SMJ Audio Wavecor Ardent

[JonMarsh]

As soon as I get things put back together and reconfirmed, I'm probably going to do that, too.

[Absinthe]

I moved to Roon after dealing with the neurosis of Jim Hillegas over at JRiver. His propensity for censoring emails he doesn't agree with left me so irritated, I dropped JRiver in favor of Roon. The then $499 lifetime was a hard pill to swallow and the fact that I don't really stream anything made the decision impulsive and wasteful, but in good conscious, I cannot support JRiver further with a man like Jim at the helm

I like Roon, it plays well with all kinds of equipment and the sound quality is excellent but that price is a killer

[JonMarsh]

The up front investment for a "lifetime" subscription is pricey, but even if you used it only 5 years, the per year cost is only about the price of a dinner for two at a nicer than average local restaurant.

As a friend/former colleague of mine would say, "First World Problems".

[dwk]

I cannot support JRiver further with a man like Jim at the helm

Okay, I'm completely out of the loop. Is it just customer service/ arrogance, or is there more to the JRiver story?

I've briefly looked at Roon, but being a longtime Squeezebox/LMS user I just haven't seen a compelling reason to migrate. With the ability to use simple RPi renderers, the LMS ecosystem still does the job (for me)

[Absinthe]

At the risk or writing a "manifesto" on the woes of JRiver and no doubtedly pissing off users of their Interact Forum.....I have no doubt they troll around this forum as the industry is small

JRiver, primarily Jim Hillegas, has a longstanding set of unmovable beliefs and opinions; facts will not sway his reality. Jim's philosophy is based on his relationship with his father who is the "Cliff", creator of Cliff Notes, so you can understand there's a paternally passed built-in bias towards minimal writing because, well, "students" don't read (so they need the Cliff Notes to get by). This makes reading his "forum" necessary to utilize all the power JRiver has. Even then the documentation is often stale, dated or incorrect. He badgers the users of the forum and other "super users" to write the documentation

JRiver's business model has been a curious one, but it has served them well enough for their needs. They do what they want, what pleases them, and are only really interested in their current lifestyle and the status quo. The company has no dedicated interest in growth, expansion, collaboration, cooperation, etc. They've had essentially the same employees and employee count for 10 years, and the average age of the developers must be 50+. This explains their refusal to work with any of the streaming services or native IOS synchronization, both of which would add to the power and appeal of JRiver and a media manager. In my opinion, JRiver has been non-visionary, short-sighted, and wasteful. They had a few business partnerships years ago (for custom version of MC), all of which have either ended or are non-substantial today.

They are full on NIH (not invented here) affliction and feel compelled to work their own solutions (despite industry standards, practices, or better solutions). Look at YaBB, their image uploading sited based on Gallery (a useful solution 15 years ago, but a relic today), their audio finger printing database (which almost nobody uses or knows about), their resistance to working in conjunction with services like MusicBrainz, AccurateRip, Discogs, etc. This severely limits the future of JRiver. In my opinion you are dealing with a company that is about 2 decades out of touch with the industry (Car Radio - really?).

They've ignored some major trends in the industry, are completely confused as to who their target market is, and in my opinion, have not set themselves up for success in the upcoming years. Jim in in his mid to late 70's and needs to retire and get out of the way. Sadly, Matt was the one poised to take over JRiver at Jim's departure but he took an accidental severe blow to the head about 5 or 6 years ago, and has never been the same since. I don't believe there is anyone else at JRiver who can take on the CEO role. And as the CEO, Jim H has squandered enormous time and energy controlling and obsessing about his Interact forum. He's failed to setup the company for long-term success, and now sounds a bit desperate. And still his idiosyncrasies cause him to endlessly admonish users, shutdown reasonable conversation, edit user's threads to remove/censor content (he's insecure and hypersensitive to any form of criticism). He continues to do the only thing he seems able to do.

Every year, Jim bates the fervent, gullible users with the same question ("What should we do next") and every year he ignores most of the responses, and then spends enormous amounts of time managing the replies and content on Interact, and starts with his usual defensive rhetoric about why their current mode of operation is optimal (leaving one outcome - no progress, no change).
If this sounds harsh, consider I've studied JRiver for nearly 20 years for my own goals but quickly discovered that there is to be no joy in working with them at any level. JRiver is Jim's baby and will likely die with him. All in all, JRiver was/is a fairly competent media player/manager but is quickly falling by the wayside in comparison to other products.
YMMV

[JonMarsh]

These comments and concerns do sound like inputs from someone who is quite familiar with the company culture and issues that arise from it.

