Steve's RMAF 2012 Picture Thread And Top 5 In Show
- Thread starter Steve williams
- Start date
Very interesting story. I had wondered what had happened to the IMF speakers. I remember years ago hearing them in the UK and being highly impressed. I thought they were poised for greatness and then they seemed to disappear. Truly sad to hear of their demise due to someone with bad intent. Oddly, I also remember Bud Fried's speakers getting some great press in the Absolute Sound around the same time...BUT he didn't get mention much after that one rave review. Perhaps, HP and others knew of his behavior even in those days
It was a marriage made in Hell from the start. They made multi-way speakers that had a lot of drivers with very complex crossovers that had sharp cutoff slopes while Fried made transmission line speakers with very simple first order crossovers and few drivers. The entire philosophies of the two entities were at opposite extremes. The IMF speakers, by my measure of reason, should have sounded awful, but they were fantastic. The Fried, based on the Model O that I know, sounded pretty bad, although Fried supposedly made all the drivers in house. Anyway, the outcome was one that can happen when new players aren't familiar enough with others who offer to help. They got screwed over by a guy who probably didn't even get the basic premise of what they were trying to accomplish.
Then, there is the new Fried speaker. Look at what design path it has taken. Go figure.
I actually thought these sounded better than what I remember of the others (the big ones) from last year (although those apparently hadn't been broken in?)
There is a little more information on the origin of IMF in the paragraph at the bottom of this page: http://www.t-linespeakers.org/classics/radford.html
It seems Radford was a significant if ineffective player, and the original designer of the TL section was Bailey, which is no surprise.
I built a Bailey transmission line in 1973 with a 10" Philips woofer, in accordance with a plan published by Bailey in Hi-Fi News. I had never heard such deep bass before - in fact I couldn't hear the deep fundamentals in the bass line of "Mother and Child Reunion" (I think) by Paul Simon until I went to the next room!
May be you are reffering to the Bailey article in the May 1972 Wireless World about transmission line loudspeakers and how to built them. I have built the Hifi Answers Chris Rogers version of the transmission line speaker using the KEF B139 around 1976 and I remember that the Hifi News article on building a TL speaker showed around that time. Did you use a diagonal partition in the speaker cabinet?
I heard the Salks in the banner at CAS 2011. They said they were prototypes. They were playing Joni Mitchell and were amongst the best sounding speakers I heard, even in a small room. I wanted to to back to listen some more but didn't have a chance.
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