Manolis Proestakis from Greek have announced his Anima Loudspeakers.

http://www.tuneaudio.gr/

The lead came from Stefano Bertoncello's blog; the picture was taken from there as well.

http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2009/11/manolis-anima-speakers-at-athens-show.html

The name of the speakers made me to laugh as I in my ultimate phonetic vulnerability have confused it with “enema”. Then I discovered that   Anima is a word from Greek psychology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima

What however I did discovered within myself that the word “enema” is a phenomenal, beyond phenomenal marketing world for audio product.  If I ever produce any commercial audio device then I would LOVE to call it “Audio Enema Reference MK-II”. Please consider the name  Audio Enema™ is trademarked  as my “Audio Demoronizator”

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Commerce/AD1.aspx

Anyhow, let to be a bit more serious and to look what the Anima Loudspeakers is all about. I have to admit that since the torch of sane sounding horn-loaded loudspeakers nowadays in my hands (among the outspoken people with web presences) I feel sort of an obligation to comment about new interesting species enrolling in my domain.

It is 3-way all-horn loaded. A Titanium 1" compression tweeter in looks like plastic Tractrix 3-5K horn.  Looks like 300Hz wooden Tractrix with 5-inch none-compression driver and 2”-3” throat. Vertical floor-loaded exponential upperbass horn with a 15-inch driver. The upperbass serves as the speaker frame. The crossover is .25K and 1.5K, all first order. The reported sensitively is 107db. Impedance drops to 6.2R.

Anima is an interesting speaker idea but with very many very controversial moments.  When I have time (probably later on this week) I will do a critical write up about some of the Anima’s idea. Meanwhile, feel free to pass your comments about what Anima’s offers, keeping my below linked position about constrictive analyses in perspective:

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=11790

It may be asking too much to expect the LF horn to play well up to and beyond 250Hz. Although the mid horn probably has an Fc of 200Hz the associated driver isn't going to be functioning optimally at the crossover point either. How well this marriage works will govern how convincing the speakers are. the designer may feel that these compromises are acceptable to make a system that fits within a typical room.  The mouth of the vertical 'horn' also seems a little constricted. the HF driver & horn might be moved forward.  It is an interesting effort though. it would be instructive to hear them.

What your picture doesn't show is that they were using a $20 CD player as the source. Good for them!




I noticed that the Greek company Sonus Aeterna also finally exhibited some of their speakers at this Athens show.



Pictures from ChrisB (HiFi Wigwam)

guy sergeant wrote:

It may be asking too much to expect the LF horn to play well up to and beyond 250Hz.

guy sergeant wrote:

What your picture doesn't show is that they were using a $20 CD player as the source. Good for them!

guy sergeant wrote:

I meant the upper end of the LF horn response.  Firing it downwards at the floor as they do and then expecting good performance at 200-300Hz in the listening position is a tall order. There may also be some confusion where the mid horn takes over.

The first and the bigger thing that I like about them is that Anima is trying to use the vertical-horizontal configuration where the bell of the vertical horn serves as frame for horizontal channels. I love this idea and had a number of my own thoughts along this way never successful however.

Then there are the things in Anima that make me less comfortable.

I would like to see much high impedance for the speaker if a speaker claims 107dB sensitivity

The tweeter is sitting at 1.5K, first order.  That is king of low crossover point for tweeter but it is OK. The problem that I see that with this time of the filter and a compression driver used I think the horn for the tweeter shall have around 700Hz mouth. I do not see in the Anima tweeter this mouth; it more strikes me as 3KHz mouth. So, I feel that for this crossover point the HF horn shall be larger, in this configuration there is even a great space for it. It is not to mention that larger/deeper horns will calm down a bit that Titanium dome.

The MF horn is fine BUT…. They claim 107dB sensitivity. This type of horn would give 6dB gains, which makes the 5” driver they use to have 101dB sensitivity. Where the hell they find 5” driver with 101dB sensitivity? I would like to have one as well. There is a “concern” however. The MF rolls off at 1.5K, which is VERY fact for 5” drivers that might work in this type of horn. Evan with no phase plug a 5-incher driver with resonant frequency above 200Hz shall be easily going to 7K. Why Manolis decided to roll it off to fast, particularly knowing that he has the underperforming lower knee in HF channel? This is very controversial as far as I can predict…

Sure the upperbass channel is the most problematic. Anima uses a 15” driver – a big mistake in my view. What Anima did is loading his 15” bass driver in a virtual a pipe – the same as Bruce Edgar does foe his mostly retarded clients in his NEW Titan design. The mouth of the Anima midbass is limited by a sanity of footprint. BTW, this floor-firing horn is a very good solution – it helps with time misalignment problems and it allows having ¼ or even 1/8 size of horn with less length problems. So, to have 15” bass driver automatically assures a relatively large throat of the upperbass horn. Let pretend that the throat is 10’ and the mouth like 150Hz. It I would say 4 feet long horn from 10” to let say 30” – you will not have a proper loading in this type of the horn – it is not a horn but a widening pipe where the 15” driver is shooting all the way throe, choking the mouth.

