I wrote a few weeks ago a typically-pissed article about hypocrisy and lie in audio and how you, the fools, allow it exists in audio, despite that we would hardly permit it to exist in our “out of audio live”. I did not posted this article yet but an email that I received today made to write publicly in response, holding my “About Hypocrisy” article in a perspective.

Mr. Yukihito Akiyama, the president of a Japanese company that produces Feastrex driver, juts broadcasted a blast-email proposing public to buy his drivers. I would never paid attention to it if the Feastrex were not use electromagnetics. Since I am experimenting now with electromagnetics myself, it has become almost “hobby of mine” to observe how the BS and hypocrisy around the filed coils overcome a sense of objectivism and realty.

Mr. Yukihito Akiyama clams:

“We at Feastrex focus not only on gap flux density, but also on smooth magnetic flow. We found that maintaining a smooth, stable, and powerful supply to the magnetism used at the voice coil gap significantly improves the sound quality of the transducer…”

Image contecy to IBI Co., Ltd

“In addition to the low flux modulation distortion and high stability of the Naturflux magnetic circuit, the aerodynamic and acoustic advantages of its shape should also be noted. The smoother air flow around the rear of the driver tends to minimize noise due to turbulence, and highly undesirable reflections off the front face of the magnetic circuit (some of which can pass through the cone and have negative interactions with sound coming off the front of the cone) are virtually eliminated by the continuous curvature of the spherical yoke.”

Well, I usually say that a littlie lie creates a bid shortage of trust. All things that Yukihito Akiyama’s clams are fine and could perfectly stay with his credentials, however how much the Feastrex’s clams might worth for anyone who actually heard the Feastrex drives?

Mr. Yukihito Akiyama said: “Those of you who enjoyed the outstanding sound of the Naturflux D5nf prototypes at CES will be glad to know that the actual production units, which will begin shipping soon, will sound even better…”

Excuse me!? “The outstanding sound at CES”? Are you kidding Mr. Akiyama, are you ignorant or you just without any touch with those thoughts that your brain generates? The Sound that Feastrex demonstrated at CES was not juts bad but it was criminally bad. It was not juts overly compressed and inhumanely de-toned. The symphonic music sounded on the Feastrex like the humming sounds coming form a person who sings without opening his mouth. The Feastrex Sound was severally compressed “particle of midrange” where all notes where staying under 4-inch-thick Persian carpet with Chevrolet Caprice Classic 86, turned upside down, sitting atop of that carpet. And after this Mr. Yukihito Akiyama suggested that it was “outstanding sound”!!! Perhaps Mr. Akiyama should review his relationship with Realty. In fact the Feastrexes driver produced even worst result then my nominee for the absolutely worst drivers I ever heard: the Hartley drivers used in the Hotei loudspeakers or something that I deservingly called “the drivers with Sound of a marble statue”.

Anyhow, I “appreciate” the multi-thousands price tag on the Feastrex fieldcoil drivers and all marketing paranoia that accustomed it. In the end of the day – crew those permanent magnets vs. fieldcoils. Mr. Akiyama and similar to him – before put yourself in a position to justify with your accomplishments the fundamentals of topologies learn how to get a reasonable, presentable and respectable sound. Also, learn how to assess sound with using self-serving lie and deception. Then, only then, after you demonstrate some credibility, honesty and proven capacity then it might be possible to talk with you about the flux modulations and about the deep-seated limitations of the “yellow diaphragms” for reproduction of western music.

guy sergeant wrote:

I do have a problem however with the notion that the reproduction of 'western' music requires different attributes than the reproduction of other types of music, for example Indian, Chinese or Japanese classical music. That is simply nonsense.  If Mr Akiyima is only using Japanese folk music (or whatever)  to develop his drivers then he would still, in an ideal world, end up with a speaker system that would play 'western' classical music as well as all other types.  That his drivers don't sound good (in your view, I haven't heard them) is not because of the type of music used but just because he doesn't know or understand what he is doing. There are plenty of 'Western' audio manufacturers who do use 'Western' classical music and yet still manufacture garbage. There are also Eastern maufacturers who do make nice sounding products.  Western classical music is no industry standard. It's just what you happen to enjoy.

I usually do not like Asian high-end audio. I would even say that I (mostly) hate the Asian high-end audio. Their audio is OK but when their audio enters the realm of high-end and people begin to use this own mind to shape the idiosyncrasies of sound reproduction then the Asian listing culture drives Asian folks into the directions that I, as a western listener, clearly do not appreciate. The “yellow drivers”, the amplifiers producing that gray Japanese midrangy sound, the washy-washy cartridges and many other things are juts the manifestation of that strategic “Asian sound reproductive desire” (with of course existing exceptions from the generalization).

The problem is (certainly this is problem only in my Western mind and is absolutely not a problem for the Asian folks) that Asian people not hear listen different different.  I made quite a few experiments with some Asian listeners that I know and when I hold the operating drivers with my hands, restricting the driver’s exertions and severally over dampening them, then the Asian listeners, though they did not like the sound but admitted that it was in some way a move into a desirable directions for them. The reason for this is that Asian listeners and Western listeners has quite different cultural roots and along with them quite different definition of audio retroactive success.

The source for the Western-Asian listener conflict is differences of our languages. The Western people use phonetic symbols to construct their words, contrary to the Asian people who recognize along with phonetic characters the amplitude of pitches, or something that call non-morphemic tone. The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Thai and many other Asian languages consist of many phonetic characters and a number of tonal markings. This concept is totally unknown for Western people as the Westerners uses tones to spice up or to moderate their phrases (question, irony, surprise, sorrow, doubts and so on) but Westerners do not use tonal differences for spelling. (Asians have 4 separate tonal groups). As the result we Westerners get out of tonal emphasis explicitly consciousness pleasure, contrary to the Asian people, who are able to get out of tonal emphasis the intellectual pleasure and values. Therefore, for an Asian person the amplitude of pitch and height of a tone as something that modifies the definitions of the words, not only moderates anthem like it would be with Westerners. Consequently, evolutionary the Asian awareness is accustomed to recognize the intellectual definition of tones and subconsciously their awareness searches for harmonics, only in their cases the harmonics acts not like enrichment of a message (this is what Westerners do) but like a window to a new intellectual meaning.

This is exactly why an Asian listener might sit for hours listening their 3-string lutes or bamboo flutes holding just one or few notes. We westerner recognize juts a few notes in this music and no further events but an Asian person hears the tonal inflictions of a singe note and to him it has an esthetic and intellectual value. Therefore, the Asian listening habits do not live in the world of fundamentals but mostly in the world of harmonics. A Western person has no intellectual definition of harmonics and he primary listens for the sequences of the fundamentals. The Western people (or whoever whose languages has no tone definition) can appreciate harmonics but they use them as adjectives, not as nouns. It is not the case for an Asian listener. An Asian listener make his audio to be single-tone-centric and then spend all his efforts to make this audio to portray more divertly the moderation of a single tone, contrary to a Westerner who wanted to see the relations and the reasons of the relations between the tones. BTW, this is of the reasons why around the World have a lot of the great Asian string players (string are harmonics-centric instruments) but most Asian piano players are quite horrible (piano is fundamentals-centric instrument).

Defiantly what I am saying is a generalization and there are exceptions. Still if you visited many listening room of Asian audio people, and particularly not the typical audio-Morons but those who have some creativeness, capacity and spends affords with their audio then you will observe a very common tendency: they build their audio with quite different objectives then Westerners might do. Or course, when we talks about the Westerners let do not forget that 99.99999% of them (the same ratio as the Asians) have no objectives in their sound reproduction at all, other then juts bring home a new peaces of audio and pile them up in their listening room. Ask tem why they do what they do and what their motivations were and they only will reply you with a quote from the same dull Michael Fremer or from the same tedious Yukihito Akiyama….

Here is where the Asians learned quite well how to use the Western used car-selling techniques to promote their mediocre Hi-Fi. Looking at the Feastrex driver and the Mr. Akiyama’s BS I think they beat us…

…. of Assian vs. Western perception.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/PDF/JapanVsWest.pdf

Rgs,
The Cat

Definitely a good read, once again revealing that Romy has done his homework.  Even though I was born and raised in a small town in the USA, I have half-Japanese heritage and I consistently "scored" Japanese on the tests in the aforementioned discourse.

I find it interesting, since I wasn't raised Japanese and don't know the language, so there must be some hard-wiring.  This may be why I can easily hear the difference between a small piece of silver wire or copper wire in my system, but I can also ignore when the tweeters aren't working and still enjoy the music.  I just listen to what is "right" with the Sound and ignore the bad sounds in my system.

Maybe this is why so many Western reviewers are obsessed with the bass response of their systems and why I can be happy just listening to 78's on a Gramophone.  Anyone else have this experience?

I have looked at the Feastrex website. The picture you show is of one of their permanent magnet drivers. This uses their Naturflux magnetic circuit. Mr Akiyama's quote also refers to one of these permanent magnet drivers so you shouldn't be attacking him on account of marketing bs with regard to their electromagnetic drivers. If you actually read what they are saying and then look at the picture it becomes quite obvious.
I applaud the fact that they seem to be paying attention to the shape of the magnetic circuit. Although it isn't a new idea, very few driver (and especially cartridge) manufacturers do. I believe there are still great improvements to be made in this area of transducer design. 

Were the drivers that you heard at the CES the field coil units or the D5nf (permanent magnet) drivers he says they were playing at CES?

I can understand that perhaps you were unimpressed by whatever they were using but perhaps your eagerness to be the one (and only) person who really understands and really 'does' field coil drivers has got the better of you on this occasion!

guy sergeant wrote:

I have looked at the Feastrex website. The picture you show is of one of their permanent magnet drivers. This uses their Naturflux magnetic circuit. Mr Akiyama's quote also refers to one of these permanent magnet drivers so you shouldn't be attacking him on account of marketing bs with regard to their electromagnetic drivers. If you actually read what they are saying and then look at the picture it becomes quite obvious. I applaud the fact that they seem to be paying attention to the shape of the magnetic circuit. Although it isn't a new idea, very few driver (and especially cartridge) manufacturers do. I believe there are still great improvements to be made in this area of transducer design.

Well, wherever Feastrex people say about thiere attention to “shape of the magnetic circuit” is fine but it is just the words what they say. Producing  for instance a poor driver with granite-made diaphragm and at the same time to “pay attention to the shape of the magnetic circuit” dose not make a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Regarding me “shouldn't be attacking him on account of marketing BS with regard to their electromagnetic drivers”…. Well, if you look at the Feastrex price list then you might understand what Mr. Akiyama intended to say:

However, my primary concern is not the fact that Mr. Akiyama presents his not-Naturflux  (that should be very bad according to you and Akiyama) electromagnetic circuits for higher price. My primary questioning was his credibly and his honesty. It is not big deal to demonstrate an insultingly poor sound at CES, everyone did it, so what? When I meant you a coupe years ago at CES you room did not have any interesting sound, or even any noble objectives. It was not big deal; I did not think you were even trying to do anything interesting at that time. However, you knew quite well the Sound you had and it was OK with you.  Still, you did bulb here and there to the people who were not there that your room had “outstanding sound at CES”. If you did, then there are only two options: you are a liar or you have no idea what outstanding sound might be. This is THE reason why I motioned Mr. Akiyama.

guy sergeant wrote:

Were the drivers that you heard at the CES the field coil units or the D5nf (permanent magnet) drivers he says they were playing at CES?

They were permanent magnet- the D5NF model

guy sergeant wrote:

I can understand that perhaps you were unimpressed by whatever they were using but perhaps your eagerness to be the one (and only) person who really understands and really 'does' field coil drivers has got the better of you on this occasion!

Well, according to my new friend Mikey the FremyMouse it is not my understanding of sound that derived me but my jealousy. In addition, I did not claim any understanding of what is really doing on with field coils”. What I do claim is that people who declare experience and expertise in the field coil world do not have credibility and DEMONSTRABLE SUCCESSES to define the benefits of the electromagnet topology. 

If you can’t grasp the differences then it is OK by me…

guy sergeant wrote:

I don't know to what extent they've tried to apply the Naturflux thinking to the Field Coil circuit. It would not surprise me if that was much more difficult to do. It may have made the costs far too high. I don't know.

Here is the root of the problem (from my point of view) and that thinking is exactly why I decided to write about this particular product. A company that produces a poorly performing driver (regardless of the technology, topology, cost and so on…. just inadequately performing driver, nothing further) comes up with an eloquent logical justifications and theory why their drivers should sound good. The theory has own merit and everything would be fine… if the drivers do sound good. However, those drivers not only underperform but they underperform 325 light years away from where the ordinary drivers with “inferior” technology. To insult the injury the company produces the speaker for those drivers that magnify the misery and a shortcomings of the drivers, how ironic is it? Still, in order to have access to people who treat audio as a “stream of literature: instead of Sound the company wraps all their not-supported BS into a trade name (Naturflux magnetic structure) and begin to drill into the hungry for a new “Messiah from a brown truck” audio minds the virtual advantages of that irrelevant for the giver speaker concept. After all, they do not sell Sound of this driver anymore but they sell obstruct and not justified believe that some kind of Naturflux drivers should be better then not-Naturflux. Wait until the Morons like Mike Framer or Steve Rochlin take the torch and start to “convince” subscribers” that while they were listening the Naturflux driver their 12 feet python had multiple orgasms. What, you do not believe into the brain of the people who measure the performance of the speakers by python’s orgasms. Them you probably jealous of them….

guy sergeant wrote:

It looks as though the basic field coil model uses a one piece magnetic circuit which may have involved high initial tooling costs or excessive machining time. Again, I don't know (and neither do you) and I don't care. They don't have to justify their prices to me. The other 'Permendur' models will be extremely expensive to make. If you doubt this you should try making something with Permendur (and remember you'll also have to recover the cost of the material wasted as you learn how to machine it!)

