David Karmeli’s Bionor/Lamm/AS-2000 Audio System

bonzo75

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actually horns are not required for listening loud, they are very easy to listen at low volumes without any loss in information. If it is easy to drive and top and bottom drivers are well matched you get all the swings at low volume, you don’t have to adjust volume for one driver or the other, or miss out on the quieter parts of orchestra. I have heard the pnoe and universum often for 5 hours or more, recently the Altec 817 for 6 plus hours, and the Cessaro zeta for 8 plus hours breaking only for a quick lunch. Zero fatigue on any of those.

I usually get fatigued on inefficient speakers and increase volume to compensate for mismatch on drivers.
Nice report, very consistent with some of our other esteemed visitors and DDK's system is a shrine to visit for sure. I would luv to hear those, especially with Lamm ML3 in an optimized context.

I would never argue away from horns. I think for the micro and the macro, it's the audiophile choice, especially for classical. If you want the full cognitive emotional impact of that plaintive oboe, French horn, English horn, or violin in the corner or middle of the stage, and dynamic jump up to massed strings, than horns are the go to.

However, virtually all music is compressed, so I don't really think one wants to listen to music with real 120 db peaks, otherwise the median levels are going to be excessive. Most artificially played music in homes is going to have a dynamic range peaking at 105 to 110 db due to recording limitations.

Raw resolution tends to be artificial compared to
"real" sound, but it is a proxy for dynamics at lower listening levels.

In perhaps a pathetic defense of dipole planars, they do have a smooth room filling and room occupying sound that is cool in their own right, and they perform well up to the 105 db dynamic peaks. I think they could also be more hearing sparing over the long run, if one were to consider one's audio perception apparatus as a limited and exhaustible commodity over time.

I see myself with horns playing them infrequently at their dynamic limits, which means that I might with routine listening seldom play them in the volume range where they sound best. However, a lot of audiophiles do play consistently louder than me from my various visits, even though I am accused by spouse as being a loud listener.
 

microstrip

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Two additional thoughts:

1) I am certain of my unparalleled suspension of disbelief of the Bionors on jazz music. But I have felt not quite as convinced on big symphony orchestra classical music. I just realized that that uncertainty is simply the size of the room. As large as David’s listening room is big symphony orchestra classical music would benefit from an even wider and taller room. In a larger room I am very confident that I would achieve with big symphony orchestra classical music the same unparalleled suspension of disbelief I feel on jazz music.

2) I have never been particularly understanding of the desire to have two different audio systems. I have always had the philosophy of maximizing the sum of sonic qualities with one system.

I think the Bionors are so dramatically convincing on jazz music certainly, and classical music as well (especially in an even larger room) I now can totally see the desire for two systems: Bionors (driven by SET amps) for jazz and classical and classic rock; planars (driven by high-power tubes) for vocals and pop.

Despite the hope of horn aficionados to witness from me a complete conversion to horns (Kedar I’m talking to you) there is some additional level of satisfaction (some combination of transparency and open-ness) I still hear from vocals on planars. I understand, appreciate and accept that horn aficionados don’t hear what I’m talking about.

Ron,

You refer enthusiastically to the Bionors in David room, and then generalize your comments to "horns". Did you listen to any other system with horns that created a similar suspension of disbelief in you?
 

microstrip

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actually horns are not required for listening loud, they are very easy to listen at low volumes without any loss in information. If it is easy to drive and top and bottom drivers are well matched you get all the swings at low volume, you don’t have to adjust volume for one driver or the other, or miss out on the quieter parts of orchestra. I have heard the pnoe and universum often for 5 hours or more, recently the Altec 817 for 6 plus hours, and the Cessaro zeta for 8 plus hours breaking only for a quick lunch. Zero fatigue on any of those.

I usually get fatigued on inefficient speakers and increase volume to compensate for mismatch on drivers.

Nice. All we need now are horns that sound good with digital and tape.
 

Ron Resnick

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Is that because you heard some coloration on the vocals that impacted your suspension of disbelief with the Bionors? Just wondering if you can elaborate why you think planars are still tops for vocals and pop music.

I am sympathetic to your situation having owned many planar speakers and I agree they do vocals (and Jazz for that matter) extremely well and most horns are significantly more colored tonally that can distract from suspension of disbelief.

Hi Brad,

No, my thinking there has nothing to do with tone. I actually never use the word “coloration” because I think it is an all-purpose slur that suggests nothing more than subjective personal preference.

I’m not sure in which sonic direction you think “most horns are significantly more colored tonally.”

There is something I hear from planars in terms of transparency and open-ness on vocals that still attracts me to planars.
 

Ron Resnick

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Ron,

You refer enthusiastically to the Bionors in David room, and then generalize your comments to "horns". Did you listen to any other system with horns that created a similar suspension of disbelief in you?

