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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: New superlative horn build - ESD acoustic
Post Subject: Well, time will show...Posted by Romy the Cat on: 4/8/2019
 rowuk wrote:
For all practical purposes, ESD has“proper“ horns and apparently decent drivers. Thus, we have a chance with this collection of bits to have some decent sonic results. Now we just need a process, perhaps the most difficult part.

Well, the “better” ingredients are not necessary an assurance of any kind “better” or better to say advanced result. I feel that advanced thinking is typically bring better results and so far I do not see in what ESD does any advanced thinking. Pay attention to the presentation that ESD did in Munich, the video is imbedded at this thread a pages or two ago. I think is was very good presentation and it very much exposed what is in the head of the guys who are responsible for what ESD. They do not saying wrong things in that presentation, although there are some things that I would very much disagree, which is fine. The main fallacy in that all tougher good presentation was a presupposition that mindless accumulation of better ingredients is enough to make “best” speaker. First all of that ESD does are not “best” ingredients but the most important is that the whole presupposition is fundamentally faulty. The “best” speaker is made by administration of very fine and very sensitive aspects of sound repudiation, including very subjective and very hard to understand logically nuances, opening your mind and to use tangible and non-abstract methods to navigate own decisions.  Of cause it includes better ingredients and properly applies science but as one of my old friend told me in 90s: if you measurements do not directly correlate with you listening experience then you do not measure right things. 
 
The case to point are some small Japanese boutique shops. The Japanese, some of them, have own relationship with “labor” and they are willing to spend literally a life time to polish some kind of obscure knob and to experience some bizarre pride that that fucking knob is polished to insane degree of perfection. As the result sometimes you can meet some very odd examples of very none-commercial Japanese audio that define all rule of common sense and that sound absolutely stunning. Efforts, perseverance, honesty and the labor of love is the key in my view. 
 
ESD is juts at the very beginning of the journey. They got drivers with some good ideas and only God knows how they sound. Thiers horns are OK, the exponential slowing horns opening with cut off frequency is an old ide and generally not bad but it did not lead them from withdrawing horns from HF. And of cause the main ingredient of ESD controversy: the last LF channels. There was so many people who wasted time and money with last mid-bass horn and stiff drivers, in my mind none of people who do it have ears… 
 
Anyhow, my bitching about ESD is that whatever they do they present as so kind of “last” statement in horns thinking but a very superficial analyses of the thinking they invested into their current design indicate that they are not forerunner of horns thinking of any kind. I feel that Jeffery Jackson for instance is much more suited for this role…

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