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Can they be used for Dolby Atmos height channels? :-) ........
Instead of a cone, it had what looked for all the world like a large, white lily sticking up from the voice coil, and close inspection revealed fine blue ruled squares on the "lily," earning for it the nickname by which it is remembered: "the ledger-paper tweeter." That system, designed by Stewart Hegeman and later produced by EICO as their HF-S2, was memorable for two other reasons, too. It was the most astonishingly spacious-sounding system of its size that anyone had ever heard, with a truly hair-raising sense of depth even when heard from a distance of a foot or so. And it produced the best stereo imaging and center-fill of any hitherto-available system. It was a commercial disaster, partly because of poor promotion, but mainly because the production-line samples, in marked contrast to the preproduction prototypes, were alarmingly variable in sound and had severe midrange colorations. But their stereo performance left a lasting favorable impression that our experience with more-recent omnidirectional systems has done nothing to change. All of which made us immensely curious about Stew Hegeman's latest design.
Description
The Hegeman 1 (the logic of that chronology escapes us) differs from the HF-S2 system in several respects. The woofer, still facing upwards, is now angled slightly forwards. The lily is gone, and in its place is a small upward-facing, forward-angled dome tweeter, with a hemispherical underside to reflect the woofer's sound waves outwards. And like the HF-S2, the Hegeman 1 has the rear surface of its cupola closed off with a solid panel so that the compartment is open on four surfaces only, but the loss of rear radiation does not seem to impair, and probably improves, the behaviour of the 360-degree radiators in the speaker (by suppressing delayed reflections from the room wall behind the systems).
The only thing that distressed us initially when we read the manufacturer's literature for the Hegeman 1 was its description of the woofer-loading arrangement as a "multi-resonant system." We have heard such systems in the past, and the best thing we could say about them was that they did what they were claimed to so. They resonated, and the resonances were both multiple and painfully audible as smearing, hangover, and gross colorations.
Sound
We should have given Mr. Hegeman more credit. His multiresonances are all at low frequencies, where response irregularities are less noticeable than in the upper ranges, and they appear to be very well damped (just as it is possible to damp out the resonances in any other kind of speaker system). The result, to our surprise, was some of the deepest, tightest bass we've heard from any system of comparable size or price.
Sweeping an oscillator through the Hegeman 1's range revealed signs of its "multiresonant" bass loading, as a series of equally-spaced peaks and dips of rather substantial magnitude, very similar in fact to the low-end bumps encountered in most cassette recorders, but with broader humps and much narrower dips.
The bass range sounds considerably smoother when reproducing music than when sweeping an oscillator slowly through the bottom range, for our ears tend to judge low-end response largely on the basis of the heights of the peaks, and narrow dips are not noticed at all except on those very rare occasions when a bass note's frequency coincides exactly with that of a dip. The lowest-frequency hump occurred slightly above 30Hz, and since this was only a few dB down in level from the output at middle frequencies, the system (or a pair of them, at least) was able to maintain subjectively flat response down to about 50Hz and usable response down to an astonishing 27Hz!
Our subjective response curve (fig.1) reflects how a pair of Hegeman 1s sounded to us when reproducing program material (rather than oscillator sweeps). As shown, they were not entirely free from coloration. The overall balance was generally good, although with a rather soft and somewhat distant-sounding quality. Highs were free from conspicuous peaks, but were judged to be somewhat rolled-off in comparison with the best high ends we've heard. The result was sweetness but a mild shortage of "snap."
Middle highs were somewhat accentuated, causing a touch of hardness which tended to exaggerate the differences between the relative hardness of different amplifiers and preamps. The presence range, on the other hand, was slightly depressed, which accounts for the system's distant perspective and its overall quality of "richness."
Two mild peaks were observed in the low-end range, but neither was of sufficient magnitude to be of significance except when, by coincidence, a standing wave in the room happened to occur at the same frequency. Unlike most small systems, though, the low-end range of the Hegemans is essentially linear in most locations in most rooms, which means they sound thin in rooms which have trouble supporting low end. (Most compacts are thin in typical rooms and are even thinner in bass-shy rooms.)
