The tweeter, sourced from the German MB Quart company, is a custom-built 1" titanium-dome design. It features a flared pole vent and five surrounding vents opening into a deep rear chamber that diffuses the driver's backwave. It is, says Kelly, "the most neutral, delicate, and…
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The large midrange driver, which Kelly chose so it can be crossed over at a relatively low frequency, is a 7.1" multi-fiber coated paper-cone unit, made by VIFA. It incorporates a 40mm voice-coil and a long, large magnet set in a cast magnesium frame. According to Kelly, it's a very smooth-measuring driver.
Kelly left worried. I don't blame him: A manufacturer wants a product to work well under review conditions. He doesn't want to have to rely on the reviewer's ability to extrapolate from a less than ideal listening situation. Part of what makes speaker reviews crap shoots is the room interaction, but that holds true for you too: When you listen to a speaker in a showroom, how much does that really tell you about how it will sound in your room? Kelly left troubled by the bass overload and what he felt was my overly damped room. "We voiced this speaker for a more 'lively' room," he told me.…
Now that's in my room, driven by big-transformered tube amplifiers. What happens (aside from getting a hernia) when you haul the 8s into a much bigger room, drive them with big Rowland solid-state amps, sit farther away, and crank them up even louder?
Greg's dedicated listening room
What a difference tripling or quadrupling your listening space can make! Greg's room is gigantic compared to mine—over 28' wide and about 20' deep to the listening position, which has another 8 to 10' behind it filled with fiberglass batting. The 8s looked and sounded cramped in my room. In his, they…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" titanium-dome tweeter, 7.1" paper/composite-cone midrange, 10.7" woofer. Crossover points: 250Hz and 2.5kHz. Frequency response: 28Hz-22kHz, ±2dB, -6dB at 23Hz. Impedance: 6 ohms nominal, 3.5 ohms minimum. Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/m on-axis. Power requirements: 50W minimum, >100W recommended. Dimensions: 45" H by 9" W by 20" D. Weight: 120 lbs each.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 080105/106.
Prices: $4500/pair in black ash, $5000/pair in walnut, $5200/pair in cherry or maple, $5500/…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: Lyra Parnassus DC and Grado Reference phono cartridges, Graham 2.0 tonearm, VPI TNT Mk.3 turntable.
Digital Sources: Audio Alchemy DDS•Pro transport, DTI•Pro 32 enhancer/jitter reducer, Enlightened Audio DSP-9000 III HDCD processor, Rega Planet CD player.
Preamplification: Audible Illusions Modulus 3A preamplifier, Plinius 14 and Sutherland PH 2000 phono sections.
Power Amplifier: Vacuum Tube Logic MB-450 monoblocks.
Cables: Yamamura Millennium 6000 throughout, Yamamura Quantum AC cords.
Accessories: Yamamura Ciabatta AC…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
With an estimated B-weighted sensitivity of 85dB/2.83V/m, the Aerial 8 will need a reasonably high-powered amplifier to sing at lifelike levels. However, its impedance plot (fig.1) reveals that it only drops below 5 ohms in the upper bass and lower midrange and that the electrical phase angle, other than in the mid-bass, is relatively benign. Other than the small wrinkle in the traces at 25kHz, due to the tweeter's primary dome resonance, this graph is free from cabinet-induced problems. The "saddle" in the magnitude trace at 20Hz indicates the tuning of the large…
Thomas J. Norton compared the Aerial 8 with the Wilson CUB in April 1998 (Vol.21 No.4):
Shortly after finishing my audition of the Wilson CUB, I set up the very same pair of Aerial Acoustics 8s recently reviewed for Stereophile by Michael Fremer (January 1998). This loudspeaker will cost you approximately $1000/pair less than the Wilson, depending on finish and the price of the stands you choose for the CUB.
The Aerial is a little more open-sounding on top, with a less vivid overall balance than the CUB. I never heard any recognizable midrange coloration from it. It goes very…
Thomas J. Norton wrote again about the Aerial 8 in November 1998 (Vol.21 No.11):
When the Aerial Acoustics Model 8 loudspeakers reviewed by Michael Fremer (Stereophile, January '98) arrived in Santa Fe, I had them delivered to my listening room for an audition immediately after John Atkinson had finished measuring them. My room is considerably larger than MF's, and less sensitive to the sometimes difficult-to-accommodate bass of big loudspeakers, if not exactly immune to it—for a long time I favored room-diagonal positioning for many loudspeakers. But the addition of several SWALS…
I don't know how many of you buy disposable diapers, but while Harry (now 6) and Emily (now 5) were still toddlers, diapers played a large role in my life. I can still remember my panic when I first saw the miles of drugstore shelves devoted to Pampers and Huggies—not just large, medium, and small, but such a variety that it could almost have been possible that each child had a diaper tailored for him or her. I'm sure that even the weirdly shaped backside of Tommy Pickles could have been securely wrapped.
According to a recent article in The Economist (footnote 1), the explosion in…
I am writing this copy on a venerable Radio Shack TRS-100 portable computer while flying via TWA from St. Louis to Albuquerque, the very fact of doing so having reminded me of what I wanted to write about in this month's column: hardware reliability. J. Gordon Holt touched on this subject in last June's "As We See It," but I felt it worth readdressing in light of recent events.
As a writer and editor, I was relatively quick to appreciate the advantages offered by word processors over typewriters, and have built up quite a body of experience over the last nine years with a variety of…