Stereonet Australia Show 2025

[Keith_W]

This was on again over the weekend at the same location they use every year. Previous show reports: 2024, 2023.

I have to say that the standard of the show improves every year. Earlier shows suffered from overcrowding and general poor sound due to demonstrators bringing wrong speakers for the rooms (either too big or too small). There was also a lot of sound leakage from HT demonstrators. This year the show has expanded, occupied more floor space, and the HT guys were shoved into a corner of the show where their explosions couldn't bother the rest of us. So the overall organization of the show is much better - kudos to the guys behind the scenes. Excellent work!

Some negatives though: the food options were awful and expensive, the coffee was insipid. It's the hotel's fault and not the organizers. Also, this year there was a huge protest in the city with thousands of protestors and counter-protestors, and hundreds of police which stopped a lot of people from attending on Sunday. Good for us who managed to get there, not so good for those who were stuck when public transport was brought to a standstill.

Anyway, on with the show report. I had more time this year, and I chatted with other show goers and made sure to visit the rooms they rated highly.

My highlight of the show was the Alsyvox / Aries Cerat room. They were showing the baby Alsyvox speakers - the Tintorettos. These are 3 way planar ribbons. I have read a lot about Alsyvox on WBF, and those guys think it is amazing. I have to agree. They really do everything - throw a wide and stable image with a lot of depth, excellent separation of instruments, excellent reproduction of timbre. But what was really more impressive was the tactility of the sound - you can actually feel the sound in the way that you can feel a real instrument in the room. Complex and loud orchestral music is a good test - if you can still hear separate instruments with their timbres preserved and no smearing when the orchestra is going full tilt, it is doing very well. These things did reproduce Shostakovich very well, but there was some smearing in the midbass. I could also tell that they must be quite directional because the tonality shifted quite a bit off-axis. They aren't laser focused like some other panels, but they were probably about 45deg. My guess.

I grabbed as many friends as I could and visited the room over and over. They were all impressed. One of my friends is the Australian distributor for Klippel and a speaker manufacturer - a hard nosed objectivist if you've ever met one. I told him what I thought of the sound, and I asked him what is producing that tactility (he heard it too). He thought that you might see it in the CSD. "Being planars, the CSD would be very impressive. There will be no box resonances and it should be very clean". But the tactility? He did not know. My theory is that these things probably radiate like line arrays which means that most of the time we are sitting in the acoustic nearfield where the sound does not decay according to the inverse square law. But in the end it's all speculation - until we see some measurements of this thing, we just don't know. The demonstrator wasn't very knowledgeable in that regard, he was more interested in telling me about amplifier and speaker cable pairings, but he did promise me he would obtain measurements from Alsyvox if I email him. I am not likely to email him because of the stupendous price of these speakers - AUD$145k (USD$95k). But it might almost be worth it because I have never heard a speaker that does tactility and timbre like these speakers do.

Directly opposite the Alsyvox room was my other highlight - the YG Acoustics room driven by Vitus amplifiers. These were the Sonja 3.2 speakers and retail for AUD$179k (USD$117k). Another stupendously priced loudspeaker. I know from my own measurements of a cheaper YG model that those things had a flat frequency response at listening position which means they likely had a rising frequency response at 1m. The owner of that system spent a lot of money on a professional acoustician who treated his room, so IMO his system sounded much better than this one (yes Sam, if you are reading this, that's you!). The construction of these Sonjas is impressive - all aluminium and the finish was impeccable. This system had a very sharp attack and the dynamics were very good. It has the same tactility as the Alsyvox but the tone was on the brighter side. The room supplied by the hotel was identical, but this room had more issues than the Alsyvox room - probably because the speaker excited the room differently. The sound wasn't bad, I could easily live with this system. Unfortunately, it costs more than the system next door and it was less convincing.

