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I did notice listening room limitations at higher power levels. I was getting a bit too much reflected sound when I really cut loose, but this was relieved by better placement. I also found I got better results in this area of sonic performance when I switched speaker placement from 3.5 feet away from the rear of the long wall, to one-third the distance of the room from the rear wall. This produced an immediate major improvement in transparency at very loud listening levels, although at some cost to the size and depth of the soundstage. Since your room is certain to be different from mine,…
Martin Colloms gave a listen to the Duetta in January 1987 (Vol.10 No.1):
Panel speakers are back in fashion. After years of determined effort on the part of a few established manufacturers, the number of these designs has seen a marked increase, and many new exotic models have appeared. Stereophile has recently reviewed two leading examples of the genre, the $2780/pair Apogee Duetta and the $2490/pair Martin-Logan CLS, (both in Vol.9 No.7). To judge by the tone of letters arriving at the magazine's offices, the reviews generated heated controversy. John Atkinson asked me, therefore, to…
The Duetta's low-frequency driver is necessarily subject to some resonance modes and, in addition, suffers from some acoustic obstruction due to the perforated steel-plate baffle used to support the massive array of planar magnets. These provide the distributed magnetic field associated with the zigzag current flow of the diaphragm conductor pattern. The acoustic "window area" of the bass section is not very high, though if this were increased, panel rigidity would suffer. The bass driver, having a one-sided magnetic field, is driven in single-ended rather than the preferred push-pull mode.…
George Graves wrote about the Apogee Duetta II in May 1988 (Vol.11 No.5):
Even though Apogee Acoustics' Duetta II, a full-range ribbon loudspeaker, has been reviewed a couple of times already in these pages (by Martin Colloms in Vol.10 No.1, by Tony Cordesman in Vol.9 No.7), their findings do not tell the whole story of the Duettas' sound in my opinion. In my efforts to elicit the very best from these loudspeakers, I've found them so cable-sensitive that one's opinion of how Duettas sound will depend to a very great extent upon what cables were used and whether or not the speakers were…
One of the more curious aspects of the Duetta II design is that Apogee provides no way of bypassing the speaker's built-in crossover. So even though there are separate sets of terminals for the woofer and tweeter on both speakers, it is impossible to actually bi-amp them. The Apogee instruction book does show how to use double amplifiers with a separate amp for the woofer and tweeter, but these amps are both fed a full-range signal from the pre-amp without the use of a low-level crossover. I can see no real advantage to this scheme except in the case when one's amplifier size is marginal.…
Sidebar 1: Measurements
Just how hard is the Duetta to drive? Contrary to rumor, it proved quite tolerable—no less than 5 ohms, almost purely resistive, on the "1" setting, and it would warrant an across-the-board specification of 6.4 ohms, which is an easy load in speaker terms. The amplifier problems arose, not from an excessively low impedance as in the case of the 1-ohm Scintilla, but from its chronic insensitivity (in normal speaker terms) of about 80dB/W. The impedance graph (fig.1) reveals the crossover located at around 500Hz.
Fig.1 Apogee Duetta, impedance…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Two-ribbon full-range transducer. Midrange and tweeter ribbon: 0.8" wide by 47" long, less than 0.001" thick. Woofer ribbon: trapezoidal, average width 12" by 47" long, average thickness less than 0.001". Frequency response: <30Hz-25kHz, -3dB. Crossover slope: 6dB/octave at crossover, increasing to 12dB/octave approx. two octaves away. Can be biamped with or without external active crossover. Maximum SPL: 106dB at 4 meters, C-weighted, using 100W solid-state amplifier. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms.
Dimensions: 58"H x 26"W x 3"D. Weight: 95 lbs…
Nothing is wonderful when you get used to it.—E.L. Howe
Before abandoning the subject of turntable power supplies for at least one whole month—that's a solemn promise—I'm here to take another crack at it. And this time I'll keep in mind that not everybody owns a Linn Sondek LP12.
But I'll bet my Social Security fund that most Stereophile readers who play LPs at home do so on a belt-drive turntable that has an AC motor. To those readers I say: I want you to get all the help you need.
There's nothing wrong with listening to vinyl, of course. It's simply that vinyl lovers…
Origin Live's Advanced motor-drive kit had a tough act to follow: The Rega P9 is the best turnkey record player I know, having the kind of purposeful, involving sound that seldom fails to hold my attention, regardless of the type of music being played. Nevertheless, the DC drive distinguished itself from the start, in mostly very positive ways. The first cut I tried was the pretty "Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles," from Clear Spot (1972), by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band (Reprise MS 2115), and with the addition of the new motor and power supply, it sounded as if I were playing an…
DAVE HOLLAND BIG BAND: Overtime
Dave Holland, bass; Antonio Hart, soprano & alto sax, flute; Mark Gross, alto sax; Chris Potter, tenor sax; Gary Smulyan, baritone sax; Duane Eubanks, Taylor Haskins, Alex Sipiagin, trumpets, flugelhorns; Jonathan Arons, Robin Eubanks, Josh Roseman, trombones; Steve Nelson, vibes; Billy Kilson, drums
Dare 2/Sunnyside SSC 3028 (CD). 2005. Dave Holland, prod.; Louise Holland, co-prod.; James Farber, eng. DDD. TT: 79:02
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Vital and durable jazz big bands are rare. Maintaining a big band is not only costly,…