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josh358

I decided to move the speakers to another wall of the room for their initial trial -- not easy since the feet won't slide on this floor (furniture glides coming Wednesday). Mostly, I wanted to see if everything worked. Which, I'm glad to say, it did, despite the fact that the delam hasn't been fixed.
My HTPC still isn't assembled so I had to jury rig my phone, which has to make these the biggest earbuds ever. I found a wonderful $8 program called USB Audio Player Pro that allows you to send high res audio from your phone to a USB DAC with a standard OTG cable and can control the DAC's hardware volume. So I stole the Dragonfly 1.2 from my computer and put it on the phone, then I used ES File Explorer to stream the music directory on my computer over wifi to UAPP. Instant access to all my music files and a pretty good DAC, isochronous USB at 96 kHz, ESS chip with analog volume control. I hooked them up to the A-21. It all worked wonderfully, both DAC and amp came through with flying colors -- if you don't count me reversing the woofer and mid tweeter feeds as a result of the upside-down diagram on the crossover boxes!

While I plan to use the Tympanis in their split configuration, I decided first to try them in their default in-line tweeters-in arrangement go get a feel for their baseline performance. This means that the mid-tweeter panels are too close together and the woofers too close to the wall, so I wasn't expecting a proper stereo spread and in that I wasn't disappointed -- I had to settle for a laterally-compressed image. Today, I'll experiment with split configuration and see what I can do by way of imaging. This shows the speakers as I listened but note that they actually wrap in more and are aligned as per the manual, you can see by looking at the floor how much geometric distortion there is in the panorama shot:

Also,the felt is currently missing from the ribbon tweeter slots, I don't have felt to replace it with yet. So there will be some serious diffraction issues and also presumably an undamped cavity resonance. My main goal was to test the speakers and test the Crowns while I can still send them back if they don't pan out.
I had anticipated having too much bass both because the room is too small for Tympanis and the woofers only about a foot from the walls and in that, I wasn't at all disappointed -- the speakers sounded boomy and muddy. That took about three seconds to fix, using the graphic equalizer in USB Audio Player -- this is the rare kind of bass reinforcement that's really easy to equalize out. Bass was what I've come to expect from Tympanis -- extended, remarkably even in the absence of bass trapping or careful positioning, and with a planar naturalness to it rather than dynamic woofer mush. I didn't push levels to the point of compression but I did listen to an organ recording and it sounded excellent. I sensed that there was a suckout somewhere between 100-200 Hz, presumably as a result of rear wall cancellation, that old dipole bugaboo. But that's all very preliminary, since I haven't played with position and had done the seat-of-my-pants EQ.
My impression overall was one of marvelous tonal balance and at times, the speakers exhibited a remarkable sense of palpability, in that you had the sense the piano was really there sort of way. Also, unlike my MMG's and even my 1-D's, the IVA's sounded great with even substandard commercial recordings, while preserving the detail that dynamics lose. These speakers are beautifully voiced and that's particularly impressive in a bare room, without tweeter resistors.
The ribbon tweeter was its usual remarkable self, transparent without tizziness, just a subtle metallic twang and the very occasional resonance (though fewer than the quasi-ribbon tweeters). And they don't beam like the 1-D's or even the MMG's. The midrange didn't quite match the ribbon as expected, and had some minor fuzz that makes the transition obvious -- however, note that there's some delamination around the segment tape, so I'm guessing that I'm hearing that, rather than just the normal Mylar noise.
Like other 3-way Maggies of earlier vintage, it did sound like three separate drivers, rather than having the more unified presentation of the 1-D's or 3.7's. Again, some of this may be do to fuzz and resonance from the delam. Either way, it will be an interesting problem to tackle.
There was some glare from the ribbon tweeter when I pushed the levels; according to Satie, this can be avoided if you move the XO up an octave, although listening position then becomes very tweaky.
Speaking of tweakiness, I had thought my old 1-D's were tweaky, but the IVA's set a new record for tweakiness! The 1-D's have only two drivers and single first order crossover, whereas these have three drivers and wo higher order XO's. So you have some pretty substantial lateral lobing, which means that they have to be set up for your listening position. The single panels are a lot easier in this regard, since you only have a single angle to adjust.
To my disappointment, the IVA's don't have the dynamics of my old 1-D's. By that I don't mean they won't play as loud -- they will (the fuses set the practical limit) -- but rather that the ribbon driver sounds hard at higher levels and as Satie has pointed out, the midrange is smaller than that of the 1-D's, which runs the bass panels up to 1000 Hz. So while they're far superior to the 1-D's in clarity and have much lower IM on complex passages, they don't have the sense of "feed me all the power you want" ease in very loud passages that gave the 1-D's their dynamic-like slam. But I expect I'll be able to solve these issues with the Neo 8's, and by tweaking the XO as Satie suggests.
Depth of sound stage was surprisingly excellent, better than the MMG's for some reason and much better than my 1-D's, which didn't really do depth at all.
As I said, lateral imaging was compromised by setup and it was also somewhat fuzzy and confused -- the room is too live and zingy, there's no furniture or carpeting or treatment in it yet, so that's to be expected. And the speaker setup was rough, distances, which are critical with these speakers, were only approximate. I'm impressed that they sounded as good under the cirucmstances and expect to do much better today.
Female voices aren't yet where they should be -- Maggies usually excel in that area and these were not quite there. I'd give piano an A, and should be able to get it to A+. Balance on orchestra was superb and even screechy violin recordings were tolerable. Beatles sounded horrible, but those were technically horrible recordings so I'm not sure what to expect! I did miss the famous bloomy midbass -- but again, only after a rough EQ and with no real attempt at optimal placement. One of the best -- and hardest to reproduce -- recordings of all time, the magnificent Klemperer performance of the Deutsches Requiem on EMI, sounded magnificent, stunning -- and damning, if you consider when it was made and how it blows away most contemporary attempts. Even better than on my 1-D's, where it had once so impressed the chief engineer at Sony Classical.
Definition was superb on the ribbon and good on the mid with some planar noise (that's absent from the ribbon, which however has its usual subtle twang), superb in the bass -- much better than the MMG's of course and better than dynamics. Bass was superb overall, with the EQ/suckout caveats. Depth rendition excellent, lateral imaging needs serious work. Dynamics need work, unlike the MMG's they will play loud but the ribbon glare makes it annoying to do so -- but this is not something you would hear at typical audiophile listening levels, it sounds great at those.
Of course, I'm jumping the gun here, these are very preliminary impressions based on brief listening to broken speakers after a coarse initial setup.

Edits: 10/27/15

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