Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

---

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

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: Are Cornwalls Still Current?

Posted by George S. Roland (A) on April 13, 2015 at 11:58:00

In Reply to: RE: Are Cornwalls Still Current? posted by Lt Einhorn on April 13, 2015 at 10:23:44:

I would like to second this poster's opinion of the Cornwalls. As I said in my earlier response, I owned a pair of Cornwall 1 s for several years. I found their dynamics, bass and punch exciting, but with lots of music their inherent hardness and sonic constriction was fatiguing.

I think whether or not you like them, and many, many people do, depends on what you're looking for in a speaker. I listen mostly to classical music, opera and acoustic music in general. I like rock okay, but the problem with it as a source for speaker evaluation is that it has no analog counterpart. In rock, nearly everything is electrified, digitized and so on, so there is no analog original to which its sound may be compared.

In classical music, opera and acoustic music, we know what an oboe sounds like. We know what a violin or piano is supposed to sound like. We can go to an opera and listen to real singers singing in real space and close our eyes and absorb what a soprano, tenor or chorus sounds like. Then, we have something "real" to compare to what the speaker sounds like.

A real revelation for me was listening to a classical LP over my Cornwalls and then, the same passage over a pair of KEF 104aBs. What I got out of the Cornwalls was a generalized woodwind sound. What I heard over the KEFs was an oboe and a clarinet. On the Cornwalls, it was difficult to know exactly how many instruments and which instruments were playing. On the KEFs, the accuracy, detail and truth to timbre of the instruments was obvious. They didn't go as deep and the Cornwalls and they were less dynamic, but my sense of it was, that if you couldn't even tell what instruments were playing, something was seriously wrong. Vocals were another area where the difference was very obvious and the KEFs were far superior in this area.

If on the other hand, you never listen to such music and don't care as much about timbral accuracy as you do to rock out with a big, honking speaker, go for those Cornwalls!

I would definitely recommend you try them with tube electronics.

Good luck,

George

Edits: 04/13/15

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

---

[ 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 ]

---