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Posted by Gregm on
10-24-2007
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...For only $ 25k: http://polymeraudio.com/index.html It is sold under the name Polymer Audio and these people also sell amplifiers called "DK design"
I haven't listened to this product & am referring here to the unusual marketing content in their site.
They state their speaker is "best" & they set out to prove this by named comparisons with 2 other speakers... an unusual marketing twist. They don't actually prove anything, but...
...they also give a quick bill of materials vs retail price comparison for a number of named speakers which I found interesting, and they refer to the drivers used in 6-7 models out there.
So their approach is, with us you get a lot more for your money and here's the proof. Whether you need what you get -- or like its sound -- is another matter, it's neither here nor there.
In fact I find this an acceptable argument within one context, at least: if you need what you get (i.e. anyone wishing to diy a very trendy speaker) it's better to buy the speakers & use them as parts rather than buy the parts off the shelf! That much is proven on their site.
What you get for USD: 25k. Two boxes made out of wood & polymer. A super-duper passive xover with selected parts, etc, etc, and one cut-off @ 500Hz /can't tell about the others/ , which took 6-7 yrs of hard-work to design (in fact, some of the drivers used weren't available then -- how's that for forward looking ). You get a 1" titanium dome Supravox tweet; a 2,5"Thiel & partner diamond-ceramic "midrange "unit (allegedly these cost $12k each), and, placed far apart, two 7" mid-bass units paper (?) metal(?) with titanium sprinkled on them from somewhere in Italy. You also get the necessary complement of internal wire, binding posts, support platform.
Interesting comparisons:
it's cheaper than a Tiffany engagement ring, they say, for example. Tiffany's engagement rings, however, have a frequency response of 2Hz - 1,2MHz depending on how well one perceives the loved one wearing that ring and the moment... so that comparison is unsuccessful.
It's better than a Marten Supreme because the mid is cut off @500Hz whereas Marten cuts it off at 1,3kHz "where the ear is at its most sensitive". Note: they must be referring to latest technology ears -- not the traditional ones (i.e. the ones most people on this site probably use). Whatever, if you say so.
It's better than a Magico Mini!!! Now you're talking!
Actually a good question would be, "in what way is it better? Sound for oscilloscopes or JM Jarre?" This question as in: "I heard JMJ being played through a Magico Mini, and the rendition of the chipset in the CMI.... floored me it was so realistic".
That 2,5" ceramic must be doing a hell of a job playing well at 500-600Hz up to I-don't-know-where (5-6 kHz ?)...
Anyway there it is for your casual perusal.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
10-24-2007
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Actually, Gregm, I think those guys are in a very right direction as they do discover an objective method of evaluation of loudspeakers. You remember I use to tell that I have a concept off purely mathematical function that expresses dependence between quantities and qualities of listening evaluations. I was not kidding, so the apparently the Polymer Audio people are not kidding. They come up with a few new ingredients though:
BpO - Buck per Octave – measures the amount of currencies paid for one octave of reproduction.
DaBpO – Dally Average Buck per Octave – measures the amount of currencies paid for dally average use of octaves.
BpR – Bullshit per Review – measures amont of the foolishness must be expressed in an industry review in order to sell 100 pair of loudspeakers.
SEpS – Sales Efforts per Sale – measures the amount of minutes a sale person sell convince a buyer to get the product.
4-eBay – Quarter-price characteristic – the among of days the eBay prices for a given product drops for ¼ from a suggested retail prices
6eBaen - Srajan Ebaen Factor – a delta between the product worthless glossiness and the misery of its performance….
Do I need to go on?
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
10-24-2007
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I have written my previous post after reading their remarkably-idiotic page about “values” and noticing a few mistakes in thier “punch-lines”, still there is a further point in all of it.
The Hi-Fi companies and Hi-Fi marketing are lost touch with the nature of sound reproduction and so deep in disassociation with the means of Real Audio that they are forced to pull out of own asses new and new ways “to sell”. What Polymer Audio does is nothing new – it is very normal behavior for a newcomer manufacturers nowadays. When a few years ago Magico popped up on the Hi-Fi market then Alon The Owen (not the designer – he does not do it) was running around screaming how much he anti-industry and how much he do not like all of industry's "things". Meanwhile he was running form one industry player to another, from dealer to dealer, from reviewer to reviewer, buttering up his crappy speakers and kissing evryonew in the industry into asses. The Polymer Audio does nothing new or wrong – another year and some doodles-writing cretins will sell the Polymer Audio's prodacts to public and Daniel Khesin, the founder and CEO, will be loading his 4th Lamborghini in his garage.