Sadly, it reminds me of some of the things I've had to deal with more the last 5 years of my own job. I'm still in touch with several key people (two I recruited, and another I've worked with closely about 15 years), and one of them extensively on a daily basis and doing what amounts to pro bono consulting just to keep some key programs on the rails. I'm a share holder, and it's in my best interests to be constructive.

I have dabbled with JRiver from time to time, but that's all I would call my involvement.

I'm really looking forward to when we can get moved into our own home and I can unpack and start getting serious about setting up stuff that has been in storage for years, including my networked music system and some upgrades to it, two major speaker systems, and my Halcro electronics.

As my friends from work comment, I have a lot of deferred gratification saved up...

[Absinthe]

I sympathize with your plight, Jon, file this under companies that exist despite what they do rather than because of what they do

[technodanvan]

Well it's been a bit since I posted so I thought maybe I should give an update. Once Steve let me know what the problem was I crudely soldered a few wires to a beautiful crossover job and got the speakers working as intended. Someday I'll redo it and make it all nice and pretty, but that day is long in the future I think! Initial impressions were pretty disappointing, largely due to the lack of bass from drivers that were several years old and had never been broken in properly. This was expected of course, so I played some fairly bass heavy music for a while and it really lowered the deep end substantially. I still think they can go lower - I haven't really been able to play loud music much, so it may be they still need to be loosened up a hair, or maybe I need to add some stuffing (though they sure seem stuffed already!). In any case, after a few weeks of non-critical listening I sat down with a playlist and really enjoyed the music for once, maybe a couple weeks before Sven came out to visit.

I don't really have the flowery language necessary to describe what I heard, but what I will do is compare them to my old (and still technically current) mains in my living room. Wayne Jaeschke's 'Eros' design, featuring the Vifa PL18 and the Scan-Speak D2905/9500. This design is probably over 20 years old, and my iteration of them is at least 15. The boxes I made are stout - 1 1/4" of MDF and Baltic Birch, baffles 1.5", and the whole thing covered in fiberglass and painted professionally. All in all, I want to say the speaker parts cost less than $1000 back in the day (maybe around $600? I don't really recall), with another $1000 in building materials and professional assistance in finishing them. I've used these speakers a long time, and I think I can honestly say they're the only speakers I ever finished myself. So many other projects get left by the wayside or I never really felt the need to paint or stain them because I just didn't care for them much. The 'Eros' was the first loudspeaker that I really enjoyed music on, that not only let me hear things I hadn't heard before, but friends who were musicians felt the same way. One of the key moments was hearing a tune from Nirvana's MTV Live album and realizing a slight change in Cobain's guitar was due to his loose sweater rubbing against the guitar strings. These were the first speakers I experienced that made other speakers sound like boxes making noise. I went to hifi stores on occasion and while I would sometime hear a speaker that approximated this feeling it was more often than not that I would be disappointed by the offerings presented.

After some critical listening on the Ardents I felt they were better than the Eros but I couldn't necessarily nail down why I thought they were better. I knew that I could hear more detail, I could pick out individual background singers sometimes as well as subtle instrumentation that I previously didn't know was there. I knew the bass was clearly better in basically every dimension other than MAYBE extension (the Eros is a large ported box, albeit with smaller drivers). I'm not a musician and would hardly consider myself a gifted critical listener, but they were just 'better'. I couldn't really put my finger on it until I went back into the house and turned on the TV and Plex for some background music while doing something else. It only took a moment to realize what I had missed before - the Eros now sounded like 'boxes making noise'. Coming from the Ardents they all of a sudden sounded like they had shoddy cabinetry, poorly tuned (and bloated) bass extension, lack of mids, and tweeters that struggled to keep it all together. The Eros sounded empty, soulless in comparison, just like the Eros made everything else sound like back when I first heard them. That's how good the Ardents are.

Admittedly, the Eros are being powered by a small, underpowered Marantz 5.1 channel receiver (despite the fact they're 4 ohm speakers) and the Ardents are powered by some of NAD's finest work. I'm not sure how much difference this would make given the age of the Eros and the dated design, but felt a caveat should be provided all the same.

In any case, I am proud to be an owner of a speaker as fine as the Ardents. I don't imagine I'll be hitting this price point again for at least a decade or two (well, depending on how inflation and tariffs work out!) but I am glad to have something to call a reference system. Something I can compare other speakers to as I build/acquire them.

