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About the new LS5/9.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
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Just noticing this. No real opinion otherwise.
At least, it will sound like a British Radio!
I appreciate Derek Hughes's practical advice. I am using a pair of Rogers Studio 7 speakers. Rogers also made the original BBC LS 5/9 that Derek talks about (using as a control for his new version).
The Studio 7 uses the same kind of PVC surround (and driver) as was used in the LS 5/9 that Derek describes as disentegrating over time. I am experiencing this.
The PVC surround of one of my speakers keeps separating from the cone (creating audible distortion) and I keep gluing it back down, but I can see that eventually I am going to have to have the surround(s) replaced.
I fear that new surrounds may change the speaker's sound and I wish I had the wherewithal and knowledge that Derek has. He seems to have painstakingly researched modern materials and compared them to the oringal materials used, before coming up with satisfactory replacements.
Derek's knowledge would be very useful to me with this project.
The problem may not be the surrounds themselves. Sonically PVC makes a good termination for a cone driver. The problem may be the glue you are using. I recall that one of the difficulties in creating the 1st polypropolene cones was finding a glue to use with the material.
You may be right. I will have to research glues.
Thanks! for sharing.
What's interesting to me is that despite Derek's talk about neutrality, the BBC family of British speakers (Spendors, Harbeths, etc.) have a personality -- actually personalities within the overall personality. I would love to hear him respond to a question about that.
Thanks for this post! To my ears, the speakers you mention are some of the most colored speakers on the market. These speakers are pleasant sounding, but they are not neutral.
Absolutely correct. How about the famous BBC dip which was put in to give the speakers a mid row perspective. But for the time BBC speakers certainly were among those with the very lowest coloration.
A good friend of mine, who designed tons of electronics and speakers over decades both commercially and for himself, once wrote an article that he wanted to follow up called Color Me Perfect.
Care to expound?Are you saying that all BBC speakers share a "house sound" but that each individual model has a distinctive and easily recognizable voice? Much like the well-known family unit comprised of "Papa Bear", "Mama Bear", and "Baby Bear"?
BTW, can you name a loudspeaker that is devoid of "personality"?
Edits: 04/06/14 04/06/14
This is my favorite audio subject. I’ve gone on about it too often and will likely continue to do so because I find its issues fascinating and believe them probably unresolvable. The subject probably fascinates less those who understand the science that lies behind it.
I think these speakers, considered loosely as a family, have the same general priorities. Clarity, subtlety, delicacy -- the achievement of which seems to reduce overall fullness and weight. Their designers feel that since no one appears able to retrieve both aspects of live sound equally well, this is the one that matters most. The other side feels, with equally good reason, that in order to achieve a persuasive sense of the scale and avoirdupois of live music through a domestic loudspeaker, a bit of this clarity has to be sacrificed.
The differences between these camps can result in radical differences or fairly subtle ones, depending on how strong the belief of a designer is in his point of view on the matter. The differences among the speakers within the family have to do mainly with the presence or absence of a bit of what I called “charm” and some others often call liquidity. Spendors tend to be more charming than the others, Harbeths somewhat less so, some of the others I know less well (Sterlings, etc) even less, approaching at the extreme a trace of dryness. I expect this has a great deal to do with choice of materials in the bass drivers (bextrene, polypropylene, “radical,” paper, etc., though also probably response curves.
Those who don’t like these speakers call them relatively thin sounding, yinny, buttoned down, precious, diplomatic, pedagogical; those who do like them call them accurate to source, neutral. I have lived happily with some of these speakers and with some of the ‘other camp.’ If I spend a couple of weeks with what I consider to the best of one or the other, I ‘get’ them and they affect how the other sounds to me.
I don’t think one of these approaches or sets of priorities is right, the other wrong; but I do think the differences are important. There are very smart designers on both sides.
Truthful but a bit boring?
I too have oscillated between speakers with a bit of go to them and the neutral ones. As a sometime cathedral Chorister, I want to hear singers working. I ended up with a pair that were on the more dynamic side.
Soon I will be building a pair of WR spheres using Mangers from 150hz up.
JBTW I really enjoy your reviews of music CDs etc. When I hear one of them I agree with you.
I also record concerts for a local FM station.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
Haven't heard Mangers. I don't get around much anymore, by intention. John Geisen and Creston Funk bullied me into listening to Tocaros and look where that got me!
I'm toying with auditioning the Graham LS5/9's out of curiosity, but I warned the importer of my affairs with Spendor and Harbeth and said if the new Grahams weren't better he should probably ignore my curiosity.
If you enjoy my record reviews you must be as unprofessional as I am...I'm more a fan than a student. I treat music as something that's somewhere between literature and baseball.
Does Graham Audio already have a North American Importer?
http://www.simplyanalog.com/about-graham-audio.html
I was a 'professional' singer from age 9 to 18. I was a cathedral chorister and we did get paid.
I have sung - off and - on ever since. I like your even handedness with HIP recordings in particular and your concern for effect / affect.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
Technology aside and considering sound alone, don't the Quads belong in this family? I had a customer here once who said my Harbeth M40s sounded like Quads to him. I found that curious but my experience with Quads is limited. Since then, I've heard that comparison made by others as well.
I think Derek Hughes said it all when he revealed that the goal of the BBC research program and thus the goal of all the designers working for the program was/is accurate reproduction of human speech.
I think that's what all the BBC speakers have in common, even though they vary considerably when it comes to engineering, driver engineering, geometry, driver size, cabinet design, etc. They all possess a consistent approach to solving this engineering problem (accurate recreation of human speech) and that's why they have a consistent "voice" or "house sound."