When bottom-thinning does take place, it does so through the entire low-frequency range rather than just at the extreme bottom, so although the overall balance is affected (and tweeter-level adjustment doesn't helpthe crossover is too high), the system's deep-bass response relative to the upper bass is virtually unaffected. Oddly, though, what is more affected is the middle range, which develops a perceptible "aww" coloration. And since a certain proportion of recordings also have some of the same coloration, the net result is an apparent enhancement of the differences between the sound of different recordings. This quality of "selective fidelity," whereby a speaker seems to point up differences between recordings is often held up as evidence that the speaker is more "analytical" and is thus a more-accurate reproducer. Sometimes this is the case, but not always, because it can stem from tendencies on the part of the speaker to exaggerate certain aspects of the program material, and this is not an aspect of fidelity, but is rather a sign of imperfection in the speaker system.
We mentioned the tendency for the Hegemans to spotlight differences in the hardness of sound from different amplifiers. Their low end, too, is moderately affected by the power amplifier characteristics, being a bit heavy and loose with moderate-powered amplifiers of moderate damping factor (like the Audio Research units), and slightly sparse and taut with high-powered high-DF amps like the Crown DC-300A. This suggests a way of coping with the effects of the listening room on the system's low end.
Efficiency was quite lowestimated at around 1%, so the manufacturer's recommendation of 20 amplifier watts per channel minimum is no idle jest. A maximum rating of 25 per channel, though, is ridiculous. We would recommend 60Wpc and a modicum of restraint in use, or a couple of hundred per and 1¼-amp fast-acting fuses in the lines. Since it is, however, just a bit ridiculous to use a $700 amplifier to drive a pair of $114 speakers, we would recommend the Citation 12 as being the ideal driving amp for the Hegemans.
We were not surprised to note that the Hegeman 1's strongest asset was its tremendous sense of spaciousness. Like the original Hegeman system, you have the feeling of listening through the Hegeman 1s rather than to them, for which reason they are ideal speakers for use in small listening rooms or in difficult decor situations where it is impossible for one reason or another to sit farther than a few feet from the speakers. Like other omnidirectional systems, you can get full stereo spread even when listening from the left of the left-channel speaker (or vice versa). Because of their rather distant sound, though, they are likely to sound too remote if listened to from a distance of more than about 10 feet.
One thing we did however find the Hegemans to be ideal for was the rear channels of an ambient stereo system, which calls for just those qualities in which the Hegemans excelspaciousness, omnidirectionality, and a feeling of distance rather than of immediacy. Because of their rather erratic impedance characteristics, thoughdue to their multiresonant bass loadingwe recommend driving them from their own stereo amplifier (with an appropriate decoder) rather than via a Hafler-type "passive" decoder which connects the ambience speakers between the front-channel amplifier outputs.
We did most of our listening to the Hegemans as normal stereo speakers, and after having lived with them for several months, in different rooms and with a wide variety of program material, we would describe them as spacious, rich, and despite their minor irritations, easy to live with. But that breath of life was never there. Most musical instruments just didn't sound quite real to us, and we were always at least vaguely aware of listening to reproduced sound rather than to live music. (The Hegemans are in good company in this respect; we have observed the same shortcoming in some of the Class A Recommended speaker systems, which are listed because they are state-of-the-art components in some other respects.)
Conclusion
If we were shopping for speakers in this price class, we would probably choose the Dyna A-35s because, to our ears, they sound more alive than either the Hegemans or the large Advents, and they are more easily able to fill a moderate-sized room than either of those, with amplifiers of the power one would use with them. There are some nice things about the Hegemans, thoughtheir spaciousness and their remarkable ability to provide adequate center fill despite wide spacingand although they are not our cuppa tea, we have heard from too many satisfied Hegeman 1 owners for us to be able to dismiss these speakers out of hand. Our suggestion, then: Audition a pair of Hegeman 1s for yourself.
Can they be used for Dolby Atmos height channels? :-) ........
They were almost 40 years ahead of time in their thinking :-) .......
John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile
Hegeman also designed speakers for Eico and the Citation amps and preamps for Harman Kardon.
This classic review reminded me that both of the founding fathers of High-End journalism had the odd quirk of using "dickensian" language. Here JGH jumps right in and refers to himself as "Ye Editor" (Of what? "Ye Olde Stereo-Phile?"). And hardly a Harry Pearson review could go by without his prefacing an opinion with "Me thinks..."
I used to find this irritating but now I must say I miss these two giants.
JA1 could say "ye (technical) editor" is measuring this XYZ amplifier and, "me thinks" that it has too much 2nd harmonic distortion :-) ........
