High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ High Efficiency Speaker Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile

Posted by Paul Eizik (A) on January 7, 2016 at 11:11:57

I recently had a debate with a Stereophile reading, S.S. direct radiator listening friend, and he posed the following question: "Are you a vintage audio enthusiast, or are you an advocate of accurate audio reproduction?". I pleaded guilty to being a vintage audio enthusiast as evidenced by the general superior quality of vintage equipment, and I furthermore presented the case that vintage audio enthusiasts themselves are superior to less experienced ones. To support this I offered as evidence J.Gordon Holt's article "Space, the Final Frontier" from the March 1994 issue of Stereophile. In this article JGH observed that speakers with a tilt towards the bass (for "warmth") and peak in the treble (for "detail") were tending to get rave reviews compared to comparable speakers with more flat response which were tending to get luke warm reviews. As current evidence of this trend I reached for the latest issue of Stereophile I had on hand (Aug. 2015), and looked for a speaker review confident that I would see at least half of the signature Holt had described. Lo and behold the review was of the Falcon Acoustics iteration of the LS3/5a by Herb Reichert. Here's the first sentence of the second paragraph of the review: "After you've spent a bunch of time with horns, electro-stats, or ribbons, box speakers won't sound "boxy", as many reviewers claim; they'll just sound squawky and...peculiar". I had to look at the cover of the rag to make sure I was'nt actually reading an issue of Sound Practices from the 90's! This said, Herb gives the Falcons an enthusiastic rave review and describes them as "accurate". The Holt signature is definitely there (and then some) in editor John Atkinson's measurements with a bass tilt below 500 Hz, a peak at 7K Hz, including a peak at 1K Hz and another above 10K Hz. The Falcons utilize reproductions of the original drivers and the freq. response is compared with the later Rogers versions of the LS3/5a, and it could be argued that the Rogers is more accurate in that it's less peaky, but Herb prefers the Falcons. I probably would agree with Herb on this, but it seems that actual accuracy is not taken very seriously at Stereophile. This said, Herb's presence marks quite a change at Stereophile. Back in the 90's the first SET amp tested (a Cary 805 as I recall) was declared a "tone control" by John Atkinson, though all of the specialty cables and tweaks advertised in the magazine get a free pass in this regard. JA has also stated that he is "...suspicious of horn loaded designs" which makes Herb's above quote all the more surprising.

Now just when I'm having some warm feelings for Holt and his audio purism, kind of like one would admire an aesthetic monk whose life one would'nt want to actually imitate, in the latest issue of Stereoohile JA reprints some past letters illustrating some people bemoaning the decline of audio through the years, and Holt replies to one of them with a ridiculous anti-horn rant. He would be spinng like a turbine in his grave if he could see Herb's quote.

Paul

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

VH Audio

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---