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Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
Trevor Wilson wrote:
: : Very few manufacturers have managed to get moving coil driver : : systems to deliver a coherent wave-front. Dunlavy did, with the Crown : Prince : : (but not the Sovereign). I heard them in the same room (within minutes) : as a : : pair of Martin Logan CLS and the comparison was surprisingly close. : Except : : for the bass, reliability, maximum SPL capacity, etc, etc. Dunlavy paid : VERY : : careful attention to the crossover and cabinet diffraction effects. The : : result was a very ESL-like speaker system. With bass. : : Dunlavy that good? : : **I don't know. I ONLY speak about what I have directly compared with ESLs, : in the same room, on the same day, with the same equipment. Anything else, : is guesswork. The Crown Price is very much like an ESL. With bass. I read the thread again and figured out what was bothering me. You obviously mean Duntech, which you mentioned earlier? I am not familiar with the Crown Prince (or Duntechs in general). Returning to the originating post's spirit, how big/expensive is it? |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
"AKT" wrote in message ... Trevor Wilson wrote: : : Very few manufacturers have managed to get moving coil driver : : systems to deliver a coherent wave-front. Dunlavy did, with the Crown : Prince : : (but not the Sovereign). I heard them in the same room (within minutes) : as a : : pair of Martin Logan CLS and the comparison was surprisingly close. : Except : : for the bass, reliability, maximum SPL capacity, etc, etc. Dunlavy paid : VERY : : careful attention to the crossover and cabinet diffraction effects. The : : result was a very ESL-like speaker system. With bass. : : Dunlavy that good? : : **I don't know. I ONLY speak about what I have directly compared with ESLs, : in the same room, on the same day, with the same equipment. Anything else, : is guesswork. The Crown Price is very much like an ESL. With bass. I read the thread again and figured out what was bothering me. You obviously mean Duntech, which you mentioned earlier? **Correct. Duntech was owned by Dunlavy, before he started the company which bore his name. I am not familiar with the Crown Prince (or Duntechs in general). Returning to the originating post's spirit, how big/expensive is it? **It WAS a large (nearly 2 Metres tall, but with a miniscule footprint), expensive (approx US$5,000.00, in Australia) speaker. -- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
"Alex" wrote in message ... For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from well known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't know about (DCM Time Window).] I understand Quad have their own box speakers now. You'd expect them to produce the family sound, but do they? How do they do against Proacs, Dynaudios, Spendors? (I don't have a Quad dealer near me to check them out myself.) Please nominate your candidates for a poor man's 988, poor in money but more importantlly poor in square feet. The Dahlquist DQ-10 was intended by the designer to imitate the Quad sound. It also imitated the looks. The crossover design even attempted to time-align the drivers. Imitation was also the goal of an earlier speaker Dahlquist was involved in, the Rectilinear III. I've heard both and can vouch that he was at least partially successful. The characteristics that are most easily imitated are overdamped bass, clarity, and a general impression of analytic sound. It's not really possible to get the radiation pattern of a Quad point resonator with a box speaker. However, any speaker which uses open back mid drivers could conceivably come closer to the peculiarities of radiation pattern of a Quad. So might a Spica TC-50 or TC-60, the front of which is heavily adorned with felt. However, the bass quality of a small box speaker is necessarily very different from an electrostat. Spendors definitely do not have this sound. Any small box speaker that attempts to produce a sound with a natural balance puts a little bump in the upper bass. In other words, like virtually all box speakers, but to a greater extent, it uses acoustic resonance to flatten the frequency response, at the expense of phase delay. Electrostats don't do this. Electrostats may not be completely time coherent, but as they have a single driver, the impulse response must necessarily be very different from a multiple driver speaker with the common high order crossover. This latter reproduces a single impulse as a train of separated impulses from each of the constituent drivers. This characteristic would be best emulated by a Lowther full range driver, or a multiple driver system with a first order crossover and a slanted baffle: Spicas come to mind. I have a set of Acoustat 2+2's, a very large, full range electrostat. Because the ear-brain system is so easily fooled, I could not honestly say that every characteristic of the speaker sounds markedly different to my ears than every dynamic speaker I own. However, one thing is striking, and this may be the most useful practical guide: intelligibility of vocals is so much higher than any two way speaker I am familiar with that it sometimes causes a recording to sound completely unfamiliar. It makes me check the label. Of my collection of dynamic speakers, the Polk LS-15 and the Spica TC-50 seem to do the best at emulating these, inspite of the fact that the design philosophy of these speakers is completely different. |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
"Alex" wrote in message ...