I regret not knowing about JGH and Sterophile when I was a nascent still-teenaged audiophile in 1978 (soon to be one of tens-of-thousands of BBC monitor/Rogers LS3/5a owners). By the time "we" discovered Stereophile, Aczel and The Audio Critic had started his/its long "sabbatical" and Pearson was still calling your rag unkind names - all too late as far as I am concerned.
This is why I so appreciate these reprints (as HP surely would, if he were above ground.)
So I encourage you to keep doing it - but also to provide some context: JGH refers to "Class A Recommended speaker systems" - a reprint of those (or a link to contemporaneous listings) would be at least interesting if not "valuable".
Not only were Advents and Dynas available then, but also Dahlquists, Maggies, AR's, etc.
I suppose prices were also published in the "recommended" listings?
Having a firm grasp of the obvious and awareness of "the" Consumer Price Index (actually, there may be several of these indexes), I note that JGH listed the 1973 price of this system as $114/pair. This strikes me as downright afforable. The ratio of year-to-year averages of CPI-U (for "urban" consumers) 2019-to-1973 is roughly six - which confirms my impression - the Hegeman 1 sold for the current equivalent of less than $700/pair.
(by another measure, this was about 70 hours at the 1973 federal minimum wage - I later paid about 200 such hour's equivalent wage for my own pair of BBC monitors)
Anyway, thanks for your series of reprints. Again, please consider rolling out those Recommended Components lists.
... actually $114 each, so $228/pr.
The Large(r) Advent was $210/pr in vinyl and $240/pr in wood veneer finish.
The Dynaco A35 was $240/pr.
For comparison, here are the prices for some other contemporary speakers circa 1973:
JBL L26 Decade $260/pr.
Acoustic Research AR 2ax $280/pr.
Bose 901 $525/pr.
Acoustic Research AR 3a $540/pr.
JBL L100 Century $550/pr.
ESS Heil AMT1 $600/pr.
Dahlquist DQ10 $800/pr.
Magneplanar Tympani I $1000/pr.
Acoustic Research AR LST $1200/pr.
Infinity Servo-Statik I $2100/system
To adjust for inflation, multiply those prices by about a factor of six.
The price of the Hegeman Model 1 speakers was actually $114 each, so $228/pr.
Thanks very much for the correction, Ortofan.
John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile
Don Morrison, a friend of Stewart Hegeman, purchased the speaker business when illness prevented its continuance. Don has sustained a steady evolution of the design, and currently offers two remarkable models at MorrisonAudio.com
TAS was founded in 1973 by Harry Pearson :-) .......
Mark Levinson founded his company an year earlier in 1972, and released the legendary JC-1 pre-amp designed by John Curl :-) .........
Pink Floyd releases 'The Dark Side of the Moon' album in 1973, which goes on to become one of the best selling albums of all time :-) .......
I got in to high end audio too late to have read JGH, so I'm very happy to see all these reprints appearing here. Thank you!
I really enjoy his writing style and his very direct "tell it like it is" lack of hesitation in discussing flaws as well as pros. (Where the norm these days is usually all the good pointed out so it sounds like a great product, then a final "but lest you think these speakers are perfect..." at the end :-))
I could launch into a typical BS Stereophile-type review, listing each and every crap recording with which I auditioned the speakers and how they made me 'feel' ["While playing Blind Lemon Nosedrip's vinyl on the Hegeman Model 1's, I could actually feel his spittle spray on my face, and smell his fetid breath..."], but instead I'll take a radical turn and actually tell you how they sounded.
Bass - amazingly deep and tight. Very articulate. In this respect, it contrasted sharply with the bass that was typical of the day - slow, sluggish bass such as that found in the AR3a. Another speaker that came out shortly after the Hegeman were the DCM Timewindows, which had a similar bass quality.
Midrange - There was a big suck out in the mids; probably right around 1Khz. As a result, the speakers never sounded right.
Highs - They used the infamous Philips AD0160T8. Those had a big peak between 12Khz and 14Khz. They sounded sizzly, but without harshness. My young ears liked them. In the Hegeman, they were pointed upward, so some of the treble peak was ameliorated.
If not for the midrange suck out, they'd have been really great speakers.
I really enjoy these reprints of Gordon Holt's reviews. I also would enjoy updates in the few cases where the manufacturer, like Ohm Acoustics, are still in business. The case for omnidirectional speakers that JGH makes at the beginning of the review is very interesting and it coincides with descriptions I've read of current omni's.