Epos es14n with 7 inch midwoofer, directivity??

[dogmamann]

thisspeaker has a 7 inch midwoofer which is larger than normal, is it hard to get the directivity right on them? Or, it depends on the crossover point ?

 

[dfuller]

Looks like it'll behave roughly as you'd expect any flat baffle 2-way to behave.

 

[dogmamann]

Looks like it'll behave roughly as you'd expect any flat baffle 2-way to behave.

What are some good practices to avoid such problems ?

This company is run by some knowledgeable people, who had been in the industry for long. I guess they must have calculated it through. But 7 inch is what got me into thinking tooo. I had a very old bowers and Wilkins with 7 inch midwoofer, which was very shouty. But at this point it’s hard to conclude anything. No reviews yet on this sadly.

 

[Penelinfi]

There are measurements and theory on the guy's on website. Appears to measure well enough with the typical widening of dispersion in the tweeters lower band where it meets the woofer due to the higher crossover point. Would be interesting to hear it with a waveguide tweeter

EPOS – Just Blogging

 

[dogmamann]

Looks like a great speaker. Think they use Klippel too.

 

[dfuller]

There are measurements and theory on the guy's on website. Appears to measure well enough with the typical widening of dispersion in the tweeters lower band where it meets the woofer due to the higher crossover point. Would be interesting to hear it with a waveguide tweeter

EPOS – Just Blogging

Yeah typical flat baffle behavior. Nothing unexpected. Good behavior overall.

 

[dogmamann]

Yeah typical flat baffle behavior. Nothing unexpected. Good behavior overall.

Is it worth 3900 euros a pair ?

 

[DSJR]

What are some good practices to avoid such problems ?

This company is run by some knowledgeable people, who had been in the industry for long. I guess they must have calculated it through. But 7 inch is what got me into thinking tooo. I had a very old bowers and Wilkins with 7 inch midwoofer, which was very shouty. But at this point it’s hard to conclude anything. No reviews yet on this sadly.

The classic BBC two cubic foot boxes with 8" approx bass mid drivers never shouted unless there was something wrong. In fact, the best of them can 'do' speech better than most smaller wonder-boxes out there with rough upper mid problems as measured here time after time!

My beef on the 'new' ES14 is that it's nothing remotely like its flawed but so enjoyable (if used and set up right) ancestor, so a marketing play on the name.

 

[dogmamann]

The classic BBC two cubic foot boxes with 8" approx bass mid drivers never shouted unless there was something wrong. In fact, the best of them can 'do' speech better than most smaller wonder-boxes out there with rough upper mid problems as measured here time after time!

My beef on the 'new' ES14 is that it's nothing remotely like its flawed but so enjoyable (if used and set up right) ancestor, so a marketing play on the name.

Karl Heinz Fink is a loudspeaker Designer since 1980s. Imo, he is a bigger shot than the epos guy himself when it comes to loudspeaker designing. I think his name itself was a bigger gamble than using epos. I am familiar with his companies than epos. In fact I never knew epos was so popular until he bought it and it was news in some website.

I think if we compare any old epos to this one, this one should run circles around them easily.

 

[DSJR]

Karl Heinz Fink is a loudspeaker Designer since 1980s. Imo, he is a bigger shot than the epos guy himself when it comes to loudspeaker designing. I think his name itself was a bigger gamble than using epos. I am familiar with his companies than epos. In fact I never knew epos was so popular until he bought it and it was news in some website.

I think if we compare any old epos to this one, this one should run circles around them easily.

Like I tried to say, Robin Marshall designed the original Epos driver's magnetic circuit without the luxury of using then expensive computers and as I said, it was flawed but worked absolutely consistently from sample to sample - Robin took great pride in showing me how they were made up (in Chesham originally) and plots of the drivers all laid on top of each other with barely half a dB variance... Robin learned the practical way, starting with complex crossovers (he used to calibrate Audiomaster LS3/5A's individually and needed to tweak and measure cap values when KEF supplied a duff batch of drivers which is something I don't think the other mid 70's makers ever did to the same extent. Bit by bit, his crossovers became simpler until with Epos in the 80's, he dispensed with them altogether, bar a cap in series with the ES14 tweeter and a cap in series plus resistor across the tweet in the ES11. Stereophile has a review of the later and final 'original' ES14 version and by Klippel standards it's a dogs dinner, but to listen to it back then in a small to middling room and with the Naim gear it was designed to partner (for good commercial reasons), they 'sounded' well enough (I used mine with port bungs in sideways to retain a little bass and prevent boom). Robin went deep into the pro side post Epos and after his domestic run with Mission and others and many years back, I gather he was using JBL Arrays at home (don't know the model). I suspect he's enjoying retirement now but it's twenty five years or so since I last spoke to him.

