Article: AXPONA 2019 Best of Show

[ednaz]

I got a set of Gradient Revolutions back in late 1999, when I was sent over to live in Asia for a couple years (so had to leave my US current components in storage at home.) Triangular shaped tower. The woofer is suspended, open air, in the bottom segment. The mid and tweeter are in a separate unit that mounts on the woofer unit, and has a cardioid radiation pattern. (speakers are forward facing, with the other two sides of the triangle open, so that there's some sound radiation there.)

Got them for the reason I think the Rossi speakers sounded so good to you... that open woofer/cardioid mid and tweeter makes the speakers fairly independent of the qualities of the room. Our apartment in Singapore had hard plaster walls, with a wall of windows on one side, and marble floors. The living room dining room was two stories high on one end. The echoing was so bad that when I took a mobile call in the place, the person on the other end literally couldn't understand me.  When we moved in we did what everyone does there - lots of rugs with thick padding, and we hung rugs here and there as decoration. While it made it possible to make phone calls, the place was still WAY too live.

 

At one audio shop, I picked out a couple amps and speakers I wanted to try, and was telling the owner about the awful acoustics. He burst out laughing, and said he'd come by that evening with speakers - the ones I thought I wanted would sound horrible, all room coupling and muddy. Showed up with the Gradients, set them up near the wall at one end of the room, where you'd logically want them... and they sounded amazing. Then he moved them into different placements, and they really didn't sound much different no matter where. He then hooked up a set of more traditional speakers he'd also brought (that cost twice what the Gradients did) and there wasn't a placement that worked. Muck and boom no matter where. He was right. The Gradients stayed.

 

I've had them in several very different rooms since then. Some well damped, some almost as bad as the Singapore place. They always sounded great. The Gradients are a bit bass shy, as the woofer is much smaller than what Rossi's using. In well damped rooms, I added a sub for the last octave.

 

I was excited when I saw the Rossis, since speakers don't last forever and Gradient no longer has a US distributor, until I saw the price... 

[miguelito]

On 4/18/2019 at 6:11 PM, fas42 said:

What horns do to the equation is make the job for the electronics far easier - the amplifiers are operating much, much further down in their working range; and the power supplies are actually functioning as they're supposed to. Currents being drawn from the mains are much lower, and are far less spikey; interference anomalies are greatly reduced.

 

All the designer has to do do is make sure the design of the horn drivers, etc, doesn't add too much distortion, which happens if they are not made well enough in the physical sense.

Not just that... The driver diaphragms in horns need to move a lot less to produce the same amount of sound compared to a dynamic speaker. So they are always far from their maximum excursion, and in a transient there is a lot more dynamic range to be had before you reach the point of distortion.

[Ralf11]

horns act as acoustic amplifiers - I have one that works with no electricity at all

 

(...just like all the other record players of that vintage)

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

horns act as acoustic amplifiers - I have one that works with no electricity at all

 

(...just like all the other record players of that vintage)

 

The local audio friend once mentioned an incident where he was in an office building, where many people had radios and such provding some background music, of normal standard. Then, down a corridor he heard some classical music being played at a good volume; rich, full, engaging - ahh, at least one person in the building has the interest in good sound to set a decent playback rig, he thought. Went down the corridor, and the quality only improved as he did so, and stood outside the door to the office from whence the sound came; really intrigued, he was emboldened to knock - the door opened, and he was taken aback to see a glorious, ancient windup unit - with huge horn - in full flight. The chap gave him a solid wink, and said, he gave the unit - a premium quality effort from those days - a good workout every now and again, just because ...

 

The SQ on many levels was so superior to much of the casually paraded stuff; it was a lesson to him, my friend, about what mattered ...

[Rexp]

On 4/16/2019 at 10:44 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Only a 16/44 version from Tidal, not Analogue Productions. 

I keep coming back to this video, Coltrane sounds so good. The playback chain was Esoteric N01 Network Player>amp or via clock and mono dacs? Thanks!