What I would like to see in Anima is to employ 6”-10” driver and to have 3”-5” throat. That would make the horn to go higher but they do have room in there. Furthermore if the do then this uncomfortable budge atop of the speaker will be much higher (3-2 feet) and much smaller. Then, only then, the Anima will have more properly operating upperbass. Sure it will screw up the whole esthetic of the speaker but it is what it is.

As guy point out, the upper knee of the upperbass channel, loaded to floor and crossed at 250Hz with first order is a bit too optimistic. The whole “melody range” looks like very underdeveloped in the Anima, id it was up to me then I would add a small direct radiator channel to care 100-400hz range. A small direct radiator channel of this range and 105-107dB sensitivity? Good lack to find it….

Sure, to sound more or less complete the Anima has to have a dedicated separate LF channel. I do not see it on the picture and there is no where mentioning of it. Perhaps they run the 15” driver with open back and the bulge is not a back chamber but a vertically fairing direct radiator and feel they try to pick some extra bass that does not cared by the upperbass hors?  I do not know, it looks like the back of the upperbass is sealed, not to mention that a dipole with one side horn is VERY questionable implementation.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The tweeter is sitting at 1.5K, first order.  That is king of low crossover point for tweeter but it is OK. The problem that I see that with this time of the filter and a compression driver used I think the horn for the tweeter shall have around 700Hz mouth. I do not see in the Anima tweeter this mouth; it more strikes me as 3KHz mouth. So, I feel that for this crossover point the HF horn shall be larger, in this configuration there is even a great space for it. It is not to mention that larger/deeper horns will calm down a bit that Titanium dome.

KLegind wrote:

It looks like a 1kHz tractrix horn to me (maybe 800Hz). I have one though it's from Stereo Lab.

Well, let see. For a regular Tractrix we would need a mouth with the following diameters:

800Hz -135.3mm or 5.3 inches

1000Hz -108.2mm or 4.3 inches

1500Hz -72.2mm or 2.8 inches

You might be right – my initial estimate was not correct and Anima tweeter horn does look like having 5”-6” mouth, even though it is hard to judge from the picture the exact size.  If it has 5”-6” then it would make it suitable for 1.5K crossover.  Thanks for pointing it out.

Hi Romy,

been reading you for some years now and 99% of the cases agree with your judgments (and sarcastic criticism).

Some data on ANIMA.

The bass is an exp horn tunned to 50Hz using the floor as a virtual expansion of the missing length/mouth. The bass horn was developed after my personal J shaped 50HZ 6400cm2 mouth, wanted to go commercial. I didn't agree but she insisted : ) Going on a strict diet and here you see the results. Can understand the doubts on the upper range but properly phased -to the rest of the ways- and positioned, has no issues on either listening tests or measurements.

Mid horn is a full mouth 200Hz tractrix. Allow me not to elaborate any further on driver etc. It's doable to squeeze this kind of efficiency from stock drivers if you provide the proper design, give them a good massage and trade off with limited bandwidth ; ) 

Hi horn is a full mouth 600Hz tractrix. Maybe the photo/color doesn't help in getting the size right. That's the only one which is straight forward in the design part. The material thou is not. The final choice is high quality epoxy resin with some aggregate mix additives. Have build a dozen of them to get it right.  

All pieces -except drivers- are build in house. No 3rd party or sub contracting.

Regards,

Manolis Proestakis

www.TuneAudio.gr

Thank, Manolis, it did address some concerns.

I think I even know what you did with the MF driver. You were able to get 50Hz out of this looks like horn? This is impressive. The boundaries-loaded horns sometimes allow doing away with the horn size and make even the 1/8 size to be operational. Might I ask you: what is the resonance frequency of your midbass driver loaded?

