Jim did find the website already 
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Alsace would be a nice place for a walking (and speaker listening) holiday.
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In many fields there are enthusiastic people making very good products, and either because it is a sideline, or because they make sufficient to make a living, are nit interested in expanding. Sometimes in their view that would take the fun out of it, or they don’t want it to become impersonal, or lose the hand-made aspect etc. Personally I have the greatest respect for such businesses, resisting the “business” drive to ever expand and “grow the business”. If only more did that… But the negative aspect is that the products are hard to find, and such businesses often die with the founder.
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Agree 100%. And like I said, it’s cool for those in the know. I can call Stefan Sehring and he helps with questions or hops on the scooter and visits with a bag of crossover parts. That wouldn’t be possible if he ran Focal or something.
I wasn’t so much surprised by how Synthese run their shop, I was surprised that they are not better known by Naim speaker enthusiasts.
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Why is he nipping over with a bag of crossover parts? Out of curiosity.
Adjusting, still perfecting speakers for room. Not every day Setup is always part of the service - setting up and initial adjustment, then letting them run in and getting used to them, then the detailed setup in a second go.
But after the initial installation and first run-in hours I wasn’t entirely happy, so I called and we discussed things. I could have waited until the final setup, but he said he’ll simply stop by and check; the workshop is just 15 minutes from where I live. Hasn’t been necessary since, but he’s staying in contact to check in how it goes. We’ll do the detailed setup in February.
(The crossovers are designed to be easily flipped out and for parts to be exchanged with different values. If the customer wants, he also provides a set of parts with different values to play around)
Crossover compartment and crossover:
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Yeah ok, that looks pretty interesting. Are they a relatively new company? It’s great that you are getting that kind of service. You also must be helping them tweak the design before settling on a permanent crossover.
What is also pretty cool is that you can (once the crossover adjustment is finished) purchase a really high quality cap/caps for the tweeter if you know the value. Makes a big difference! Judging by the size of those caps they are mid level.
The company has existed since 1988, they are also doing work for studios, actually their main thing. The new speaker models have been in development for the past 5 years.
He’s always factoring in affordability. The drivers are good mid-range quality parts, from Wavecor for bass and mids and a Peerless ring radiator for tweeter, but all with tweaks applied in-house. The caps are, as you say, not the fanciest but good industry parts from Mundorf and rigorously selected. He believes in tweaking the hell out of the design until everything works perfectly together, instead of just throwing money at it and driving the final price up. I’m not going to mess with it on my own, it was designed with so much love and attention to detail, and he’s is around the corner, I leave his job up to him. And yes, the final setup will be done with his experience but for my taste and room, he doesn’t believe in selling one-size-fits-all speakers.
Now that the basic design of the new range is finished and he doesn’t think that any more can be squeezed out, he’s switched attention to working on a new version that’s another step up, which will use the same bass modules but with a further improved crossover that will have top-level components without cost considerations and a new mids/tweeter module, which will feature a new mids driver and either a beryllium tweeter or, another notch up, a diamond one to choose from. It will probably be done in a year or two.
As the whole speaker is modular, the crossover and mids/tweeter module of my speakers can then be switched over to the new one, and there’s an upgrade pricing model, so you only pay the difference plus a handling fee. Sounds fantastic as it is now, but looking forward to another improvement for reasonable cost and without having to throw out 18K of speakers.
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Really impressive customer service. Looking forward to give it a listen!
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I’ve had a few occasions when a single change has affected the emotional communication without changing the speakers. The most recent was using a Dynavectore DV17D3 where I found a change in capacitive loading of 1nF did just that where a 470R plug on its own was just detailed.
Changing the filter selection on a Rega DACr, 3 was more emotional, 1 was dryer but had a little more PRAT.
Putting a loose loop in the cable from the 282’s supercap to 250-2 in an attempt to get it off the carpet made the sound more analytical.
Speakers were NBLs troughout.
I love my Shahinians - still besotted with them after several years now and because there’s really nothing else quite like them, not tempted to look elsewhere. Curiously, they provide a lot of detail but you don’t really perceive it as detail because it is so well integrated in the voice and performance of the different performers, instruments and venue acoustics. I was reminded of this when switching from the very detailed Focal Utopia headphones to them. They’re astonishing really and I also love the way they’re a big box speaker but don’t tower over you.
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I believe the red caps are Jantzen Superior Z Cap, the black could be a Mundorf Supreme MKP and the white cap may well be a Mundorf Evo.
I use Mundorf Supreme MKPs.
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Devondick I have spendor SP2/3 R2 and Spendor S3/5 SE special edition have the tweeter scans peak d2010 the same that mounted the spendor sp100 and I must say that the small air suspension are mini with exceptional sound unparalleled voices neutral sound not at all tiring. Even the Sonus Faber Minia M2 siavvicina those produced in the 90s Serblin are excellent but the spenor have something more magical than the LS3/5.
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I have Spendor SP2s (the original) with substantially uprated crossovers and internal wiring.
There is a wonderful quality to both these and the SP2/3 (the SP2/2 was less successful and they’ve also not aged well).
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I think “transparent” speakers accurately transmit whatever signal reaches their terminals, adding or deleting little between the terminals and the drivers. Others, by design or constraint alter that signal in a noticeable way.
The recording needs to capture the emotion and detail for it to come out of the other end. A live stadium recording might capture emotion but loose detail. A studio recording might capture detail without emotion.
The source sound is altered at many interfaces, from the recording mikes, to the mastering, to the storage media, to the reproduction chain etc. Everything that alters that signal will interact with other alterations, accumulating, deleting and otherwise contaminating until a quite different signal is presented to the speakers than that which was first recorded.
A transparent speaker will not further alter the signal and will potentially provide the most accurate reproduction of any detail and emotion captured on the recording, but only if the entire chain from the original recording to the playback system (including room) is optimised to get the best out of them. A great recording played through an ill matched conglomeration of electronics and cables might sound rubbish through transparent speakers, whereas other speakers may sound much better, by colouring the contaminated signal to get an agreeable “house sound”.
A setup optimised to allow transparent speakers to shine is often not possible or desirable and transparent speakers in a sub optimal set up can appear strident or emotionless. In that case a more forgiving speaker with its own coloration can be much more satisfying.
I guess what I mean is yes, I believe we can have both if both were in the original recording but system quality and synergy has as much to do with it as the speakers.
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Why might that be?
Not to speak for Elfer, but for instance a neutral speaker probably has a less treble roll-off than a colouring one, which may be less forgiving with certain rooms or poor recordings.
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Various reasons, including the expense (quality of upstream electronics), room treatments (domestic harmony), optimised speaker placement (space constraints), motivation (desire for accuracy vs good enough), source quality (unsatisfying results with poorly recorded music), media quality (unsatisfying results from truncated media such as MP3, internet radio), primary genres (classical with wide dynamic range vs dynamically limited pop) etc.
In my case, I use transparent speakers in a dedicated listening space with an expensive system which I spend time and effort to optimise. I don’t use transparent speakers in the living room for background music from internet radio or connecting to the TV. If my living room were also my listening room, I don’t think I would want the compromises that come with getting transparent speakers to sing, unless they just happened to work (which is unlikely).
But what are neutral speakers?
Magico, Kudos 808, Kharma Exquisite, or Sonus Faber Aida…are all well regarded speakers but sound very different. Who can say one is more neutral and accurate vs the other one ?
Can anyone point me in the direction of a forgiving speaker (brand) please. With certain hearing issues, I’m looking for something rich and dare I say warm ?