AlsyVox Botticelli with external crossovers

[Zero000]

The actual driven area of the Duetta is equivalent to 6 12 inch bass drivers.Having replaced the bass ribbons on my Duettas myself I don`t recall the distance between the ribbon and magnets as being 7mm;more like 3mm unless your Interstellas are built differently than standard.BTW what type of MRT do the Interstellas have?
I installed the lightweight XLM2 versions,both these and the bass ribbons still going strong after 14 years,which is a testament to Grazs quality.

7mm was the figure the UK restorer told me.

Looking at them move with heavy bass tracks I believe it.

It's also in a fairly consistent ballpark with the Alsyvox magnet spacing of 1cm either side of the diaphragm I would say.

So I stand by my figure.

 

[Apogeelover]

7mm was the figure the UK restorer told me.

Looking at them move with heavy bass tracks I believe it.

It's also in a fairly consistent ballpark with the Alsyvox magnet spacing of 1cm either side of the diaphragm I would say.

So I stand by my figure.

The bass ribbon magnet gap on my Duettas is definately not as large as 7mm so I would suspect your Interstellas have stronger magnets than standard.As I recall you had input into the rebuild of your speakers; do you remember if the magnets were upgraded?

 

[Zero000]

The bass ribbon magnet gap on my Duettas is definately not as large as 7mm so I would suspect your Interstellas have stronger magnets than standard.As I recall you had input into the rebuild of your speakers; do you remember if the magnets were upgraded?

Nope the only thing left that is original in the speakers are the magnet arrays.

However, all magnets were removed and more precisely aligned.

That shouldn't make any difference to the spacing, though.

I can see very large movements in the bass panel by putting nothing but 15Hz into the speaker from a signal generator. But be careful not to do that too loud.

I can double check with the restorer if it's important to you.

Surgery pic below LOL. IIRC correctly the bottom clamp is 18mm thick. You can't see the top clamp in that pic.

The more I think about the excursion figure the more I am wondering if I am remembering correctly. The bar magnet thickness I can't remember. Plus they are raised a tiny bit by the grid.

Don't rely on the pic to draw conclusions. It's deceptive.

 

[Apogeelover]

Nope the only thing left that is original in the speakers are the magnet arrays.

However, all magnets were removed and more precisely aligned.

That shouldn't make any difference to the spacing, though.

I can see very large movements in the bass panel by putting nothing but 15Hz into the speaker from a signal generator. But be careful not to do that too loud.

I can double check with the restorer if it's important to you.

Surgery pic below LOL. IIRC correctly the bottom clamp is 18mm thick. You can't see the top clamp in that pic.

The more I think about the excursion figure the more I am wondering if I am remembering correctly. The bar magnet thickness I can't remember. Plus they are raised a tiny bit by the grid.

Don't rely on the pic to draw conclusions. It's deceptive.
View attachment 75596

Thanks for reply.From the picture it looks like the clamps are made from Corian in place of the original MDF;also I notice some horizontal bracing at the back of the magnet structure,interesting!
While I was tuning the bass panels I thought out of curiosity what the frequency response of these full range would be;the result was pretty flat out to 12khz and then fell away quite steeply.Try that with a cone woofer!
My Duettas are braced on the back both vertically and horizontaly and rigidly bolted via two stays to 45kg damped granite bases which isolate them from the wooden floor to good effect.They are actively driven by a crossover I built myself from a kit supplied by a local eccentric but brilliant electronic designer called Les Sage,sadly now passed on.

 

[Zero000]

Thanks for reply.From the picture it looks like the clamps are made from Corian in place of the original MDF;also I notice some horizontal bracing at the back of the magnet structure,interesting!
While I was tuning the bass panels I thought out of curiosity what the frequency response of these full range would be;the result was pretty flat out to 12khz and then fell away quite steeply.Try that with a cone woofer!
My Duettas are braced on the back both vertically and horizontaly and rigidly bolted via two stays to 45kg damped granite bases which isolate them from the wooden floor to good effect.They are actively driven by a crossover I built myself from a kit supplied by a local eccentric but brilliant electronic designer called Les Sage,sadly now passed on.

This really is an Alsyvox thread. I like Daniele having talked to him quite a lot. So I don't think we should continue to post about a maybe last touched 25+ odd year old speaker design and how to better it when he is actively doing a contemporary, better marketed job.

Send me a PM if you want to talk in more detail.

