and of the 8 people I was touring with yesterday afternoon at its peak (so great to see a lot of friends and family in the spirit of music), all 8 preferred the Altecs to the Tunes.
Doesn’t surprise me. They can sound great and there is a reason the old VOTT speakers are legends. They also have bass and integration closer to box guys expectations...the Tunes may also not be well setup...
I like the way they modernized them with the colorful horns and natural wood finish, wonder how stock are the crossovers. Which company was this?
david
Could one of you folks who attended compare and contrast the Stenheim with YG? I can't find any information about the Stenheim drivers on the website (i.e. no mention of them being an in-house design). But the MSRP of the Alumine Five seems to be in the $85k USD ballpark. The aluminum cabinet is obviously custom-built, but does the overall design stand up to YG's?
As I was looking at the website, things got interesting with the Reference Ultime model - a 4-way design and available passive or active woofers with the latter quoted as 15 Hz to 100 kHz FR. And a sealed cabinet with 96dB sensitivity. Even the passive version at 25-100k Hz and 91dB with a sealed cabinet seems really interesting.
I like the way they modernized them with the colorful horns and natural wood finish, wonder how stock are the crossovers. Which company was this?
david
David,
He takes the horn from the VOTT and matches it with a Baltic Burch reproduction of the Model 19 cabinet. He reconditions the bass driver, leaves the compression driver stock and reconditions the crossover only if it needs it.
Very successful presentation. And this is with digital only as his turntable broke.
I'm happy that multiple people that like very "high-fi" sounding systems really enjoyed this system. And all for the cost of some RCA's
As I was looking at the website, things got interesting with the Reference Ultime model - a 4-way design and available passive or active woofers with the latter quoted as 15 Hz to 100 kHz FR. And a sealed cabinet with 96dB sensitivity. Even the passive version at 25-100k Hz and 91dB with a sealed cabinet seems really interesting.
Ah here we go, for anyone else of curious mind... "...while Stenheim doesn’t build its own drivers, the company works closely with its chosen supplier (PHL, definitely not one of the usual suspects)..." Customization must be fairly significant, given the off-the-shelf specs of the 10" PHL woofers: http://www.phlaudio.com/products/?no_cache=1
He seems to have a nice inventory of original Model 19’s, for those interested you should compare them to the reconstructed ones before buying. Though simple in construction woofer boxes made with modern techniques and so called better materials do not always sound better. Also be aware that you can’t drive those 15” drivers with flea sized SETs, you need current and at least a quality 50watt push/pull tube amp to make them come to life and control the woofers so they don’t sound muddy.
david
The old boxes were leaky, and the new boxes are not. That's a big difference. If they were smart they'd make the new ones "leaky" with an aperiodic vent.
He seems to have a nice inventory of original Model 19’s, for those interested you should compare them to the reconstructed ones before buying. Though simple in construction woofer boxes made with modern techniques and so called better materials do not always sound better. Also be aware that you can’t drive those 15” drivers with flea sized SETs, you need current and at least a quality 50watt push/pull tube amp to make them come to life and control the woofers so they don’t sound muddy.
david