Damon
What are the biggest differences between the Endeavor and the Ultra 55 besides a major price difference? Components? Sound quality and characteristics of the speakers from a voicing perspective?
Hi Will,
I'll do my best to answer this great question as I'm sure many are curious about this as well, but I fear my explanation will fail to describe exactly all the differences as well as the similarities. So let me say that if there are any questions about my response, please follow up with me. I welcome all questions in the hopes of answering this as precisely as possible.
In my opinion, ALL designs are an exercise in compromise. Even cost-no-object designs are limited by several factors not the least of which is the current state of technology. But in the case of the Endeavor Line, we were trying to design the highest performing full-range loudspeakers we could where price AND space were the limiting factors for the potential buyers. We were targeting specific price points, yes. We were also targeting mid to small sized sound rooms knowing that if we achieved our goals there, the Endeavor Line could be paired with subwoofers to pressurize larger sound rooms.
Beyond that, we put every design technique used to create our cost-no-object flagship loudspeakers possible into the E-3 MkII, Endeavor Reference Edition, Endeavor Special Edition and E-5 MkII.
To state it more succinctly, we recognized that people with midsized to smaller sound rooms; potentially in more urban environments, and spending $10K, $20K or even $50K still wanted; and in our opinion, deserved a no-compromise experience. That was our driving benchmark and if we could not deliver that, we wouldn't put these designs to market.
To this end, we employed all the things we're known for and are present in the ULTRA series of flagship loudspeakers into the Endeavor Line given the price budget and room size requirement.
The same cabinet resonance control system we’ve iterated on since the original VR-4 from 1992 is present in these loudspeakers.
We’ve judiciously spent the Bill-of-Materials where we would get the biggest bang for the buck. The aluminum woofers and Kevlar midranges punch well above their class. And this allowed us to invest in the very costly; but well worth it, ScanSpeak Beryllium domed tweeters we use on the Endeavor RE, Endeavor SE and E-5MkII. These are the same tweeters used throughout the ULTRA Line. Given the budget, we went with the ScanSpeak dual ring radiator silk tweeters for the E-3 MkII
We also spent the lion’s share of our budget on the network components for the tweeters and midranges where they would make the biggest impact to performance including top-tier Mundorf capacitors, high-purity copper ribbon foil inductors and top of the Line Mundorf resistors. All wired point-to-point in distributed networks with MasterBuilt Reference II internal hook-up wire to eliminate distortion as much as possible.
And when it comes to driver integration, even our fiercest competitors will acknowledge our competency in that regard. Like the ULTRA Line, you can stand a foot away from the Endeavor Speakers and have full driver cohesions with none of them standing apart from the others.
When it comes to voicing, we strive for the same balance between resolution and musicality. If we can’t get the tonality right, the entire design would be a failure in my opinion.
Lastly and most importantly, we employ the same understanding of psychoacoustics to create as close to a fully realized omnidirectional wave launch as possible. The speakers are designed to first couple with each other and then the room to produce the most realist and wide/deep soundstage as even our flagship speakers do. When setup optimally, they create a sweet space for multiple listeners. And in the better room environments, we create a three-dimensional soundstage that can be observed from outside the typical triangulation of speakers and listening chair.
One of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had as a designer is playing the Endeavor SE on our cost-no-object show system and have people remark on just how good the ULTRA speakers sound that they assume are playing. When I point out it’s the Endeavor speakers, it usually invokes expletives from multiple people in the audience.
To me, it demonstrates not only how well these speakers will scale with the components you put in front of them, but that we achieved our goal of getting the most bang for the buck.
I think the Endeavor Line; in certain ways, speaks far more of our success in loudspeaker design than even the ULTRA series do because of what we’ve achieved in the constraints of both price restriction and sound room size. If I could only present one speaker to a potential dealer as a representation of what our designs do, it will almost always be an Endeavor given their extremely low barrier of entry compared to the ULTRA Line much less how they perform compared to the other manufacturers in this space.
I'm sure I've missed quite a bit but I hope that helps. As I said, please let me know if you or anyone else for the matter has more questions.
Thanks.