That said, Apogee has history and Graz. Not to be ignored, especially in terms of experience. And Daniele probably wouldn't be where he is without Apogee history.

Swings and roundabouts.

 

[Apogeelover]

This really is an Alsyvox thread. I like Daniele having talked to him quite a lot. So I don't think we should continue to post about a maybe last touched 25+ odd year old speaker design and how to better it when he is actively doing a contemporary, better marketed job.

Send me a PM if you want to talk in more detail.

That said, Apogee has history and Graz. Not to be ignored, especially in terms of experience. And Daniele probably wouldn't be where he is without Apogee history.

Swings and roundabouts.

I agree,no more Apogee talk!

 

[christoph]

I agree,no more Apogee talk!

Pity
Maybe in an Apogee Thread?

 

[BillK]

I'll just say that to me, Alsyvox is all of the benefits of Apogees with none of the drawbacks; they're completely incredible speakers on their own, but if you liked Apogees you'll love Alsyvox.

 

[christoph]

I'll just say that to me, Alsyvox is all of the benefits of Apogees with none of the drawbacks; they're completely incredible speakers on their own, but if you liked Apogees you'll love Alsyvox.

I agree with you

I would love to have a pair of AlsyVoxes but unfortunately the prices are way too steep for me

 

[howiebrou]

I agree with you

I would love to have a pair of AlsyVoxes but unfortunately the prices are way too steep for me

View attachment 75707

Your're not doing too bad!

 

[christoph]

Your're not doing too bad!

You are right.
I have no right to moan

 

[BillK]

I agree with you

I would love to have a pair of AlsyVoxes but unfortunately the prices are way too steep for me

View attachment 75707

Alsyvox speakers are indeed pricy, but no more so than what Graz charges to build you a brand new set of his Apogees ($118K for a pair of Diva Advance 9.)

 

[thazeldean]

Alsyvox speakers are indeed pricy, but no more so than what Graz charges to build you a brand new set of his Apogees ($118K for a pair of Diva Advance 9.)

View attachment 75725[/ATTACH]

As the owner of the speakers in the photo, I can only say that they have got better and better with time. I have moved them further apart, a task in itself given the 250kgs of weight per speaker. I had to wait six months for assistance from a suitably trusted adult. I have also moved the JL Audio Gotham's to sit in line with, and outside the Apogees. The JL Audio CR-1 crossover is set to 30hz so the Apogees produce most of the bass. The soundstage can be several metres beyond the speaker extremities on either side and far behind the speakers in depth. I look at other setups and often wonder why people set up dipoles so close to the side walls. I know that in some cases this is a necessity of room width, but where this isn't a factor, I really think you are strangling the sound. I toed the Apogees in about 3/8" but moved them back to parallel again as I found they sound better and the sound stage is much wider. If you couldn't see the speakers, on some recordings you would struggle to know where they were located.
The crossover on the Apogees permits bi-amping so I run Ayon Audio Orthos ii XS for the MR and TW and Boulder 1160 for the bass panels. The Boulder never seems to struggle to supply the necessary power. The bass is deep, fast and amazing. I use an Allnic L10,000 for the preamp and the Aesthetix Io Eclipse for the phono stage.
Audio bliss. These really are very special speakers and I believe still the only pair in the world.
I have added a couple of additional photos so you can see the craftmanship.
I know that Graz refers to the speakers as Diva's but they are in fact a lot closer to the full range.

 

[Ron Resnick]

They look amazing! Congratulations!

 

[BillK]

As the owner of the speakers in the photo, I can only say that they have got better and better with time. I have moved them further apart, a task in itself given the 250kgs of weight per speaker. I had to wait six months for assistance from a suitably trusted adult. I have also moved the JL Audio Gotham's to sit in line with, and outside the Apogees. The JL Audio CR-1 crossover is set to 30hz so the Apogees produce most of the bass. The soundstage can be several metres beyond the speaker extremities on either side and far behind the speakers in depth. I look at other setups and often wonder why people set up dipoles so close to the side walls. I know that in some cases this is a necessity of room width, but where this isn't a factor, I really think you are strangling the sound. I toed the Apogees in about 3/8" but moved them back to parallel again as I found they sound better and the sound stage is much wider. If you couldn't see the speakers, on some recordings you would struggle to know where they were located.
The crossover on the Apogees permits bi-amping so I run Ayon Audio Orthos ii XS for the MR and TW and Boulder 1160 for the bass panels. The Boulder never seems to struggle to supply the necessary power. The bass is deep, fast and amazing. I use an Allnic L10,000 for the preamp and the Aesthetix Io Eclipse for the phono stage.
Audio bliss. These really are very special speakers and I believe still the only pair in the world.
I have added a couple of additional photos so you can see the craftmanship.
I know that Graz refers to the speakers as Diva's but they are in fact a lot closer to the full range.

