RMAF 2008 impressions

[jdybnis]

I just came back from RMAF. This was my first such HiFi show, DIY or otherwise. The whole experience was really cool. I got to hear many different kinds of systems. I highly recommend going to anyone who hasn't been to one.

The GOOD

- Linkwitz's dipole Orion http://www.linkwitzlab.com/
I'd never listened to the Orion's before and this just blew me away. They were just simply better than every box speaker I head at the show. The soundstage was perfect. The dynamics excellent. And they handled full-range orchestral music without losing detail in the midrange.

- Linkwitz's omnidirectional Pluto
The Plutos are in fact very similar sounding to the Orions. This is extremely surprising, not just because the radiation pattern is different, but also because the drivers are so different. It seems clear that Linkwitz could redesign the Orion to use less expensive drivers without compromising the end result.

- Gradient Helsinki http://www.gradient.fi/helsinki15/
A funky controlled directivity design, look at the pictures to get an idea. The tweeter is in a waveguide, the midrange is a cardioid and the bass is a dipole. They are set up so that the listener is almost in the dipole null. This goofy combination seems to work well though. When I was there, a large group of people were sitting there listening for about 20 minutes. Then the guy running the room switched over to the Harbeth M40.1's (not a bad speaker) and people went right back to the regular sit down for one track and then get up routine.

- Acapella's big horn speakers http://acapella.de/
These monsters had the best dynamics of any speakers I heard at the show, the horn coloration was minimal and the soundstage was precise and expansive. On the downside they are steeped in audiophile BS, so they cost over $200k. I have serious doubts about the value of the ion tweeter. I'm pretty sure an equivalent speaker could be built without the flashy enclosure and esoteric parts for way less than 1/10 the cost.

- Von Schweikert speakers http://www.vonschweikert.com/
These just sounded pretty good in every room I listened to them in.

- Audio Note UK setup http://www.audionote.co.uk/
This was an ungodly expensive setup. There was no bass to speak of, and the sound was colored. But the system was just pleasant to listen to. When a trumpet blared and the amps clipped it sounded great. This would be a poor choice if you only had one system, but it would make a nice 3rd or 4th system if you listened to the right type of music on it. That said, nobody in their right mind should buy this setup. It borders on unethical that someone is selling it. It is a 0 on the value scale. The speakers were $50k and I didn't even ask about the electronics and the source equipment, but I wouldn't be surprised if the total was over $100k.

The BAD

- systems playing too loud
So many rooms were playing their systems too loud. It might make some of them sound better, but it selfish of the part of the rooms that do it.

- line arrays
I'd never listened to any line arrays before. The ones I heard here didn't impress me. They all seemed to be lacking in detail. This was only true of the arrays and not the other line sources. The RD75, the Analysis Audio full range ribbons, and the Sanders electrostatics didn't suffer from this problem.

- price and performance are minimally correlated

The NEWS

- Parts Express is coming out with some new drivers. An RS75 is in the works. It's the same style as the rest of the RS woofers, just smaller. There is also a soft dome version of the RS28 coming out and truncated frame versions of the RS100 and RS28. Also interesting to me was that the bland wood veneers used on the Dayton cabinets were a deliberate choice. They think that it's what people prefer. But they did say if you order 50 pair they'll put whatever finish you want on them.

- SEAS was was showing off the next two drivers in their exotica series. The first was a high efficiency woofer with an overhung Alinco motor and a wooden phase plug. The second was a 1.5 inch soft dome tweeter with an Alinco magnet, a 3mm (!) air gap and 1mm xmax. The two were obviously meant to be paired together. But that tweeter looks like it could be really interesting on its own. Although I expect that the price will be higher than any of SEAS's existing tweeters.

[Dennis H]

Wow, thanks for the nice review, Josh. I think Thomas and Chuck were there as well so tell us what you thunk, guys.

