I have to pass this along and express my views and feelings about my recent visit with Eric Alexander and Tekton Designs a couple of weeks ago. As I sit down to put into words what I experienced that weekend, I’m still in awe and wonder. I was there to audition and choose my next set of speakers for my music only system. While I was there Eric invited both my wife and I to listen to and experience the current state of his IRL technology project and it’s resulting presentation of both music as well as some not so everyday sounds (at least from my perspective).
Let’s Set the Stage
• The speakers were standard Pendragon’s and the electronics were class D amplification units along with the IRL components.
• All of the music and audio was sourced through standard off the shelf streaming devices, even from my own phone as a source.
• The room was a medium sized shop area with dragsters and a myriad of stored items around with no real room treatments, making this experience all the more astonishing in my opinion.
What we experienced, heard and were encompassed by was nothing short of astonishing. The first tracks were outdoor sounds; rain falling in a rainforest, a thunderstorm and most impressively an F35 and F15 flyby. In all of these soundscapes presented, the results were nothing short of amazing. In dynamics, sound field and aural realism. One in particular, the F35 fly over, was of specific interest to me having had the opportunity in my professional career to hear them live at the flight line. The presentation and what I heard was truer to live than anything I have ever experienced before. As they “flew” by, the aircraft were above us, to our right, left and behind us, in the sky. Not at any time did I get a sense of a point source, the speakers, delivering the sound. It sounded exactly as though I was back on that flightline. Truly astonishing. The same could be said for the rainforest and the thunderstorm. It never sounded like it was coming from the speakers themselves. We were encompassed in a “sphere of sound”.
With regards to music reproduction, the sound was rich, vibrant and lively, and like nothing I had heard before. All of the musical instruments were spread across the stage in both breadth and depth. The lead vocalists were up front, the drums behind, the backup vocals were placed in proper positions across the stage. Again, no point source of sound could be discerned. Drums and percussions were alive and spread out across the soundstage with depth and a realism that I've not heard from anything else I’ve listened to. That would include speaker systems ranging from $2,000 to $250K, and all setup in very meticulously staged environments. Along with the several tracks we listened to including Dead Can Dance, Alan Parsons Project, Steely Dan as well as many others, I played my own tracks though my phone with my Streaming App. One in particular that I’m very familiar with and that I use as a reference, Santana’s “Smooth” was presented as I had never heard it before. As noted above, the instruments and vocalists were beautifully “staged” precisely as you would expect at a live performance in depth, breadth and height. It never sounded like I was listening through speakers. The sound simply did not appear to be coming from them.
Conclusions
It’s somewhat difficult to put it all into word and to do justice to what we experienced, but I might compare it to the following; Someone who was blind, without sight their entire life actually seeing a stunningly beautiful sunrise for the first time after only having the warmth of it and other people's descriptions prior to that new experience. I was blind, but now, I see.
This latest technological innovation is nothing short of pure genius. In closing, this experience was beyond the next level. It will redefine audio reproduction in all areas including home audio, home theater, theater and most any other venue for sound and music presentation or reproduction. Eric’s genius and passion for music is a gift to all of us. It has brought us some of the most astounding products and technologies. He has most certainly done it again with the IRL experience.
Eric has proven that technological barriers are still there to be broken. He does it with his offerings in his speaker systems every day and is poised to do it once more with IRL. Not only does he produce what is in my opinion some of the best and most musically accurate and realistic speaker systems in the world, they are presented at a price that is realistically within reach of anyone to enjoy. I expect IRL technology to follow that same path.
