Andrew Jones MoFi Speakers

[cavedriver]

Are any members here actually interested in the Mo-Fi Source Point 10, eyeing them as a possible purchase (waiting to see if they meet the hype)?

I'm looking at them to replace my recently acquired Lintons in my library. I currently have a Hypex amp driving them but have a number of tube amps on their way (a Scott 296, a Willsenton R8, potentially a 300B) that I want to be able to pair some 91+ dB speakers. If I buy the SP10's it will prevent the use of straight up 300B amp with about 8 W, so that will have to happen in another room. I have been working on hearing other high-efficiency speakers but may abort that effort if I can find a more powerful tube amp and speaker pairing that gets close enough to the benefits of the 300B sound I am familiar with without some of the negatives. I was interested in your comments about the O/96's because they are on my list. I'll add that the AN's that I heard at the Capital Audiofest sounded tight and controlled, at least tighter than my (admittedly not great) old Snell E/III's, but at the same time the AN's weren't wowing me with their soundstage size.

To further the discussion maybe folks that are serious that are also trying to be consistent in budget across their choices should list the speakers and prices that would be the competitors to these. Certainly the DeVore O/96's at ~$13k a pair are not cost competitors.

 

[MattHooper]

I'm looking at them to replace my recently acquired Lintons in my library. I currently have a Hypex amp driving them but have a number of tube amps on their way (a Scott 296, a Willsenton R8, potentially a 300B) that I want to be able to pair some 91+ dB speakers. If I buy the SP10's it will prevent the use of straight up 300B amp with about 8 W, so that will have to happen in another room. I have been working on hearing other high-efficiency speakers but may abort that effort if I can find a more powerful tube amp and speaker pairing that gets close enough to the benefits of the 300B sound I am familiar with without some of the negatives.

Interesting. FWIW, I think the reviewer in the video posted in the last page tried the SP10s with a 50W tube amp and said it kinda worked, but didn't really seem to be enough power/grip compared to the solid state amp he used. My CJ Premier 12 tube amps - 140W/side - have handled all sorts of harder to drive speakers.

I was interested in your comments about the O/96's because they are on my list.

Have you heard the O/96 yet?

My take, having auditioned the O/96 is that, properly set up, the O/96 have a bigger, beefier "wall of sound" - instruments and voices tend to have a greater sense of size and weight than what I heard on the SP10s. The SP10s are more point-source-like in imaging, more precise than the O/96, and possibly able to render a greater sense of image depth than the O/96, if it's on the recording. From what I heard under the conditions yesterday, I preferred the presentation of the O/96 myself - which sound to me more "alive" in terms of tone and dynamics. I can easily see someone else preferring the SP10s, though (with quite a savings on the Devore!)

I'll add that the AN's that I heard at the Capital Audiofest sounded tight and controlled, at least tighter than my (admittedly not great) old Snell E/III's, but at the same time the AN's weren't wowing me with their soundstage size.

I've heard ANs at shows and also auditioned a set at that same store years ago (different room, different model). I have definitely heard the ANs sounding much better - more balanced and natural. The thing with the AN speakers for me is that the typical AN set up puts the speakers against wall boundaries, usually near the corners, so you get the room gain extending the bass and making them sound bigger and deeper. But in those set ups I find myself aware of the "trick" - I feel I hear the bass region as that back-wall re-enforced room gain (a trick I used to use with some speakers I owned long ago) and it sounds less like "the real bass from the recording." So it sort of bothers me. The Devores work best pulled well out from room boundaries, but sound more convincing in the bass to me.

To further the discussion maybe folks that are serious that are also trying to be consistent in budget across their choices should list the speakers and prices that would be the competitors to these. Certainly the DeVore O/96's at ~$13k a pair are not cost competitors.

Yeah, though the AN speakers tend to be silly expensive too, which likely puts almost all of them out of comparison with the SP10s.

Of course, one could be eyeing something more expensive than the SP10, and fortunately find the SP10 fits the bill at a cheaper price! Which I think is partly their raison d'etre.

