Speaker Oasis...Bionor

[morricab]

Back in the day I had two pair of Acoustat 3,s that I gutted. I than had some special oak racks made and stacked them....in essence a pair of Acoustat Specta 6600. It was an imposing looking system, about 8 feet tall and almost 3 feet wide, as I recall. Yes they had fabulous bass and could really crank. Wish I had taken pics of some of the systems I used to run back than but for the most part I didn't.
Cheers

Yeah, 6 of those panels per side could really move some air. Jim Strickland was one of the all-time great speaker designers.

 

[Zero000]

Sorry for the OT but...

I can leave aside the comments about the perception of the bass quality through YT...opinions is one thing,and talking about things you have no knowledge of,is another.

1.How can you tell from the video,what the throat area is?
2.Do you even know what the throat is?
3.What is "relatively small area" means? What is the required Sd parameter best suited for this horn?
4.Have you ever seen 4'' diaph compression drivers loaded with 30 foot bass horn? Somebody should tell them wrong.
5.Have you ever designed a bass horn?Please guide us through your driver selection process.
6.What is the BL equivalent of a bass panel of a magnetostat? Do you think it is higher than the 8'' driver and that " has sufficient force per unit area over a much larger area to cope?
7.What is the sensitivity of a magnetostat bass panel?Do you think it has something to do with "has sufficient force per unit area over a much larger area to cope"?

There are questions in all friendly tone,just trying to learn something new here.

Hi,

I'm referring exclusively to the Air Partner in my prose.

Just thought I'd make that obvious. I thought it was.

I loved the Aeries Cerat amps sonically driving Tune Audio Anima at Munich 2011

I've never designed a bass horn. No wish to. The one I have heard that works the best to my ears is the Avantgarde one, with Trios.

 

[morricab]

Er... nothing to do with what it looks like Brad.

More info on the Air Partner here.

http://website.lineone.net/~empson/featuring_Vitavox.html

I remember that Air Partner quite well, even though it was a long time ago.

Why? Because my instant reaction was "god, that sounds really odd!!!". "Echoey", "bloaty", and uncontrolled are words I'd use to describe it. Putting it simply, I just think the relatively small surface area of the driver compared to the throat aperture, and the fact that the air is being forced to make a U-turn places quite a bit of stress on the driver. It can't really control the air and that is exactly what it sounds like.

The Apogee bass panel mates/couples directly with the outside world, and has sufficient force per unit area over a much larger area to cope.

The downside of the Apogee bass panel is limited excursion, and once that limit is met no amount of power will really help. In this situation the speaker will literally drink any excess power.

There is also more suck than push. The magnets are on the one side of the panel. So there's more force moving towards the magnets than away from them.

The Leonardo tried to solve that problem. I've not heard it, but it does so at the expense of losing a massive amount of surface area at the front of the driver.

Well this post confirms kind of what I suspected from the last one that you are not really "getting" horn design. The Air Partner might have sounded like you described but for the reasons given most likely. The bass driver on the air partner was a 15 inch vitavox... Not so small. The horn may have poorly designed and too short but the fact that it was folded is not a problem per se. The size and type of driver in the Aries Cerat has been carefully chosen and sounds extremely good in the bass. What you are calling the throat is actually called the mouth. The throat of a horn is where it mates up to the driver and in both speakers is invisible buried inside the speaker. The mouth is supposed to be large. Think of a megaphone. The mouth is much larger than your own mouth that is at the other end. The efficiency of a horn for coupling with the air cannot be matched by a planar. This is science not opinion. Horns done with wrong dimensions will sound strange because of unwanted resonances and that is perhaps what you are reacting too.

As I said a friend has air scouts and the bass is not deep or especially great. It has nothing to do with using a 12 inch woofer and everything to do with horn design.

 

[Zero000]

15 inches is relatively small compared to the mouth size of the Air Partner. It is also small compared to the surface area of the Apogee bass panel.

Kevin Scott's Olympian with subs fortunately sounds one hell of a lot better than the Air Partner did IMHO.

I'm not arguing that a horn isn't a lot more efficient than an inefficient Apogee.

 

[microstrip]

(...) With Apogees, all that is now moot. I just have to buy the right flat (flat wall rectangular block), and I have no desire to consider other speakers. If for some reason that doesn't work - London real estate is always challenging - then I will get the hORNS Universum and invest more in analog.

Theoretically you should carry the speakers and system with you when visiting flats ... No one is referring that the critical aspect of panel speakers in the bass is the self cancellation of bass because of the out of phase back wave. In order to have bass in a panel speaker you must have some room gain - room dimensions and distance to the back wall are critical, but the building characteristics of the room are even more critical.

My listening room is ground floor with a wood floor over thick layers of sand and concrete, around 40 square meters large, and the living room is exactly the same area, built over it, but with a suspended floor on solid wood studs and a one foot higher ceiling. The bass performance of panels in the two rooms is completely different .

The subjective bass performance of panels is an interesting subject - people praise and love it, but usually the measurement is very poor. You have to rely on your ears, the graphs are usually misleading.

 

[bonzo75]

Theoretically you should carry the speakers and system with you when visiting flats ... No one is referring that the critical aspect of panel speakers in the bass is the self cancellation of bass because of the out of phase back wave. In order to have bass in a panel speaker you must have some room gain - room dimensions and distance to the back wall are critical, but the building characteristics of the room are even more critical.

My listening room is ground floor with a wood floor over thick layers of sand and concrete, around 40 square meters large, and the living room is exactly the same area, built over it, but with a suspended floor on solid wood studs and a one foot higher ceiling. The bass performance of panels in the two rooms is completely different .