This was the Wilson-Benesch / Halcro room. WB was demonstrating the Discovery 3zero speaker, and Halcro showed off their Eclipse monoblocks capable of 300W RMS sustained and 2.1kW peak. This room was highly rated by subjectivists at the show for its clean sound, and I had to agree. Those shiny things you see at the bottom is a woofer. This thing is configured as a 2 way with isobaric woofers. It misses out on the bottom octave and it badly needed a subwoofer. There were no sonic flaws that I could detect. The demonstrators were smart enough not to load the room with listening chairs. 6 seats, one sweet spot, and that's it. Everyone else had to wait. If you managed to claim that sweet spot (as I did) you would be rewarded with sound almost as good as you would get at home. It sounded a little lean, but it was neutral and the imaging was quite good given the limitations of the room.

I asked the demonstrator a rather naughty question - "The predecessor of this amplifier was rated by Stereophile as the best amplifier in the world, with 1 part per billion of distortion. What improvements have been made from that? You can't hear distortion that low, why buy this amplifier (AUD$140k/USD$93k) when the superseded model is selling for such a heavy discount?". He went on about oscilloscopes tell you one thing, but you need to design amplifiers with your ears, and these sound better, etc. IOW he tried to feed me a bunch of marketing. That's ok, he didn't work for Halcro, he was the distributor. I would be disappointed if an engineer said that, but a distributor is a businessman, not an engineer.

 

[stvnharr]

I attended the Stereonet show on Friday with a couple EE friends. I last attended 2 years ago. As noted in the first paragraph of Keith's post, the show was much better organized this year. It was not crowded on Friday and there was very little sound bleed between rooms. I liked the room with the Sound Labs electrostats the most. I was disappointed that the D&D dealer did not show the 8C's this year. They were my favorites from past shows. And compared to all the 6 figure speakers at the show, the D&D's are almost bargain priced.

 

[Keith_W]

Another highlight of the show (being a DSP nerd) was the DEQX room. That's Kim Ryrie on the right, one of the founders of DEQX. Alan Langford (the other founder) looked like he had been up all night and declined to be photographed. The gentleman on the left is Steven, who designed the speakers that you see.

DEQX was showing off their new Dolby Processor. IOW it's the only linear-phase Dolby Processor in the world, apart from Trinnov. It takes a HDMI input and does the decoding. It has 8 Dante outputs, each equipped with PoE (Power over Ethernet) that can go to other Dante capable DEQX devices, such as the Premate 8, the LS200 (a 2 channel DSP processor), and a their new amplifiers shown below.

This is DEQX's new Class O amplifier. I asked ... "Class O? Never heard of it". Answer: that's because they invented it. "O" stands for "Open Loop", so it is an open loop Class D. An amplifier designer I was with thought that it was crazy to design an open loop amplifier. But me, I have no opinion. I have no interest in amplifiers - to me, if they do the job, and don't go unstable, they are fine. Can someone tell me what's wrong with open loop amplifiers? Genuine question - I don't know the answer, and I am not here to promote or defend them.

As you can see, it's a tiny little thing. See the Dante network port for an idea of its size. There is no power supply, it receives power from PoE. The outputs labelled Ch1 and Ch2 are speaker level outputs. It makes 30W RMS, but is capable of 300W for 300ms. This design means that it is severely limited with compatibility, and MUST be used with a Dante and PoE.

I dunno man, I like the idea of a linear-phase Dolby decoder, but this thing is really niche. Almost as if some engineer went wild with a minimalist concept without a marketing guy (sometimes you need them) putting the brakes on that idea. They are selling it as an AV preamp with the flexibility of choosing as many amplifier output modules as you need. I didn't ask about price, but it better come in at less than AUD$1000. Because I can think of some other Class D amps without the same limitations of compatibility that I would rather own. I mean, there is a reason why all other AVR's have XLR outputs instead of Dante/PoE outputs. You don't get the flexibility of up to 64 Dante endpoints, but i'm not sure the average HT needs that many endpoints. Maybe they aren't targeting the domestic market.

This is Glenn Dickins, the DSP guru at DEQX. He is one of the fathers of linear-phase, a big proponent of FIR, helped develop Dolby Atmos, and has multiple DSP related patents. We exchanged phone numbers, and he sent me this message:

The Youtube link goes to an AES presentation by Francis Rumsey about spatial audio, and the rest of what he said ... I had to do some serious Googling before I understood what he was talking about. As a doctor, I have to explain technical terms to non-technical people, and it is vital they understand. Engineers mostly talk to each other. Maybe they might have to speak to marketing or accounting. So the flurry of jargon was too much for my brain to process even though I have a better understanding of DSP and signal processing than most hobbyists.