Having been an Apogee owner for over thirty years, I can definitively say I've never heard Apogees sound good with toe; they always sound best with zero toe.

Alsyvox on the other hand do get more focused with a slight amount of toe - differences in design philosophy.

Congrats on your new "Diva"s!

 

[Addicted to hifi]

Thank you CK!

I have been searching for a suitable replacement for our Focal Utopia EVO loudspeakers for quite a while as they were starting to become a limiting factor in our product development. They have served their purpose very well but we have reached a point where the audibility of certain aspects of music reproduction exceed their "pay grade". This was becoming obvious during our visits to Matej, Steve, Mike, Rob, Bob, Jeroen and "the French", all very different systems with different presentations, but all laying bare shortcomings in our own in house system.

I am a big ribbon fan. I have owned the original Apogee Full Range which I finally sold due to driving headaches. From memory the tweeter was around 0.8 ohms and the midrange 0.2 ohms, combined with a very low sensitivity which was estimated in the 80-84dB range and a maximum excursion of 3mm on the bass ribbon before it started to seriously buzz. It was really hard to get these to sing. I had custom better transformers made for the midrange, for the tweeter you could get away with something like a 2.2 ohm series resistor. For good results you really needed an active crossover and 6(mono) power amplifiers. But they were capable of a mind blowing sound.

Enter Alsyvox, an easy 4 ohm load, first order crossovers, 18mm-20mm excursion capability, a 94-95dB sensitivity and a full 20Hz-40Khz frequency response. We heard the Tintoretto at Bob (Rhapsody.Audio NY), zero driver integration issues, moves serious air, you will not lust for a subwoofer with these, an incredible transparency from the lowest to the highest registers, full soundstage envelopment and very fast and dynamic with real punch and impact. These are really everything an Apogee owner would have wanted them to be capable of, and I'm sure had Apogee not gone bust this is how they would look today.

I went back and forth with Bob on the options available to us and decided to contact Daniele Coen. Daniele turned out to be a very nice guy, passionate about what he does, completely understood what I was after, what was important to me and 2 weeks later a pair of Alsyvox Botticellis showed up. These honestly exceeded my (high) expectations cold out of the box, we had them playing about an hour after delivery and our whole crew did nothing else then listen to music for the remainder of the day, all of us even ended up calling home with the excuse we had to put in some overtime that day! Incredibly musical, impressive sound and just plain fun to listen to.

Being aware there was an "X" upgrade available to the Botticelli which consists of external crossovers with a patent pending crossover topology I was curious how much that could possibly improve the already incredible Botticellis, so I called Daniele and he offered to come over to visit us and personally install them.

One of the guys took some photos of Daniele's visit which have been posted online by Mono&Stereo. I will include the higher resolution versions here:

System view:
View attachment 60735

Daniele + the Taiko Audio team Ed, me, Ton, Ted:
View attachment 60738

Ed pulled up a seat for his preferred closer perspective, refusing to take a break from listening: View attachment 60739

What an amazing system congrats.

 

[JYACO]

Interview with Daniele Coen...

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2020/01/exclusive-interview-with-alsyvox.html#more

Marcus:
Are you still using Cardas Clear Beyond speaker cables on the AlsyVox speakers? Your thoughts?

 

[Zero000]

Marcus:
Are you still using Cardas Clear Beyond speaker cables on the AlsyVox speakers? Your thoughts?

My thoughts are don't worry about it. The speakers are stratospheric without concern with or to speaker cables.

Of course if you own a pair that's different. And my apologies if you do.

 

[Argonaut]

Alsyvox speakers are indeed pricy, but no more so than what Graz charges to build you a brand new set of his Apogees ($118K for a pair of Diva Advance 9.)

$118 K

 

[thazeldean]

$118 K

Yep $118k. But here is the Australian price of the Alsyvox:

Alsyvox Botticelli X​

AUD $220,000.00

3-way Dipole Speaker (2 Panels) with 2 external crossovers.

So bearing in mind that we save the freight costs etc. for the Apogees, roughly half the price here in Australia!!