I've no doubt at all that K H Fink is a great established speaker designer, willing and able to use the latest CAD techniques/measurements as well as listening to create an excellent end product, my beef being it needn't have used the 'ES14' name. The price is high also for a two way passive as is the unrelated but 'retro leaning' resurrected Mission 770 (stylee) model, but no doubt they'll sell a good few.

To the OP here - my take for what little it's worth, is that dispersion inconsistencies aren't always as much a problem as port/surround issues in the upper hundred Hertz region as shown here with so many of the cheaper wonder-boxes out there that have been tested. I'm convinced these issues can cause listener fatigue after a while to youthful ears. Smoothies like Radial cone Harbeths (now measuring much 'flatter' overall in 'XD' form judging by reviews around the world) may not sound initially as 'impressive,' but by Lord you can listen to music for hours and enjoy the experience, even f the passive crossover design isn't ultimately as 'forensically detailed sounding' as a good active can achieve.

 

[dogmamann]

Like I tried to say, Robin Marshall designed the original Epos driver's magnetic circuit without the luxury of using then expensive computers and as I said, it was flawed but worked absolutely consistently from sample to sample - Robin took great pride in showing me how they were made up (in Chesham originally) and plots of the drivers all laid on top of each other with barely half a dB variance... Robin learned the practical way, starting with complex crossovers (he used to calibrate Audiomaster LS3/5A's individually and needed to tweak and measure cap values when KEF supplied a duff batch of drivers which is something I don't think the other mid 70's makers ever did to the same extent. Bit by bit, his crossovers became simpler until with Epos in the 80's, he dispensed with them altogether, bar a cap in series with the ES14 tweeter and a cap in series plus resistor across the tweet in the ES11. Stereophile has a review of the later and final 'original' ES14 version and by Klippel standards it's a dogs dinner, but to listen to it back then in a small to middling room and with the Naim gear it was designed to partner (for good commercial reasons), they 'sounded' well enough (I used mine with port bungs in sideways to retain a little bass and prevent boom). Robin went deep into the pro side post Epos and after his domestic run with Mission and others and many years back, I gather he was using JBL Arrays at home (don't know the model). I suspect he's enjoying retirement now but it's twenty five years or so since I last spoke to him.

I've no doubt at all that K H Fink is a great established speaker designer, willing and able to use the latest CAD techniques/measurements as well as listening to create an excellent end product, my beef being it needn't have used the 'ES14' name. The price is high also for a two way passive as is the unrelated but 'retro leaning' resurrected Mission 770 (stylee) model, but no doubt they'll sell a good few.

To the OP here - my take for what little it's worth, is that dispersion inconsistencies aren't always as much a problem as port/surround issues in the upper hundred Hertz region as shown here with so many of the cheaper wonder-boxes out there that have been tested. I'm convinced these issues can cause listener fatigue after a while to youthful ears. Smoothies like Radial cone Harbeths (now measuring much 'flatter' overall in 'XD' form judging by reviews around the world) may not sound initially as 'impressive,' but by Lord you can listen to music for hours and enjoy the experience, even f the passive crossover design isn't ultimately as 'forensically detailed sounding' as a good active can achieve.

They started selling in September. So far no reviews by users or reviewers. That’s not a good indication. Yeah 3900 is a premium price for a two way bookshelf! But still it’s cheaper than the Fink’s other two way speaker : https://www.finkteam.com/products/kim/

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

They started selling in September. So far no reviews by users or reviewers. That’s not a good indication. Yeah 3900 is a premium price for a two way bookshelf! But still it’s cheaper than the Fink’s other two way speaker : https://www.finkteam.com/products/kim/

......no idea why you think no review yet is not a good indication, but the truth is that we are just delivering the first units to the market. Yeah, it took a bit longer - Covid 19 did not make it easy. So sooner or later, reviews will come, but I'm not pushing it.
And come on boys, do you really think I don't know how to design a waveguide? The flat front on the tweeter is what I wanted. Yeah, I know the effects of the directivity, but I also know the effects of a waveguide and my personal choice is the flat front. And the small valley @2-3kHz is also there on purpose. It would be easy to make it flat, but I don't want to have bleeding ears. In an ideal world, everything could be flat, but with real-world music, the flat upper-mid band is biting.
For a studio monitor, a waveguide with controlled directivity and flat response is great, but you are using those in an often overdamped room in the nearfield and that's another story.
Voicing speakers is hard work - it would be a lot easier to only make them measure well and that's it. Most of us designers have two souls. The engineering one wants to go the measurement way and the other soul tries to make the speakers sound pleasant and makes you feel good.
I know that here at ASR, the measurement side is dominant and that's OK. I enjoy the reviews and like to see measurements (to please my engineering soul), but my experience tells me that measurements are not everything. However, fact is I bought the Klippel NFS after I saw the results Amir published.

