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Re: needs conventional monopole subwoofers to give it the (70Hz performance.

Posted by JP van Son (A) on March 27, 2007 at 17:30:20

In Reply to: needs conventional monopole subwoofers to give it the (70Hz performance. posted by sogood on March 27, 2007 at 16:04:05:

Funny thing. I originally had a couple of lines about "die-hard fanatics" and "knee jerk reactions" in my post, but I removed them right before posting to keep from being unreasonable and guilty of the action I was accosting. I figured it was only a vocal few who made Apogee owners look bad with absolutism comments about the performance being the ultimate and responses ignoring physics as an attempt to beat specs provided by "non-believers" and to give a benefit of a doubt for those who are likely open minded and just choose the speakers for their own preferences not out of absolute loyalty and hyperbole. Guess I should've left the comments in seeing how I was mistaken.

These Apogee panels use a ~80 year old design that's well understood and first popularized by Jim Winey and "audiophiled" with extravagant claims (quite a few held up with actual performance, but not all) by Apogee. While the materials used are top notch and even better than in the more common Apogees, there isn't something mystical about this design that allows it to break physics. The dipole panels aren't especially large (smaller than the Full-Range) and are limited by their surface area in bass. My guess looking at the measured performance of other Apogee speakers of similar design, actual bass performance without the monopole subwoofers is likely upper-40s, but starting to roll off by then.

The review linked to should've provided some hint about that, but I found it surprisingly uninformative. It was an enjoyable read and increased my estimation of Apogee's capabilities (and make me more hopeful about my clone project), but there wasn't much useful information provided. It could be summed up as "the Grands sounded awesome with Tim's (formerly a Magnepan fanatic) amps and awesomer with mine" with a lot of hyperbole and grandiose language surrounding that core. It isn't all that different from what one can find on any planar speaker out there by an enthusiast -- I've been guilty of the same. The author is very technically minded and has forgotten more than I'll ever know about planar designs (builds replacement ribbons, iirc), which is why I'm surprised he made such a post.

The specs (surprisingly limited for such originally expensive speakers) being thrown around about what the panels themselves can do are interesting. The 17.8Hz, for instance, is the same as the spec for the system's subwoofer elements within the tolerance provided. I wouldn't be surprised if some confusion was made there, thinking the total system response (much deeper when room gain is factored in for the monopoles) was that of the planar panels alone. Though, it could also be the resonant frequency of the planar woofer's diaphragm, which would make sense. However, the resonant frequency of a driver is only a theoretical limit and I've rarely seen a design (definitely not planar) that can produce a flat output down to that point. (Case in point, I've a pair of speakers that use a woofer with a Fs of 15 Hz, but start rolling off by 70Hz anechoic, 50Hz in a medium sized room.)

The ribbon elements themselves aren't particularly special, just your average quasi-ribbons with strong magnets. The ribbons in my own Flatline Designs (1/15th the MSRP of the Grands) are flat from 350Hz up to 44kHz in their speaker, so the Apogee's specs aren't abnormally impressive (the roll-off in the Grands, guessing again, is likely due to thicker, and thus heavier material used to back the elements to allow the higher power handling for the higher SPL limit -- I guess the Apogee was designed for gymnasiums or for people who want to become deaf with their "awesomeness".)

The Apogee Grands are a mighty impressive system and one of my dream speakers. Let's have a reasoned discussion about them and appreciate them for the incredible performance they can offer rather than some of the inaccurate fan boy comments that tend to surround these speakers.

- JP

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