Serge wrote:

Thales tonearm tracing an infinite groove.

I am a bit missing. Those speakers are Silbatone or G.I.P?

The anointment that I head was these speakers are made by G.I.P

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=16210

The G.I.P is known as driver maker, not the entire speaker maker. Silbatone would be the more appropriate company to do it, perhaps they used G.I.P drivers, or G.I.P made the speaker and gave to Silbatone to market it under own name. It is not know…

Regardless, I do feel that his new Silbatone/G.I.P speaker is a remarkable move. It is much more interesting then the garbage with Magner driver that Silbatone did a couple years back. I hope their whore Joe Roberts did stick those old speaker with Silbatone drivers in his own ass – that is exactly the place they shall rest.

I would discard the Silbatone preoccupation with WE. They want to drag them from show to show – it is fine, they very soon get tired from it. From audio advisement perspective this WE fixation is kindergartenish. The new speaker however is very notable and I am very glad for Silbatone for THIS move.

ArmAlex wrote:

The price is 167,000 Euro I was told. The material they used for bass cabinet at least looked like MDF. Sound was much better than any speaker I've heard in show, expect Cessaro which was wonderful. BTW Marten, Kharma, Focal, Magico and some other porcelain driver speakers could happily compete for worst sound in the show.

Needless to say the sonic impressions I am getting at the shows may be deceptive and always are very preliminary: that's the nature of an event like that. Who knows what's happening in the mains while I am listening, may be the AC power just got a crapload of some digital sucker in the next room or whatever.

Anyway I heard what I heard and I am sure that was like that. May be next 5 minutes will bring radical difference. Or may be not.

The SIlbatone room was very large. They played an Edith Piaf record on a mono WE16B (or A, not sure). They played it very loud which I don't like, ever. I felt the system was made to show dynamics and it did it. The dynamic range was really undistorted and huge. But I've got the feeling that there was no power or body behind the jumps and dives of pure SPL if you see what I mean. I'd say a touch of pneumatic sound was there - no real drive behind the notes. It was not bad though since the music was coherent but lacking substance a bit - both tonally and artistically.

Then they put on stereo with their horns and the sound was in many ways similar to original WE. Of course it had much more extension at the top end and the bass was weighty but as an approach to showing me the musical performance it was very much the same. Dynamic but a bit empty.

Swissonor also had a big room but not as large as the SIlbatone's. They do a lot of restoration for classic Thorens turnables and also their own amps and speakers. Very lively sound though distorted and amorphous in the bass. Speakers used a horn-loaded woofer and old-style coaxial mounting of a tweeter.

The sound I like most was the one at Audio Tekne's room. I never listened to them before. The speakers were very ugly. I'd say extremely ugly. And 4-way, drive units arranged as if by chance. The big ugly turntable cost 53000 euro which made me cringe. Later I was told that the speaker cost 300 something 000 euros.

But the sound was decent. The frequency range was limited, there was a hint of some colouration and distortion in the highs but the music performance was meaningful and within-reach as opposed to something distant of which I have no concern.

Serge wrote:

The SIlbatone room was very large. They played an Edith Piaf record on a mono WE16B (or A, not sure). They played it very loud which I don't like, ever. I felt the system was made to show dynamics and it did it. The dynamic range was really undistorted and huge. But I've got the feeling that there was no power or body behind the jumps and dives of pure SPL if you see what I mean. I'd say a touch of pneumatic sound was there - no real drive behind the notes. It was not bad though since the music was coherent but lacking substance a bit - both tonally and artistically.

I guess the nature of the business dictate to get bigger room and to have more people in there. Funny but at the show manufactures “compete” in the eyes of stupid public opinion by the size of their rooms as a bigger room sends a message that the company does well rand and afford to pay those exuberant fees for larger rooms. Needless to say that the larger room, and particularly the German style with glass, blows in a face of most of audio. The Silbatone own speakers are topologically not truly equipped to deal with larger rooms without retuning. In the past Silbatone I think invited third party consultant to help them to retune crossovers and to fit the speaker to the room acoustically. I do not know if they did recalibration of the speaker for the large room. To a degree the “lacking substance a bit - both tonally and artistically” that you report might derive from some challenges in Fundamentals Channel – something the slides very first in large room, particularly with the speakers where Fundamentals in the melody “range” can’t be individually dial in;  topologically it would be possible only with Cessaro Gamma. There is a catch however. The full bloom of Fundamentals in a large room and in context of full range is very complex. Neither  Silbatones are full range but still going for “full bloom of Fundamentals” would be in a way suicidal and people at the show would not “get” it. It is much more preferable at the show to strip harmonics, subdue Fundamentals and to demo fast and clean “dynamic” sound. I guess this is what Silbatone was doing….

Serge wrote:

Then they put on stereo with their horns and the sound was in many ways similar to original WE. Of course it had much more extension at the top end and the bass was weighty but as an approach to showing me the musical performance it was very much the same. Dynamic but a bit empty.