Hi Francisco,

I think I am commenting consistently specifically on the Bionors. Where am I generalizing my comments to horns?
 
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Kingrex

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Mike's LZ is amazing. I think I subconsciously visited him again just to hear LZ 1 again, I have not heard You shook me all night long and Dazed and Confused even close like it plays on his. That said, I like the Altec 817, videos posted, equally for rock. On 10 watts. You will need to listen to many horns, many will be bad, they will be quite different from each other, and very few will be good.
Mikes whole system is amazing. It wanders into what horns do but keeps some space between it all.
 

microstrip

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(...) 7) David’s Bionors confirm my long-held view that there is something about the way that horn loudspeakers, especially large horn loudspeakers, move air that is consonant with the way that musical instruments themselves propagate their sounds to the air surrounding them.

This is why I believe, pursuant to my speaker prediction theory (that with enough live music experience, and with enough stereo auditioning experience, musical genre preference eventually drives loudspeaker preference) that many jazz aficionados and chamber music aficionados eventually find their way to horn loudspeakers

Hi Francisco,

I think I am commenting consistently specifically on the Bionors. Where am I generalizing my comments to horns?

Please see your previous post. But my comment was mostly a question about your experience with horns other than the Bionors's.
 

Ron Resnick

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Please see your previous post. But my comment was mostly a question about your experience with horns other than the Bionors's.

Off the top of my head:

Avantgarde Duo 3X
other horn speakers at David’s
Cessaro Liszt
Cessaro Zeta 3X
Classic Audio
JBL Hartsfield 2X
JBL/multi-cell
JBL Everest
Tannoy Westminster 10X+
Tune Audio Anima 3X
Tune Audio Avaton
Vox Olympian 2X
Zingalli Acoustics

Please also my horn reports from the two Munich shows I attended.
 
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cjfrbw

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thomask

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I just visited David for five days around New Year’s Eve. From music listening and audiophile points of view this effectively was my first experience with David’s audio system.

1) It was very fun to see “my” turntable — a Vintage Audio Specialities (“VAS”) AS-2000— for the first time! Exactly as PeterA has reported, the machining and metal finishing quality looks literally perfect. Despite its weight, it is as simple as a turntable gets.

I am glad that I ordered the VAS Nothing racks with all stainless steel shelves. Combined with the all stainless steel turntable, the whole set-up should be quite a sight. Of course that would not matter if I didn’t love the sound.

2) David showed me how to operate the system, and then he let me listen for hours. These tracks were in heavy rotation:

“Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley, Grace (Columbia)

“Landslide,” “Monday Morning,” “Crystal,” and “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac, Fleetwood Mac (MFSL)

“Send in the Clowns" by Bill Henderson, Live at the Times (Jazz Planet Records/Classic Records)

”I've Got the Music in Me" by Thelma Houston, I've Got the Music in Me (Sheffield Lab 2)

“Night on Bald Mountain” and “Pictures at an Exhibition,” The Power of the Orchestra, Rene Leibowitz, RPO (Chesky RC30)

"First We Take Manhattan,” "Bird on a Wire,” “Famous Blue Raincoat” and “Song of Bernadette” by Jennifer Warnes, Famous Blue Raincoat (Rock the House Records/Classic Records)

Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby

Van Cliburn Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 Symphony of the Air, Kiril Kondrashin LSC – 2355

Mozart Jupiter Symphony No. 41, George Szell, The Cleveland Orchestra

Mozart Jupiter Symphony No. 41, Bruno Walter, Columbia Symphony Orchestra

Mozart Jupiter Symphony No. 41, Collegium Aureum, harmonia mundi

Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, George Solti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra

“Refugee,” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Damn the Torpedoes (Backstreet Records)

“Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” and “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting” by Elton John on a greatest hits album.

“Beat It,” “Billy Jean,” “Human Nature,” and “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, Thriller (Columbia Records)

“Who Can it Be Now” by Men At Work, Business as Usual (Columbia Records)

Musica Nuda “Eleanor Rigby” and “Roxanne” (Fone)

3) The wide mouth horn in front of the Bionors’ dual drivers just throws 500 Hz and down in large, wide and tall waves of sound that make for a very realistic presentation of all acoustic instruments, both brass and string. The Bionors project a huge sound-field that envelops you. I think it is somehow almost planar-like in openness and effortlessness.

I hear this as a contrast to the tightly-wrapped sound of heroically inert box loudspeakers. As with planars I hear the sound emanating from the Bionors as untethered to the speakers. The presentation sounds different to me than trying to squirt most of the frequency range of an orchestra through one or two small, midrange dynamic drivers.

