Alcons?

[Pultzar]

Hello,

I haven't seen much talk about Alcons speakers for home theater/audio and I'm curious if anybody here has experience with them. There are some bold claims being made on other forums but I haven't seen measurements like those that are posted on this site. Given the tall ribbon driver in many designs, I imagine vertical directivity suffers, but again, haven't seen proof one way or the other.

I saw Hamilton years ago and Alcons was the system in use. It sounded amazing, but that is a totally different use case!

 

[rybking]

Bump this thread!
Also interested in the topic.

 

[ocinn]

Bump this thread!
Also interested in the topic.

Hi there. I just spent ~4hrs chatting with their engineers, and demoing their studio and PA systems at NAMM this weekend.

Their performance is genuinely mindblowing and actually caused me to completely reconsider what I thought was possible in professional audio.

I work with L’Acoustics, D&B, and Danley professionally and yet, I have never experienced a system which does not exhibit any audible distortion or power compression all the way to their electrical limit, until I heard the alcons.

Their studio monitors were, bar none, the most impressive speakers I’ve ever heard in my life (and I’ve demoed Kii, Dutch and Dutch, JBL M2, Revel Salon 2, Genelec 8351+W371 and many, many others)

The only speakers which I’ve heard which may be able to compete, are the Genelec 8381, and the Danley Hyperion (unfortunately both were demoed at low levels with really poor music, so I am unable to confidently give my opinion). But as of right now, the Alcons were far more impressive to me.

The ribbon is not synonymous with narrow vertical directivity. Look at the RR12 charts in EASE gll viewer. It manages a pretty clean 60deg pattern. Narrow vertical directivity is highly desirable in studio (console bounce) and live (elimination of ceiling and back wall reflections), so it’s a non-issue IMO.

I had skeptisism on them until I heard them. And then you read testimonials from others which mirror my experience and you realize how much of a hidden gem they are. And I’m not even trying to be a shill right now, I am legitimately so blown away it’s driven me to fanboy status.

 

[Purité Audio]

Unusual there isn’t a single measurement on their site, unless I have overlooked something?
Keit

 

[gnarly]

Unusual there isn’t a single measurement on their site, unless I have overlooked something?
Keit

ARC3 simulation software, with EASE / GLL data for modeling.

Beats the hell out of 'spinorama PIR', huh?
Horses for courses

 

[napilopez]

Unusual there isn’t a single measurement on their site, unless I have overlooked something?
Keit

There are also frequency response charts and polar maps for some of the speakers in the product manuals.

 

[Pearljam5000]

So they're better than Genelec and Neumann and Geithain ?

 

[Purité Audio]

There are also frequency response charts and polar maps for some of the speakers in the product manuals.

N thank you I found these, very flat!

Keith

 

[napilopez]

N thank you I found these, very flat!View attachment 345973

Keith

Granted, the scaling and smoothing makes them look better than they probably are, but they do appear reasonably flat and with very solid directivity.

 

[Purité Audio]

If they were any more zoomed out you would need a magnifying glass.
Keith

 

[gnarly]

It's the sound of the ribbon drivers that makes them special...the utterly clean sense of HF/VHF, SPL and dynamics..... like ocinn was describing.
(Ya know, one of those things we haven't yet learned to how correlate measurements with perception )

Real life is dynamic !
Drop a fork on a plate from only 6-12 inches, and a mic 2-3ft away will read over 120dB peak. Or clap, or even snap fingers....same thing.
REW captures instantaneou peaks...use Z (none) weighting.

I really don't think even the new Genelec or the Hyperion can match the Alcon's HF/VHF, either audibly or via measurement.
Both of those use smaller sized compression drivers, in their coaxial mids, aimed at home market.
Bigger compression drivers, especially the ring radiator coax types might match by measurement...but so far to my ears, the Alcons have the cleanest HF/VHF I've heard.

Now all that said, HF/VHF is just one part of a speaker. I think getting the rest of the spectrum blended in / optimized, has to end up making for the best speaker overall.
Whether that can be done with the Alcon ribbons and the rest of the design? Like vs a Genelec or Danley? That I'd like to hear.