It is not about the prices bit about the results. If company present $1000 driver that sound like crap and the company suggests that it is a perfect sound then what should be my expected form the driver of quadruple cost? It is irrelevant how expansive Permendur is, it goes to credibility. If a constriction worker built a new room in your house and the roof is collapsed then will his new proposal (to pay 6 times more for having the same room rebuilt but with better fireplace) affect you?

guy sergeant wrote:

If Mr Akiyama did that after the show then unfortunately he's doing nothing different to the majority of exhibitors at those shows who all claim they had the best sound there

Actually, it is incorrect. You practically NEVER see the manufacturers who claimed in this marketing pamphlet that they demonstrated good sound at CES… unless they did.

guy sergeant wrote:

(often just because some visitor told them they did.)

Please, do not insult my intelligence.

guy sergeant wrote:

It seems that the crux of your criticism of this company is that their president dared to say he had a good sound at CES and that they are daring to make field coil drivers. From your show reports, no-one had a good sounding room there. Why pick on them? Why not pick on the manufacturers of electrostatic loudspeakers (a truly flawed technology, badly implemented everywhere and sold in much greater quanties than field coil drivers ever will be) It's the same with all commerce. Vote with your wallet and don't buy what you have no regard for.

I pick whoever I wish, I have ability equal opportunities to employ anyone as a target of my attention. The Feastrex attracted my attention juts because they experimented with electromagnets.

guy sergeant wrote:

For my benefit, would you give some examples of commercial amplifier or speaker manufacturers who have achieved DEMONSTRABLE SUCCESSES and who therefore can claim to have experience and expertise in their respective fields. There don't seem to be any with products good enough for you to use them.

I do not think that this was a question that shaped in a format that might require an answer. There are quite a few interesting products and ideas out there but I do not build “Romys’ Recommended Component List”. I have my reasons why I do not.

guy sergeant wrote:

They aren't forcing anyone to buy what they make. It's like walking into your favourite bakers and seeing a new type of cake on the shelf. You don't have to buy one but it makes the shop more interesting.

guy sergeant wrote:

You do make me laugh sometimes! You really do seem to have problems in seeing the merits in anything if it doesn't fully satisfy the very particular performance criteria you set. As a species such inflexibility wouldn't allow you to evolve very much and you'd soon become extinct.

Yes, you probably are correct but I do not fight for existence or propagation of my breed but rather I’m enjoying my existence.

guy sergeant wrote:

Shaping the magnetic circuit of a driver is possibly a good idea. I hope that someone else may see that idea and implement it more effectively resulting in a driver that is closer to my ideal. That, I would regard as progress. For making that aspect of design an issue in the first place I would commend Feastrex (although in this case it isn't an entirely new idea) It doesn't matter that their implementation doesn't work particularly well or that they stuck one of the dreaded yellow cones on the front. The fact is that they may prompt others to develop the idea further.  The same applies to all of the people working with field coils or some of the things you yourself have done with your playback. Others may be provoked into further advancing the science.

Well, this is one of the reasons why I have writhen this article:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=930

No one questions that shaping the magnetic circuits “might” be a prospective direction but would it be possible to learn about it from an industry participants? Absolutely not! The reasons why not is because the definition of success for the industry players is not the achieved Sound but the amount of sales and the amplitude of marketing squeal was created around tha product that employs the given magnetic circuits.

Rgs,
The caT

Romy the Cat wrote:

No one questions that shaping the magnetic circuits “might” be a prospective direction but would it be possible to learn about it from an industry participants?