After reading their entire site (I was unsuccessfully looking information about SOUND) all that I found there was a remarkable is the level of open grotesque with which the company says about own product. also what surprised me was the level of treatment of the prospective customers as a potential idiots. It is in a way reminds me how US politicians talk to public. I might agree with Daniel Khesin – his prospective customers most likely will be the idiots….
Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Posted by Gregm on
10-25-2007
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What I find irksome is exactly this: | Hi-Fi
companies and Hi-Fi marketing are lost touch with the nature of sound
reproduction and so deep in disassociation with the means of Real Audio
that they are forced to pull out of own asses new and new ways “to
sell”. |
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In other words, we are expected to purchase a product (esp speakers) for a number of reasons none of which seems to be directly related with what the product is supposed to do.
Clearly: | the level of treatment of the prospective customers as a potential idiots |
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is very high.
What the product I would purchase is supposed to do is produce sound in an overall correct manner relating to that sound, in a way that further correlates to what I have defined, and be better at this than my present product doing the same job.
Failing this, why would I purchase the new product since I can stay with my existing one?
Even kitchen tables proposed for purchase are accompanied by a few reasons why to buy: functionality, aesthetics, durability...
However, take the above speakers -- and I take these as an example, one of many, and I would have nothing against the Polymer/DK people: I am urged to purchase these because...
a) they are the best...??? (imagine someone trying to sell you a kitchen table because it's the best)
b) they are cheaper than the retail cost of the parts used... OK
c) they are better/different than two other models using some parts from the same supplier...
d) the drivers have a strong magnetic field...
Presumably, one would buy speakers because they are EACtm : electrical to acoustic energy converter. So how is that sound?? No idea. We are expected to infer functional quality from peripheral considerations: 6 yrs in developing a xover, the Gauss spec of the driver, 6people or 60 or 600 worked very hard for 10-100 years to produce the product, so it must be good...
Basically, I am expected to purchase this product (or many others) simply because it's new, it contains trendy parts, it;s fashionable, because it's nicely lacquered, because... none of the "becauses" being its functionality.
Indeed, manufacturers and marketing seem convinced that people will buy something new anyway; not because they need that particular product but because it's new.
So the attitude seems to be:
"Clients are deaf, so who cares about sound and similar stupidities. Now, what does it take to get this moron and that moron to buy my product rather than the neighbour's?".
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
10-25-2007
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I still find that what Polymer Audio is reasonable if to take under consideration what they are. The Polymer Audio try to appeal for a totally different segment of prospective customers – the Robb Report reading and the sleazy Rolexes wearing yuppies, sort of the people who have already grow up from expensive pop hi-fi and who now look for something “different” that the other might not have. Surely SOUND is not a commodity in there…. Ironically those yuppies are the best customers... So, why do not talk to them in the language that they can understand?
I certainly do not make any explicit presumptions about the sonic results of Polymer Audio speaker - I just do not share many of their views that they express in their “Technology” section. Still I would give them an opportunity to demonstrate what they do. However, their grotesque stress of price-enforcement in their presentation does portray what was in the head of the Polymer people. It kind of reminds me the joke that Jay Leno did last night in Tonight Show”- “We assure you that the prize you pay will be less that the value you get from our services…
I wonder what would be next. Probably it will be an offer to buy a loudspeaker because it automatically enters the owner into a specials lottery of give to the owner a free pair of tickets for the next World Series. (In pompous US the “World Series” are a set of the baseball games between sport teams of two cities).
BTW, keeping jokes aside, I know about a local audio guy who bought or sold (I do not remember already) a pair of Wilson Audio loudspeakers and the condition of the deal was a fully paid day in Connecticut casino – so the tendency is there…
Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Posted by el`Ol on
10-29-2007
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 Gregm wrote: |
It's better than a Marten Supreme because the mid is cut off @500Hz whereas Marten cuts it off at 1,3kHz "where the ear is at its most sensitive". Note: they must be referring to latest technology ears -- not the traditional ones (i.e. the ones most people on this site probably use). Whatever, if you say so.
