifi, and you.

And once, again, your words betray you and your intent. MC has not only gotten more threads closed than any other and yet you leave his name out of it. What is he to you, Voldemort?

All the best,
Nonoise

 

Douglas,

We think alike.  I heard the Eminent Technology LFT8 around the time I read your review.  Its midsize is an ideal compromise for realistic imaging + clarity at the same time.  Your experience with stacked ET's parallels mine with the Stax F83 which was stacked F81's.  Art Dudley was working for Edison Price in the mid 80's and played the F83 for me.  He was gracious to let me bring my Audiostatic 240 speaker and compare.  Previously I had brought my 240's to another place which had the F81's.  My 240 had similar clarity to the F81, with the F81 having more clarity in the midrange and the 240 more HF extension.  But the F83 compared to the 240 was much more bass heavy with muddy/smeared midrange and markedly reduced HF energy.  That experience taught me that merely doubling panel area, while enabling more dynamics and bass, paid a price for focus/clarity and HF extension.  Why is this?

More panel area yields more time smear from worse time alignment.  This is due to more summation of time differences from further apart locations on the panel radiating sound to your small ears.  Consider even live music.  Many orchestra pieces have violin solos from the concertmaster who then rejoins the 1st violin section.  The solo part is brilliant and focused, but the violin section is smeared and muddy by comparison.  As a violinist, I assure you that the 16 professional violinists in the section are each very competent, and they all play together perfectly.  However, the ensemble sound is murky compared to the sound if any one of them were to play alone.  This explains how the sound from the stacked ET's was murky, compared to single ET's.  You can do an experiment with 3 people.  You listen to each of them reciting a sentence, then you listen to the 2 together saying it perfectly together.  You will find the same murkiness from the 2 together no matter how perfectly they are together.  This is the choir effect vs individual singers.

Aside from orchestra ensembles where there are many players playing one part, most ensembles are composed of lots of players each playing a different instrument or part.  Even large instruments like tuba, string bass radiate sound from a relatively small opening, such as the bell of the tuba.  Some energy comes from the large body of the tuba, but the focus of the instrument comes from the smaller bell.  An ideal acoustical presentation would be like a large sky with many tiny stars as point sources.  Less desirable is a large sky with a few nebulous fuzzy nebulas (pun intended).  I prefer as few speaker drivers as possible, time aligned, with accurate electronics and recordings using focused cardioid microphones enabling spatial accuracy,  The ideal is a point source speaker like a horn.  But the horn has colorations, so alternatively the lowest distortion low mass electrostatic driver with that concave configuration and just enough panel area to get enough dynamics is my choice.

I agree that this ideal concave driver would have the maximum beaming, but I am willing to fix my head in the ideal tiny sweet spot.  Speakers with a large sweet spot means that several people all hear the same mediocre, muddy, bloated sound, not for me.

Functionally, the concave ESL would have the same pinpoint, accurate imaging as the point source horn.  The advantage of the point source horn is no beaming but perfect time alignment, but with the disadvantage of horn coloration.  The concave ESL would have the lowest distortion, but with the disadvantage of supercritical listener positioning.  

How does this apply to Tekton speakers?  The freq above 3000 Hz are handled mainly by the single center tweeter, enabling best focus.  The multi-tweeter array circling the central tweeter as used in the Uber/Moab is for 300-3000 Hz.  I don't like the double array, which causes smearing from more drivers handling the same freq.  This relates to my criticism of the Stax F83 vs the purer F81 and your criticism of the ET stack vs the single ET.  I understand that the cheaper models use a single array, which has the disadvantage of covering the range down to only 600 vs 300 Hz in the double array.  I have never personally heard any of the Tekton models, and just defer to your observations, which are explained by my analysis above.  I suppose that the best Tekton speaker is the small single array monitor with limited bass extension and dynamics.  For smaller scale music, this probably captures the heart of the innovative array concept.  Remember that the classic BBC mini monitor LS3/5a is champs at what it does, so the small Tekton monitor is in a similar realm.