Charivari
Fighting Naïve Realism
Of all the speakers Julian Hirsch listened to, including such famous speakers as the AR LST, which today fetches outrageous prices, only one speaker earned the “100% perfect” rating. That speaker was the Design Acoustics D-6 and thanks to kfa888’s efforts, I am now the proud owner of a fine pair.
The D-6 is a most unusual speaker, shortly following the D-12 dodecahedral speaker, of which I too have a pair; it was an attempt to repackage the true omni design in a more conventional format to raise the WAF out of the negatives. There are 5 2.5” tweeters (4 of one type around the periphery and another on the baffle), a 5” midrange, and a rear-firing 10” woofer. Each is just a little smaller in depth and height than a Pioneer HPM-100, but with a wider baffle. The baffle itself is set forward and the perimeter tweeters are mounted on the angle. Overall, the construction
My preliminary listening sessions have revealed that due to the rear firing woofer makes these speakers a bit sensitive to placement. They must be approximately 3 feet from a wall for the bass and lower midrange to fill in to match the levels of the mid and tweeters. Still, the upper frequencies are still a bit more pronounced than my tastes prefer, but it is a smooth sound that is not fatiguing. Imaging isn’t pin-point, but the room-filling ability is quite realistic. With a few of my test CDs (Red Planet OST, Goran Bregovic, Lhasa, and Emma Shapplin), this is shown to be a consistent character. Low bass is a little lacking, most likely both due to my room and that these speakers don’t go down below the bottom-50s. With the gentler female vocals, the sound did not possess the slight harshness that most speakers add, HPM-100, Bozaks, even my Tannoys, that you don’t really notice until it’s not there; this pleased me to discover, though it’ll now bug me with other speakers.
With these speakers, more than others, you end up listening to the room. Due to the room effects, any sound that originally has a bit of an echoing quality is emphasized making some poorer quality recordings, those done outside of a sound-proofed room, sound on par with singing in the shower. This, though, is more a product of my acoustically poor room than the speakers. For darker rooms, these speakers may not work all that well or work superbly. With bright rooms, the D-6 seems to excel by lacking the harshness in the HF other speakers possess.
In all, I am very happy that I was able to snag a pair of these very rare speakers in such good condition, aside from a few minor cosmetic blemishes and a broken grill over a rear woofer. These are very good sounding speakers for their $249 price tag and being from 1973.
At my Design Acoustics Yahoo! Group, I’ve posted both the Stereo Review and High-Fidelity Magazine reviews.
Now, time for some pictures. Sorry about the small size of the full-on shots, my friend’s digital camera does great work up close, but goes soap opera lens (blurry) for anything else.
- JP
The D-6 is a most unusual speaker, shortly following the D-12 dodecahedral speaker, of which I too have a pair; it was an attempt to repackage the true omni design in a more conventional format to raise the WAF out of the negatives. There are 5 2.5” tweeters (4 of one type around the periphery and another on the baffle), a 5” midrange, and a rear-firing 10” woofer. Each is just a little smaller in depth and height than a Pioneer HPM-100, but with a wider baffle. The baffle itself is set forward and the perimeter tweeters are mounted on the angle. Overall, the construction
My preliminary listening sessions have revealed that due to the rear firing woofer makes these speakers a bit sensitive to placement. They must be approximately 3 feet from a wall for the bass and lower midrange to fill in to match the levels of the mid and tweeters. Still, the upper frequencies are still a bit more pronounced than my tastes prefer, but it is a smooth sound that is not fatiguing. Imaging isn’t pin-point, but the room-filling ability is quite realistic. With a few of my test CDs (Red Planet OST, Goran Bregovic, Lhasa, and Emma Shapplin), this is shown to be a consistent character. Low bass is a little lacking, most likely both due to my room and that these speakers don’t go down below the bottom-50s. With the gentler female vocals, the sound did not possess the slight harshness that most speakers add, HPM-100, Bozaks, even my Tannoys, that you don’t really notice until it’s not there; this pleased me to discover, though it’ll now bug me with other speakers.
With these speakers, more than others, you end up listening to the room. Due to the room effects, any sound that originally has a bit of an echoing quality is emphasized making some poorer quality recordings, those done outside of a sound-proofed room, sound on par with singing in the shower. This, though, is more a product of my acoustically poor room than the speakers. For darker rooms, these speakers may not work all that well or work superbly. With bright rooms, the D-6 seems to excel by lacking the harshness in the HF other speakers possess.
In all, I am very happy that I was able to snag a pair of these very rare speakers in such good condition, aside from a few minor cosmetic blemishes and a broken grill over a rear woofer. These are very good sounding speakers for their $249 price tag and being from 1973.
At my Design Acoustics Yahoo! Group, I’ve posted both the Stereo Review and High-Fidelity Magazine reviews.
Now, time for some pictures. Sorry about the small size of the full-on shots, my friend’s digital camera does great work up close, but goes soap opera lens (blurry) for anything else.
- JP