Jon, thank you for the design. And thank you again Steve, for all the hard work you put in to making these a reality.

[dar47]

Congrats! Danny

Glad you got them sorted out and don't worry about the base it my be just you coming from ported sound. My last speaker had 2 RS225's in a sealed cabinet and I noticed the bass was better. The design is focused around that beautiful mid and as you keep listening to more well recorded music you will pick up on the big differences. One of the first things I noticed was when playing full orchestra at a laud volume you will see how these speakers never loose control you will get the full meal detailed deal.

I also think if you try better front end gear in the future you won't be thinking you need better speakers. As you mentioned these may be your keepers for a long time and I hope you enjoy for a long time as I am.

[Mikerodrig27]

The bass from the RS225's is exceptional. Especially at their price point.

[JonMarsh]

A little history and a few ideas to try out for fun...

I don't know how much or how many of the Ardent and Wavecor Ardent threads you've read, Danny, but maybe it would be useful or fun to recapitulate some points about the history behind them and this style of speaker.


First, some history...

• As I'm sure you're aware of, this design is sort of inspired by the industrial design of the Avalon Indra and Avalon Time, with intent to adress some specific issues with the Avalon builds.
• What you may not be aware of is that Avalon Acoustic and I have some shared history- Charlie Hansen.
• Charlie founded Avalon after making a go at trying to start a bicyle building company, another of his big loves.
• While Charlie was a physics student at CU, he worked for me as a technician, when I was the engineering director for a smal Pro sound outfit in Boulder, CO.
• Prior to working for the Pro sound outfit, I worked for a small outfit in Boulder, designing and building HiFi speakers.
• After that, I was a partner for several years in a high end retail audio shop, The Boulder Sound Gallery.
• During that time frame, I did more speaker development work, both with the founder of a speaker company called Ultraphase (produced minimum phase time aligned speakers in Denver) and on my own, using Audax, MB Quart, and B&W drivers (being a B&W dealer gives you access to parts)
• I was also involved with some small local studios, and did live recording sessions of classical music- including the Boulder Philharmonic performing the well known Saint Saens Symphony #3.
• I learned a lot of things in those days, including avoiding using drivers anywhere near their breakup modes, the value of thick very stiff front baffles to optimize the driver launch, and the use of baffle facets to control diffraction effects. My goal was not just smooth transparent frequency response, but optimizing the imaging capabilities, which is very necessary to do good studio mixes or to evaluate microphone setup and placement.
• I also had the opportunity to experiment a lot with room placement and setup in the old house in Boulder that I rented with our receptionist from the gallery (bless her heart, hope she's doing well these days) and basically had the opportunity to discover on my own a lot of the principles of Cardas speaker placement long before I'd ever heard of George Cardas. That story alone would be a long post.
• This was done with a setup that included a RABCO tone arm on a Denon platter, with a Denon DL101 cartridge, an Audionics preamp, and the Luxman low TIM 100W/channel amplifier. Oh, and let's not forget the B&K 4133 pressure zone microphone with HP preamp, or the White model 140 LED display spectrum analyzer. That was pretty heavy hitter equipment for the mid 70's. 1970s, not 1870s.
• Folks I'd bring over to listen were amazed at the kind of image this setup would produce, especially with good classical recordings. This included manufacturer's reps for gear we carried, and sometimes actual designers for those companies. This has been my reference point for playback imaging, and it took a long long time before digital could start to approach that (think Berkely Audio Design DAC 1, which Steve has these days)
• When I got married, my new wife insisted that my "reference" speakers had to go- that was my first encounter with WAF issues, and I gave a set to Charlie Hansen. Probably one of the more fateful reverse wedding gifts.
• What those speakers did, and how they did it, inspired Charlie to found Avalon Acoustics. Visiting him at their facility later, he introduced me a few times as the grandfather of Avalon. I considered that quite an honor.
  Charlie sold his ownership in Avalon to a small local investment group including some other Audio people, and they ended up selling to Neil Patel, their current CEO. Neil has done a lot of interesting industrial design work, but sometimes I think he's lost his way a bit the last 5-8 years. But who am I to say? But go try to find an Avalon dealer near you, or in your own state, even.

And some experiments to consider...

If you haven't read this thread from 2016, go back and so so.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php?43337-Report-back-on-stereo-speaker-voicing-investigation&highlight=Stereo+speaker+voicing

Keep in mind this filter hardware concept can be used to shape the frequency response of a speaker using a simple passive filter for any purpose - including low frequency EQ.

I know of several Wavecor Ardent builders using this, as published in the thread, and are quite happy with the results.

