I agree. Hiding the screws/bolts is a good move.
Should be compulsory.
On the 4.2, 6.2 and now the new speaker, it’s what helps make them so clean looking.
Which is why I don’t understand the grooves part.
Again, it’s personal taste; but it looks like a tall stand mount on a crap stand.
Could be to help break the sound from the speaker.
Dahlquist used a 3M flocking material on the front panel to great effect back in the late 1980's.
I have had mine in use since 1990.
My DQ 905's (semi-anechoic) are +-2 DB from 26 Hz-20 KHz (without EQ of any type) and I'm still using 4 of them and 2 custom DYI subs for 20 Hz-80 Hz.:
From HiFi Classic:
Dahlquist refers to the cabinet of the M-905 as an “Un-box” enclosure, likening its construction to that of a violin. The wall panels are of varying thickness, and there is special internal damping and bracing designed to suit the individual characteristics of the drivers in the system, all to minimize coloration of the sound by the box. The front panel is coated with a black flocking material whose thousands of fibers are electrostatically aligned perpendicular to its surface during application. The flocking and the flush-mounting of the tweeter are said to minimize diffraction from front-panel discontinuities, preserving image focus.
Lab Tests
Preliminary listening tests of the Dahlquist M-905 speakers—in-stalled on the ST-9 stands, as recommended—revealed a very wide-range and balanced sound whose smoothness and lack of coloration were far beyond what we would have expected from speakers in their price range. In fact, the sound from the M-905’s would be more than acceptable at several times the price. In view of this, we were not too surprised to find that with respect to flatness and freedom from peaks and holes the measured room response was among the best we have encountered.
The close-miked woofer (and port) response was also considerably flatter than we have measured from most speakers, with a very small bass-resonance peak. At the system resonance of 60 Hz, the output was only about 2 dB above its average level in the upper part of the woofer’s range, and even that minor output variation was spread over almost two octaves. When the bass curve was spliced to the room-response measurement, the resulting composite frequency response was flat within about ±2 dB from 26 to 20,000 Hz. The horizontal directivity of the tweeter was only discernible in the room measurement above 10,000 Hz.
We measured the sensitivity of the M-905 as 87 dB SPL, which was lower than the rated 91 dB but still about average for speakers of its size. The difference may have been a result of different test conditions since we used a full-range pink-noise signal while Dahlquist’s rating was made at 1,000 Hz. The system’s minimum impedance was about 4.8 ohms in the 8,000- to 10,000-Hz region, and it measured 7 ohms at 150 to 200 Hz. Its maximum impedance was 28 ohms at 60 Hz, and there was a broad peak of 18 ohms in the vicinity of 1,500 Hz.
We measured the woofer’s distortion with a 4-volt drive level, corresponding to a 90-dB SPL at 1 meter. The distortion was less than 1 percent from 100 Hz down to almost 60 Hz, the effective crossover to the port. Below that crossover the distortion rose to 5 percent at 45 Hz and 9 percent at 35 Hz. In high-power tests with single-cycle tone bursts, the woofer began to sound “hard” at about 350 watts into its 8.5-ohm impedance at 100 Hz. At higher frequencies the amplifier clipped—at outputs of 490 watts at 1.000 Hz and 1,380 watts at 10,000 Hz—before distortion became visible on the acoustic waveform.
Quasi-anechoic FFT measurements showed an overall group-delay variation of about 0.1 millisecond between 4,000 and 20,000 Hz and 0.5 ms between 1,000 and 20.000 Hz, convincing evidence of the attention paid to the phase characteristics of the M-905.
. I started the listening session blindfolded and it would be obvious to listen for differences in the deep bass, but to my surprise I had a hard time hearing much difference between the two, in terms of low reach and slam, but there were some differences in articulation and detail. I later had to discover that Morten had played a little trick on me, more about that later. What I heard was that the 6.2's had a much smaller soundstage and was a bit nasal in comparison to the 66. On contrast the 66's had extreme clarity (more treble energy?) and presented all music genres with purity and comfortable ease. Soundstage is HUGE, clear and well defined. The interesting thing is, that its the same AMT tweeter/waveguide and almost the same bass driver (66 is aluminium) yet the contrast was so big. I can wholehearted recommend that you give the Clarity 66 a listen, I think you will be impressed of what it can offer sound wise, I know I was.
