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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: RE: Stereophile Reaches a New Nadir posted by A.Wayne on November 1, 2017 at 19:18:14:
Neither Leak nor I had laser scanners at our disposal. It's kind of a tough nut to crack. I thought I had figured it out in 1985, but was wrong. Once I got serious about building loudspeakers and started a company, we bought a Crown (later Techron) TEF (Time, Energy, Frequency) analyzer, invented by audio genius Richard C. Heyser. That's when I finally figured out a way to positively, absolutely measure cone breakup. I had built several fully pistonic speakers before then (using my earlier method), but couldn't prove they were pistonic until I got the machine and figured out an improved measurement method. So I actually did it in 1985, but didn't know it until 1986. Then we built pistonic loudspeakers but the really good ones didn't come out until 1987.
I never told anyone the "secret", as it seemed so simple. I figured it was just a matter of time until everyone figured it out. I left Avalon in 1991 and kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting. It wasn't until Laurence Dickie made the original Nautilus in 1994 that the next one was built. I'm not sure if he talked about it or not. He must have known what he was doing, as you can't quite do it by accident. (Although Jon Dahlquist almost did it by accident with his DQ-10. Much of what people loved about those speakers was due to the fact that they were far more pistonic than the average speaker of the day.)
By 2000 or so a *lot* of people were talking about "pistonic speakers", but none of them were. Even the Avalons went backwards, and were less well behaved than the speakers I had made in 1985. It wasn't until Laurence Dickie released his Vivid Giyas that a company was making fully pistonic speakers, and Andrew Jones with the big TADs. I can't remember which of those came first.
I am kind of surprised that Andrew's designs for Elac are not pistonic. It costs more to make them that way, but not that much more. One company that got kind of close was the old Canadian speaker company, Energy. They had the Veritas 2.8 that was a a fairly close copy of the Avalon Ascent as far as the drivers (two 8" woofers instead of one 11") and crossovers, but in a more conventional looking cabinet. I'm not sure when it came out but Stererephile reviewed it in June 1995.
One of the problems with a truly pistonic speaker is that all of the first-order colorations are stripped away. The speaker is so much more faithful to the source that it can be a double-edged sword. If there is anything wrong with your upstream electronics, a pistonic speaker will let you know about it real fast. It's definitely easier to get "pleasant" sound with a speaker that hides things, much like they used to put Vaseline on movie camera lenses for close-ups of actresses - to "smooth out" the wrinkles in their skin.
And sine 99.9% of all speakers are non-pistonic, everybody is so used to hearing that coloration that they don't usually even notice it. It's kind of like water to a fish. But if you ever hear a system with purely pistonic radiators and really good upstream electronics, it is very, very hard to go back.
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- RE: Stereophile Reaches a New Nadir - Charles Hansen 20:46:03 11/01/17 (0)
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