Acoustic Zen's Transmission Lines

I have never been a fan of transmission-line speakers. My experience has been that too often resonant problems in the line color the speaker's upper bass. But I didn't hear any such problems with the Acoustic Zen Crescendo speakers ($16,000/pair), seen here with designer Robert Lee. The Crescendo combines two 5" midrange units with magnesium-impregnated paper cones placed either side of a horn-loaded tweeter with two 8" woofers that use ceramic-coated "non-pressed" paper cones, these loaded with a transmission line venting at the speaker's base. Driven by a Triode Corporation 20Wpc TRV-845SE integrated amplifier ($6000), which uses two 845 output tubes running in class-A, and a Triode TRV-CD4SE CD player, the sound in this room was uncolored and extended at both frequency extremes, revealed by a superb recording of a female singer accompanied by a double bass.

COMMENTS
soulful.terrain's picture

I Loved this room. And what suprised me was the fact that the Crecendo's made such wonderful music with only 20W! Great amp design! One of the best sounding rooms!

I am glad I got to finally meet Robert Lee. Super nice man and really enjoyed demo'ing all his GREAT stuff.

FSonicSmith's picture

I have owned a pair of the more affordable and much talked about Adagios for a year now and they too seem to love tubes. Isn't it about time for the Magazine to do a formal review? Let me also add that before purchasing my speakers I e-mailed Mr. Lee with some questions. Rather than write back, he called me and patiently answered all my questions. Fantastic guy.

asaitama's picture

My friends and I spent the whole 3 days going back and forth in every room at AXPONA2011. For all of us without any doubt the Room 346 which is Acoustic Zen Crescendo driven by TRV-845SE ( Amp) and TRX-1 ( Pre-Amp) was the best sounding room. Details, harmonics, transient, soundstage, bass... they have it all.

That room blow all the expensive room in the show considering that the whole system is probably only 30K. Forget about the 50K to 300K rooms.....

X