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Audio Discussions
Topic: Hi-fi is just a(nother) product category, I think

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-15-2006

Once again, it is not about the loudspeakers but about the idiots who put themselves in position of shaping public opinion by expressing the “expert” view.  Yes, I am taking about the Morons who write those audio reviews. A new Danish 90db sensitive speaker that has no MF channel and uses a planar crossed at 2kHz is hardly something that deserved to mentioned at my site. However, those feeble speakers like magnets attract the most ridiculous sale personnel to push them. So, here they are…

A friend of mind send me PDF file with Eben X-3 review (Presumably it was December TAS – I am not getting TAS anymore) asking if it might be worth to drive far and to listen them.  I, juts looking at them, I immediately replied that the speakers have that tweeter crossed too low and should not be considered. Then, reading that PDF file with speaker description I was actually laughing.

Do you remember that phrase “You know, for kids” from “Hudsucker Proxy” - the brilliant Coen brother’s satire about American corporativism? It was exactly “for kids” – the crap that Jim Hannon offered to his readers. Looking ion the bogusness that Jim expirees I wonder if he might go to a special TAS reviewers school where he got contaminated with the typical TAS writing idiocy….
   

  Jim Hannon wrote:
Denmark produces some of the world's best speaker drivers, and the units in the Eben are quite special. Designer Michael Boerresen has created a unique, sealed, planar-magnetic tweeter whose voice coil is etched onto a diaphragm that is less than 1/10th of a millimeter thick and weighs only 1/10th of a gram.

And what is unique about it? There are plenty thinner and might lighter ribbons. Not to mention that they do not suffer from the planar’s “wrapping” syndrome…

  Jim Hannon wrote:
I do not know of a planar-magnetic, ribbon, or electrostatic tweeter with better power-handling or more extended high-frequency response than this one.

First of all if you do not know that you should not be in business to write reviews. Second, what THE SAID has to do with power-handling? The third – who cares about the extended high-frequency response if those Denmark peoples crossed it at 2khz?!!!

  Jim Hannon wrote:
Three large, powerful, neodymium cobalt magnets…

Hold on? Are they neodymium or cobalt magnets? The neodymium is neodymium and the “cobalt” are the samarium cobalt magnets. The are different magnates! If Eben X-3  does used use “large, powerful, neodymium cobalt magnets” (whatever it might mean) than what is the point of being “large and  powerful” if the damn speakers has 90dB sensitively. Perhaps the “unique” about the Eben design that they lost a hell of lot magnetic flux in the stray fields? Still, it would not be unique but it a very common unfortunate practice for ignorant driver boulders…

  Jim Hannon wrote:
… magnets are distributed across the back of the membrane, which is constrained right around its periphery. Voltage is applied across the entire membrane, top and bottom.

Jim Hannon forgot to mention that voltage applied across the entire membrane is also unique for the Eben design as in the most of the other drivers the “voltage” dose not travel across the entire membrane but jumping across membranse like kangaroo…

  Jim Hannon wrote:
As appealing as the design of the Raidho/Eben planar appears, exotic tweeters are notoriously difficult to integrate with conventional midrange drivers without negatively impacting coherence, timbre, and transient speed.

Yes, it is correct. If they cross those planar not at idiotic 2khz but at 200 Hz then they would have even more difficulties.

  Jim Hannon wrote:
The reality is that most cones have trouble keeping up with the speed of low-mass/high-speed ribbon, planar-magnetic, or electrostatic tweeters and they have different launch patterns. Both the design of the planar tweeter on the X-3 and its placement on the front baffle, recessed slightly back for time alignment and flanked by a sloping foam-like sur- round, help make it far easier to integrate with the Eben's cone drivers, which also happen to be lightning-fast. Raidho teamed with Per Skan- ning of Audio Technology to develop a custom set of relatively small (6.1 "") dynamic drivers which use expensive, massive Audio Technology motors assemblies and Raidho cones. Each column uses five of these and although these dynamic drivers are the same size, they incorporate slight differences to optimize their performance. For instance, the mid- range unit has a Kapton voice-coil former to improve its speed and reso- lution. It may be the quickest cone midrange unit I've heard and it, too, has excellent power¬handling and frequency response out to 12kHz, although it gently crosses over to the planar tweeter at 2kHz. This inte- gration between the Raidho planar tweeter and cone midrange driver is very good and rivals the coherency and speed of the original Genesis V loudspeaker I used as a reference for several years, while exceeding  the Gen V's high-frequency extension, if not its air. (That speaker mated two circular ribbon tweeters with a midrange dome driver that was anything but conventional. Both of these superlative performers come surprisingly close to the single-driver coherency of a large SoundLab electrostatic in treble/midrange area, and the Eben is just as coherent as the big 'stat in the midrange/bass.... blah-blah-blah-blah)

I do not want even to comment on this BS. It all defiantly too much… you know,  for kids…

The caT
Posted by Paul S on 12-16-2006
Ulysses S. McGill had it about right (Cohen Bros., "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"):  cons find easy marks when times are tough and everyone's out shaking the bushes.

Also apropos:  "No one ever went broke by underestimating the American Public." -- P.T. Barnum. 

It's been a while since I've seen such a great, steaming pile of partly-digested crap pushed out there as a "review".  Either: the guy is bi-polar; he was getting down to his deadline with nothing; or he was on the downside of a long bender.  At least Hunter Thompson was entertaining under the same conditions.

What's facinating to me in this case is that although this one is obviously drivel it is in fact just barely askew from the mainstream dreck that people actually subscribe to!  Just change a word here and there and you have a line that reads substantially like The Big Boys, who really do "sell", month in and month out, year after year.

I mean, kids, yes, of course, God help them.

But people over 18 don't take this seriously, do they?

Best regards,
Paul S
Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-18-2006

Paul, what I feel people are missing is that there is something else behind the fact that some kind of fool has written a foolish review. You see, by constant writing their ordinary idiotic articles the reviewers take microphone out of the people who should be taking – the manufacturers. Manufacturers should be the people who should express in publication their objectives, intentions, reference points and the ways in wish their products should be used. And I’m not taking about the fools manufacturer who sometime pop in the publication and try to imitate the fool reviewers. A manufacture is like a pianist – there are no needs to play if you have nothing to say. I am taking about the manufacturers who are able to demonstrate conviction, certainty and the means to demonstrate their convictions. Besides, it would be beneficial for us, the users,– people would clearly see that majority of high-end manufactures are in fact the “naked kings” who are not worthy even to listen not to mention to vote with their money

Look, for instance what HP did in the last TAS. Instead of writing his typical-glorifying “release notes” (to witch he apparently already feel abhorrence himself) he decided to introduce Hansen’s new speaker letting the manufacturer to talk himself. (The reason why I read it because I was informed that Hansen was expressing a lot of very similar things that I’m pitching for years). Agree or disagree I with what I read but it was less disgusting then the typical garbage we accustom to read from most of the reviewers. Defiantly I would prefer HP did not ask sophomoreic question and Lars Hansen had a chance to express more interesting views then … what is “today expected by hi-hi crowd”. Form a different perspective perhaps HP was right navigating Hansen into primitivism. The industry people could operate only at ETHER level of bogus “incredulous technically” OR at level of “spirituality for sale”. If they, god forbid mix it together then they sound more like a mix of  Charley Manson and John Marks… both revolting but the mix is  not only revolting …. but well “deserved” to be published… in the hi-fi publications…

Rgs,
Romy the caT
Posted by Paul S on 12-18-2006
As we have discussed, part of the problem is the co-dependency of "reviewers" and "manufacturers", so why expect sagacity from a "manufacturer"?  In fact, even the traditional role of manufacturer is mutating into "specifier/marketer" of goods made more cheaply in 3rd world countries, so it comes to pass that the "principal" (or the principle, for that matter!) only exists in the denominational sense.  Adorno would have a field day with this!

I think there are people out there who have a measure of understanding about what is going on with the hi-fi industry, at least at the level of consumer goods (which are, after all, about the only links most have with their aesthetics), but I think it's likely that even the majority of these people are sub-consciously still looking for "exotic" and/or "underground" editions of more or less the same old stuff.  I know that this is no secret because of the financial success that any number of enterprises have had by pitching exactly to this quasi-underground "market".  That there is good stuff out there, too, in no way mitigates the fact that the set-up itself is flawed to the extent that the good stuff inevitibly shares shelf space with junk, and both are hawked with equal intensity by their purveyors.  If you've got the money, Honey, I've got the time.

Of people who actually do have some useable, promising  ideas, how many times have we seen someone begin with such promise then gradually lapse into a proscribed orbit, not only in terms of "price point" offerings but also in terms of design desiderata, in the process losing not only the initial promise but generally also anything, really, that made or would make his "product" distinct in other than proscribed generic terms, AKA, "features"?

We must also face the fact that even a site such as this is constantly being monitored and evaluated in terms of specifc references, whether there is something more out there to copy, buy and/or plug in, never mind that you constantly warn against this specifically.

As lazy as I am, I just hope that your concept of "training" components to sound a certain way will somhow rub off on enough manufacturers, specifiers, or whomever that all I have to do is go online and click for speedy delivery.

But I won't be holding my breath,

and I never voted for the Bastard!

Best regards,
Paul S
Posted by Gregm on 12-19-2006
As long as the motto "sell to survive" stands, performance parametres will kneel. If you want to sell -- and now we have a fantasmagoric global marketing opportunity, you start by being known.
A magazine review is one way of doing that. A silly one is better than a serious one.
A good product is one that sells regardless of its intrinsic perfromance parametres, good or not.
Talking about "design features" is helpful and goes to show how serious you are about your product -- it may be definitely rehash "underground editions of more or less the same old stuff" as you say.
But, I think, the "features" to be mentioned change with trends and fashion; there are proscribed and prescribed things to say at any given point in time...

Other than that, with products like speakers selling at +50k, there is a lot of room for good implementations. Really, I find manufacturers claiming the ubiquitous "price point" or its opposite, and the entertainers' (self-proclaimed "reviewers") often incomprehensible mish-mash pitiful.
It used to be entertaining to read all these things: "alnico-cobaltium" magnet-- you bet! "Ruthlessly revealing, unforgiving of partnering equipment..." yup, La belle dame sans merci= a S&M image of a speaker with +10dB between 2-8kHz.

It's not fun any more. I must be getting older, or it's too much of a bad thing, or both.

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