He agreed to do a Q&A session for ASR, so I will think of some questions and send them to him. If you guys have questions, feel free to post them in this thread or DM me. He had some opinions which were different to my understanding of DSP (for e.g. he thinks that 8192 taps per channel at 48kHz is enough - "show me a system that needs more than a 6Hz bin size"). I am in no position to disagree with him (he is a Professor, I am a hobbyist!), so the best I can say is that I have not yet been persuaded. "Disagreement" is too strong a word, I am not qualified to disagree.

 

[Keith_W]

March Audio was back at the show with their new Kuoro loudspeaker (brighter red) which fits in between the Sointuva bookshelf speakers (finished in natural wood) and the Ukkonen (darker metallic red) flagship speaker. They also showed off their new P801 monoblock power amp.

Unlike the Ukkonen/Sointuva, which both use an SB Acoustics tweeter with a waveguide, the new Kuoro uses a Purifi tweeter. The difference is that the Kuoro has wider directivity than the Ukkonen/Sointuva. I didn't ask to see the measurements, but given previous measurements by Erin, I am sure that Alan has done a good job. Unfortunately, I preferred the sound of the SB Acoustics tweeter of the older speakers. The Purifi tweeter seemed to smooth things over too much. Alan said that he will be sending these speakers to Erin, so let's wait a few months and see what Erin's Klippel says. I will be particularly interested in comparing the top end of the two speakers.

Another highly rated room at the show featured SoundLab speakers. This is a very small US based manufacturer. They make 11 speakers per year, and there is a long waiting list. These are full range electrostats.

I am not a fan of electrostats or panel speakers for that matter. I find most of them dynamically compromised - can't go very loud, compress at loud volumes, only good for low volume listening. Top and bottom extension is a common concern. Not to mention, maintenance is required - the mylar degrades and eventually needs replacement, and the membrane needs periodic re-tensioning. The membrane needs to be protected from dust, so screens are mandatory, and screens can't be so tightly woven that sound can't get out, nor can they be so loose that dust can get in. All these compromises mean I have never found an electrostat that I like.

These things seemed to be less compromised than other ESL's I have heard. The sound is huge, and they can certainly go loud without compressing. I was able to throw orchestral music and pipe organ at it and it played music at volumes that would make other ESL's start crackling. Subjectively it seemed to be missing the bottom octave. Could be the speaker, could be the room. It seemed to suffer less from off-axis listening, so directivity seems wider than a typical ESL. So it is clearly a very good ESL ... maybe the best ESL I have ever heard. But the demonstrator was unable to answer my questions about maintenance.

Another room that showgoers talked a lot about was the DeVore Fidelity O96 paired with a tiny 10W amplifier (sorry, can't remember what it was). We were told that these speakers were specifically designed with high sensitivity as a design goal (it is 96dB/W/m) and easy to drive with a nominal impedance of 10W. The wide baffle supposedly helps with the sensitivity since it directs more sound towards the listener.

On-axis, these speakers sounded okay. Reasonably neutral with nothing annoying standing out. The tonality changed a lot when I stood up, meaning that vertical directivity was likely very poor. They seemed to compress at high volume. Can't tell if it's the speaker or the amplifier. I don't know how much they cost, but they would be a good choice if you were of the "high sensitivity" persuasion.

That's right, another panel speaker. Fonica International showed off their Flag S and Flag M ("Small" and "Medium") speakers. This was also highly rated by many showgoers. This year, there were more panel speakers than normal, and they seemed to garner more enthusiasm than usual. The demonstrator said that these are not ESL's and not planar magnetic dipoles, which left me quite confused. The illustration on their website clearly shows a conductor bonded onto a mylar membrane. So, unless someone on ASR corrects my misconception, they are planar magnetic speakers as far as i'm concerned!

Compared to the Soundlabs ESL's I mentioned earlier, these speakers have two important advantages - (1) they are half the price at AUD$35k vs. $65k, and (2) you can actually buy them and not have to join a waiting list. However, they had an mid treble resonance or peak that made female vocals and violins sound a bit hard and brittle, but it wasn't so high up the freq range that it produced sibilance. So I estimate it's about 3-5kHz. Otherwise, the speakers sounded fine - a surprising amount of bass for a panel speaker, and without the dynamic limitations or compression at loud volumes that are typical of this type of speaker. If that mid treble peak can be tuned out with DSP, these would be very good speakers. Otherwise, I can't recommend them.

 

[Keith_W]

Now on to some fun stuff.

Marantz Grand Horizon speakers - a wireless speaker that is clearly targeting the lifestyle crowd pioneered by the Devialet Phantom. These are an attractive speaker with a high excursion woofer (you can see that thing pumping) with an absurd price of AUD$9500 each. You need two for a stereo pair. They can certainly go party level loud and fill the room with sound, but the only people buying these will be for the styling.

Focal Diva Utopia wireless speakers. I was amazed that someone was brave enough to make such a forward thinking loudspeaker. These are 3 way active wireless loudspeakers with built-in DSP, amplification, streaming, and includes an ADC and HDMI inputs. All it needs is a power cord and a wifi connection. They sounded fine - neutral, powerful, no irritations. But ... it's $60k. For that kind of money you have to please the tweako crowd who won't be happy that it is so progressive. Maybe there is a new type of buyer. For their sake, I hope so. I wasn't game to ask them about Naim/Focal gossip (the short version is: the Australian importer "uncoupled" itself from the distributor, who then sold Naim/Focal at a huge discount to get rid of his stock. Result: worldwide drop in Focal/Naim sales as customers realized what the mark-up was. Add to that a lot of wild swirling rumours which were probably unconfirmed embellishments ... but the stories were really funny!).

As a side note, those Focals remind me a bit of this...

Line Magnetic 212 amplifier. This is a 50W SET power amp. The photo doesn't give you an idea of how big those tubes are.

Perhaps this photo is better. The pairing with Focals was a rather odd choice. A lot of showgoers praised the sound of this room, but the amplifier was clearly struggling. There was very little bass to speak of, and what was there was woolly. It could not go very loud without a lot of smearing. I know these speakers are capable of sounding much better, so it's probably the amp. If you threw something undemanding at it, like a female vocal, it sounded fine. My friend said of this system: "the music they are playing is 30% silence, so of course it's going to sound great". It's certainly a cool looking amp, and part of me loves it. But not with this speaker. AUD$32k.

I am not going to go through my list of comical sounding speakers this year, and there certainly were many. It boggles my mind that they would dare bring a speaker with such obvious tonal deficiencies to an audio show. Microphones are cheap, REW is free ... there simply is no excuse. I would dearly love to say "they sound like crap! Do you even have ears? WTF are you thinking!" but I'll spare Amir the legal troubles.

 

[naviivan]

Another room that showgoers talked a lot about was the DeVore Fidelity O96 paired with a tiny 10W amplifier (sorry, can't remember what it was).

It was a First Watt Amp- Nelson Pass /Class A power amp.
This was also on my list of rooms that I enjoyed.

My highlight of the show was the Alsyvox / Aries Cerat room. They were showing the baby Alsyvox speakers - the Tintorettos.

When I got there they had the Sigma Acoustics 3 way. Wish I heard the Alsyvox!

I thought the Fonica's were great and were one of the stand outs for me. I didn't get to hear the sound labs speakers because the room was full around the time I was there.
Obscene amount of money for speakers on show so it was good to hear the Richter Merlin S6 plus that sounded great for their little size and was only $1,399AUD/$915USD
Didn't have the deep bass like the other large speakers what what it did, it did really well.

 

[Reddoc]

There were no sonic flaws that I could detect.

People on ASR often demean subjective assessments as worthless, but at the end of the day, I want to hear something that sounds real, so FWIW
This system sounded more real than any others at the Show (except in the bass, which, as you point out, was a sensible omission as the environment was essentially uncontrollable eg flexible noisy roof paneling) and was very enjoyable indeed.
Best treble I've heard in my life from a hifi system.

