I built a pair of 1Pi speakers for a friend last summer and ever since then he never complained at all about them and told me he was happy with them. But then one day I brought along my very small Sonab OD11 speakers (30 year old speakers from the late Swedish designer Stig Carlsson) that I had restored, to try them with his tube amp. We were both shocked by the difference! The old Sonab speakers had a very natural sound with lots of "air" while the 1Pi speakers sounded dull, overdampened and boring. The bass and midrange sounded as if somebody had put a bunch of t-shirts or something over the speakers.I read somewhere that somebody stated that the Alpha based models have a vintage sound. Is this what it means?
I can only think of one thing that could be wrong with the speakers and that is the internal dampening. We used high density fibreglass insulation instead of the very soft type that I see most people are using. But could it really cause this much of a difference?
/Erik
Follow Ups: