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It was yesterday around 4 PM – I viciously took it off and decided never use it again.  I was listening Brahms German Requiem with James Levine and BSO – a phenomenal performances in my view and one moment after being offended by each note the F120A played I sais the it was enough and I should not endure that horrible audio masochism anymore. I took the F120A out of the system and I know that it will not be neat to it anymore.

A few hours prior, I played with Fostex F120A, trying different operations. I have absolutely no idea why the F120A has such a good reputation as it has among the Fostex users. I sincerely feel that Fostex F120A is the absolutely the worst driver I even had in my room and it is not a poetic glorification of my hate to the F120A’s sound but just a fact.

I tried a few amps on F120A, the 100W SS, 2A3 and full-range Milq – I have identical sound in all 3 cases. In full range application the driver is just operating faulty. It has huge amount of distortion and alien sounds at bottom region that make it virtually unlistenable. Crossing it at $600-700 makes the alien sounds and crappy paper-cone inflection to go away. Still if I play it a bit louder then it comes back. That “newspaper sound” looks like completely goes way at ~85dB it I cross the driver at 1700-2000Hz. The driver does not look it might play louder than 85dB. From top end the F120A is kind of extended with the quality of HF being very poor. I took one of my “slow” silk dome tweeters (North Creek Music tweeters) and tried to add it to the F120A. Sliding the crossover up and doe I concluded that approximately at 5.500Hz I stopped to hear the F120A’s HF misery. So, 2000Hz to 5.500Hz – too much for a “full range driver”?

However – it was not the worst part. The worst part was that whatever even left in MF was absolutely not usable and it sounds at very much sub-acceptable level. Dynamically it is emblematic how a driver must not sound. The 75dB sensitive SL6000 of chippers Martin Logans sound like a thunder compare to F120A. The transient characteristics are not even present in F120A as it feels like sounds do not change in this driver. Whatever the driver reads sound like colors during a midnight in fox 0 it little have no dynamic or tonal discrimination. I do believe that the drivers are defective in some way as the crap like this shell not exist.

I can give you the very exact feeling how the F120A sounds. Pretend that you have a normal 8R driver properly loaded to your SET and you have OK sound. Now you take .2R resistor (it is zero point 2 Ohms) and sun the driver, making your SET to drive sub .2R. Did you note the dymick, tonal and expressive changes in the sound of your amp? Here it is – this is now the F120A sounds…

Anyhow, it was in the middle of the German Requiem when I took the dreaded F120A out of my room and switched sound back to my Hamster system. It was like a breast if fresh air after running a marathon in gasmask. OK, the Fostex, never again….

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