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a couple of days ago I had the pleasure of listening to a friend's system with a new and somewhat exotic preamp, the Coincident Tech. Signature. Source was mostly digital via the amazing PS Audio DS DAC, which we also tried in my setup. His Coda amp and Focal Nova Utopia Speakers are as before. We were comparing the speaker cables - one set from MIT - a $14K MSRP and a Tara cable $6k MSRP, which I hope nobody ever pays, he certainly didn't.
But the main thing that occupied me in the process was the fact that the preamp had finally managed to provide enough information for the clear rendition of images outside the space between the speakers. Prior preamps (and possibly interconnects) had not managed to do it for these speakers and amp though they did fine in providing that kind of spatial performance in my setup.
In his setup, the body of instruments had finally managed to become fully sized and undistorted, but differed in rendition with the mellower Tara cables providing an artificial outline around a central piano image that was absent with the MIT cables. The piano image was also slightly foreshortened by the Tara cables. Again, this was not quite managed by prior preamps.
My Neo8 line array, either with or without the rest of the T IV speaker rendered deep wide soundstages with images well outside the space between the speakers and with good to great precision in those, with minor differences from the amp driving them and preamps and sources. The differences between say the Schiit Loki and PS Audio DS did not really amount to much in regard to imaging, though tone texture and detail were clearly on the side of the PS DSD.
The point is that the line array planar did more with less information. The soundstage projected by it is natural and has fully rendered images with volume and not just points even with low resolution material (e.g. 320k, where CD is 1440k). Using higher resolution material fills out the images and makes them more solid but it is no night and day difference as was the case with the big Focal speakers.
The thing that bugs me is why such an expensive and highly engineered speaker needs the most absolutely pure sources and transparent components all through the chain (including interconnects and speaker cables) to finally produce full sized images and render them with precise shape and location outside the speakers, while a good planar line source does it with the most rudimentary equipment.
Any experiences and thoughts on the matter (feel free to speculate so long as you don't reach for the inhabitants of the Pantheon) would be appreciated. .
Follow Ups:
"The thing that bugs me is why such an expensive and highly engineered speaker needs the most absolutely pure sources and transparent components all through the chain (including interconnects and speaker cables) to finally produce full sized images and render them with precise shape and location outside the speakers, while a good planar line source does it with the most rudimentary equipment."You don't think it's the inherent difference in directionality between the two configurations? There are many variations of either configuration from different designers, but the basic difference/advantage of non-conventional speakers still remain.....IMO.
Anyways, I'm not sure why "imaging" progressed so high on the list of check-boxes that audiophiles seem concerned about for reproduction. It's down low on my list. :)
Dave.
Edits: 06/07/15
At least when listening to acoustic music imaging is important for the "buy in" into the illusion of listening to a real performance. Once you have stereo then the rendering of awkward distorted images really sets back the illusion and makes you wish for mono.Mono recordings don't require you to buy into the illusion of a live event it lets you enjoy the music as if sitting far in the hall or just outside the club.
I should point out that I had similarly good experiences with Vanderstein and Thiel speakers (at least those of a couple of decades ago when I had the chance to move them around) that did lateral and depth imaging very well without super tweaked perfectionist components. They just lacked image precision and height was not quite there.
I agree that it is likely the directionality advantage but also wonder about phase issues from the XOand driver reactivity since the boxed drivers have a more limited range of flat FR and dispersionn.
Satie, I am in coffee break time and with short time. Kudos, I extremely pleased to see you bring this richly rewarding subject up. This time with yet another perspective.
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