 

[tengiz]

View attachment 473417View attachment 473418

This is DEQX's new Class O amplifier. I asked ... "Class O? Never heard of it". Answer: that's because they invented it. "O" stands for "Open Loop", so it is an open loop Class D. An amplifier designer I was with thought that it was a stupid idea to design an open loop amplifier. But me, I have no opinion. I have no interest in amplifiers - to me, if they do the job, and don't go unstable, they are fine.

The late-1990s to early-2000s Equibit power DAC could be classified as open-loop switching design: PCM→PWM→output filter→speaker. It was praised by some and harshly criticized by others. Used in Lyngdorf digital integrated amplifiers and Panasonic receivers, it was eventually eclipsed by ICEpower and Hypex, which delivered superior performance.

It would interesting to learn more!

 

[Keith_W]

People on ASR often demean subjective assessments as worthless, but at the end of the day, I want to hear something that sounds real, so FWIW

You edited the quote so much that it was unclear which system you were referring to. Wilson Benesch / Halcro, yes?

We have no choice but to make subjective assessments at hifi shows. I try to Google for measurements after I listen, to check if what I am hearing matches what was measured. I have heard so many neutral speakers that I am reasonably good at separating neutral from coloured, but it's good to have measurements to fall back on since our hearing depends on our mood.

I wasn't in a very good mood by the end of the day since there was too much blood in my caffeine circulating system, and the coffee was so weak.

 

[AndreaT]

This was on again over the weekend at the same location they use every year. Previous show reports: 2024, 2023.

I have to say that the standard of the show improves every year. Earlier shows suffered from overcrowding and general poor sound due to demonstrators bringing wrong speakers for the rooms (either too big or too small). There was also a lot of sound leakage from HT demonstrators. This year the show has expanded, occupied more floor space, and the HT guys were shoved into a corner of the show where their explosions couldn't bother the rest of us. So the overall organization of the show is much better - kudos to the guys behind the scenes. Excellent work!

Some negatives though: the food options were awful and expensive, the coffee was insipid. It's the hotel's fault and not the organizers. Also, this year there was a huge protest in the city with thousands of protestors and counter-protestors, and hundreds of police which stopped a lot of people from attending on Sunday. Good for us who managed to get there, not so good for those who were stuck when public transport was brought to a standstill.

Anyway, on with the show report. I had more time this year, and I chatted with other show goers and made sure to visit the rooms they rated highly.

View attachment 473385

My highlight of the show was the Alsyvox / Aries Cerat room. They were showing the baby Alsyvox speakers - the Tintorettos. These are 3 way planar ribbons. I have read a lot about Alsyvox on WBF, and those guys think it is amazing. I have to agree. They really do everything - throw a wide and stable image with a lot of depth, excellent separation of instruments, excellent reproduction of timbre. But what was really more impressive was the tactility of the sound - you can actually feel the sound in the way that you can feel a real instrument in the room. Complex and loud orchestral music is a good test - if you can still hear separate instruments with their timbres preserved and no smearing when the orchestra is going full tilt, it is doing very well. These things did reproduce Shostakovich very well, but there was some smearing in the midbass. I could also tell that they must be quite directional because the tonality shifted quite a bit off-axis. They aren't laser focused like some other panels, but they were probably about 45deg. My guess.

I grabbed as many friends as I could and visited the room over and over. They were all impressed. One of my friends is the Australian distributor for Klippel and a speaker manufacturer - a hard nosed objectivist if you've ever met one. I told him what I thought of the sound, and I asked him what is producing that tactility (he heard it too). He thought that you might see it in the CSD. "Being planars, the CSD would be very impressive. There will be no box resonances and it should be very clean". But the tactility? He did not know. My theory is that these things probably radiate like line arrays which means that most of the time we are sitting in the acoustic nearfield where the sound does not decay according to the inverse square law. But in the end it's all speculation - until we see some measurements of this thing, we just don't know. The demonstrator wasn't very knowledgeable in that regard, he was more interested in telling me about amplifier and speaker cable pairings, but he did promise me he would obtain measurements from Alsyvox if I email him. I am not likely to email him because of the stupendous price of these speakers - AUD$145k (USD$95k). But it might almost be worth it because I have never heard a speaker that does tactility and timbre like these speakers do.