Regarding the price of the speakers, we put a lot of work and material into them. If you feel, the price is too high, you can always buy cheaper ones. We design enough of them, but we also know what the difference is. Might not be enough for you, but hey, everybody is free to buy what he wants.

Best regards

Karl-Heinz Fink

 

[Purité Audio]

Will you then be publishing the Klippel measurements on your website?
Keith

 

[thewas]

Personally I haven't met yet loudspeakers that measure greatly but don't sound great and when I ask for such examples I never get an answer.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

Personally I haven't met yet loudspeakers that measure greatly but don't sound great and when I ask for such examples I never get an answer.

It depends on what you mean by great measurement. Let's talk about bottom-end timing for example....in a halfway sensible alignment, you can tune the port a few Hz up and down and it would not change the roll-off too much. I personally like to tune a tad lower compared with other designers, who want to get the maximum level out of the port. I'll get a flatter roll-off, the other guy more level above tuning, but a steeper roll-off below. I do the lower tuning because I calculate in some room gain and we optimize the timing. It's not easy to explain what timing means.....but sometimes we change the port by one cm and it just locks in. The higher port tuning might look more impressive but can sound boomy and slow. So both measurements look good, but the sound is different.
There are many other areas you have to touch in the voicing - without changing the measurements too much.
So my conclusion would be: speakers that really measure badly, will never sound great. Speakers that measure well, can sound great

 

[dogmamann]

It depends on what you mean by great measurement. Let's talk about bottom-end timing for example....in a halfway sensible alignment, you can tune the port a few Hz up and down and it would not change the roll-off too much. I personally like to tune a tad lower compared with other designers, who want to get the maximum level out of the port. I'll get a flatter roll-off, the other guy more level above tuning, but a steeper roll-off below. I do the lower tuning because I calculate in some room gain and we optimize the timing. It's not easy to explain what timing means.....but sometimes we change the port by one cm and it just locks in. The higher port tuning might look more impressive but can sound boomy and slow. So both measurements look good, but the sound is different.
There are many other areas you have to touch in the voicing - without changing the measurements too much.
So my conclusion would be: speakers that really measure badly, will never sound great. Speakers that measure well, can sound great

Was this the same case with port designs stub the older brands you worked for, say ALR, IQ and so on? Honestly, I really wished you brought some of those designs especially the Nummer series back the market for their older prices I had all 3 versions of Nummer /Number 4 and had listened to mostly all the speakers around 4000 euros and I am pretty confident that they would stack up easily.

 

[Joachim Herbert]

Voicing speakers is hard work - it would be a lot easier to only make them measure well and that's it.

That made perfect sense before DSPs became widely available.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

Was this the same case with port designs stub the older brands you worked for, say ALR, IQ and so on? Honestly, I really wished you brought some of those designs especially the Nummer series back the market for their older prices I had all 3 versions of Nummer /Number 4 and had listened to mostly all the speakers around 4000 euros and I am pretty confident that they would stack up easily.

Time has changed....we don't have any infrastructure left for making speakers for a lower price here in Europe. ALR and IQ cabinets have been made locally in Essen, but that would be crazy expensive nowadays. VIFA was making my drivers, but they are now Scan Speak and everything costs crazy money. And you should not forget that ALR and IQ were happening around mid/end of the 80 and that is >30 years ago. A Golf around mid 80th was 20.000DM=10.000€. Now a simple Golf is > 30.000€. IQ was always priced as a local brand, so no margin for export, and ALR was similar. Now in a global market, you have to make sure that prices are harmonized. It's not that we are just filling up our pockets with your money.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

To the OP here - my take for what little it's worth, is that dispersion inconsistencies aren't always as much a problem as port/surround issues in the upper hundred Hertz region as shown here with so many of the cheaper wonder-boxes out there that have been tested. I'm convinced these issues can cause listener fatigue after a while to youthful ears.

I totally agree.... . BTW, the idea to use the name was based on the fact that the ES14 was more or less the first successful model that came out. I worked with Robin during his time in Mission and later on a project with Infinity. He always had his own ideas and he did not care too much about other opinions. I thought we should follow that tradition, so we changed everything we found to be an improvement. The latest Mission Retro speakers tried to copy as much of the original design as possible, I was more interested to give it the best possible technology

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

That made perfect sense before DSPs became widely available.

Yes and No . Same problem, just different tools.