If I were you I would very certainly go for a slightly smaller midbass driver and a slightly smaller midbass throat. Let pretend that it would be 10” driver and 10” smaller throat. Then your midbass horn will go a feet taller – very manageable. As the benefit you might have:

1)    Ability to make the back chamber twice smaller.
2)    Removing the reflective corner from tweeter pass
3)    Pick a few dB of equalization at the bottom of midbass’ output

BTW, even as it is I would make the back chamber on the vertical horn not rectangular but circular…

Also in my own designs around the vertical-horizontal configuration I thought about the provision to add the “footprint extenders”. The point was that if I make the mouth larger then I get more dB. In any installed speaker one (or two) sides has room to have a lager horn. So, the idea was to add a “wing” to one side to make the asymmetrical large footprint. In some cases it might extend the loading to the wall and pick up 5Hz -10Hz, which always would be very welcoming. In some case you do not even to have the contact between the “wing” and the speaker and all that you need to have is an RTA and a heavy panel semi- horizontally positioned and sitting on the floor on 3 legs with individually adjustable height.

Might I ask you how do you fine the sound of the Anima? Anything that you like and anything that you would like to have to sound differently? Do you listen them “as is” or you use a help of some kind of complimentary LF devise? If yes, then what LF you feel works well with Anima? How heavy the upperbass horn? Did you detect any differences in sound and in midbass resonance frequency when you placed the upperbass not on the hard legs but on the spongy legs? How about a fat hairy carper – what difference it makes? What music do you listen?

Sorry for the delayed reply.

Oh yes. 50Hz is possible ; )

Fs of the driver is measured at 32HZ matched for both channels.

As for a smaller driver, the smaller throat, keeping the "same" length for practical reasons wouldn't load it sufficiently. Giving it a few feet more length would be a choice but we would end up with a weirder looking final design. Even as it is the criticism is quiet heavy on the looks. Plus phasing would be much harder keeping the beaming of the rest of the ways as it is now (averaged ear level at least for the mid).

The inside of the back chamber is not square. Corners are rounded. The outside square doesn't add that much reflection on the hi. Directivity of the tractrix helps.

On the sound I wouldn't dear to comment, ANIMA been my creation.

In my listening room frequencies lower than the low end of ANIMA would add more troubles than pleasure. So for the moment I'm listening to it without and additional LF. If necessary I would vote for a box -even mono- with some hi powered PWM amp and heavy DSP pushing it to taste.

Again, in my listening room I'm running them on hard mosaic floor while in the show room we had thick carpet on soft wood floor. I prefer the hard floor been a fan of fast midbass without the usual not natural IMO "tail". The upper bass with the driver is around 70kg.

Music ... If I had to pack some music for one way trip to Marsh it would be Jazz, Blues and Classical.

Regards,

Manolis Proestakis

www.TuneAudio.gr

Morfeas wrote:

Fs of the driver is measured at 32HZ matched for both channels.

Morfeas wrote:

As for a smaller driver, the smaller throat, keeping the "same" length for practical reasons wouldn't load it sufficiently. Giving it a few feet more length would be a choice but we would end up with a weirder looking final design. Even as it is the criticism is quiet heavy on the looks. Plus phasing would be much harder keeping the beaming of the rest of the ways as it is now (averaged ear level at least for the mid).

Morfeas wrote:

On the sound I wouldn't dear to comment, ANIMA been my creation.

Throat is not that large. ~1/3 sd

Half space response is 50HZ. In room I would expect something lower.

Wouldn't comment because using a public forum for free advertisement is not my cup of tea. 

Morfeas wrote:

Wouldn't comment because using a public forum for free advertisement is not my cup of tea.

 Morfeas, you of cause might do whatever you wish but I would like to point out that the concept of “free advertisement” is not a expression that even remotely applicable to the framework of my site. This site is as far from “advertisement” as possible and it has very strict and very narrow-minded sonic objective. Also, this site is not free for advertisement. Mentioning anything at this site might expose a concept or a product to critical inspection without any respect to a people, circumstances or status.

I think that propelling at many public forums filthy crony-solicitation practice made you to fear yourself to behave like you advertise something. The funny part is that there is nothing wrong with advertising if you are able to stay behind what you say. We almost lost it in audio as manufacturers do not have voice in audio. The public voices that we hear are the voices of empty-headed whores who hardly understand the meaning of the words that they us. I feel it is incorrect and therefore I asked YOU what you think about the sound of your speakers. If you and me discuss any third party speakers then we would be able to exchange opinions but what is the deference if in this case this third party speaker is yours?  Do you advise me to wait until a pimpy industry idiot would express his/her prosaic idiocy about your speaker? I would prefer to hear from you not from them. It might not be your “cup of tea” but it is only because the industry peed to long time in your cap and you lost a feeling how tee might taste. In any other sane industry – if you for example build bridges, make brass instilments, design cars, perform music or write software – you, the creator, would be the very first and the very valid entry to assess the value of your creation and you will be very welcomed to express your opinion publically. In the stupid hi-fi the industry made you to feel “humble”. Sure, it is up to you, but be advised that they made you to feel this way deliberately in order THEM to have a control over your voice. I do not support this “convention”.