De Paravicini: That's right. Even in Japan the pace in audio design has slowed down dramatically in the last four or five years. There is a stagnation because of the lack of incentive. There's not enough marketplace demand. I blame a lot of this on the audio magazines. The mighty word is Gospel, and people believe what's in print much more readily than they believe what is verbal. But the words they print have caused more confusion than enlightenment. And they mislead.
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The Japanese Yamaha firm, better known for its successes in motorcycle design than in audio design, has managed to score a First in audio by devising a way of producing speaker domes of beryllium, by depositing the metal on a suitably…
Description: Three-way loudspeaker system consisting of beryllium-dome mid- and upper-range drivers and a cone-type woofer. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Power capacity (signal): 100 watts.
Dimensions: 14.75" W by 26.5" H by 12.75" deep. Weight: 68 lbs each.
Serial numbers of review samples: 10492.
Price: $950/pair.
Manufacturer: Yamaha Electronics Corp., 6660 Orangethorpe Avenue, Buena Park, CA 90620. Tel: (714) 522-9105. Fax: (714) 670-0108. Web: www.yamaha.com.
Building such ambitious loudspeakers as the Genesis products is a risky proposition. Big loudspeakers often fail miserably—any flaw seems to be magnified by the loudspeaker's lofty aspirations—the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Moreover, the criteria for what…
Three tweeters are used in a vertical array to approximate the midrange ribbon's line-source radiation pattern. The top two tweeters roll off at 8kHz, with the bottom tweeter run out past 20kHz. The rear tweeter is wired out of phase (…
The wide dynamic window in which the music could express itself was greatly enhanced by the II.5's bass performance. Until you've heard…
Description: Three-way floorstanding loudspeaker with woofer amplifier. Driver complement: Two servo-driven 12" woofers, one 4' ribbon midrange, four 1" planar tweeters. Impedance: 4 ohms. Sensitivity: 90dB/1W/1m. Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz ±3dB.
Dimensions: 28½" W by 6' H by 2½" D. Weight: 1250 lbs/pair shipping, 1000 lbs/pair net.
Finish: Brazilian rosewood.
Serial numbers of speakers reviewed: 251006/7.
Woofer amplifier power output: 400W RMS/channel (into 2 ohm load presented by the II.5 woofers).
Amplifier dimensions: 19" W by 41/2" H by…
At the time of writing, I've been using II.5s for the past five months, auditioning them with a variety of equipment. Without question, the best amplifiers for the II.5s were the superb Audio Research VT150 tubed monoblocks (reviewed in Vol.17 No.8). When relieved of driving the woofers, the VT150s could really sing. It was almost as if these products were made for each other: the II.5s were particularly adept at resolving things the VT150s do so well—eg, depth, space, truth in timbre, and layering. After trying solid-state amplifiers, I recommend tubes for the II.5.…
John Atkinson measured the II.5s in my new listening room—a much easier proposition, given the system's weight, than trucking it to the test lab in Santa Fe—and was therefore only able to perform a limited set of measurements. The II.5's impedance magnitude and phase angle are shown in fig.1. Note that this plot is of the midrange and tweeter section only—not the woofers. The minimum impedance is 3 ohms through the top octave, with a slightly higher 3.8 ohms or greater through the rest of the band. The combination of the phase-angle and the impedance magnitude in…