 

[Sal1950]

Not only is he a brilliant loudspeaker designer, he is an amazing communicator. He is able to reduce extremely complex physics into simple and uderstandable language.

Having just watched the video linked above and then the one on the MoFi site: https://www.mofielectronics.com/sourcepoint10
I was particularly struck by his reliance on subjective listening. Having talked with him in the past I know he uses the best measurement techniques available to him, but to hear him talk about "listening" was very interesting.

He's also a intelligent marketer.
He understands the fact that subjective audiophiles outnumber objectivists by 5, maybe 10 to one in this hobby.
So who you going to aim the bulk of your verbal communications with the combined market?
He's smart and never puts either appoach in a bad light, all he needs to say is he uses the best technical equipment and design approach, then just leave it at that, he could talk for days on his listening experience without turning off any of us.

 

[Sal1950]

Humm, $4,000 for another mini-monitor pair. Not my cup of tea as many here know from me.
I'd be very interested in seeing them measured and given a critical listening session along side
the HSU CCB-8 which has received some very positive reviews around the industry over the last
5 years and can be purchased for under $1,000 shipped to your door.
Certainly neither are going to offer a SOTA sound experience but it might be very educational to
find out what spending 4X the money on the AJ designed speaker would bring to the plate?

CCB-8 Speaker

The CCB-8, a constant directivity horn made in collaboration with Don Keele, is one of the industry’s best performing speakers when it comes to smooth, musical, off-axis response. Inspired by the HSU subs, the CCB-8 offers a variable tuning feature that gives you the most flexibility for dynamic...

www.hsuresearch.com

Doug Blackburn, Widescreen Review Issue 217, June 2017

 

[Tangband]

I'm just going on memory from some of his interviews, but I think the idea was that a 10" woofer wouldn't have to move as much around the tweeter in terms of excursion, hence reducing it's influence on the tweeter in that sense. But aside from that, I think it's the case the 10" woofer is still acting as a sort of slight wave guide in terms of influencing tweeter dispersion, is it not?

This problem goes away almost completely If you crossover a coaxial driver at 300 Hz , regardless if its a 10 inch or 5 inch coaxial driver. This MoFi loudspeaker cant fool acoustics and without a proper HP crossover, the 10 inch woofer gonna modulate the tweeter at some point if you play music with a lot of base and cymbals at the same time.

Erins audiocorner :

Kef Q100 Speaker Drive Unit Testing

Kef Q100

www.erinsaudiocorner.com

”I thought it would be interesting to see how the position of the woofer cone impacts the frequency response of the tweeter. This matters when you’re listening to music and isn’t captured by a standard sine sweep. To measure this performance I simply connected a 9v battery to the woofer’s terminals in positive polarity, then negative polarity which resulted in an approximate +/-3mm shift in cone direction. I ran a sine sweep over the tweeter while the woofer was a) at rest, b) fixed out, and c) fixed in. The pictures below illustrate these different configurations.”

———————-

Tangband:s thinking of this : Now, with that fact proved by Erin , there are also advantages in the soundstage and imaging with the coaxial approach, especially when done right as we all can hear if listening to the Kef blade or Kef ls60w.

 

[restorer-john]

Humm, $4,000 for another mini-monitor pair. Not my cup of tea as many here know from me.

I'm in the same camp as you, Sal.

It's just an obscene amount of money for a 10" 2 way stand-mounter whatever way you look at it, especially one made in a low cost country.

 

[regan]

I'm looking at them to replace my recently acquired Lintons in my library

Why? You don't enjoy them?

 

[cavedriver]

Why? You don't enjoy them?

The Lintons are very nice speakers, I had previously listened to and rejected numerous cheaper or similarly priced speakers such as the ELAC Unifi Reference, the LS50 Meta, and a variety of cheaper speakers. Over more listening though I feel the Lintons have flaws that once heard bother me and so I keep searching for something better even if I pay more.

 

[John57]

A 3mm excursion from the Kef Q100 Woofer does not seem much.

