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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 ?
Sure, but “neutral” does necessarily include that it is neutral in its frequency response compared to the input. Many speakers aren’t. There are no absolutes though, as always
Look into Sonus Faber, they are great if one is into this kind of thing. See the previous posts where they were mentioned along with others in a similar mold
….and this is probably where ‘we all hear things differently’ creeps in. However my biggest issue understanding this concept is where people are listening to say a 15 DB increase at Hz 80 and find that perfectly natural and ok ATB Peter
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting speakers that are not transparent can not be great speakers, they often sound much better than transparent speakers in a much wider range of environments. I do think transparent speakers can be the cherry on the cake if you can optimise your setup for them, but that brings its own compromises.
I would say it’s harder to identify specific characteristics in transparent speakers as they don’t have a house sound (or its much less noticeable as 100% neutrality is, I imagine, technically impossible).
To me, Sonus and Kharma clearly impart their own characteristics so I wouldn’t call them transparent. I listened to a variety of Sonus speakers with a variety of electronics at a demo a while back and the house sound was evident in all configurations. I havent heard a Kudos speaker but given the variety of situations I see them in with extremely satisfied users, I doubt they are particularly transparent - by design.
I see you have Sonus Faber. I find Sonus generally on the warm side, it may be worth experimenting with speaker positioning or looking at how your room is set up, it can make a significant difference.
Spendor? ATB Peter
ATB Peter