[augerpro]

I wandered around with Thomas and Chuck on Sunday. I didn't get to hear everything I wanted-didn't know Rick Craig was there-but Tom and Chuck steered to me to the highlights-and a couple turds. Biggest thing I noticed was how average most of the speakers sounded, easy targets for a number of designers on this forum. But the few good speakers were REALLY GOOD, and would be pretty tough to match. Here is a quick review.

On the standout list were the following:
The Audiokinesis Planetarium was good. Very efficient and percussion was excellent. Every "thwack" on a snare drum smacked you in the chest. Very smooth, a bit laidback. You could probably play these all day long and not get tired. Solid stereo image.

The Viv Audio Evanui was just crazy. It uses a single 3" driver that drives the big horn thing. Everything from high hats to low bass. And it had a lot of bass! Actually the midbass/lower midrange was very strong overall, maybe a bit too much, though it could have been the room too. Solid image and the speaker just disappeared. All from a tiny little driver. Strangest thing you've seen.

Roger Sanders, apparently the original brain behind Martin Logan, had his ESL's there and they were excellent. All the magic of an ESL but with treble that doesn't sound "phasey" and seamless integration with woofers which gives a great midbass slam-something you don't usually get with ESL's. If you like ESL's you have to check these out.

ACI Sapphires were the best small speaker I heard. The midrange/midbass is superb and they just disappear into a big, deep image.

The Avalon Indra was impressive. Big soundstage, very clear.

The best of the show-especially if you like classical or opera-was an omni speaker that was developed with involvement of Aleksander of RAAL ribbons: http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatur...rbia/raal.html. The did have a little problem in the upper midrange that needs to get worked out. But otherwise they were very dynamic and powerful and clear. They were the only omni I heard that actually had a defined soundstage. And it was big and deep. You could almost see the different levels of instruments and chorus during the classical music that was played. Almost like being at the top row of a big amphitheater.

So what about the let downs? The Marten Design Coltrane Supreme REALLY expensive and it sucked! Poor integration of the drivers with no real stereo image. You always knew you were listening to a loudspeaker. A couple doors down was Avalon's Indra using nearly the same drivers-though not as many-and it absolutely upstaged this junk.

Another was Acoustic Zen's Maestro driven by crazy expensive Halcro amps. It was merely ok. Decent soundstage size with good bass but that was about it. Voices and instruments wandered up and down between drivers and never really formed a great stereo image. If these were $2k I'd say they were a steal...but they are MUCH more than $2k.

The MBL Reference omni speaker was the most incredible engineering at the show but mediocre sounding. Yeah the speakers disappeared like any good omni, and there was a big sound "space" but there was no defined soundstage and the treble made me want cringe. For the astronomical price these were a real letdown.

I passed some other rooms with some mediocre yet generally expensive speakers. I missed some stuff in the BPT and Salk room (thanks for the veneer tips Jim!), but did get to hear some Linkwitz Orions finally and man, for the $2.3k or so to build these they are nearly unbeatable. Smooth and coherent with good driver integration. Big, enveloping soundstage. And the bass was superb, tight and tuneful. A "walking" bassline was perfectly clear. A little on the warm side, great with classical/acoustic/new age, but I'm not sure about rock and roll. I didn't hear many line arrays/sources that I liked-other than Roger Sanders ESL. I did hear the av123 LS9 which of course threw a large soundstage with a big floating head doing vocals. Pretty neat, although the upper midrange/treble needs some work. All in all a super cool show, and a great way to see what the real state of the art is.

[ThomasW]

I was VERY VERY, impressed with the Orions. As Branden mentioned driver integration was excellent. They neither added or subtracted anything from the music. They created a superb soundstage even in the untreated hotel room. And all this was accomplished with Radio Shack interconnects and a very modest amp. The cost of these makes them one of the true bargains in audio today

The Sander's hybrid ESL is the only seamless hybrid ESL/dynamic driver loudspeaker I've ever heard.