I was pointed out to me that my Feastrex thread is mapped to the search engines and some folks searching for limited information about Feastrex find given thread as some kind of reference. It is important to point of that I had juts one and juts momentary exposure to the Feastrex during the event at CES a few years ago and it was it. Also the regular readers of my site know that I have generally an  attitude toward any attends to get sound forma single driver… Anyhow, since this thread is Mapped to the site’s Knowledge Tree I would like to give a chance to justness. So, since this thread will remain in internet’s archive here is a folowup of a Feastrex’s, I presume distributor: Christopher Witmer. It was made on February 11, 2007 and posted somewhere with the Audio Sewers:

"Tristan, if you can get a pair of Dimension 5 speakers for $4K including shipping, I hope you'll get a pair for me too while you're at it. Such a low price is unheard of hear in Japan.

I assume you are referring to Romy the Cat's criticisms. Did you know that Feastrex's website actually links to those very criticisms? They have nothing to hide. Because the principals of Feastrex have very poor English skills, they hired me to be their interpreter at CES 2006 and I was in the room when Romy dropped by. I remember the whole thing very well, and I can assure you, I don't blame Romy in the least for coming away with a negative impression. Here's why:

1) At that time, all of the Feastrex products still had some bugs in them. They were very good, but not yet ready for prime time. In the case of every product they brought to CES, although the basics of the product have remained unchanged, they have made extensive refinements in the last year, and those refinements make a world of difference. They changed the formulation of their paper. They got rid of dust caps and went to phase plugs instead. They changed the configurations of their cones. They changed the content of the varnish that they apply to the cones. They improved the materials that they use in their yokes. They eliminated bottlenecks in their magnetic circuits. They slightly repositioned their voice coils. The frames were redesigned. They tweaked their enclosures to eliminate certain weak areas of the sound. In other words, the products they are bringing to market are significantly improved over what they brought to CES 2006.

2) Romy stopped by early on the first day of Feastrex's first show ever. Just reading that last sentence should bring a knowing smile to the face of any small manufacturer who has participated in one of these shows. Murphy's law definitely applies. The electricity sucked. The acoustics of the room sucked. Their amplifier broke and they spent precious time dealing with that when they should have been trying to figure out what to do about the horrid acoustics of the room. They finally did eliminate much of the problem, and the solution was ridiculously simple, but by that time Romy's visit was already history. If he had come by late in the show, after they had figured out how to deal with the room's horrid acoustics, perhaps he would have felt differently about them.

3) They fired their chief engineer shortly after CES 2006, and they seem to be much better off without him. (To those who know about Feastrex's earlier relationship with Exact's Mr. Sano, I'm not talking about Mr. Sano. Mr. Sano got the boot half a year before CES, and this fellow was brought in to replace Mr. Sano.) They had high expectations that he would be able to head up their development project, but he had a very hard time thinking in terms of "a startup venture on a limited budget." One mistake that they made was allowing him to determine their pricing structure, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. One of the things that got Romy pissed off was the screwy way they had their prices set up. Romy wasn't the only one pissed off about that, but I guess a combination of factors made him decide to write about it in his characteristic style -- a style which has gotten him permanently banned from this forum, by the way. Anyway, that side of things has also been addressed.

It took Feastrex nearly all of 2006 to get everything worked out to where they felt confident in starting to bring products to market. It has only been in the past few months that they shipped out anything to anyone. That's one reason why Dick Olsher's glowing comments about the D5nf just recently came out.

I have not heard the most recent Dimension 5 speakers that have all the above improvements made to them, but I had on loan for four months a pair of the type that went to CES -- starting two months before CES, and I returned them two months afterward. I thought they were wonderful, but I couldn't possibly afford them. Fortunately for me, I have had a chance to hear the D5nf speakers a few times as improvements were being made during the past year, because there have been several demonstrations here in Tokyo. I have not heard the final version, which Mr. Teramoto tells me is much better than the ones I heard,but the ones I heard knocked my socks off. I was preparing to get the basic black model but got a good deal on a pair of the gold model because they had some cosmetic blemishes in the gold finish of the yoke.
If the Dimension 5 was within my budget I would be listening to it again before buying, but it's not so I only made it a point to listen to the D5nf. If the Dimension 5 has improved as much in the past year as the D5nf has, it is sure to be one fantastic speaker.

Finally, to go back to Romy, have you seen his personal speaker system? It is a five-way compression driver horn system. Knowing him, I don't doubt for a moment that it is truly fantastic, but I wonder if he would ever be pleased with any single driver solution. "Different strokes for different folks," as they say. I hope that someday Romy has a chance to hear the Feastrex drivers that are actually being brought to market. It would be interesting to see if his final opinion would be any different.

As always, "Your mileage may vary." Still, that's an incredible price if it's correct. I know some people in Japan who would love to be able to buy a pair at that price."