It is quite deep but agree not really the same scale as what I would term big speakers, after all the Marquis is very good in small to medium rooms.
Axpona 22’ pictures
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
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Absolutely. When I heard the dynamics and micro-dynamics of the Avantgarde in an obviously non-ideal room, I was sold.
Hi,
Since I have heard the Giya previously for many hours on many setups with many different amps, and consider it one of top 2-3 box speakers (despite the hype from the "audio journalists"), I can most definitely say it was an amp mismatch.
An amp, say like Gryphon or CAT, would be able to control the speakers better and express emotion, instead of sounding anemic. It was like comparing dynamics from an underpowered amp, such as audio research driving a Wilson, to the lifelike dynamics of the Avantgarde horn. Only an audiophile who hasn't left their basement since 1970s would think audio research had life-like dynamics.
Had they used the right amps to properly control the speakers and express the full dynamics and micro-dynamics, the virtues of the Ideon , such as detail resolution and an authoritative sound would have shined through.
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As far as dealers go, if you find one you trust, trust but verify.
Remember, there are incentives at play. The guy may want to take a nice vacation Instead of you and your family. If you don't see misinformation, or at least incomplete information, I think we are in deep, deep doo doo. How many individuals who write about provide the weaknesses of gear? Virtually no one, other than Fremer and Yoda Valin. They are trusted advisors and everyone else is lying by omission, in effect writing marketing materials for the impotent manufacturers. Valin and Fremer are true trusted advisors, while virtually everyone else comes across as pathetic charlatan.
And finally, remember, WBF is only a small part of the market and is not fully representative of all of the participants of the hobby. It's "naive realism" to assume all other hobby participants have as much knowledge as WBF participants . (Naive realism means falsely assuming that everyone sees the world as they do, because they see it in an objective way while everyone must see it the same way or else is wrong/ idiot... And just because something is good for the Naive Realist, it is the absolute truth for everyone else.)
But High end audio is a subjective experience, and no one has heard every combination of gear. People rely on others to form their opinions and what to explore. So it is prone to influence. For those who truly want to understand how this industry operates, I highly recommend a book by Cialdini called Influence. It's out in an updated version. I am too lazy to post the Amazon link, but here are some quotes from Nobel Prize winners about the book:
“Robert Cialdini has done the impossible: he has improved a masterpiece. The new version of Influence is a marvelously rich and engaging account of the subtle power that people exert on each other.” -- Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize laureate and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise
"In this update of his classic book, the world's most practical social psychologist shares his wisdom and reveals his charm. There's dynamite here. Please use what you learn with care!" -- Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize laureate and author of Nudge and Misbehaving
PS. also highly recommend Danny Kahneman's book thinking, fast and slow. His (and Tversky's) Prospect Theory about how people judge losses and gains explains why so many buy a wilson or a magico , instead of Gryphon speakers (or other smaller/ less popular speaker brands), or a hifi-sounding Pass amps instead of the smaller but more natural-sounding Wells amps.
Whats wrong with that?
Ever opened a car magazine or a Yacht magazine??
Its the audiophiles own fault they treat some like gurus and take every word literally .
See it as a combination of own opinion and marketing and everything will be fine .
Has anyone posted let’s say the top ten rooms and why. Not hear to Debate just like to see views and why. we each have soo much difference in views. And the best is to put aside what anyone thinks is correct. To post on this road just derails others conceptions
And when I heard the sibilants from vocals come from the ceiling, the midrange come from the nearest wall, and the chest cavity come from the floor, I ran out of the room. Different strokes I guess...
i guess one issue is for those of us (like me) with limited (almost zero in my case) experience with horns, especially big horns in big rooms, it's hard to know what a reference playback for soundstage should be.
obviously this is a big horn firing the short dimension, in a smallish long narrow room, thrown together over a couple of days. so you only get hints of it's potential.
Marty, i know you know live music better than most here, and have a great room with cones and boxes like me.
how much of our reproduction reference applies to big horns? (i expect you to say who cares, it was a mess).
most feedback on big horns sidesteps imaging as not relevant. what should it be doing as far as soundstage? in a proper room reasonably set up?
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It should be as your prior experience with other speakers is! You should get a nice expansive soundstage in a big room, with pin point imaging. IOW if the system is doing it right, the main difference should be greater dynamic expression, possibly also more relaxed since the electronics won't be working hard and so will have lower distortion.
thank you Ralph. good to know where my expectations should be.
that room had a loooong waaaay to go then.....
You are listening to the wrong horns and most likely heard in the wrong environment, however I suspect that none of this fundimentaly matters to you !
why are they the 'wrong horns'? my question is entirely serious and it matters to me.
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
If most feedback on big horns sidesteps imaging then how can it sound like live music. There are absolutely placement of players when one listens to live music in a hall or a club. It might not be the pinpoint imaging that many are looking for in their hifi however you can certainly identify what instrument is placed where. If I listen to a piano I know where it is , the same with a violin or a guitar etc. If this is missing then something is not correct. I don't know what's wrong without hearing the specifics, is it the gear? the room? the set up? It has to be something. IMO one can't have the music without the rest unless you want an expensive car stereo in your room.
If the instruments are coming form weird places then again how can this sound real? When one sits in front of a piano it has a sound and a way in which that sound comes from /off the instrument, the same is true for a guitar or a violin. If these impressions/sounds/cues whatever we want to call them are missing and we are only left with a tone IMO no matter how good that tone is it is not going to cause the emotional reaction I am looking for.
I don't get goosebumps from ceiling speakers, or car stereo its just music without a lot of the information I feel is needed to express the event,\
Great post Elliot. I have heard this quality from horns, big and not so big, but very rarely with cones or panels. In fact, the best imaging I have heard from audio has been from two horn systems. I just don't think of it as imaging (pin point and outlined), but rather the sense presence of the musicians and instruments in the room. Regardless, we are talking about the same thing. I suspect it had little to do with the speaker typology, and everything to do with the gear chosen and set up and infrastructure decisions.
OCD Mikey, quite the character. However, his four way active crossover system bears a general resemblance to mine.
Strange, after suffering from audio show deficit the past couple of years, the show hungry audiophiles didn't seem to key into this one as much as I would have expected.
Also strange because before the plague or whatever demented thing it was, I thought the audio shows had gotten much better than in the past at presenting good to very good sound at shows.
I can't speak to the dynamics and relaxed effect. I just couldn't relate to the set-up adequately enough to evaluate those parameters.
Agree it was the wrong environment so again, I defer judgement. What matters to all of us I think is sound. Sound systems try to reproduce what recording microphones allow. Hopefully it's a good facsimile of the real thing (which is the de facto reference). Some set-ups did it more convincingly than others for me at the show. The big horns did not. Wrong horns? I am basically ignorant of horn systems so how would I know?
I do remember in college a buddy had 2 Klipshorns in his 8 x 10 cinder block wall dorm room that he drove with Marantz Model 7s. Think I lost my hair from that system's SPL. Does that count?
It's pretty obvious I'm just not a horn guy. Can we move on?
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OCD Mikey is very negative in general. I think he is happy only when riding motorcycles. I thought the show was great and I know next year will probably be much bigger than this year as more people venture out. If a system can not reproduce the correct tonality then I don't care about anything else. It's very hard to set up in show conditions with the close proximity of walls. You have to hear around this issue, why imaging may not be the best.
It was nice meeting you ralph so many honest answers to technical questions I’ve asked
ty
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