Boundary loading and it's impact on bass behavior and modes is very important- suggest a read of the Cardas placement guides, and a quick review of this very short thread to get the basic point about the relationship of dimensions from woofers to nearby boundaries- why golden mean spacing is important.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php?10872-Guestimating-room-gain&p=138262#post138262

So, just for fun, and even though you possibly can't leave things setup using Cardas guide, try it for an afternoon and evening some weekend when you have a bit of free time. This cleans up the mid bass, and gives a lift in the optimum region of the low bass. ALL Avalon speakers are designed for this setup, with critically damped bass response, and so is the Wavecor Ardent.

Other than that, see if you have a dealer near you that allows home demos- try getting hold of a current Berkely Audio DAC, or a Bricasti or some other highly recommended ones from Stereophile magazine. Look for the ones that have the cleanest looking 24 bit sine test waveforms.

Also, if you're a bargain basement hunter, the latest Benchmark Audio DAC3 is finally a measured good and sounds good product. Just a smidge over $2K.




My current DAC is a Denafrips Terminator with some upgrades.







They are only sold by Vinshine Audio in Singapore; I've bought several items through them, never had a problem.

Here's a good review of the Terminator, if you're curious.

https://6moons.com/audioreviews2/denafrips/1.html

While we're talking about Benchmark, consider what John Atkinson at Stereophile had to say about the LA4 line preamp:

Benchmark's LA4 is the widest-bandwidth, widest-dynamic-range, lowest-noise, lowest-distortion preamplifier I have encountered.—John Atkinson

It does work best with amplifiers with reasonably high input impedance- 10K or more.

I can vouch for that, as I own one, and it's been in the heart of my acoustics test setup for some time. (I have a Halcro DM10 preamp for the big playback system). I've measured both on my Audio Precision.

Oh, and did I mention these suckers go for just $2,999? It's definitely an audiophile bargain, though it's certainly pricey by a lot of work colleagues standard for home audio- but most of them have very little- but they drive a nice BMW SUV. Different strokes for different folks. FWPs.

Just some ideas. You may have only scratched the surface with your Wavecor Ardents so far...

[dwk]

Also, if you're a bargain basement hunter, the latest Benchmark Audio DAC3 is finally a measured good and sounds good product. Just a smidge over $2K.

We have, uh, just slightly different ideas about what constitutes a 'bargain basement hunter', I think.

[JonMarsh]

We have, uh, just slightly different ideas about what constitutes a 'bargain basement hunter', I think.

Understood, DWK, but it depends on which bargain basement you're hunting in. In this case, it's the top flight performance or very, very close, at a relatively reasonable price.

Just like the LA4 line preamp. You can spend a lot more money on a stereo preamp than the LA4, and still not match it.


The DA25TX008 tweeter is another example of a product in this category- many folks would not consider a $50-$60 tweeter bargain basement, but for what it does, and how much better in can be with the right approach than many $300 to $400 tweeters, it truly is.

Compare the DA25 to this guy, for example:

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php?44293-An-interesting-quot-budget-quot-tweeter-from-SB-Acoustics-for-hard-dome-fans&highlight=interesting+budget+tweeter

[Bear]

Understood, DWK, but it depends on which bargain basement you're hunting in. In this case, it's the top flight performance or very, very close, at a relatively reasonable price.

Just like the LA4 line preamp. You can spend a lot more money on a stereo preamp than the LA4, and still not match it.


The DA25TX008 tweeter is another example of a product in this category- many folks would not consider a $50-$60 tweeter bargain basement, but for what it does, and how much better in can be with the right approach than many $300 to $400 tweeters, it truly is.

Compare the DA25 to this guy, for example:

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthr...budget+tweeter

I'll show my ignorance (maybe I'm also misunderstanding the intent of the comparison...) and say that I think the SB26ADC/CDC may also be competitive with tweeters in the $300 range, especially many of the members of the older SEAS/ScanSpeak drivers from ~10 years ago that are still widely available. It may not beat the DA25 when properly implemented, but I still think of it as a comparative bargain for <$100. It's also a good "learner" tweeter. Likewise, the SB29RDNC doesn't measure well when compared to either the DA25 or SB26 in the sub-$100 price range, but it does hammer into a decent LR4 at ~1.8kHz - 2kHz with only a few parts.

[dwk]

Understood, DWK, but it depends on which bargain basement you're hunting in. In this case, it's the top flight performance or very, very close, at a relatively reasonable price.

