AudioNec Loudspeakers

[Ron Resnick]

AudioNec makes full height, partially dipole loudspeakers. Did anybody hear the Diva XL or the Neo speakers at Munich?

The speakers have a very interesting full range ribbon driver of some sort, which attracted my attention. (I am always curious about very tall loudspeakers, with M-T-M driver arrays, which are fully or partially dipole, which use wide-band drivers and which employ exotic or unusual drivers for the midrange.)





The older model was the Diva XL.











They seem to have a new modular line, using the same interesting driver, call Neo.






Is anybody familiar with these speakers?


http://www.audionec.com/diva-xl.html
http://www.audionec.com/index.html

 

[cjfrbw]

They look interesting. Not dipoles, or tall line arrays, but efficient. A modern updating of the folding wave tech, used in the Ohm Walsh and German Physik? The main driver has the nice, 'unbroken-by-crossover' range from 200hz into over 6khz range, similar to the Bohlender Graebener large ribbons.

I wonder how 'fast' they sound compared to ribbons and stats.

 

[Folsom]

A driver’s speed is basically how high it can play. Those play to 20khz, they aren’t slow!

 

[cjfrbw]

Large drivers may have output to 20khz, but is it without harmonics or congealing? There tends to be a 'speed limit' to larger drivers where it is advisable to cross over at higher frequencies to faster, lighter drivers. I would peg that at 6 to 10 khz. I can certainly hear the difference crossing over at 7khz between leaving the higher frequencies in the larger ribbons vs. using the separate foil tweeters for the range above 7 khz. Just pulling the card from the active crossover gives a quick comparison. The sense of speed and precision improves with the foil tweeters.

 

[Zero000]

Looks like they have stopped making the only one I thought was good! It was called 'The Answer' and I rated it 2nd best speaker Munich High-End 2011.

Heard the ones pictures above and I wasn't impressed.

 

[Folsom]

Those aren't normal drivers - their size may play zero factor in frequency response range. The biggest problem to expect is beaming as frequencies rise, due to the size of the "driver", based on what we know.

Maybe the foil tweeters just have more ringing, giving rise to thinking they're better.

I'd prefer to see measurements before criticizing these drivers.

 

[Zero000]

Looks like I am wrong The Answer still exists (click on Answer).

Fabulous I thought. Excellent and very interesting bass driver and generally pretty brilliant in the Munich 2011 room.

The Diva XL's ribbon tweeter is positioned too low on the speaker and you can hear that by sitting down and standing up in front of it.

The white boxy ones were used by Lampizator at Munich 2019. Unsuccessfully I felt but Christoph liked them.

 

[cjfrbw]

OK, they are dipoles, open in the back I presume.

The bending wave I gather still uses a voice coil with a diaphragm in a different configuration than a pistonic driver.

With ribbons, the voice coil IS the driver, so the signal is not handed off to a separate diaphragm through a voice coil.

Perhaps some quasi ribbons you could argue like maggies and the bass panels of Analysis speakers use metal traces to drive mylar, which might be a kind of 'hand off' type drive.

I don't know how much of a difference that makes but it does seem that a ribbon is a more direct deployment.

It's funny. In a thesis on bending wave speakers, he shows an activator attached to a milk carton type diaphragm.

http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/154618.pdf

 

[Folsom]

They're actually a bipole. Here's some more information. and Over 10 years of information.

"handed off" weird choice of words... It's not like there is a loose connection.

 

[cjfrbw]

"Like its «little» sister the Diva, it is equipped with our high-performance Duo-Pole main driver (200 Hz - 20 kHz), which benefits from an imposing neodymium motor with magnetic field of more than 1 Tesla, operating in Dipole and boxless."

From the manufacturer's web site.

 

[Folsom]

Yes but you can see from the other websites that they either wanted to lie or made a mistake. You can't have that driver be a dipole unless you have two of them facing each direction, and try to cancel out the backwaves from both with eachother and abosrbing material (obviously they aren't doing that). That's part of how they have such high sensitivity.

 

[Golum]

Rubanoide driver...diy attemp/s here

Audionec and Audio Consulting are two companies that I know deploying them. Latter I heard few months ago at designers demo room near Geneva and it was something special...

 

[christoph]

Like Justin already mentioned, I liked the AudioNEC, Jadis and Lampizator room a lot

For me, the tiny little AudioNECs where one of the very few positive surprises (along with the Diesis Dipole Bass Horns, the AlsyVoxes also were excellent again but that was no surprise for me anymore ) at this years High End in Munich.
Almost unbelievable what a big and surprisingly also high soundstage those tiny buggers threw
All this very energetic and palpable

@Ron Resnick
I read that Fred Ainsley from Lampizator North America @LampiNA has the Distribution for AudioNEC on your side of the Pond.
Maybe he could arrange for a listening experience for you (and certainly other people interested)

 

[morricab]

Like Justin already mentioned, I liked the AudioNEC, Jadis and Lampizator room a lot

For me, the tiny little AudioNECs where one of the very few positive surprises (along with the Diesis Dipole Bass Horns, the AlsyVoxes also were excellent again but that was no surprise for me anymore ) at this years High End in Munich.
Almost unbelievable what a big and surprisingly also high soundstage those tiny buggers threw
All this very energetic and palpable

@Ron Resnick
I read that Fred Ainsley from Lampizator North America @LampiNA has the Distribution for AudioNEC on your side of the Pond.
Maybe he could arrange for a listening experience for you (and certainly other people interested)

I guess I have to agree with Justin, the Audionec room didn’t do much for me but their room the year before was interesting.

Agree with Diesis audio...awesome sound but it was awesome in 2018 as well (so not surprising to me this time).

 

[christoph]

I guess I have to agree with Justin, the Audionec room didn’t do much for me but their room the year before was interesting.

Those little fcukers are 18k, not 180k

 

[morricab]

Those little fcukers are 18k, not 180k

Yeah slight difference in price

 

[heihei]

I thought the big ones in 2018 were awesome - one of my favourite speakers, esp considering it was one of the boxy rooms. I thought the little ones in 2019 were ok (again in a poor room), but were expensive for what they were. I like the idea of upgradability, but again by the time you get to full-scale, they are expensive.

 

[mr.gregdee]

We would like to inform ALL of you here Gentlemen, That G Point Audio had a great honor to be appointed as an official AudioNEC distribution in the UK. We ordered samples of EVO-2AS build for us in special configuration with sort of harness like wiring , which would allow Us to demonstrate models EVO-1, EVO-2 and EVO-2AS with use of the same samples. Shortly we are planning to expand one of those pair into the EVO-3AS or maybe SE. One of them will be available on the permanent display in our Southern venue in East Sussex, another will be demonstrated in demo facilities of our partner Lucas Audio Labs, also known well here for his excellent LDMS music server. We don't want to Spam the thread, just plot an information, so please feel free to contact us direct for more questions, unless you are OK, with us taking part of the dispute and wish to have in answered here. With respect for All the users of course.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=653716085397938

 

[Ron Resnick]

Congratulations!

I have been fascinated by those four column speakers ever since I first saw them in the AudioNEC website photo!

 

[mr.gregdee]

Congratulations!

I have been fascinated by those four column speakers ever since I first saw them in the AudioNEC website photo!

Thank You Ron. So I loved them from the first hearing. Took some time to establish collaboration but we are now the part of the game and if we will be lucky enough to see Cranage Show happening this year - They will be premiered there in the UK for the very first time.