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Balanced performance isn't the be-all and end-all of product design. A person can listen to a product which balances the highs with the lows, detail with forgiveness, delicacy with dynamics, and still feel unmoved. Such a product might sound "proper," but it won't produce the illusion of a live performance. It takes a special window or two on reality to convince you you're listening to live music. Such a loudspeaker may have other deficiencies which keep it from being a universally appealing product, but it keeps reminding you of the live experience. It may appeal only to a small number of…
Just visible through the black grille cloth is the star of this system: the pleated-aluminum tweeter/midrange ribbon, 69" tall and about 5/8" wide, is suspended within a magnetic field emanating from 30 lbs of ceramic magnets. The ribbon is lightly clamped at two points along its length by rubberlike wedges, which offer physical support, keep the ribbon oriented within the magnetic field, and damp resonances. The ribbon housing, though open at the back, is partially damped with fibrous material. The open back makes the speaker largely dipolar in radiating characteristics, resulting in an…
There was a sacrifice in perceived depth when I moved the speakers back to the rear wall—the recordings had to provide most of the depth cues, without as much assistance from a deep room/speaker interface. The number of recordings that can provide most of the depth cues are fewer than you might imagine. With my listening chair about 12' away, the speakers were certainly able to "dissolve" the rear wall, but I got a 20th-row perspective of the orchestra, with a foreshortened front-to-rear perspective of the ensemble depth. Moving the chair closer, to about 9', deepened the soundstage again,…
The bass was slightly looser with the Melos. I imagine that most or all tube amps will behave similarly, since they have less ironclad control in that region than do transistor amps. The Melos measured the way it sounded: about 0.5 to 1dB more at each 1/3-octave step than the Krell. Had I kept the Melos amps longer, I would have moved the speakers slightly out into the room again and taken advantage of that bass bloom. If the Melos is representative of the best tube designs out there, then tube-amp owners will be able to take advantage of the Flatline 175s in a unique way: the ribbons will…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way hybrid loudspeaker. Drive-units: 69" treble/midrange ribbon, 5" plastic-cone midrange/upper-bass driver, 10" pulp-cone, side-firing woofer. Crossover frequencies: 350Hz and 100Hz. Crossover slopes: first-order, 6dB/octave. Impedance: 3–5 ohms. Frequency response: 35Hz–40kHz ±3dB. Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m.
Dimensions: 71" H by 14" W by 12.5" D. Weight: 75 lbs each.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 175-1014/1015.
Price: $4495/pair in cherrywood, $3995/pair in oak (1994); no longer available (2010). Approximate number of dealers: 7.…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Flatline's 175 is not very sensitive, 2.83V RMS of B-weighted noise raising an estimated sound-pressure level of just 82dB at 1m. This is much lower than the specified 88dB, and might contribute to RN's finding that the speakers lacked "jump factor." However, to some extent this will be compensated for by the ribbon's cylindrical-wavefront dispersion: the level drops with distance according to more of a 1/d law than the 1/d2 typical of point-source radiators.
The ribbon's impedance, shown separately on the right-hand side of fig.1, drops to a value of 2.4…
A world-renowned musician had scheduled an appearance as guest soloist with the string quartet in residence at a certain university. When he arrived he noticed a pair of microphones arrayed over the small stage and, following the wires, located a college student backstage next to a tape recorder and a pair of headphones.
Rearing himself to his full and not inconsiderable height, he fixated the youth with a withering stare and said "There will be no recording."
The recordist said "But I always record these concerts. I do it for the players. They like to evaluate their performances…
Some of the audiophile-disc manufacturers eschew that kind of temporal butchery and allow the work to be played all the way through before going back to correct fluffs. But many of the performances they get are still uninspired, perhaps because the conductor and the orchestra are bored with the potboilers that comprise the core of audiophile discography, and almost certainly because there is no audience to bounce a mood off.
The French record company Lirynx (which also releases Sirynx, unless I have that backwards) has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem. First they record…
Here's a question for a Stereophile.com poll: What's the best hi-fi value of the last 15 years? I'd bet that, 16 years after its introduction, Grado Laboratories' SR60 headphones would get more than a few votes.
When introduced, in 1993 or '94, the Grado SR60 was cheap by hi-fi standards—just $69. The early '90s were a great era for personal sound—ie, headphones. It was a time when, for the first time in my memory, it became possible to buy really good headphones for under $1000, let alone for less than $100.
Corey Greenberg, in his June 1994 review of the Grado SR60s (…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Dynamic open-air headphones. Driver matching: within ±0.1dB. Frequency range: 20Hz–20kHz. Sensitivity: 98dB SPL for 1mW input. Nominal impedance: 32 ohms.
Serial Number Of Unit Reviewed: None found.
Price: $79/pair. Large Grado earpads: $15–$20. Approximate number of dealers: Not disclosed.
Manufacturer: Grado Laboratories, 4612 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220. Tel: (718) 435-5340. Fax: (718) 633-6941. Web: www.gradolabs.com.