That 2,5" ceramic must be doing a hell of a job playing well at 500-600Hz up to I-don't-know-where (5-6 kHz ?)...
Anyway there it is for your casual perusal.
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The true reason why they do this is probably the very poor behaviour of the ATD from 1kHz up. CSD below is truely state of the art. I ask myself if their remarks about standard crossover means they use elliptic x-over, but if they did this it would have been possible to cross higher. Does anybody have information about the diamond midrange? Could it be used up to 20 kHz (with poor dispersion)? Accuton website still says available soon. That they use the Supravox in such a speaker (and no diamond tweeter) could be very interesting for high sensitivity people.
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Posted by morricab on
11-07-2007
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It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker. Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint. My guess is cost. They already had splurged for that hellishly expensive midrange and they want to keep the speaker priced in a range with the Wilson Watt/Puppies of the world. Add the diamond tweeters and now you are looking at $40,000+ speakers. This Supravox tweeter was perhaps the best they could find and still kept the price in the (more or less) real world.
Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible. Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations. I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good. My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues. Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer.
I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker. I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money. It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny.
It reminds me of when Bobby Palkovic from Merlin tried to convince me that his $10,000 two-way speaker was justified in the price because it was so expensive for him to build. I calculated that there was only about $600 per speaker in materials...
Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like? I have heard Lumen White speakers with Diamond tweeter and it wasn't bad at all with Ayon Reference 52B monoblocks. The Avalon Eidolon Diamond sounds boring with a Pass labs setup.
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Posted by Gregm on
11-07-2007
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| morricab wrote: | It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker. Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint. My guess is cost.
Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I
think it makes sense to push it as low as possible. Of course going
too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations. I have
found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite
good because the coherence through a critical range is good. My guess
is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues. Perhaps
even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer. |
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I would agree about the cost -- but that's my speculation. Extrapolating, I have a personal theory regarding hard ceramics. The ratio of the cone size vs paper drivers vs usable frequency is +1,5 octave at least in hi-pass: i.e. let's say you have a great choice of a driver from say 1kHz, changing the cone to diamond you should be considering upwards of 2,5kHz.
So, if I had two diamond-coned drivers, one 2,5" & one 1", I would be spending a lot of money to cover a region only from upper-mid to bats (the tweet reaches its limits ~100kHz). To be safe, I would propose over 4-5kHz. Furthermore, it's difficult to mate that hard ceramic with anything else after it... what would be the MF of choice?? Probably another similar ceramic, since it's available. But then, you're stuck with the rest of the frequency spectrum. For mid-bass I would like driver that provides some tonality and also contributes to the spacial restitution; this is usually a paper, and its characteristics must differ from, say, the upper mid unit -- obviously, each is dealing with a different FR. The smaller the soundwave, the better suited is the hard ceramic. Admittedly this is no scientific observation -- just little experience trying to "systemise" Accuton's regular mid + tweet in a system. It is also what invariably comes to mind whenever I listen to speakers which use small ceramics as mids & the equivalent tweets, including the diamond ones. I have nothing to back it up, except for Caballe sounding as if she lost a LOT of weight, the cello sounding like a viola, and the violins made mostly out of plastic (sometimes glass).
| morricab wrote: | | I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker. I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money. It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny. |
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Indeed, it's the marketing approach that captured my interst.
| morricab wrote: | | Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like? |
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Yes, and no. Yes, as in there were the speakers in a room being used. No, because I didn't hear the mid & tweet but what Marten did with them and what the owner did placing the speaker system and setting it up to play, and it was impossible to move all those boxes anyway to change anything in their spacial position... and the sonic result is better left out of the discussion.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
11-07-2007
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| morricab wrote: | | It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker. Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint. My guess is cost. They already had splurged for that hellishly expensive midrange and they want to keep the speaker priced in a range with the Wilson Watt/Puppies of the world. Add the diamond tweeters and now you are looking at $40,000+ speakers. This Supravox tweeter was perhaps the best they could find and still kept the price in the (more or less) real world.
Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible. Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations. I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good. My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues. Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer.
I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker. I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money. It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny.
It reminds me of when Bobby Palkovic from Merlin tried to convince me that his $10,000 two-way speaker was justified in the price because it was so expensive for him to build. I calculated that there was only about $600 per speaker in materials...
Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like? I have heard Lumen White speakers with Diamond tweeter and it wasn't bad at all with Ayon Reference 52B monoblocks. The Avalon Eidolon Diamond sounds boring with a Pass labs setup. |
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Defiantly, why not? I do not think that anyone has an answer to it ironically, as I can see it, the problem here is not with diamond tweeters themselves. We do not judge the diamond tweeters but rather the implementation around the diamond tweeters and here is where the problem I see lays…
Any company that I know of, and the sound or products am familiar with, since they went for diamond tweeters (after they formerly used other tweeters) got very unfortunate results. The Avalon Eidolon is just one of the long line of them – how wonderful was the original Eidolon and how bogus become the late Avalon production. This list would go on but does it mean automatically that diamond tweeters are some kind of ultimate evil? Not really and I see in all of it a bigger fish to fry.
The last few years audio industry invented a new definition of hi-fi sound and the majority of selling and writing cretins are aggressively hammer-in the notion of this sound into the vulnerable mind of morons-audiophiles. They the supply demands kikes into the game and as result tweeters are not used to care a proper TTH pattern but rather to imitate the glory of SS application form beginning of 70s.
I still would like to see a company or a designer with civilized sonic objectives employ a diamond tweeter in his arrangements – who know – it might do well. The only problem is that the designer will have no market to see his loudspeaker the demands of the target market had already been screwed. Look around, you will see many of manufactures who are capable for “good sound” obliterate (some of them deliberately) better sound in own products, replacing it with barbaric industry-promoted “sonic thrill”. It is very difficult to judge a specific topology of the drivers in this environment. I do confess that any single speakers with diamond tweeters I have heard were crap. Was it the fault of the diamond tweeter? I do not know but I certainly do not think so. As I always say – any technology in hands of barbarian produce barbarian result…
The caT
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Posted by morricab on
11-08-2007
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Hi Romy,
I see now you are throwing around the term "absolute tone" in a relative manner again . Why would you want to neutralize absolute tone and with a metal tweeter no less!! You are talking about a tweeter "absolute tone" offsetting a port noise "absolute tone"....Hmmm I think someone spiked your kitty food with catnip! Back in the old days they called that Boom and Tizz or "west coast" sound courtesy of JBL.
The ONLY truly invisible tweeter that I have had the privilege to listen to is an ion tweeter, like acapella or lansche audio. If the diamond tweeters were to blame for the bad sound I heard from speakers with them is their fault or not I don't know. The ion tweeter is essentially massless as well! Has no materials colorations (although it is colored optically ) as well. The next best tweeters I have heard are ribbons and eletrostatic drivers. While not being completely colorfree they are very open and natural sounding. Especially long ribbons (like Apogee, which will play down to about 300Hz) have an easy open quality that is hard to beat. When I think about WHY they are superior to the typical dome I come back to one simple point, NO high frequency resonance!! A good ribbon goes easily to 30 or 40Khz and then just rolls away. Electrostats also have no high frequency resonance to intefere with crystal clear (no pun intended!) highs. This is also why nasty eletronics are so easily shown up with such drivers.
I sure would have loved to hear the Hill Plasmatronic speaker. He had a HUGE Helium plasma (needed a tank of helium and looked like lab equipment) that went down all the way to 750Hz!! I think that would be an nearly ideal mid/high driver but matching it to a conventional driver would be hard and was probably why the speaker was not that successful. The plasma tweeters today only go down reasonably to a few Khz before they need to hand off to another driver.
Personally, I think they should have bit the bullet and put in a diamond tweeter as well. If their design is good by running the mid down to 500Hz or whatever and the highs should be good to about 10Khz with that 2.5 inch mid then I think they could have a winner on their hands. My guess is that they felt this funky titanium/gold tweeter was a good price/performance compromise. I don't know what its measurements look like and how bad it resonates but I am sure that it does. The diamond tweeter pushes it far enough out of the audio band that it is no longer problematic.
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