 

[GXAlan]

Which Alcons did you hear? The smaller ones don’t seem to inherently be in a different class than Meyer Sound.

Measurements for speaker Alcons Audio VR5 V1

www.spinorama.org

 

[gnarly]

Which Alcons did you hear? The smaller ones don’t seem to inherently be in a different class than Meyer Sound.

Measurements for speaker Alcons Audio VR5 V1

www.spinorama.org

I can't remember exactly, as thy were demoing several models, playing the same tracks...as one part of the show.
And the other was an immersive audio extravaganza.

I can say my attention was much more on the various sized RBN drivers they were using https://www.alconsaudio.com/proribbon/,
than on the particular speakers the ribbons were in.
I personally feel they are the only viable candidates to replace good compressions drivers ...(in the type speakers I like)
The ribbons really rock at HF/VHF.

I can also say, Meyer was debuting their x-40, which sounded awesome too...and with probably a better overall top to bottom.
Not sure which of Alcons speaker model with sub, would have made the right matchup.

 

[Flaesh]

how to express this in plain decibels?..

 

[GXAlan]

how to express this in plain decibels?..

The ratio between the minimum and maximum peak output where distortion is below a preset threshold is needed. We don’t know that threshold, but it’s 6 dB for each bit. 144 dB = 24 bits.

15:1 is 90 dB
4:1 is only 24 dB.

@amirm this seems unclear to us. Can you make sense of what Alcons is saying?

“The VR5 HF section has a 500 W peak power input, enabling a 1:16 dynamic range with up to 90% less distortion from 1 kHz to beyond 20 kHz.”

Is 90% going from -40 dB to -60 dB distortion?

 

[Flaesh]

15:1 is 90 dB

Hmmmm....
x16 voltage compared 2.83 V:

- only 24 dB ov power difference..

 

[GXAlan]

Hmmmm....
x16 voltage compared 2.83 V:

- only 24 dB ov power difference..

Agree, doesn’t make any logical sense

 

[ocinn]

how to express this in plain decibels?..

You guys are hugely overthinking this. It’s weird wording, they are referring to wattage.

Imagine a 100w rated, 100db efficiency driver:

At 100w (continuous rating) - 120db
At 200w (2:1, typical crest factor) - 123db
At 400w (4:1, rare/ultra high performance) - 126db

Now the Alcons driver is capable of 15:1.
So 131.8db at its 1500w peak rating.

This gives it a 8.8db dynamic advantage over the vast majority of drivers, and a 5.8db advantage over the bleeding edge of high performance comp. drivers.

Which is (real world) absolutely massive.

 

[GXAlan]

You guys are hugely overthinking this. It’s weird wording, they are referring to wattage.

Pro-ribbon - Alcons Audio

In order to give you a “glimpse behind the scenes” of our product development, our R&D guys share their discoveries and developments with you in the “Tech Section”. The information can vary from recent developments to useful “tricks & tips” on getting the best out of your Alcons system.

www.alconsaudio.com

The effective radiation length of 18" / 46cm. offers an extreme power handling of 210W RMS and 3kW peak (for 200ms, which is ten times the industry standard) and a very high efficiency of 108dB with 1Watt @ 1m.

The RBN401 is a scaled-down version of the RBN601. With a power handling of 50W/800W and an efficiency of 100dB (log average 2-10 kHz

The RMS values aren’t as high but it’s still impressive.

 

[ocinn]

The RMS values aren’t as high but it’s still impressive.

I was just stating easy numbers for easy math. No matter the Efficiency/power handling, they have nearly 9db more dynamic output than their competitors.

A desktop-size tweeter that is able to do 129db@1m for 200ms, wish vanishingly low distortion is bonkers. For comparison, Seas DXT is capable of 113.8. You’d need a CD (BMS 4524 for example) to come close to that output and then you have to deal with all of the drawbacks of CDs.