 

[cavedriver]

Humm, $4,000 for another mini-monitor pair. Not my cup of tea as many here know from me.
I'd be very interested in seeing them measured and given a critical listening session along side
the HSU CCB-8 which has received some very positive reviews around the industry over the last
5 years and can be purchased for under $1,000 shipped to your door.
Certainly neither are going to offer a SOTA sound experience but it might be very educational to
find out what spending 4X the money on the AJ designed speaker would bring to the plate?

CCB-8 Speaker

The CCB-8, a constant directivity horn made in collaboration with Don Keele, is one of the industry’s best performing speakers when it comes to smooth, musical, off-axis response. Inspired by the HSU subs, the CCB-8 offers a variable tuning feature that gives you the most flexibility for dynamic...

www.hsuresearch.com

Doug Blackburn, Widescreen Review Issue 217, June 2017

That's a curious little speaker. 94 dB efficiency and a coax. You would think it would come up in more conversations and also become kind of an internet darling where all these youtube influencers search for "the next great recommendation" that they can make. For that price I could order a pair, demo them for myself and eat the (small) losses when I CL them, or just push them to the side channels in the surround room and replace the old used Snell LCR 500's that I have there temporarily.

 

[John57]

The review for the HSU CCB-8 is well written and stated that making a coaxial driver costs six times as much as compare to a separate woofer and tweeter

 

[jhaider]

Humm, $4,000 for another mini-monitor pair.

I would not be surprised if their cabinet volume is similar to that of your JBL towers. They are standmounts, but very large ones.

Price is what it is. @MattHooper made a comment about the finish quality that is more interesting to me than the asking price.

This problem goes away almost completely If you crossover a coaxial driver at 300 Hz , regardless if it’s a 10 inch or 5 inch coaxial driver. This MoFi loudspeaker cant fool acoustics and without a proper HP crossover, the 10 inch woofer gonna modulate the tweeter at some point if you play music with a lot of base and cymbals at the same time.

FWIW, for several years I ran 12” coaxes in closed boxes with no highpass filter for LCR channels, integrated with 4 subs (Geddes-style). Never did they “sound loud” or otherwise evince any tonal or distortion shift with volume, even at rock concert levels. Increasing level just made the sound subjectively “bigger.” High SPL wasn’t apparent until you tried to talk or realized an exogenous sound (e.g. phone ringing) was barely if at all audible. Put another way, they acted just like any other relatively large and relatively efficient speaker driven with sufficient power.

I would expect similar from a 10” coax in a larger, vented cabinet.

So yes, while modulation will happen “at some point” it’s also probable with a big coax that point is higher than a sensible listener will endure.

 

[cavedriver]

Have you heard the O/96 yet?

My take, having auditioned the O/96 is that, properly set up, the O/96 have a bigger, beefier "wall of sound" - instruments and voices tend to have a greater sense of size and weight than what I heard on the SP10s. The SP10s are more point-source-like in imaging, more precise than the O/96, and possibly able to render a greater sense of image depth than the O/96, if it's on the recording. From what I heard under the conditions yesterday, I preferred the presentation of the O/96 myself - which sound to me more "alive" in terms of tone and dynamics. I can easily see someone else preferring the SP10s, though (with quite a savings on the Devore!)

I've heard ANs at shows and also auditioned a set at that same store years ago (different room, different model). I have definitely heard the ANs sounding much better - more balanced and natural. The thing with the AN speakers for me is that the typical AN set up puts the speakers against wall boundaries, usually near the corners, so you get the room gain extending the bass and making them sound bigger and deeper. But in those set ups I find myself aware of the "trick" - I feel I hear the bass region as that back-wall re-enforced room gain (a trick I used to use with some speakers I owned long ago) and it sounds less like "the real bass from the recording." So it sort of bothers me. The Devores work best pulled well out from room boundaries, but sound more convincing in the bass to me.

I've not heard the O/96's but they have been on my radar for a while. Someone had a pair of Gibbon Super Nine's at the CA show and they showed promise although they are strangely a little short (only 37" high, just 2" taller than my Snell's without their ~6" stands).

