Here is an interesting setup. It is nowhere in Moscow Russia. I did not hear it but it does not mean that we can’t analyze what the authored was trying to accomplish.

It is 3-way installation. Bass looks like dual Goto driver in a J-horn with 35-40Hz mouth. The horn looks like too short for it rate. Also it is not know if the Goto drivers are tunable for this specific horn. From what I heard from Goto people they do not even understand the concept of driver resonance and none of Goto systems I read about even mention the Fs of Goto drivers. So, most the Morons just load off the shelf Goto drives into whatever they use and then feel that if they pay so much for drivers than it shall not sound like crap. In contrary I do know that this approach does lead to very unsophisticated bass.

The twitter is some kind Fostex, probably 900 or 9000, which is fine.

The mid range of course is the most interesting – it is 8” Lowther loaded into a short horn. So, basically it is a direct radiator. I am know to be not a big fan of Lowther but this Moscow guy is looks like trying to do something interesting. I think he has small room and listen in very nearfield position. I made this conclusion from the way how he alight the Tweeter to MF. If you paid attrition the tweeter sits on the curve that focuses very close to the speaker. It is hard to estimate from the picture but if the Fostex has the cone on the back then we are looking at ~8 feet. This says that the playback does not need to pump pressure for 1000 sq feet room and Lowther might be not overly horrible.

As I motion before Lowther might be very good in VERY limited bandwidth and with going too low. My estimate was that it might be 700-800Hz and room is not too large.  I do not know where the Moscow guy low passes his Lowther. If he goes lower then 700-800Hz then he might not listen complex music. If he does cross it there then the question how he can drive his bass horn so high? My estimate is that this type of bass horn is good for no higher than 400-500Hz. However, the Moscow guy uses his MF channels as phase plug for his bass horn, effectively extending the HF of his bass horn. This is elegant idea in my view.

Still, I think that it is a bit a half ass solution. The guy obviously have recourses, interest and desire to get the things right. To have the things done right he needs to put an extra upper bass channel above his bass mouth. He has an excellent space for it. If he introduce let say 200-800hz additional cannel then he would be able to use Lowther MUCH more sparingly at lower knee and will have MUCH better control over the room loading and now he is pretty much is a hostage of a chance.

BTW, pay attention to the wall finish – the exposed rock; this is a phenomenal room treatment.

haralanov wrote:

Romy, the main driver in this acoustic system has nothing to do with the funny Lowthers. It is very high class field coil speaker unit made by Oleg Rullit. The owner of the system has tried the highest class of the Feastrex line of widerange drivers - D9eIII, but he prefers the Oleg Rullit's because it better renders musical intonations. Here is a photo of the Feastrex driver in the same horn.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I still feel that a complementary upper bass channel is begging to be used in this system.

oxric wrote:

Whilst as Romy points out, the room might well be on the small side, it has a very high ceiling (say 4.5 m) that in my mind always presents fabulous opportunities.

Jeen wrote:

бас- спаренные драйвера GOTO, нагруженные на 45-герцовый рупор (длина 3.6 м) Диапазон - 50 - 200 Гц Среднечастотный рупор (200 - 12000Гц). Динамик Руллита на подмагничивании. Твитер Fostex T-500 AMK-II

haralanov wrote:

Quote taken from here:  http://www.classicaudio.ru/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=98788#p98788  Jeen wrote: бас- спаренные драйвера GOTO, нагруженные на 45-герцовый рупор (длина 3.6 м) Диапазон - 50 - 200 Гц Среднечастотный рупор (200 - 12000Гц). Динамик Руллита на подмагничивании. Твитер Fostex T-500 AMK-II Judging by the chronology of the photos, obviously the first change in the system was the midrange channel. It seems the guy found some sonic faults in his goto compression midrange (and his tweeter channel too) and then changed them with a wideband quasi horn loaded driver. At the moment of this change, the goto supertweeter is still there: For some unknown reasons, he later decided to change it with the sharp and artificial sounding fostex supertweeter. What might be his motivation? Logically appears the following question – is that Goto supertweeter so horribly sounding??

haralanov wrote:

For some unknown reasons, he later decided to change it with the sharp and artificial sounding fostex supertweeter. What might be his motivation? Logically appears the following question – is that Goto supertweeter so horribly sounding??

It is very difficult to make any guess just judging the fact that photographs were changed.  Those people post pictures but never talk about reasons or actual results. A few years back there was guy, I think he was from Greece or from Italy, I do not remember exactly but he was from  the Mediterranian region, so he was traveling around the world, listed different playback installations, shared his views about Sound and the most important interviewed the system owners about their reasons, motivation and interpretation of results. That how the audio journalism shall be taken and his articles WERE interesting. Considering that it had absolutely no commercial exposure I found it was very educational.

