Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Genesis Advanced Technologies was formed in 1991 to manufacture loudspeakers designed by industry veteran Arnie Nudell, who was responsible, with Cary Christie, for some of high-end audio's highest-performing models when both were at Infinity Systems. The company was acquired a few years back by Gary Leonard Koh and some of his friends, but Nudell remains with the company as Chief Scientist and the company has offices and a production facility in Seattle.

Audiophiles sure don't have it easy. We put in a hard day sweating to hear those diminishing-return differences, and when we're finally ready to pontificate, no one at the party will obligingly ask us what we think. They've made that mistake before, you see, then spent the next 45 minutes frantically looking around the room for someone to rescue them.

The Magnep1anar Tympani I that is the subject of this report is already an obsolete model, having been superseded by the Tympanis IA, II, and III that were unveiled at the CE Show in Chicago this past June. Since many of our readers already own Tympani Is, and dealer stocks of them are being sold at a substantial price reduction, the report should still be of interest. We will publish follow-up reports on the newer models as soon as they become available for testing.

Dear Diary:

Back in the 1970s, I used to hang out at an audio store on Northern Boulevard's Miracle Mile. After business hours—and sometimes during them—a group of us audiophiles would put every new product through the wringer. One of the most anticipated was the original B&W 801, which appeared in 1979. The 801 was simply unflappable. Fed enough power, a pair of them played louder and cleaner than anything we had ever heard, including the mammoth, multimodule Fultons that were the pride of that shop. But—and this was a big but—the 801 lacked immediacy and engagement, and I soon fell back to preferring an earlier B&W model, the DM6, which seemed more coherent and to offer the music out to the listener. The 801 was more objective and detached, but boy, could it knock you over with the right source material.

More, I think, than any other link in the audio chain, loudspeaker designs tend to reflect the personal preferences, opinions, and philosophies of their creators—think Henry Kloss, Paul Klipsch, Rudy Bozak, David">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/478">David Wilson, Jon Dahlquist, Arnie Nudell, and Amar Bose (just kidding). Consider, if you remember, where Ken">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/232">Ken Kantor took Acoustic Research when he took over AR's design reins. Might as well have called AR NHT, for all that the new designs followed the old.

Jim Thiel sounded almost bored. "Almost everything about the CS2.4 is pretty standard stuff—short-coil, long-gap, low-distortion drivers, aluminum diaphragms, polystyrene capacitors, spatial coherence, time coherence, reduced diffraction baffles, reduced cabinet vibration, etc., etc. Of course, I think the execution of the 2.4 is more successful than our previous models, but in terms of what's really different, that mechanical crossover is what's special."