Were the recent AN's one of the really high-efficiency pairs? I know they range from ~94 dB at the "cheap" end up to 98 or more in the crazy expensive versions. The pair at the CA show was $10k and 94 dB. Perhaps more importantly they were not close to any walls and I find it somewhat puzzling that AN would put them near walls or corners when Peter Snell was adamant about not putting his speakers like the E/III's near walls. I have mine about 15" from the front wall but far from any corners- they are on the long wall of the room. Certainly putting them near a corner will reinforce the bass but also make it obviously boomy usually. I've also seen the AN's shown toed in, but Snell suggested having them face straight out into the room, which is the way I have always preferred mine. I suppose the diffraction behavior of new AN's and their tweeters may be different from the old Snell's of course.

as an aside, the B&W's and Paradigm's you mention are both significantly more expensive than the SP10's of course. I suppose that the Philharmonic towers and bookshelves are two speakers that you could be pricing the SP10's against, although they are radically different in strategy. Maybe some Revel's, Focal's, or something else would qualify as an alternative in the 2-6k range?

 

[Mr. Widget]

I would not be surprised if their cabinet volume is similar to that of your JBL towers. They are standmounts, but very large ones.

Price is what it is. @MattHooper made a comment about the finish quality that is more interesting to me than the asking price.

Sure we want our speakers to sound and measure well, but at the end of the day loudspeakers are also furniture.

Unless you have a dedicated listening room, the speakers should ideally fit in with your other furnishings. These days most affordable speakers are not using quality hardwood veneers and are not as nicely finished as the speakers of decades ago.

From closely looking at numerous stills and videos of the new MoFi speakers, it looks like they nailed it in matching the mid-century modern look. I say that is a plus and adds value.

 

[Els]

I've not heard the O/96's but they have been on my radar for a while. Someone had a pair of Gibbon Super Nine's at the CA show and they showed promise although they are strangely a little short (only 37" high, just 2" taller than my Snell's without their ~6" stands).

Were the recent AN's one of the really high-efficiency pairs? I know they range from ~94 dB at the "cheap" end up to 98 or more in the crazy expensive versions. The pair at the CA show was $10k and 94 dB. Perhaps more importantly they were not close to any walls and I find it somewhat puzzling that AN would put them near walls or corners when Peter Snell was adamant about not putting his speakers like the E/III's near walls. I have mine about 15" from the front wall but far from any corners- they are on the long wall of the room. Certainly putting them near a corner will reinforce the bass but also make it obviously boomy usually. I've also seen the AN's shown toed in, but Snell suggested having them face straight out into the room, which is the way I have always preferred mine. I suppose the diffraction behavior of new AN's and their tweeters may be different from the old Snell's of course.

as an aside, the B&W's and Paradigm's you mention are both significantly more expensive than the SP10's of course. I suppose that the Philharmonic towers and bookshelves are two speakers that you could be pricing the SP10's against, although they are radically different in strategy. Maybe some Revel's, Focal's, or something else would qualify as an alternative in the 2-6k range?

I have heard the O/96, they are Dynaco A25's in a nicer box. They are easy to drive and sound good in a low budget system.

 

[MattHooper]

I've not heard the O/96's but they have been on my radar for a while. Someone had a pair of Gibbon Super Nine's at the CA show and they showed promise although they are strangely a little short (only 37" high, just 2" taller than my Snell's without their ~6" stands).

I always wanted to hear the Super 9s. (I heard the Gibbon X). They are just about the same dimensions as my Joseph Perspective speakers.

Were the recent AN's one of the really high-efficiency pairs? I know they range from ~94 dB at the "cheap" end up to 98 or more in the crazy expensive versions. The pair at the CA show was $10k and 94 dB. Perhaps more importantly they were not close to any walls and I find it somewhat puzzling that AN would put them near walls or corners when Peter Snell was adamant about not putting his speakers like the E/III's near walls. I have mine about 15" from the front wall but far from any corners- they are on the long wall of the room. Certainly putting them near a corner will reinforce the bass but also make it obviously boomy usually. I've also seen the AN's shown toed in, but Snell suggested having them face straight out into the room, which is the way I have always preferred mine. I suppose the diffraction behavior of new AN's and their tweeters may be different from the old Snell's of course.