On “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting” the long, across-the-keys piano stroke sounds more like a piano than I have ever heard on any other system. I have never before heard the guitar solo in “Beat It” sound this involving, energetic and realistic.

4) I now believe that prior to this visit to David I had never before heard a vdH cartridge set-up properly. I have reported repeatedly based on at least eight listening sessions across at least four systems that I hear unnatural brightness and sibilance and excessive treble energy from the vdH Colibri cartridges. David has said that this means that the cartridges simply are not perfectly aligned. I did not believe David.

David is correct. At David’s the vdH Master Signature cartridge does not exhibit much, if any, of the brightness or sibilance or excess treble energy of which I have accused Colibris repeatedly. Is this impression because the Bionors sound to some listeners rolled off in the high frequencies compared to Magico and YG loudspeakers? That could be a part of it, but that cannot explain away all of the sibilance and edginess I have reported previously, including on vintage (JBL Hartsfield) and vintage-sounding (Tannoy Westminster RG) loudspeakers. Still, out of caution, I personally would not pair a vdH Colibri with a hot-sounding tweeter. For some reason, only David, it appears, knows how to adjust perfectly a vdH Colibri.

5) The Neumann DST sounds more in-the-room-real and “alive” and present than the vdH Master Signature. It’s not a huge difference quantitatively, but, in this hobby, I consider it a significant difference qualitatively. There is a noticeable increase in believability with the DST.

6) “Send in the Clowns” and Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby were head-shakingly remarkable: a greater suspension of disbelief of being in a live jazz club than anything I’ve ever heard in my entire life. You are in the jazz club. Sonically, it is something out of the Star Trek Holodeck. When you stand behind the speakers it sounds like you’re in the hallway next to the jazz club venue room.

7) David’s Bionors confirm my long-held view that there is something about the way that horn loudspeakers, especially large horn loudspeakers, move air that is consonant with the way that musical instruments themselves propagate their sounds to the air surrounding them.

This is why I believe, pursuant to my speaker prediction theory (that with enough live music experience, and with enough stereo auditioning experience, musical genre preference eventually drives loudspeaker preference) that many jazz aficionados and chamber music aficionados eventually find their way to horn loudspeakers
.
8) The entire system together is wholly less electronic-sounding than the contemporary high-end systems to which many of us are accustomed and which many audiophiles use as their references.

9) On vocals and rock and pop I sometimes preferred the closer listening position of David’s coffee table rather than the primary listening chair.

10) I’ve been moving in this philosophical and preference direction for a while, but I am just done with most of the low-sensitivity, multi-way, complex-crossover, heavily-damped, heroically inert cabinet box speakers driven by most solid-state electronics. These speaker/amplifier combinations simply don’t produce sound that I find emotionally-engaging. There are just too many better and easier and often less expensive ways to get closer to the sound I hear at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

11) I heard no steely resonance from the AS-2000. I listened for this on the Bionors, and I listened for this on another of David’s speakers, which are very neutral in perceived frequency response and which have a very contemporary sound.

12) On jazz music and on classical symphony orchestra music David’s system affords me the greatest suspension of disbelief, the closest to what I hear at Walt Disney Concert Hall, that I have ever heard.

13) The system also is amazing on rock music. Drums and electric guitar are very engaging. It is not terribly difficult to imagine lead singers and guitarists and drummers stepping out from behind the speakers.

14) Transparency of vocals, as compared to transparency of vocals on Magnepans and Martin-Logans, remains an open question for me.

15) It’s as if we learn, and become accustomed to, not only the sonic attributes of modern loudspeakers and modern systems, but also the concept of the sound of modern loudspeakers and modern systems. And I think it’s a little bit hard for some people to unlearn that sonic “language” and expected sonic attributes.

I continue to feel, for my ears and subjective sonic references, that “black backgrounds” and “clearly delineated sonic images” and “pin-point imaging” are not things I hear at Walt Disney Concert Hall. I think these are hi-fi artifacts, often generated conscientiously by electronics, that we have learned to listen for. I don’t hear these sonic attributes on David‘s system.

I also don’t hear these sonic attributes on my temporary Magnepan + subwoofers system. The Magnepans, to me, exhibit the more diffuse sound and the more natural tonal balance of vintage, and the driver continuity of two-way speakers, without hi-fi attributes. Unfortunately, Magnepans are not high sensitivity, and so they don’t exhibit the lightning quick dynamics and jump factor I hear from most horn loudspeakers. Also, I think sometimes Magnepans create exaggerated image sizes.

16) We spent the afternoon yesterday hiking in Bryce Canyon in the snow. It was a beautiful winter wonderland! David said that it hasn’t snowed like this in a couple of years. See photos below.

17) A huge thanks to David and Kana for hosting me for five days. But “hosting me” doesn’t begin to describe the incredibly gracious and generous and hospitable manner in which they cooked every meal and made me feel totally like a member of the family. It’s like a gourmet restaurant at the Karmeli household!