View attachment 473388

Directly opposite the Alsyvox room was my other highlight - the YG Acoustics room driven by Vitus amplifiers. These were the Sonja 3.2 speakers and retail for AUD$179k (USD$117k). Another stupendously priced loudspeaker. I know from my own measurements of a cheaper YG model that those things had a flat frequency response at listening position which means they likely had a rising frequency response at 1m. The owner of that system spent a lot of money on a professional acoustician who treated his room, so IMO his system sounded much better than this one (yes Sam, if you are reading this, that's you!). The construction of these Sonjas is impressive - all aluminium and the finish was impeccable. This system had a very sharp attack and the dynamics were very good. It has the same tactility as the Alsyvox but the tone was on the brighter side. The room supplied by the hotel was identical, but this room had more issues than the Alsyvox room - probably because the speaker excited the room differently. The sound wasn't bad, I could easily live with this system. Unfortunately, it costs more than the system next door and it was less convincing.

View attachment 473397

This was the Wilson-Benesch / Halcro room. WB was demonstrating the Discovery 3zero speaker, and Halcro showed off their Eclipse monoblocks capable of 300W RMS sustained and 2.1kW peak. This room was highly rated by subjectivists at the show for its clean sound, and I had to agree. Those shiny things you see at the bottom is a woofer. This thing is configured as a 2 way with isobaric woofers. It misses out on the bottom octave and it badly needed a subwoofer. There were no sonic flaws that I could detect. The demonstrators were smart enough not to load the room with listening chairs. 6 seats, one sweet spot, and that's it. Everyone else had to wait. If you managed to claim that sweet spot (as I did) you would be rewarded with sound almost as good as you would get at home. It sounded a little lean, but it was neutral and the imaging was quite good given the limitations of the room.

I asked the demonstrator a rather naughty question - "The predecessor of this amplifier was rated by Stereophile as the best amplifier in the world, with 1 part per billion of distortion. What improvements have been made from that? You can't hear distortion that low, why buy this amplifier (AUD$140k/USD$93k) when the superseded model is selling for such a heavy discount?". He went on about oscilloscopes tell you one thing, but you need to design amplifiers with your ears, and these sound better, etc. IOW he tried to feed me a bunch of marketing. That's ok, he didn't work for Halcro, he was the distributor. I would be disappointed if an engineer said that, but a distributor is a businessman, not an engineer.

Alsyvox are the creation of my old schoolmate Daniele Coen. After spending five years in the classroom with him, I can say he is the most intelligent and goal oriented person I have ever known. I met him in NYC a few years ago, when he was demoing his speakers to an High End retailer: they do sound wonderful and in spite of the reputation of large panel speakers, they are also stupendously efficient, requiring not many Watts for live music loudness. They are expensive, but they should be considered an ultimate sound quality speaker, nothing else I have ever heard is as majestic and delicate as the sound generated by Alsyvox speakers.

 

[Reddoc]

This was the Wilson-Benesch / Halcro room.

I lifted your quote about no sonic flaws from this paragraph. Agree it sounded wonderful.

 

[Reddoc]

I wasn't in a very good mood by the end of the day since there was too much blood in my caffeine circulating system, and the coffee was so weak.

You were in Melbourne, keith. How tf could you not be full of high-quality coffee 24/7? I know I was. Along with several world-class restaurant meals. That city is fantastic.

 

[dlaloum]

You were in Melbourne, keith. How tf could you not be full of high-quality coffee 24/7? I know I was. Along with several world-class restaurant meals. That city is fantastic.

The Cafe's of Melbourne are legend.... the international hotels on the other hand, not so much...

 

[Keith_W]

Alsyvox are the creation of my old schoolmate Daniele Coen. After spending five years in the classroom with him, I can say he is the most intelligent and goal oriented person I have ever known. I met him in NYC a few years ago, when he was demoing his speakers to an High End retailer: they do sound wonderful and in spite of the reputation of large panel speakers, they are also stupendously efficient, requiring not many Watts for live music loudness. They are expensive, but they should be considered an ultimate sound quality speaker, nothing else I have ever heard is as majestic and delicate as the sound generated by Alsyvox speakers.

