New speakers from Pranafidelity that replace the Bhavas, of which I was a fan. I think I preferred the sound from the Bhavas to this new version with laminated cabinets. Perhaps they are more inert, but right off the bat for me, the sound was a bit less musical than I'd recalled from Pranafidelity in the past.
Edit: Also note the passive Townshend preamp was in play. Thumbs up.
Nice little tube amps with Hashimoto OPTs, but ultimately this room didn't work. The rep argued with me about bass response, which was non-existent from the AERs. And the timbre from the acrylic speaker cabinets just sounded wrong to me. What can I say.
Thanks for all your interesting reports, Bazelio. What did you not like about the JBL horn speakers? (Insofar conclusions can be drawn under show conditions, that is.)
Easy to listen to. A bit smooth and laid back for my tastes overall. This is the second time I've heard Voss now. I am piecing together an impression that it's pretty good stuff.
For each channel I was imagining a vertical array of AER drivers in one column, and a stack of small, fast REL woofers, starting at about 300Hz, next to it.
Kedar, how come we never see on a baffle groups of these AER drivers to achieve more driver surface area, instead of squirting all of the sound out of a single 6" thing?
For each channel I was imagining a vertical array of AER drivers in one column, and a stack of small, fast REL woofers, starting at about 300Hz, next to it.
Kedar, how come we never see on a baffle groups of these AER drivers to achieve more driver surface area, instead of squirting all of the sound out of a single 6" thing?
I have never seen full range drivers over a baffle. Usually in back loaded horns, the other way is to cross over to an open baffle like the Pass SLOB design but another driver is used for the bass. Apart from G's pnoe in person, AER videos from Russia were brilliant with Murat's crossed over to horn bass and another to Maxxonic woofer array.
Also look at feastrex designs
The whole point of single full range driver is to minimize crossover and cover as much range as possible through one driver, that's the magic. The compromise of not having a stack of drivers to cover the whole range then has to be dealt by the design. There is a certain magic to be heard in the dynamic range due to the elimination of crossover which was heard only with G's pnoe, Pietro's yamamura, and the Loth minstrel that Bill had even though the Loth lacked bass
Thanks for all your interesting reports, Bazelio. What did you not like about the JBL horn speakers? (Insofar conclusions can be drawn under show conditions, that is.)
They were breathy and unexpressive. For example, there was a track played with some foreground hand clapping. There was no snap to it whatsoever, but rather the sound was just rounded over. Detail in general was just not there.
That's why they were basically playing only simple vocals (at least while I visited the room). The rep didn't take kindly to my request to play something that had bass content in it, and it was apparent why once he capitulated. And even with vocals, to my ears, there was a certain glare off the acrylic that wasn't ultimately pleasing. I really wanted to like the AERs more. It was my first exposure to them.
Perhaps I did try, and you're jumping to conclusions (again). Similarly, I've never heard Voxativ sound good stateside. But this is not to say they can not sound good, nor to say that I've written them off entirely. This was merely a disappointing first exposure to AER, which I'd been looking forward to for some time.
They were breathy and unexpressive. For example, there was a track played with some foreground hand clapping. There was no snap to it whatsoever, but rather the sound was just rounded over. Detail in general was just not there.
Thank you, interesting. You said on earlier occasions that in general you have not heard great detail from horn speakers. What kind of detail do you mean?
Thank you, interesting. You said on earlier occasions that in general you have not heard great detail from horn speakers. What kind of detail do you mean?
Ultimately the room sound was too warm. I'd like to know if it was the speakers or the electronics/TT or the cables causing the excessive warmth because otherwise it was a nice sound. The blue Topwing wasn't warm when I had one.