18) This trip proved, yet again, that, for me, the most important aspect of this hobby is the lifelong friendships this hobby places us in a position to cultivate and to cherish. Thank you, David.


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Binor is one of the top vintage speakers with musicality.


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it had been five years since I had been to Bryce Canyon. ;)
 

Mike Lavigne

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Maybe Mike could post a video of LZ
i try not to comment on videos one way or another and respect those who like doing them or want to me to do them. i reserve the right to change my mind about doing them at some point.
no, he couldn't.:rolleyes:
you are absolutely welcome to visit anytime for the actual experience of my system doing LZ.

i have a group coming tomorrow and i expect it's on the agenda.
 

bonzo75

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Nice. All we need now are horns that sound good with digital and tape.

? Was yours an attempt to spread misinformation?

Tape: Leif is a tapehead, has both Studer and had also Telefunken. The Altecs I reported on last month had Telefunken m15a (best rock video posted), and that room also has Studer, and many nakamichi and pioneer cassette decks. The Kondo Bionor video I posted, has a Studer C37 in the room (though not featured in my video). Yamamura's friend Pierre, is a key supplier of tapes to many audiophiles. Bill has a Studer with his pnoe and previously with his DIY. A guy in UK has multiple tape decks with his Duos. Stefano Bertoncello has Studer with his multiway GoTo. The chief designer of BAT was active on the tape thread playing his tapes with Trios

Digital: Of the two best digital I heard, Audioquattr has Taiko Lampi (Pacific and Horizon) with his Cessaro Zetas. He spends more time listening to digital. Leif's DIY ddac holds it own in his sources. The Bach Cantata video I posted with Universum is sounding great played through a 2k Ming Da CD player. Marslo is primarily Lampi only, minor analog, previously through his duos and now through his trios. Christoph with his Universum is Lampi only. Trios have been designed to be played using digital correction. Mani uses only digital and DRC for his Animas with subs. At Munich they regularly play Living Voice Vox Olympian through Neodio Origine CD player, and Western Electrics through the Silbatone dac (also use Studer). Lukasz of Lampi and UK distro with their digital are purely horns...in fact, Lampi, SETs, and horns go together, as Lampi was designed to add SET philosophy to digital, so those users adopted Lampi before others. Astrotoy played 15000 original Deccas, and some tapes, with his duos, and Lampi, before selling his vinyl collection and staying with Lampi. Stavros and his customers have AC dacs with horns. Yamamura system came with an Yamamura CD player. Possibly my favorite system judging on videos which I will travel to Vietnam for to confirm in person, is one where all videos are played on an altec 817 with a Studer CD player. Maybe dCS users do not have horns, that is why you have this impression, and I understand why they don't.
 
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morricab

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Hi Brad,

No, my thinking there has nothing to do with tone. I actually never use the word “coloration” because I think it is an all-purpose slur that suggests nothing more than subjective personal preference.

I’m not sure in which sonic direction you think “most horns are significantly more colored tonally.”

There is something I hear from planars in terms of transparency and open-ness on vocals that still attracts me to planars.
Many horns suffer coloration from high order modes (HOMS) as discussed and researched at length by Earl Geddes and others, which led to the development of more modern horn shapes to minimize the effect. Often referred to as “honk”…
 

Ron Resnick

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Many horns suffer coloration from high order modes (HOMS) as discussed and researched at length by Earl Geddes and others, which led to the development of more modern horn shapes to minimize the effect. Often referred to as “honk”…

Ah, okay, “honk” or “shout-i-iness.” I understand now. I have never perceived that sensation when listening to horns. So either I have never heard that, or I have heard that, but I am not sensitive to that.
 
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PeterA

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Nice. All we need now are horns that sound good with digital and tape.

I listened to a bunch of digital on my first trip to visit David. It was not the same as his various turntables, but it was awfully good. Horns there with digital were the Bionors, my Vitavox, and the JBL M9500. Great sound. It didn’t sound like the digital I am used to hearing.
 

morricab

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Ah, okay, “honk” or “shout-i-iness.” I understand now. I have never perceived that sensation when listening to horns. So either I have never heard that, or I have heard that, but I am not sensitive to that.
If you have heard vintage horns you will have heard at least some degree of it. You may not be sensitive to it. As a planar guy who likes vocals I would have thought you might be because voice is often where it is most easily heard.
 

morricab

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I listened to a bunch of digital on my first trip to visit David. It was not the same as his various turntables, but it was awfully good. Horns there with digital were the Bionors, my Vitavox, and the JBL M9500. Great sound. It didn’t sound like the digital I am used to hearing.
What was the digital source and DAC (or CD player)?
 

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