As usual the Marten Design Coltranes sounded terrible. Take a $250,000.00 speaker demo it in a room with NO acoustic treatments.... :roll:

Aleksander's RAAL Omnis knocked me on my butt. Wonderful deep 3D like soundfield unusual for an omni. 15 ribbon tweeters/side along with 30 mini Jordan clones. MBL and their bizillion $ R&D program/products should take a lesson from these speakers built in Aleksander's parent's home.

A big thank you to Mr Ray Kimber for bringing his $500,000.00 demo room with the multi-channel DSD playback system using Pass powered Pro Soundlab ESLs... :T

And finally a shout out to our own augerpro for the private audition of his Delphis project. After some final tweeking we'll have a new design in the Missions Accomplished section ....

[SQdude]

Thomas how did the Orions compare to your Isiris? Gosh I want to build them, need a bigger apartment first!

[john k...]

Just a quick comment. I believe the "Sanders" behind Martin Logan was Gayle Sanders. I've had ML Monoliths since the first came out (82?) and spoke with Mr. "G" Sanders numerous times because the early ML's were very prone to panel failure (long since corrected). I don't know of any relationship between "R" and "G" sanders.

[twitch54]

Just a quick comment. I believe the "Sanders" behind Martin Logan was Gayle Sanders. I've had ML Monoliths since the first came out (82?) and spoke with Mr. "G" Sanders numerous times because the early ML's were very prone to panel failure (long since corrected). I don't know of any relationship between "R" and "G" sanders.

Martin Logan, FWIW was originated as such.......

Gayle 'MARTIN' Sanders and Ronald 'LOGAN' Sutherland

Gayle now retired enjoying life in Merry ole England and Ronnie continues to design build his neat batterry powered phono-pre's , etc.

Roger Sanders(no relation to Gayle) continues his electrostatic journey as well as designing some top notch electronics that are praised by electrostatic speaker owners. FWIW, he feels that Martin Logan 'stole' his curved panel design. Logan of course patented it ad thus Rogers current ESL is a flat panel.

Additional RMAF coverage buy us "Logan Nuts" can be seen here.....

http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7410

[Rick Craig]

Thanks to the HTG guys who visited our room. It was a special treat for me to meet and talk with Mr. Linkwitz and Mr. Klippel. I didn't get a chance to hear many rooms at the show but I thought the Orions sounded very good.

[Dennis H]

Which version of the Orions did you guys hear? Did they have the rear tweeters and the sealed subs?

[chasw98]

Yep, the Orions had the rear tweeters and they did not have the sealed subs. It was very interesting in contrast to the rest of the 'boutique' rooms that the Linkwitz room used a lowly ATI 6 channel amp and Radio Shack interconnects. I met Mr. Linkwitz's wife and she in turn introduced me to Siegfreid. We got to talk for about a half an hour about electronics and his crossover boards. Really nice guy with great (one of the top 5) sounding speakers.

As Brandon said, Tom steered us to some of the more, shall we say, large, spendy, system rooms such as Focal, MLB, Audio Federation. They really had great equipment ($40,000.00 amps, $250,000.00 speakers, $50,000.00 TT, etc.) but they sounded like dog poopy. NO treatment in the room, amazingly loud to the point of pain. I went back to these rooms several times and they were still running with loud volumes.

A room had TAD speakers in it and they were a very sophistacated pair of 2 ways that just sounded superb. And there was the ACI room with 2 way scanspeak Sapphire speakers that had amazing bass for what little punk speakers they were.

Robert Sanders speakers did sound very, very good. He also had some amplifiers, preamp, and phono preamps in use and on display that were the essence of electronic sophistication but rendered in simplicity. Very clean, minimalist design.

I could not get over how many cable manufacturers were in evidence at the show. It seemed you were nothing without a $5000 pair of speaker cables or power cords the size of a fire hose. Yet they all ended up with just a plug on the end or a banana plug like all the rest of the cables.

I have to mention the amazing Yokohama display of the little 3 inch driver that was installed in a 5 foot tall horn loaded gourd type cabinet. Very good indeed. Not practical but very good execution. Takes trans lam to a whole new level.

