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I picked xover #2 for the best sounding and #3 as the second best and #1 as my least favorite. Mark tallied the results and will email them. I will say 2 and 3 where close.
BW deliberately voices their diamond series to sound like this - what a shock, lot of people comment on that tweeter presenting detail.
My goodness was he trashed! I would call him a chain-drinker. Finish - open - finish - open...
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Apparently he's CraigK's friend, and he supplied all of the gear this year. It was a product name I hadn't heard of before: McCormack. Chris said it had a laid back midrange, and he was right, as I felt most of the speakers that played (even my own) to be a bit too reserved or laid back in the mids.
Even if he is someone some people here would get along with, I felt him to be more of a disturbance during demos than anything else. He was loud, obnoxious, and pretty rude as far as activity/speech during demos generally goes. He was generally a nice guy, and okay in discussions, but just didn't have the normal attitude the rest of us as attendees typically hold ourselves to.
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About the xover experiement..
1 was a textbook filter purchased on-line. No padding or BSC, and the tweeter was reversed for a second order arrangement as they are typically described on the internet.
2 was Jeff measuring only. No voicing or listening was done besides a final FR sweep.
3 was Matt Sobie looking at spec FR curves, with no modeling, and then approximating it with standard component equations and voicing by ear.
Really none of the 3 methods are what most of us do that have done this for awhile. Funny that Jeff and Matt came up with the exact same xover and values on the tweeter.
I felt the mids were dipped at the xover on 2, and as such, preferred 1 to 2 for a flatter mid to high for that reason alone. Even if less BSC was employed, it's not always a bad thing in room if placement is considered. I preferred 3 over all, due to the flatter response at xover, and proper BSC being employed- at least where I was sitting. I was second to last row, and in the middle.
This also got me thinking about hunches you can make in a design/build to get you closer to optimal without initially listening or measuring, and I did a design like that back in 2006 I called 'Pi-Phi'. I used a textbook off the shelf Dayton xover at 2kHz. I flipped the tweeter as they did being a second order. I inverted the drivers to angle the lobe upwards in a shorter tower, and used a coated-paper midbass with a 25mm textile dome. I also flush mounted the tweeter, and surface mounted the woofer to better align the voice coils and reduce the upward angle lobe. The woofer was a 4 ohm which gave more sensitivity for hopefully a better output match to the tweeter. And then I applied an approximate global BSC filter. I did not pad the tweeter IIRC. The result measured out relatively flat through the xover and then had a rising treble I couldn't account for in the hunches, but the experiment was completed with better results than I had anticipated. Another way of doing the woofer would be to use and 8 ohm woofer and the 4 ohm tap if there is one to yield some BSC.
There certainly are a lot of things to can approximate or guess at to get you closer, but all the way there definitely requires at least some listening and/or measurements.
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It was still an interesting exercise that I enjoyed. Overall I had a great time, as it's always really relaxed at the Meniscus event. Wish I could have stayed a bit longer as things were finishing up. I didn't get to hear Chris's Wilson-ish clones.
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I didn't get a chance to hear these speakers but Dan said he didn't like the tweeter much. I've heard the Focal tweeter a few times and never been that impressed either. I think I remember seeing a graph somewhere showing that they had distortion issues, which could lead to the bright or edgy sound.
Here are the Arcam CD player, McCormack RLD-1 preamp, and McCormack power amp. I agree with the comments on the difference in sound compared to other amps. I liked the way they sounded.
These were Craig K's speakers. They use an Isobarik woofer configuration, magnet to cone, with a 5 inch spacing distance between the woofers. They are ported out the rear, looks like at 3" ID port about 8 inch long. They hit the low note clearly on the Royals track. One of the best sounding speakers at the show, IMO
These are NavyGuy's Juggernauts. One of the best sounding speakers at the show. I have heard these speakers 3 times so far, once at MWAF, then at the Springboro Hampton, and now at Meniscus. Very impressive. I wish I could afford a pair of these tweeters!!
Here are the 3 crossovers used in the comparison. There were actually 2 separate test sessions conducted. One was performed Friday night, which I did not attend. The other was conducted on Saturday at the hotel. I voted for crossover #3, which was the one prepared by Matt. I thought the #2 crossover was a little dull sounding and the #1 crossover was way too bright. Maybe I heard wrong, but I though Mark said that crossover #1 won on Friday night only. On Saturday, crossover #3 got the most votes, #2 was 2nd, and #1 was last. Correct me if I am wrong.
And this was the speaker used for the test:
This was Javad's high end Dayton Speaker. Very detailed treble and midrange. Good low frequency extension. I asked Javad if he had made any changes since MWAF, because they sounded much better this time around. From where I was sitting at MWAF, they had a very dark tonal balance, but now they sounded very smooth from top to bottom.
These were Billit's (another Bill S.) "Old Skool" speakers. He mounted the tweeter to the midrange grill frame and then ran a small wire down the frame to the xover. They are constructed of 1/2" material. Excellent sound. The aluminum cone midrange runs free on the top (no xover parts to tame breakup modes) and I could not hear any "breakup" problems (howling, etc). I wonder why.
Thanks, Bill!
I'll add that the test rig was relay driven on input, output, and ground. Ken did good work here!
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