Just like the LA4 line preamp. You can spend a lot more money on a stereo preamp than the LA4, and still not match it.

Well, yeah - 'which basement' do we inhabit? It seems to me that the Benchmark gear is legitimately in the 'final destination' category of gear, whereas 'bargain basement' tends to imply a stopgap or at least an understood compromise. For me, 'bargain basement' is more the realm of the over-performing gear that ASR brings to light. e.g. a $450 DAC w/ balanced outputs and remote-volume that has multi-tone IMD like this https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...nts-png.31025/ is something that can take a system a long way without redirecting resources away from speakers for example. The Purifi amps might be another example, but arguably those are in the 'final destination' category as well if you can live within their power envelope so maybe the Hypex NcoreMP is a better example.

I guess my perspective reflects my feeling that the economic realities of being a specialty 2-channel audio electronics vendor have pretty much driven the market into the 'luxury goods' sphere where the product being sold is really the intangibles and exclusivity rather than tangible performance, and where higher prices are frequently seen as self-justifying as they imply even greater exclusivity. This has always existed in 'High End Audio' to some degree, but it feels like there was a time where $$$ correlated somewhat more directly with performance, but we seem to have left it behind to a very large degree. In that light, the Benchmark gear really seems to be an outlier in that they offer impeccable engineering without the boutique markup of a 'luxury goods' vendor.

The DA25TX008 tweeter is another example of a product in this category- many folks would not consider a $50-$60 tweeter bargain basement, but for what it does, and how much better in can be with the right approach than many $300 to $400 tweeters, it truly is.

Compare the DA25 to this guy, for example:

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthr...budget+tweeter

In contrast, it does seem that the raw speaker driver market is still largely governed by a more tangible cost structure where R&D and manufacturing costs are more directly reflected in end-unit pricing. Looking for bargains here is still an interesting undertaking; although I have to admit maybe I'm finally at the point where just accepting that a Purifi + Bleisma combo pays for itself in fewer hours spent in 'internet research' mode.

Due to a move last year I've had to 'go commercial', and I'm still uncertain whether that will change. My system is Kef R3 + Rythmik FM8s. R3s driven by a Neurochrome Mod-86 and the above Sabaj D5, with a MiniDSP SHD providing crossover / eq duties. I can't shake the DIY desire to build a 'statement' set of speaker though, and in addition to the Purifi/Bleisma combo I'm rather intrigued by your proposed Epique / MU12 / DA25Tx ardent variation - most of the other work going on seems to big for our current space. My shop is still out of commission after the move though, and progress getting it set up has been slow.

[JonMarsh]

Due to a move last year I've had to 'go commercial', and I'm still uncertain whether that will change. My system is Kef R3 + Rythmik FM8s. R3s driven by a Neurochrome Mod-86 and the above Sabaj D5, with a MiniDSP SHD providing crossover / eq duties. I can't shake the DIY desire to build a 'statement' set of speaker though, and in addition to the Purifi/Bleisma combo I'm rather intrigued by your proposed Epique / MU12 / DA25Tx ardent variation - most of the other work going on seems to big for our current space. My shop is still out of commission after the move though, and progress getting it set up has been slow.

I can relate to and feel your pain- we're in our second rental in Idaho (first got sold out from under us by the owners who wanted to cash in) and almost all my tools and gear is still in storage, and will be until we can move into our home under construction next year (hopefully in March).

Yeah, I'm curious to see what pans out with the Epique parts- I've got one in a 28L box and have done some basic tests- I'm thinking that a system like the first Generation Ardent in a smaller cabinet, about the same as the Avalon Indra should work out. The driver parameters are an interesting mix- not what you'd typically see in a subwoofer- light cone, low Its, and needs some significant volume if you go sealed, but a PR or ported application with an RSS265PR per each driver tuned correctly should work OK in 28L.

I'll post up some of that soon.

[technodanvan]

Thanks for the response fellas, always good to hear from other users and of course the master himself!

I think I'm a bit beyond the need for a new DAC at this time (due mostly to not having a CD player yet) and I'm pretty happy with the NAD combo for the moment. I would very, very much like to try out Cardas arrangement and maybe some wall treatments but that is not in the cards currently. If I can find a nearby storage unit for some of my excess things I could rotate my room 90 degrees and really have a chance to play around. It's nice, in a way, to know I'm not getting the most out of these yet. It gives me something else to shoot for in the future.

I'm definitely keeping an eye out for Epique designs of course. I forgot I even had those, just rediscovered them on a shelf yesterday!