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description: Audio advice and discussions with audiophiles and professionals. Free discussion forums, open to all and frequented by industry experts. Ask questions and get advice on stereos, speakers, hi-end amplifiers, pre-amps, home theater, tube hi-fi, turntables, vinyl, tweaks, music, films, video, DVDs and more.
items: Report from Son&Image
items: Re: Report from Son&Image
items: Re: First Order

Report from Son&Image
type: item
description: Spent the weekend in Montreal at the Son&Image Festival. My first audio show and had a great time. Ate my share of Smoked Meat for the rest of the year. However, I was a little disappointed as I was expecting to hear "magic". Magic as in substantially better than what I'm used to from my own system. Magic as in all those amazing things that reviewers write about. Magic as in "It's like the band is in the room". There were a few rooms that I really enjoyed though. Song Audio had a couple of rooms with Loth-X speakers and their own electronics. The Loth-X Troubadour with Song Audio's 300B SET was very enjoyable. Up until that point, the only Loth-X that I was familiar with was their BS-1, which had a very "honky" sound. The bigger and more expensive Troubadour was much more natural, although it still had that paper sound. While the speakers were tonaly inaccurate, the dynamic realism blew me away. These speakers are effortless. More and more, tonality is starting to take a back seat to dynamic range for me. I'm not refering to shear volume, but rather the instantaneous change and range of volume you get within a single note or a singers voice. Sure, it's great to have both tonal and dynamic accuracy, but a ruler flat response at the expense of dynamics sounds dead. Not to name names, but those ruler-flat speakers with carbon/kevlar cones, 84dB sensitivities and more components in their crossover than most tube amps just didn't do anything for me. Omega Loudspeaker made the trek from CT. Heard a lot about these guys on the Net and I was amazed how natural these single drivers sound. Of all the single drivers I heard at the show, these had the least amount of paper sound. Also love the way Omega can get such big sound from those 4 inch drivers. "Modified Fostex" was how they were described. StudioLab was another room that I really enjoyed. These guys are located just 10 minutes from where I live, so I'm pretty familiar with their stuff. Very simple two way speakers with…
creator: GarMan
date: 2004-04-05T19:43:37-00:00

Re: Report from Son&Image
type: item
description: Great write-up, thanks! I'm thinking that the reason the JBL K2 S9800 wasn't run is probably nothing like what you were told. Could be that they were afraid of the environment, and that the speaker might not sound good there. Could be something else, who knows. But it certainly wasn't that a good amp would have been a problem. That's the wierdest thing I ever heard. Speakers with first order crossovers can sound pretty good. They have dense interference between drivers, so things balance out. They're pretty simple too. But as for me, I wouldn't want to run a modern 1" exit compression horn with a first order crossover. At least not the JBL 2426 or PSD2002 on a 800Hz or 1kHz horn. Using first-order crossovers with them doesn't sound very good, and power handling drops so dynamic range does too.
creator: Wayne Parham
date: 2004-04-05T20:35:10-00:00

Re: First Order
type: item
description: Wayne, I would never consider 1st order with compressions. But cones and domes (and even piezos) do present new opportunities. I find the idea of 1st order, crossoverless, or very simple XO's very appealling and definately worth exploring. BTW, didn't someone, at one time say: "One of my favorite little bookshelf speakers of all time used a JBL Profesional Series 2115 - which is an 8" full range midwoofer - paired with a KSN 1038 tweeter. The only parts used were a 0.5mH coil in series with the (8 ohm) woofer and a 0.33uF capacitor in series with the tweeter. The coil tamed some rising response in the 8" driver and the capacitor attenuated the tweeter to match. Functionally, the speaker was crossoverless, like current models." Gar.
creator: GarMan
date: 2004-04-06T12:23:52-00:00

Re: First Order
type: item
description: Yep, I ran JBL 2105's first order too when used with 2205's. Sounded real nice.
creator: Wayne Parham
date: 2004-04-06T15:17:21-00:00