I don't know the model but I think it was one of the cheaper versions. The finish was very a very bland black (oak?..almost black ash). I didn't ask any more questions because I just wanted to get outta that room away from those things (Yet at one audio show in Toronto I found the AN room had one of the most impressive demos, with one of their smallest speakers).

as an aside, the B&W's and Paradigm's you mention are both significantly more expensive than the SP10's of course. I suppose that the Philharmonic towers and bookshelves are two speakers that you could be pricing the SP10's against, although they are radically different in strategy. Maybe some Revel's, Focal's, or something else would qualify as an alternative in the 2-6k range?

I just mentioned those other speakers for context in terms of what I happened to hear recently. B&W/Paradigm/Focal not really my sound. FWIW, I described my reaction to the Paradigm Founder speakers HERE

 

[DanielT]

This problem goes away almost completely If you crossover a coaxial driver at 300 Hz , regardless if its a 10 inch or 5 inch coaxial driver. This MoFi loudspeaker cant fool acoustics and without a proper HP crossover, the 10 inch woofer gonna modulate the tweeter at some point if you play music with a lot of base and cymbals at the same time.

Erins audiocorner :

Kef Q100 Speaker Drive Unit Testing

Kef Q100

www.erinsaudiocorner.com

”I thought it would be interesting to see how the position of the woofer cone impacts the frequency response of the tweeter. This matters when you’re listening to music and isn’t captured by a standard sine sweep. To measure this performance I simply connected a 9v battery to the woofer’s terminals in positive polarity, then negative polarity which resulted in an approximate +/-3mm shift in cone direction. I ran a sine sweep over the tweeter while the woofer was a) at rest, b) fixed out, and c) fixed in. The pictures below illustrate these different configurations.”

View attachment 252282
———————-

Tangband:s thinking of this : Now, with that fact proved by Erin , there are also advantages in the soundstage and imaging with the coaxial approach, especially when done right as we all can hear if listening to the Kef blade or Kef ls60w.

Ten inch paper membrane coax driver. That man has:

If he pulls this off with good FR and low distortion then...

.... to Mr. Jones.

 

[HeadDoc12]

I'm just going on memory from some of his interviews, but I think the idea was that a 10" woofer wouldn't have to move as much around the tweeter in terms of excursion, hence reducing it's influence on the tweeter in that sense. But aside from that, I think it's the case the 10" woofer is still acting as a sort of slight wave guide in terms of influencing tweeter dispersion, is it not?

I have not heard these yet. To me, given that reduced extension and low excursion are part of the design philosophy, they are kinda begging to be crossed over to a couple (or more!) big, powerful subs at like 100 or even 120 Hz or something (of course, depending on room, etc. etc.). I imagine the less those woofers move, the better the whole thing will sound. Wich is why I feel like they would be more interesting to me if they were closer to $2500 US or thereabouts. Still AJ being the genius that he is, there will be plenty of analog-loving, tube-amp dudes who have always thought Klipsch was the best you can do who will be blown away by these. He definitely has a target market for them, and they should do well there, whether they are truly worth it or not.

 

[MattHooper]

I have not heard these yet. To me, given that reduced extension and low excursion are part of the design philosophy, they are kinda begging to be crossed over to a couple (or more!) big, powerful subs at like 100 or even 120 Hz or something (of course, depending on room, etc. etc.). I imagine the less those woofers move, the better the whole thing will sound. Wich is why I feel like they would be more interesting to me if they were closer to $2500 US or thereabouts. Still AJ being the genius that he is, there will be plenty of analog-loving, tube-amp dudes who have always thought Klipsch was the best you can do who will be blown away by these. He definitely has a target market for them, and they should do well there, whether they are truly worth it or not.

It's a fair cop.

 

[BeeKay]

Strange decision to design such a nice a multifaceted baffle and then adding a protruding edge around it.
So much for addressing diffraction...

Apart from that. That wooden box is awful to me. Optically continuing the interesting shape of the front baffle would have been a sexy package. Like it is now it’s a no go just for the looks.