Aleksanders RAAL speakers were very nice. He is a wonderful, intelligent person who will probably be doing more in the audio industry in the future. All of the components in his speakers are hand made back in Serbia from the foundry castings for the bass bins to the ribbon tweeters on the top end. They really were a marvel for being an omni speaker. As Thomas remarked, they were everywhere but you could distinguish depth and placement quite easily. And this was done in cheesy hotel room with no room treatment.

All in all, it was pretty much a lot of fun being able to sit and talk with the likes of Siegfried Linkwitz, Jim Salk, Lynn Olsen, et al. These people have a lot more smarts than I do but they are willing to talk and give away their knowledge as if you were just sitting in the corner watering hole.

I have to agree with jdybnis that I did not hear any line arrays sound good at the show. I have to attribute a lot of that to room setup, lack of treatment, and lack of proper room to play these in as to why none of them sounded very good. I am sure in a different setting they could sound good but they did not at the show.

Chuck

[---k---]

Great review guys. I'm going to have to make it out to Denver some year. Sounds like a good time.

... truncated frame versions of the ... RS28.

GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! A Truncated RS28 would have been perfect for the Khancenter! A truncated RS28 and RS150 would really reduce the height and made it a lot easier to fit into my shelving unit.

The soft dome RS28 would also be interesting.

[sendler]

Orions sound great because dipole?

The Orions continue to get raves wherever they go. They must be fantastic. I often wonder if the reason they are so good is because they are dipoles, or could it be that active cross sounds much better with no components between the amps and the drivers and better caps and resistors doing the work. (I already know this to be true and even more so for digital sources with a DCX2496 where the work load of the electronics is shared all the way back to the digital domaign.) Or is it the gobs of clean power from triamping. (I know that biamping a passive cross speaker sounds better) Or is it the great tweeter crossed really low. Or is the great bass from using 4 top of the line 12s. I am sure that SL is very happy with the performance of the Orions and rightly so. They are on the short list of the worlds greatest speakers at any cost. And, that he would feel no need to prove the sonic merits of dipoles further to anyone. But it would be fascinating to build the same drivers into a conventional, sealed cabinet with active cross for a direct comparison.

[Hdale85]

Well there are probably more components involved in an active crossover then passive.

[Jed]

The Orions continue to get raves wherever they go. They must be fantastic. I often wonder if the reason they are so good is because they are dipoles, or could it be that active cross sounds much better with no components between the amps and the drivers and better caps and resistors doing the work. (I already know this to be true and even more so for digital sources with a DCX2496 where the work load of the electronics is shared all the way back to the digital domaign.) Or is it the gobs of clean power from triamping. (I know that biamping a passive cross speaker sounds better) Or is it the great tweeter crossed really low. Or is the great bass from using 4 top of the line 12s. I am sure that SL is very happy with the performance of the Orions and rightly so. They are on the short list of the worlds greatest speakers at any cost. And, that he would feel no need to prove the sonic merits of dipoles further to anyone. But it would be fascinating to build the same drivers into a conventional, sealed cabinet with active cross for a direct comparison.

I heard the Orions at RMAF, and thought they were very neutral. Though I wasn't that impresssed with the Millennium tweeter. It sounded a bit lifeless in that room. I'd love to put my Tombstones next to an Orion someday and see what differences I could hear in the treble and bass (both our designs have dipole mids). The dipole active bass was very nice, but I like the sealed bass in my Tombstones as well, and I don't need 3 amps. Maybe I should look into an active version of my Tombstones design.

Too much to do.. so little time.

Linkwitz sure was a gentleman. He's a legend in every sense of the word.

Jed

[Davey]

I guess there's still misunderstanding on what aspect of the Orion system yields the superior performance. The Seas and Peerless drivers used (those are 10's not 12's) are of excellent "quality" and quality, but it's the dipole concept implementation....baffle structure, baffle dimensions, rear-facing tweeter, etc, etc, and not the driver quality..per se..that yields the excellent performance.