Great!! If you know him, maybe you could pester him to share measurements of his speakers.

This is an opinion that has been gestating in my head for a couple of years, and I don't know if it's true or not. It started off when I read David Griesinger's presentation on "proximity" where he said that live instruments have a clarity and energy that is lost if you listen further than a certain distance. He called this the LLD, or Limit of Localisation Distance. It is caused by loss of phase coherence due to room reflections.

Then I started reading about phase audibility. Toole and Linkwitz say it isn't audible, JJ says that it is. I have linearised the phase of my speakers with DSP, and I think it sounds much clearer than the minimum-phase version. So I am tentatively convinced that phase coherence is important.

And then I started reading Don Keele's and Ureda's publications about line arrays. The difference between line arrays and conventional speakers is that they are deliberately designed so that listeners remain in the acoustic nearfield. The variables are: listening distance, height of the speaker, and wavelength. If you sit further away, you will need a taller speaker. The claimed characteristics of the acoustic nearfield are: SPL drops at less than the inverse square law - meaning the speakers don't seem to drop in volume when listened closer or further away. Of course, line arrays are not the only speakers that do this. My horns seem to do this as well, and so do some narrow radiating dipoles.

This also means that direct sound predominates over reflections. And if direct sound > reflections, maybe that means that you are within Griesinger's LLD so the "proximity" effect kicks in.

There is something going on here which I can't fully explain. I'm not saying it's not explainable or measurable, but the explanation requires a more advanced understanding than what I currently have.

You were in Melbourne, keith. How tf could you not be full of high-quality coffee 24/7? I know I was. Along with several world-class restaurant meals. That city is fantastic.

I AM in Melbourne - I live here! You can find a lot of places selling great coffee, but not in that hotel. Having travelled the world, I can say that nobody does coffee better than us. Specifically, this city. There is great coffee in Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth, but you are just as likely to run into insipid coffee as you might run into fantastic coffee.

 

[ClaudeJ1]

Great!! If you know him, maybe you could pester him to share measurements of his speakers.

This is an opinion that has been gestating in my head for a couple of years, and I don't know if it's true or not. It started off when I read David Griesinger's presentation on "proximity" where he said that live instruments have a clarity and energy that is lost if you listen further than a certain distance. He called this the LLD, or Limit of Localisation Distance. It is caused by loss of phase coherence due to room reflections.

Then I started reading about phase audibility. Toole and Linkwitz say it isn't audible, JJ says that it is. I have linearised the phase of my speakers with DSP, and I think it sounds much clearer than the minimum-phase version. So I am tentatively convinced that phase coherence is important.

And then I started reading Don Keele's and Ureda's publications about line arrays. The difference between line arrays and conventional speakers is that they are deliberately designed so that listeners remain in the acoustic nearfield. The variables are: listening distance, height of the speaker, and wavelength. If you sit further away, you will need a taller speaker. The claimed characteristics of the acoustic nearfield are: SPL drops at less than the inverse square law - meaning the speakers don't seem to drop in volume when listened closer or further away. Of course, line arrays are not the only speakers that do this. My horns seem to do this as well, and so do some narrow radiating dipoles.

This also means that direct sound predominates over reflections. And if direct sound > reflections, maybe that means that you are within Griesinger's LLD so the "proximity" effect kicks in.

There is something going on here which I can't fully explain. I'm not saying it's not explainable or measurable, but the explanation requires a more advanced understanding than what I currently have.



I AM in Melbourne - I live here! You can find a lot of places selling great coffee, but not in that hotel. Having travelled the world, I can say that nobody does coffee better than us. Specifically, this city. There is great coffee in Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth, but you are just as likely to run into insipid coffee as you might run into fantastic coffee.

Great write ups from a guy who clearly loves GOOD to Great loudspeakers. I'm a huge fan of Danley Sound Labs, and a Klipsch Traitor in that regard. You can see me at 31 when I spent a day with Paul W. Klipsch 40 years ago at the factory and his home for demos. I have lost hearing above 12 Khz, due to me being the "electrician" for teen age musicians in my own teen/garage band days and no one had any money. I helped to get sound of of some used gear in the 70's, good and bad. I am now paying the price for my ignorance of overkill decibels.

