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General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Phase coherent speaker designs

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I would have thought that the reasons you have selected both the Vandys and Meadowlark were because of their phase coherent signature design. Of all the speakers you are comptemplating to upgrade to, only the Thiels come close to achieving what the first 2 speakers can do - seamless integration from top to low frequencies, able to throw a naturally wide soundstage with precise definition of sound image postioning, - a trademake benefit of first order cross-over, slanted speaker driver designs. But as a consequence of low order cross-over designs, there might exist some frequency anamolies which sometimes the manufacturer try to minimise with some heavy-duty EQing internally. Thiel is probably the first proponent of such speaker design.

The rest of other speakers are not phase coherent, either because of their high-order cross-over designs or 1 or 2 of their speaker drivers are wired out of phase with relation to other drivers to achieve more linear frequency response. In many cases, the latter design might seem to produce a "more transparent" sound reproduction, but will not bear pro-long listening because the non-linear phase integration have grossly distorted the original musical waveform, usually resulting in an unnatural, hifish sound reproduction. I read your impression of these speaker design and I think you have also come to the same conclusion:

Dynaudio Contour 3.0--very neutral, but unemotional
Audio Physic Virgo III--great, but string sound a little thin, treble somewhat disconnected from the mids and bass
Vienna Acoustics Beethoven--nice but fatiguing, hard strings
JM Lab Electra 926--fantastic, but strings sounded like wires
ProAc Response 2.5--natural, musical, emotional, sometimes just flat out gorgeous, a little lean in the bass compared to the Thiels, JM Labs and 804/803s.

Check their Step Response graph on Stereophile magazine speaker review archives to give you a better picture.

If you like to stick with phase coherent speaker design, you may consider also those from John Dunlavy.

I have used the BAT VK200 for 1.5 years now. It has deep bass extension, natural soundstage presentation and is exceptionally capable of evoking emotional reponse. The minuses are lack of detail resolution at low levels and excessive heat generation. Properly isolated from resonance and given ample warm-up time, the sound can very captivating. I just changed to a Pass Lab X350, a similar balanced amp design and find myself missing its full-bodied, seductive sound. In my system, the BAT's earth pin was lifted, which I find dramatically improves it's detail retrival. But you might want to be careful doing that.

Hope that helps.



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