You could use the same driver complement in some sort of box speaker with active crossover or whatever, but you've then shackled yourself with a serious performance limitation that no amount of fancy crossover/box design is going to be able to solve.

Terrific results CAN be obtained using different/cheaper driver complements utilized in Orion-like system designs. I've done this with a number of projects.

I'm not sure if a "lifeless" tweeter is a good thing or a bad thing. However, the Millenium tweeter is well suited to this particular design.

Those of you who haven't auditioned the Orion's are really missing out.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Jed]

I'm not sure if a "lifeless" tweeter is a good thing or a bad thing. However, the Millenium tweeter is well suited to this particular design.

Those of you who haven't auditioned the Orion's are really missing out.

Cheers,

Dave.

Yeah, I'm a bit leery making statements about a system I only spent maybe 10-15 minutes listening too, but it was clear to me that the Joseph Audio system across the hall, which used the same tweeter- was better defined/detailed. I preferred the Joseph Audio implementation in that venue, but since I was there early on Thurs, I'm sure with the system flexibility Linkwitz has with his active setup, he was able to resolve the phasy sounding top end.

[Mike B]

If I had the space, I would have Orions.

With rat shack cables.

Oh, I do have rat shack cables...

[tktran]

I always find that preference in top end and bottom end entirely user dependant. As a guy in late 20s, I often find that most speakers' treble tonality is actually wrong. It may have all the air, sparkle and clarity in the world, and the piano or flute may sound amazing, but it should not actually sound like that.

The great thing about a DIY design is that it can have settings built into the crossover to accomodate for the large range of tastes, and recordings.

If there's one thing I've found, is that people often blame the speaker, but how do we know it's not the recording?

[chasw98]

Yeah, I'm a bit leery making statements about a system I only spent maybe 10-15 minutes listening too, but it was clear to me that the Joseph Audio system across the hall, which used the same tweeter- was better defined/detailed. I preferred the Joseph Audio implementation in that venue, but since I was there early on Thurs, I'm sure with the system flexibility Linkwitz has with his active setup, he was able to resolve the phasy sounding top end.

Jed:
Were you at RMAF 2008? I wish I had known so that I could meet you if you were there. I also went to the Joseph Audio room across the hall and did not get the same impression you got from those speakers at all. To me they sounded dull and lifeless. I believe a lot of that was showing them in a hotel room with no treatment at all! Yet across the hall Linkwitz is showing Orions in a hotel room with no treatments either. Go figure why???? I was able to spend about a half an hour talking with Siegfried about his active crossover and there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. All sorts of filters built in to limit noise and very high frequencies. It is not your mothers DCX2496!

And, YES, Linkwitz is a legend and a gentleman in every sense of the word!

Chuck

[Jed]

Hey Chuck,

Yeah, I only had a few hours at RMAF. Next year, if I have more time I'll let people know ahead of time.

When I was in the Joseph Audio Room, he played them pretty loud, so that may have explained why his Millennium tweeter sounded a bit livelier to my ears at the top end. Remember, I'm just talking about 4-5k on up- the Orions were very neutral and uncolored- more neutral than the midrange in the Joseph speaker, which had traces of box coloration in the mids. Why they port the midrange chamber I will never know. After hearing the Millennium in both designs, I will say this. It's too expensive for what you get- there are plenty of tweeters that can cross at 1500hz and sound equally as good. But that is just my opinion. I wanted to hear the Millennium to see if I needed to upgrade my Seas DXT/h1212 hybrid tweeter, and my conclusion is definitely not. Maybe I'll try the SS6600, which has documented better performance.

Honestly, I was really impressed by the RD75 system in the BPT room. That's all anyone could ever need- although the digital crossover was pretty expensive. On a male vocal recording that was played, I heard something vibrate either in the membrane of the speaker or the room-with the low 175hz crossover it could likely be the RD75 was crossed too low. It was crossed very steep too. Alright, I'm done playing reviewer because the subjectivity and lack of controls such as all of us hearing the same recordings etc- leaves any real conclusions very difficult to obtain.