Speakers with accurate timbres?

[mhardy6647]

The cheapie Radio Shack electrostatic tweeters were single-ended. There are good theoretical reasons why these will be nonlinear as all get-out... but they actually sound pretty pleasant. Probably tons of euphonic distortion.

Quad ESL panels (and all better ESLs, I presume) are push-pull; driven from both sides.

 

[barredowl]

 

[JohnVF]

Quad ESL panels (and all better ESLs, I presume) are push-pull; driven from both sides.

It's really amazing how much Quad got right, so long ago. I'll own a pair someday...just need to find a pair at the right place and time.

All this talk about Harbeth is not good for me. I really really want a pair of Harbeth Compact 7s or Monitor 30s.

 

[Tom Brennan]

It's really amazing how much Quad got right, so long ago. I'll own a pair someday...just need to find a pair at the right place and time.

I think speakermakers pretty much had the midrange right in the 1930s so Walker knew he had to get that right and he had plain targets to shoot at. Most progress since the 1940s and 50s seems to have been at the frequency extremes and then there's the imaging thing which some speakers had right long ago but more have right now.

 

[chadnliz]

What is accurate timbre anyway? Its subjective in that what I mean is proper timbre of any given instrument is affected by its surroundings and how we hear it. But given that out of what I have heard and its probably more than most (atleast in modern gear terms) Vandersteen would most likely be top of the charts for me.

 

[klama2006]

Oh no..... I'm in trouble now. I haven't yet added timbres into my audio vocabulary,

I'm not even going to try to add a comment into this one. I'm just going to watch this thread, and see where it goes.

I'm not trying to be a ass, I just got a new term that I need to add to my vocabulary. Until I can successfully use it, I chose to not even try.

 

[Tom Brennan]

What is accurate timbre anyway? Its subjective in that what I mean is proper timbre of any given instrument is affected by its surroundings and how we hear it. But given that out of what I have heard and its probably more than most (atleast in modern gear terms) Vandersteen would most likely be top of the charts for me.

Brennan's Second Law of Loudspeakers----If I like it it's accurate.

 

[klama2006]

I don't know what accurate is..... probably none of us do. What I do know is that accurate, is not what sounds best on a initial, or first impression.

 

[klama2006]

Accurate , Is something that takes some time to understand.

 

[tubed]

"Accurate" and "Arcane" go hand in hand...

 

[barredowl]

I think I do know what accurate is to some extent by for example hearing spekears that miss the mark, I had Mission 701s that really missed the mark on instruments like saxophones.

BTW Klama2006 don't let timbre trip you it's really just a pretentious way to say tone. Going to a music college like Oberlin like I did in the 80s does strange things to your vocabulary, not always positively from the standpoint of clarity.

 

[klama2006]

I guess accurate tone, inevitability means full range then.

We got some experts on that subject here on this forum then,

 

[fiddlefye]

Individual instruments are recognized by the spectral makeup of their unique harmonic content. It's how we can tell a piano middle C from the same note on a violin; the fundamental tone is the same frequency, but the harmonic content is different.

For a speaker to reproduce timbral qualities accurately, it has to reproduce the fundamental and all the harmonic content in the exact proportions as the original (flat reponse) without adding any harmonics of its' own (quite the challenge really).

:yes: I've said exactly this to quite a few "knowledgeable" folks over the years and been told I was talking through my hat, but that really is how it is. There are obviously other cues such as type of attack etc., but for a sustained note that's how it is.

Of all of the speakers I've owned only the Vandersteens are really capable of completely fooling my ear into believing what I'm hearing is reality. I'm sure there are lots of other varieties that can do the same, I just haven't owned them.

 

[Susurus]

davidb1 in my room, the DQ-20i is more tonally true than either of my sets of DQ-10's. Acoustic guitar is scary good on them. (If I recap the 10's I'll have to compare again).

legalalien I enjoy my MG-IIc Maggies especially for chamber music but won't call them tonally accurate, since the dynamic range and Alice In Wonderland scale of the image doesn't make that happen as well as say a set of Vandys. (Vandies require/deserve great gear upstream before the 'open up' however).

Tom Brennan please! Bo$e and Maggies in the same paragraph? I cringe! uke: And yes I have double-ended E-stats with less distortion than my Maggies. But they have their own issues, high-maintenance like a supermodel.

I've been fooled by phones ringing on the HT RF-7s but the only time I thought there were off-stage voices coming from the next room was on Hales or Fultons. Okay the R-117/SpeakerLabs got me once the other day too. :yes:

.

 

[Tom Brennan]

[U
I've been fooled by phones ringing on the HT RF-7s but the only time I thought there were off-stage voices coming from the next room was on Hales or Fultons.
.

Which Fultons? The big modulars with the RTR stat tweets? That was some speaker.

 

[Susurus]

E Modulars, not the largest, but nearly. And the E-stat tweeters are indeed something special.

I'm not really going to enter them in a 'most accurate' contest in their present state; fully refurbed they would. The xovers are Frankenstein monsters. Mids are simplistic 8" run full range and a single 6uF 50V on the two Peerless dome tweets.

Bass cab (for below 83Hz) has 4 inductor coils from a Packard, I kid you not! :headscrat pics to proove it.

Cellos sound like cellos on my Symphonies. There, now I'm on topic.

 

[legalalien]

Wow I never realized Maggie's were so "distorted", lets see, in business some 40+ years making upscale loudspeakers no less. I wonder how many other companies can make that claim? They must be doing "something" right...

 

[Tom Brennan]

Wow I never realized Maggie's were so "distorted", lets see, in business some 40+ years making upscale loudspeakers no less. I wonder how many other companies can make that claim? They must be doing "something" right...

Other "upscale" loudspeakers have been around a long time. Bose for instance. They must be doing something right.

 

[Susurus]

Planar speakers are going to have limits; because of the dispersion pattern they are highly placement sensitive and relatively small excursion affects dynamic range at higher SPL. When you can live within that there are benefits of fast transient response, and an open airyness. That's why I have a set. Fortunately the orig owner knew to always keep them in climate controlled environments and never exposed them to direct sunlight. :thmbsp:

 

[mhardy6647]

Wow I never realized Maggie's were so "distorted", lets see, in business some 40+ years making upscale loudspeakers no less. I wonder how many other companies can make that claim? They must be doing "something" right...

The Klipschorn has been in more or less continuous production since 1947.