The subjective bass performance of panels is an interesting subject - people praise and love it, but usually the measurement is very poor. You have to rely on your ears, the graphs are usually misleading.

Precisely

 

[morricab]

Hi,

I'm referring exclusively to the Air Partner in my prose.

Just thought I'd make that obvious. I thought it was.

I loved the Aeries Cerat amps sonically driving Tune Audio Anima at Munich 2011

I've never designed a bass horn. No wish to. The one I have heard that works the best to my ears is the Avantgarde one, with Trios.

Actually your first comment was in regard to the Aries Cerat video I posted a link to. You said it was bloated and no way that small driver could work with the large throat(you meant mouth). The Air Partner comments were from later posts.

 

[morricab]

Theoretically you should carry the speakers and system with you when visiting flats ... No one is referring that the critical aspect of panel speakers in the bass is the self cancellation of bass because of the out of phase back wave. In order to have bass in a panel speaker you must have some room gain - room dimensions and distance to the back wall are critical, but the building characteristics of the room are even more critical.

My listening room is ground floor with a wood floor over thick layers of sand and concrete, around 40 square meters large, and the living room is exactly the same area, built over it, but with a suspended floor on solid wood studs and a one foot higher ceiling. The bass performance of panels in the two rooms is completely different .

The subjective bass performance of panels is an interesting subject - people praise and love it, but usually the measurement is very poor. You have to rely on your ears, the graphs are usually misleading.

For acoustic bass, big planars probably have a the best texture and resolution, assuming proper set up. I loved things like cello concertos and well recorded jazz bass.

 

[Zero000]

Actually your first comment was in regard to the Aries Cerat video I posted a link to. You said it was bloated and no way that small driver could work with the large throat(you meant mouth). The Air Partner comments were from later posts.

I'm not denying it. But the later comments were referring exclusively to the Air Partner.

Actually the Air Partner appears goes lower than you said it did. And the sonic signature of the video reminded me of the Air Partner to some extent.

Brad you can go on as much as you like. I am not really a fan of horn bass except in the one situation I have heard it where I think it has worked. With Trios. But then in a large room, I think that speaker system is one of the world's finest. You need the space for it all to blend together IMHO. In smaller rooms the Trio/basshorn set up is far less convincingly good.

 

[Zero000]

One reason I want to hear the Duo Mezzo is to see if AG have managed to make that work well or not.

 

[bonzo75]

One reason I want to hear the Duo Mezzo is to see if AG have managed to make that work well or not.

Imo, no difference

 

[ddk]

For acoustic bass, big planars probably have a the best texture and resolution, assuming proper set up. I loved things like cello concertos and well recorded jazz bass.

How can that be when even the best high powered/high current ss amps needed to drive these large panels lack so much in texture and resolution compared to high-end SETs and quality low/mid powered tube electronics?

david

 

[bonzo75]

How can that be when even the best high powered/high current ss amps needed to drive these large panels lack so much in texture and resolution compared to high-end SETs and quality low/mid powered tube electronics?

david

Because speakers > source > amps

 

[ddk]

..hey Steve could you contrast the sound of these horns with Jimmy's VR111s?

Taking the systems in isolation they couldn't be any different, both are extreme but sonically probably have nothing or little in common, it depends on what you value. The room is a different deal, from what I see in the pictures and Steve's description the experience is untouchable for now, you can't achieve that in ordinary spaces.

david

 

[ddk]

Because speakers > source > amps

I'll accept that if you can tell me how speakers can reproduce what the electronics lost or worse perverted.

david

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I'll accept that if you can tell me how speakers can reproduce what the electronics lost or worse perverted.

david

we form our opinions about electronics and their characteristics through our particular sonic compass. one man's 'perverted' is another man's open and extended on top and linear at frequency extremes. are textures an artifact? a matter of taste maybe.

talking in absolutes is a slippery slope.

 

[bonzo75]

I'll accept that if you can tell me how speakers can reproduce what the electronics lost or worse perverted.

david

No it's a collective sound. It's not about is Krell > Lamm?? I don't think so. If I have a speaker I can run with a SET, that would be my first choice, followed by some non-SET valve.

But is SS + Apogee > a SET + a horn I like less than an apogee? Yes. Because so much of bass, tone, soundstage, midrange, is due to the speaker, not necessarily the amp. I have heard speakers I like with different amps - always liked them, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have never liked speakers I did not like with different electronics, always saw the same shorcomings.

 

[ddk]

we form our opinions about electronics and their characteristics through our particular sonic compass. one man's 'perverted' is another man's open and extended on top and linear at frequency extremes. are textures an artifact? a matter of taste maybe.

talking in absolutes is a slippery slope.

Are you saying that electronics don't pervert Mike? Subject was absolute quality of acoustic bass and panel speakers not personal preferences.

david

 

[bonzo75]

Everything perverts, speakers pervert more than electronics.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Are you saying that electronics don't pervert Mike? Subject was absolute quality of acoustic bass and panel speakers not personal preferences.

david

the word 'pervert' to me is wrong as it infers an absolute truth where there is not one.

I'm saying that there is no 'absolute quality' of the sound of music. there is only personal opinion which can vary. which includes acoustic bass.

we might all agree on what is good and bad; but degrees of good might/likely will come down to opinion on preferred characteristics. so assigning 'perverted' to a particular approach is misguided. properly executed there is more than one legit approach to reproducing acoustic bass.