For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that magical electrostatic sound? My Duntechs come the closest I've heard however they are more expensive. The Quads are actually quite a bargain. -- Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined! 615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
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Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 20:33:05 -0500, Alex Rodriguez
wrote: In article , says... For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from well known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't know about (DCM Time Window).] I understand Quad have their own box speakers now. You'd expect them to produce the family sound, but do they? How do they do against Proacs, Dynaudios, Spendors? (I don't have a Quad dealer near me to check them out myself.) Please nominate your candidates for a poor man's 988, poor in money but more importantlly poor in square feet. Appogees are really nice. Too bad the company that bought them let them die. However, if he's looking for something *smaller* than Quads, then most Apogees ain't it! In fact, of the real Apogees, i.e. the pure planars, only the Stage is even close to the Quad in size. Agreed however that you can't get the ELS sound from a box, howevr good the box. In terms of overall quality and bang for the buck in a reasonably compact enclosure, I'd be looking at something like the B&W 703, which is a slim and elegant speaker at half the price of the 988. Equivalents from Dynaudio, Spendor and JMLab will also be worth a listen. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 23:31:09 GMT, mick wrote:
On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 19:30:45 +0000, Alex wrote: For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from well known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't know about (DCM Time Window).] I have only ever heard the Quad "radiators" in demo, but I was very impressed at the time. Many years later I built some tube-loaded speakers from a Babani book - the Kapelmeisters (by Vivian Capel). They used a cheap eliptical driver with a parasitic cone tweeter, arranged vertically (for max midrange dispersion) and loaded with a folded, damped tube on the rear. The sound was pretty close in some ways to what I remembered of the Quads! They had pretty good imaging in the "sweet spot" (probably because of the single point driver and narrow baffle). Bass was weak, but I don't remember the Quads being impressive in that region when I heard them. They did have that lovely "clarity" that I remembered though. I would recommend a design using a single full-range paper-coned driver if you can find one. The Quads use concentric conductive rings on the fixed electrode IIRC (unlikely for me...), giving an effect similar to one of those. The Quads do indeed use annular radiators to form a simulated point source, unlike most planar speakers, but otherwise you'll find that they sound entirely different from any paper-coned speaker, particularly the obvious one - Lowther. I found a couple of old paper-coned "full range" speakers (i.e. with parasitic tweeter cones) on a car boot sale some years ago. I might just measure them & stick them in ported boxes to see what they sound like! You'll be horrified by how your memory plays tricks! Progress works. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
Alex wrote: For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from well known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't know about (DCM Time Window).] Magnepan. |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
William Sommerwerck wrote: Orthodynamic speakers -- ie, a conductor on a flat plastic substrate. What!??? Bob -- "Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein |
Non-ES speakers closest to electrostatic sound?
On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 06:48:39 +0000, Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
The Quads do indeed use annular radiators to form a simulated point source, unlike most planar speakers, but otherwise you'll find that they sound entirely different from any paper-coned speaker, particularly the obvious one - Lowther. I'd like to hear Lowther units. I'm not likely to buy any to find out what they sound like though! I found a couple of old paper-coned "full range" speakers (i.e. with parasitic tweeter cones) on a car boot sale some years ago. I might just measure them & stick them in ported boxes to see what they sound like! You'll be horrified by how your memory plays tricks! Progress works. Yep - I'm sure you're right. They are probably absolutely horrible... (my old car boot sale drivers - not the Lowthers... :-) ). They were just an impulse buy in aid of charity. I think I paid about £3 or £4 for the pair! NOS in original boxes though. An interesting bit of history, and quite in keeping with bottled amps! ;-) -- Mick (no M$ software on here... :-) ) Web: http://www.nascom.info |
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