So, what we have juts pictures it is very hard to say what is doing on. I am trying but without know people personally it prone to be just guessing.

I do know personally a few people from Jeen site and I am not very big fan of them. I very much do not like Jeen himself. He is an eBay intellectual who lives by cults he creates, I hate those people. Also I did caught Jeen in past on very deliberate lie. Not mistake or blinder which would be fine but very ugly falsification of facts, made very deliberate and in very revolting way. I do not like it and if I see it wipe out the persona from people whom I treat with any respect.

I do not know if the Moscow just is a part of Jeen’s circle. If yes then he can stick his horn in his own ass because he is undoubtedly as much as much idiot as Jeen is and I do not care about his results or reasons. It is possible however, that they are not close, juts live in the same city. If so then here are the options I see for the system owner move from Goto to customized Lowthers

1)      The customized Lowther might have some sonic characteristics that the system owner find valuable. This is very interesting to learn but there are a few factors that I would like to bring to the table. The Jeen’s site says that the owner plays in Jazz band. It does not indicate that his built his playback to play only jazz but considering the he high-pass his Lowther at 200Hz (!!!!!) I doubt that this playback ever played anything serious or seriously. So, of the guy is listening mostly jazz then all bets about motivation are off as they are not justifiable.

2)      The system owner got sick from burning the Goto upper range drivers. Got driver with super fragile VC and ultra-low mass are very vulnerable and have no power handling. I heard from a number of people that it is VERY easy to burn Goto HF drivers and I have seen as some people step away from Goto just because of this reason. There is a guy in South America, I forgot his name, he is well presented at web with all Goto system and he moved out from Goto. I read his comments at AA and Altec site where he was complaining about low power handling of Goto. This Moscow guy use 2A3 amps to drive MF, shall not be too much power from them but if you give a DC pulse to the amp’s input by changing the cables while the amps is on then will  it burn Goto tweeter?

3)      The system owner might have no reasons or motivation but he just following Hi-Fi fashion that Russians invent for themselves. If you look at our idiots like Jonathan Valin for instance then does his change of his speakers preference indicate anything? Of cause not as he has even no “preference” but many other sound unrelated motives why he use one or another acoustic system. The Russians do not have the sinister motivations as the US pimps do but they have their own “issuers”.  Russians are very tribal creatures and they live in many ways as a collective herd.  Their leaders invent for themselves some “party of interests” and then they spend enormous amount of efforts to maintain those cults and own relationship with those “party of interests”.  I personally is very much individualistic and I do not like Russians for their desire to be “violently together” and fear to be independent. Russians mostly do not act or think as an individual but rather as “supported tendency”. So, it is very possible that the Moscow guy was riding in past a wave of Goto popularity. Then the prevailing wind of fashion was changed. 10 year ago a Russian audio propaganda guy sold to Russians the myth about German Natzi audio and all Russians were trading to each ashes from Auschwitz that they believe need to be applied to driver’s diaphragms in order to make it to sound better. I am very little kidding - it was absolutely the same level of idiocy. I think Rulit was riding the way of that German popularity from end of 90s, furnishing Russians with vintage German audio. Eventually he went for making his own drivers and I think nowadays he does a lot of electromagnets with old German paper and leather suspension. That is the current fashion in Russian and the playback of the Moscow guy juts reflects it. Saying all of it I do not make any presumption how good or bad it is, I just say that flowing the current fashion is not a motivation that needs to analyzed.

Anyhow, I hope the Moscow guy will come across this thread or by other means will recognize the he needs a dedicated upperbass channel for his setup.  Then he will not drive his  Lowthers to the horrible 200Hz and will be more realistically see the true performance of his MF driver.

Wojtek wrote:

I'd like to point out that Fostex 500 MKII is very much not sharp and artificial sounding. If anything it's an opposite -little too syrupy , soft and round so it blends with cone mid better than beryllium tweeter.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I think it is absolutely not need to discuss how Fostex tweeter sounds as it might sound like anything.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I tend to believe that it was just the way how different people used it in two different setups. It is very simple unwilingly to make Fostex-like tweeter to sound sharp and sharp. Unfortunately many people do.

Romy the Cat wrote:

We have no idea what this guy is looking in Sound

Yras wrote:

I listened to this system and photos were done by me. It LOMO 2A-9 in which the coil is changed and (dome), a paper will change later. They are softer, line and is more musical GОТО. Very much it is pleasant to the owner of system. GОТО sounded much more chilly and not interesting.