I still design, build, repair, and modify hybrid horn/direct radiator speakers. I have all Danley stock and Modified Klipsch in my setups in different rooms. BUT, I must admit owning 3 pairs of Carver Amazing Platinum Loudspeakers (I, II, and III), there's something magical about planar magnetics (they were just not good in my small living room.

As a former trumped player, however, when the best of horns are time aligned and tamed with FIR filtering. NOTHING on the planet sounds like a real live band in your living room quite like my Danley SH-50's with TH-Subwoofer (all capable of 130 db peaks from 20-18,000 after DSP room correction. The only thing that sound as good or better are the Tom Danley Signature HRE-1's that were demonstrated to me at their Headquarters Listening room by Mike Hedden and Tom Danley himself (who went to lunch with my friend and I). Tom gets full 120+db full output our of only 8 cubic feet of speaker volume, where most of the sound is from the synergy horn on top of the built in subwoofer. Just a pair of those with built-in Quad Channel Amplification, and all you need is a good music signal, for Sonic Nirvana!!!

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

. I am not likely to email him because of the stupendous price of these speakers - AUD$145k (USD$95k). But it might almost be worth it because I have never heard a speaker that does tactility and timbre like these speakers do.

To spend 10 or maybe even 20k on a pair of loudspeakers might possibly be woth it. For 100k, just buy your wife cello-lessons...

 

[TLEDDY]

“spare legal trouble”…

 

[fordiebianco]

Hi @Keith_W , many thanks for the impressions and pictures. I have visited Melbourne a few times in the last ten years and can vouchsafe for the quality of life to be had in this magnificent city.

I am a bit saddened though that Hi-Fi manufacturers seem to be pushing the Veblen Goods category further and further. The law of diminishing returns tells us that the benefits (if any) of these overengineered things at these astronomical prices are fractional.

Was there a speaker/electronics you liked under, let's say, 3000 OZ dollars?

 

[Ajax]

Hi Keith, many thanks for your report on the show.

I have retired to Bangalow, NSW in the Byron Bay hinterland and struggle to get to hear / see new gear so I'm grateful for the time and effort you have made in giving us all a feel for the gear on display.

There is definelty a place for outrageous gear and prices in the pursuit of excellence, however, I support Fordie's comment above, and I expect most here at ASR do as well. I want to hear about gear that, to quote Archimago, is "good enough" or at least fit for purpose, that we can afford. Gear that has huge performance / price ratios such as that produced by the likes of Wiim, Benchmark Media, Revel etc.

Anyway, many thanks.

 

[Keith_W]

Was there a speaker/electronics you liked under, let's say, 3000 OZ dollars?

KEF and Richter. Richter is an Australian brand that caters towards the reasonably priced category. KEF already gets plenty of exposure on ASR. I know both these speakers very well, they exhibit in the show every year. So I didn't bother to visit those rooms.

I know a few Australian speaker designers. The BOM alone is >$1k. Add to that manufacturing, overheads, and taxes, and a finished speaker costs them $3-4k to make. Then there's transport, dealer mark-up, and other costs. Result: very few Australian manufactured speakers can get in under $5k. It's cheaper to outsource manufacturing to China, but then you need sufficient volume of orders to do that.

You would need a minimum of $5k, if not $10-15k to start getting into decent Australian brands. March Audio, Pitt and Giblin, VAF, Hulgich, Krix, and SGR are examples of well-measuring and great sounding Australian speakers, but none of them are cheap (as in <$3k). I am okay with that, these manufacturers deserve to be paid a decent living wage for their work. I know all of them, and you can't describe any of them as "rich". Well, except for Krix - they have a healthy cinema and sound reinforcement business going. AFAIK they all manufacture in Australia, though some are more Australian than others. I know that SGR's entire speaker, including amplifiers and drivers, are made right here in Melbourne. Maybe the glues, varnishes, and electronic components are imported, but otherwise everything is local.