The reason those of us that go with big systems is not to play loud but rather to get the advantage of being able to play with less stress on the individual transducers to reach normal sound pressure levels. In Jim's case his system has almost no stress at realistic sound pressure levels. Add a room where you have full wave development at 20 Hz and low RT60 and you get that over the full spectrum. Now this is not to say it will turn crap into gold. This is where Jim's software comes in. Pristine LPs and great tapes of great music recorded well, enough of them where you could play non-stop for maybe two weeks without repeating a track and things get really scary.
Unmentioned by anybody is the heroic efforts that have gone into the power for the room. Not just audiophile stuff but the back room. The AC power supply uses filtration normally used for industrial security printing machines and other devices that require extreme stability at overkill KVA.
The 11s and 111s share the trait that they create coherent pressure waves. The difference is that Jim's pressure wave is so large and enveloping that they extend past field of view. Think I-Max. This is what live music is like that most systems fail at. Now think huge Soundlabs or huge Maggie allowed to breath and without the constraints of running out of gas ever and without the inherent limit of artifacts that show up at the point where the crimped edges from the frames reflect back into the panels at the rare but important peaks/climaxes in classical pieces . As Jerry puts it there are peaks in some material where we've been conditioned to anticipate the inevitable cringe but here and if I may be allowed to brag a bit and at home, when those moment come, there is no break up
There is no magic going on here. It's care for the small signals, consistency throughout the spectrum and low distortion through good basic design and the provision of more than sufficient headroom. Those are the baseline performance parameters. As for tone color that's where Jim can do his salt n peppering to taste by choice of tubes, carts, headblocks, tensioning etc. Of course we all have different tastes and Jim and I have our own preferred "sound", mine being more sloped and Jim being more linear. Our difference however is more in our bass response preference. I prefer slightly looser and softer bass and more of it. Jazz club upright bass feeling as I don't listen to classical music as much as he does. That said either system can be set up accordingly as Steve witnessed in a mater of a couple of minutes to get in the ballpark. This flexibility is what drew us to these speakers. In the early years our purists friends said we were cheating LOL. These days where powered subs and even DSP are now very much accepted we no longer get accused of that!
Unmentioned by anybody is the heroic efforts that have gone into the power for the room. Not just audiophile stuff but the back room. The AC power supply uses filtration normally used for industrial security printing machines and other devices that require extreme stability at overkill KVA.
The 11s and 111s share the trait that they create coherent pressure waves. The difference is that Jim's pressure wave is so large and enveloping that they extend past field of view. Think I-Max. This is what live music is like that most systems fail at. Now think huge Soundlabs or huge Maggie allowed to breath and without the constraints of running out of gas ever and without the inherent limit of artifacts that show up at the point where the crimped edges from the frames reflect back into the panels at the rare but important peaks/climaxes in classical pieces . As Jerry puts it there are peaks in some material where we've been conditioned to anticipate the inevitable cringe but here and if I may be allowed to brag a bit and at home, when those moment come, there is no break up
There is no magic going on here. It's care for the small signals, consistency throughout the spectrum and low distortion through good basic design and the provision of more than sufficient headroom. Those are the baseline performance parameters. As for tone color that's where Jim can do his salt n peppering to taste by choice of tubes, carts, headblocks, tensioning etc. Of course we all have different tastes and Jim and I have our own preferred "sound", mine being more sloped and Jim being more linear. Our difference however is more in our bass response preference. I prefer slightly looser and softer bass and more of it. Jazz club upright bass feeling as I don't listen to classical music as much as he does. That said either system can be set up accordingly as Steve witnessed in a mater of a couple of minutes to get in the ballpark. This flexibility is what drew us to these speakers. In the early years our purists friends said we were cheating LOL. These days where powered subs and even DSP are now very much accepted we no longer get accused of that!