I am disappointed with Silbatone own horns. I think that idea was wonderful, the design was superb and with proper mind set they could proper that speaker to very significant popularity. With near ¼ mil dollars price tag they killed the whole idea. It does not take a lot of brain to make an acoustic system expensive, it hake much more wisdom to make it finance-efficient. Altec Lansing sells their Altec A7 for $8K, Silbatone topologically in the very same price category as Altec A7, so why A7 cost $8K but Silbatone $235K? The sonic advantage that Silbatone might have over Altec might exist but it will be still restricted by the topological limitation of the both speakers. The whole point was to have the new Silbatone as I said before for 20K and to have it hugely scalable- people can chose what drivers they want, how much they are willing to pay and what kind sound they are willing to get. The whole great, from my perspective, notion of the new Silbatone design was that it can accommodate absolutely anything. The type of the bass bin that Silbatone use fakes any bass drivers you wish. The MF horn has no limit in length, so put in the 1” or 4” driver – does not mater, juts change the tail of the horn and slide the horn in time-aligned position. For sure setting the price of $235K Silbatone killed all of it. Unfortunatly….

Serge wrote:

The sound I like most was the one at Audio Tekne's room. I never listened to them before. The speakers were very ugly. I'd say extremely ugly. And 4-way, drive units arranged as if by chance. The big ugly turntable cost 53000 euro which made me cringe. Later I was told that the speaker cost 300 something 000 euros. But the sound was decent. The frequency range was limited, there was a hint of some colouration and distortion in the highs but the music performance was meaningful and within-reach as opposed to something distant of which I have no concern.

Yes, they are extremely ugly but I do like it as a “package”. This super ugly shape with unfinished particles board panels and screws sticking from the speaker work out fine with me. I would be much more annoyed if they have the same ugly speaker with piano-gloss finish. I do not know anything about Audio Tekne and I do not truly understand what they did or where trying to do.

Serge wrote:

The sound I like most was the one at Audio Tekne's room. I never listened to them before. The speakers were very ugly. I'd say extremely ugly. And 4-way, drive units arranged as if by chance. The big ugly turntable cost 53000 euro which made me cringe. Later I was told that the speaker cost 300 something 000 euros. But the sound was decent. The frequency range was limited, there was a hint of some colouration and distortion in the highs but the music performance was meaningful and within-reach as opposed to something distant of which I have no concern.

Yes, this English pace did not give a lot of new information.  I know nothing about the AudioTekne Company. I like that they wrote about their bass driver but I do not know how much truth and the actual results behind it. I do think that they worked in this direction and did something. For this matter I have no idea what kind drivers they use. They give no indication of it and provide only weight of the drivers – like somebody cares about it. Why they ask specific amount of dollars for this speaker but do not ask for 21.2 kilograms of money? This comments about the subduing the vibration of horns and boxed I discard as irrelevant.

Anyhow, the entire design look slice straight forward and in my view not well thought. The bass driver is direct radiator with looks like felt-impeded large port. It is what AudioTechnica does – an effective way to get more LF extension. They claim that the driver is “special”. Very possible. However, topologically this is very cheap solution. Sergey told that the AudioTekne speakers cost 300 something 000 Euros. For this money the LF section must be estranged into separate modules. The solution with bass driver sit in the same box and the rest of the speaker in my view are good for sub $40K-$50K (retail) . If somebody is willing to put more money/efforts and to get more interesting bass then it automatically imply separate bass modules with option to position them where they have to be and dedicated amplification.

MF and HF drivers sitting horizontally. This is a big labiality and of cause a main screw up. I would like to see a larger MF channels as I estimate that the existing MF would not go lower then 6-7Khz. I guess they drive the upperbass horn way too high, probably all the way to 6-7Khz. The MF and HF do not look time-aligned but I do not know where the diaphragms in those drivers are.

The upperbass channel is a classic J-horn with a compression driver. As I said they most likely drive it all the way up, using the reflected HF from the J-horn bend. I really hate that HF reflected sound and I never seen anybody get anything good out of it. I can only presume that they mask the sun 7K problem with MF and HF channel and in context of the very live show room no one recognized it. The straps to the upperbass horn are ridicules. To hold the horn month in the position it shall be much effective ways to be used. If they try to send message that the straps prevent/damps the upperbass mouth vibration then it is laughable.  All that those straps tell me that somebody needed some kind of mouth holding solution 2 days before the show started and they found it. Unquestionably it is a very elegant solution for basement-built $2000 prototype but it is not a solution for $4.000.000 commercial acoustic system.

All together I am not impressed about what I see in Audio Tekne. I would like to learn more about the drivers but it is about it….

Serge wrote:

Silbatone used a WE horn to play in mono and a pair of their own horn cabinets for 2-channel.The very cinema sound reinforcement looking horn was, I was told, a 16B. I will post some comments about the sound a bit later.