Yes, I understand that. Alan Shaw of Harbeth reiterated that view as did long-time Harbeth fan Robert Greene. Greene also insisted on the accuracy of M40's in reproducing his violin. Getting a human voice or a violin right is a commendable accomplishment. The issues that arise with these speakers come when more than one voice is being reproduced, especially full orchestras.
I do intend to look into the LS5/9, however. I am curious, as are most of us, to see if this venture into the past will result in something more successful than either the Spendors or Harbeths, not that they weren't in their different related ways.
Whilst the BBC design speakers are good with voice, they were are not so good at the bottom end or bass which is why I much prefer TL speakers. I used to own both Spendor BC1 & Harbeth HL1, Spence & Dorothy Hughes visited my House when I made a complaint about the BC1.
Edits: 04/08/14
Can you think of a loudspeaker that seems to have little or no "personality"?
Not really. I think some speakers that strive conspicuously for neutrality end up having a signature we can also identify. What I hear from these speakers is the sound of cowardice: a lack of identifiable defects rather than virtues. And that is definitely not what we hear in the concert hall or jazz club. Don't get me naming names here because I'm really not permitted to express that kind of opinion here. And they know who they are. Let's just say that the sound of "neutrality" in audio is a sound. When someone says a speaker sounds boring, that's what they're hearing.
This subject deserves a lot more than I can give it, especially on the technical side.
I cant think of any more noble a pursuit for a speaker manufacturer than neutrality. Please explain to me how a speaker that isnt neutral can do more justice to halls or clubs than one that is? Problem is that most speakers are so colored or have so many other difficulties that the audio public cant handle a more neutral presentation without thinking of it as deficient.
"I cant think of any more noble a pursuit for a speaker manufacturer than neutrality."
Noble is the word. Nobility is good stuff.
"Please explain to me how a speaker that isn't neutral can do more justice to halls or clubs than one that is?"
I can't.
"Problem is that most speakers are so colored or have so many other difficulties that the audio public cant handle a more neutral presentation without thinking of it as deficient."
I agree that "the public" is accustomed to a colored presentation. I think that if they heard a genuinely neutral (transparent, realistic, objective) presentation, they would initially be put off but that they'd come around eventually. Of course part of it is that most people don't really want that. They want something that sounds attractive (their standard of that) all of the time. I may not 'approve' of such sinful behavior but I understand it, sometimes practice it myself...
.
It's a punishment for trying to be god. It's Audio's version of falling into the Icarian Sea and so yes, ironic rather than tragic since the result is boredom. We've always known that the truest line to where we're all going is a curve, not a straight line.
This whole conversation leaves out speakers which sound aggressively bad, whatever their priorities, of course. Bad is worse than boring, I guess we can agree on that -- at least in audio.
Thank you very interesting indeed
An aspect that i have found mostly interesting is that he uses speech reproduction as a main testing tool.
I think this is key to the very high performances of his creations.
I see that they place at 2.4kHz the crossover frequency.
In this way the woofer reproduces almost all of the voice.
Once the voice is got rightly then everything follows.
I would be extremely interested to know what tracks they use for testing
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
Thanks. As someone who lived through the BBC era as an audiophile and loved the BBC sound, a conversation from a designer who knew and lived through it was especially interesting.
S the conversation says the LS5/9 was meant to be a small LS5/8. And as some one who lived with a set of LS5/8s for a monthin the early 1980s(I wrote a review for Stereophile)if the LS5/9 sound similar(as I'm sure they do), I can say if you like BBC sound you'll love the LS5/9.
Alan:
I still own and love a pair of BC3s, designed by Derek's dad. Man -- talk about "midrange to die for" . . . .
Jeremy
Interesting speaker. A friend had a pair about 30 years ago, BC2 woofer as midrange with Celestion tweeter and super tweeter(instead of STC super tweeter with a 12" woofer below. It's a heck of a woofer. Same basic design is still used today and was once used up to 1800 Hz in a 2 way. What amp do you use? The BC3 was a difficult reactive load so hard that Wireless World said that if an amp drove them it would drive anything..
I use 2 Mc 275s, bridged and connected off their 4-ohm taps. I used to connect as 8-ohm, but I imagine to myself that the 4-ohm taps sound better. But in the past, in a smaller room, I successfully used a Dyna St-70 that I wired myself from kit. (Nostalgia is a wonderful thing -- thank you.)
I don't know if I still possess Mr. Hughes's specs, but I think I recall that the woofer was used to a very high frequency in the BC3 as well.
Jeremy
Good amps to drive them. The woofer was used to about 400 Hz but to 1800 Hz in the 2 way. Of course in those days 400 Hz was a low crossover point. The famous AR2ax crossed to the mids at 2000 Hz which makes it a tweeter to me. The original AR3(not 3A) crossed at 1000 Hz.
I think it was in the first issue of Stereophile that I ever saw (may not have been the first issue) that your friend Gordon recommended both the Dyna and the Mc amps. I became a JGH addict approximately instantly, not because of the recommendations but because of the writing.
J.
Gordon was the best. He had a great ear. He wrote beautifully. He had a sense of humor. And while he considered himself non-technical he had a wonderful sense of how things worked even if he wasn't that good with the arithmetic.
Who also designed the two latest BBC speakers and the LS3/5A bass extenders for Doug Stirling.
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
Edits: 04/05/14
Derek Hughes seems to be involved in almost everything associated with new BBC designs. I recall he did new crossovers for the LS3/5a and the Spendor BC1 for a German company. I don't know if they're still available.
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