"Let's face it," he confided, "six thousand dollars is a lot of money. You really ought to be able to buy superior performance for that. I have certain philosophies that I use throughout my designs: I believe in certain diaphragm properties, and I use the same crossover design—fourth-order Linkwitz-Reilly acoustic slopes—…
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Paul Hales does things differently. "I set out to build a true reference speaker," he asserted when I asked him about the, er, concept behind his Concept Five loudspeaker. For a mere six grand? The other guys don't even blink at $20k, $30k, even $70k statement speakers.
The proprietary 2" midrange dome is manufactured by MB Quart, and uses an edge-wound flat-ribbon conductor on the coil that gives the unit greater sensitivity than the standard Quart driver used by other manufacturers.
The 10" woofer used in the Concept Five sports a long voice-coil—nearly an inch in length—wedded to a dual-layer Kevlar cone that Hales deems the "ultimate" for stiffness and low moving-mass. "I spent a great deal of time modeling different designs in the computer to optimize that driver to provide the greatest bass extension in a 0.5-Q enclosure—a reasonable-size…
Part of this can be attributed to the fact that the Five's tonal balance is intrinsically lean. Paradoxically, this leanness is not associated with a lack of extension—the Concept Five does reproduce well down into deep bass territory. Paul Hales may very well be right that many listeners, myself included, have become used to the excess bass resonant energy he attributes to bass-reflex enclosures, but I'm not just comparing the Fives to other speakers. I am not unfamiliar with live music, and one of the most seductive qualities of live sound is that sense of slam in the lower octaves that…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floorstanding, critically damped, sealed-box loudspeaker. Drive-units: one 10" Kevlar-composite cone woofer, one 2" aluminum-dome midrange, one 1" aluminum-dome tweeter. Crossover type: fourth-order Linkwitz-Reilly. Crossover slope: 12dB/octave. Frequency range: 25Hz–26kHz. System resonance: 25Hz. Nominal impedance: 6 ohms. Sensitivity: 86dB/W/m.
Dimensions: 48" H by 12" W by 21" D. Weight: 225 lbs each.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 9509 1066A/B.
Price: $5800/pair (grilles add $350/pair) (1997); no longer available (2005).…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital front-end/preamplifier: Krell KPS-20i/l.
Analog front-end: Linn Sondek LP12 with Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim ARO tonearm/Transfiguration Temper, or VPI TNT Mk.III/JMW Memorial tonearm/van den Hul Grasshopper.
Phono Section: Naim Prefix/HiCap or Krell Reference.
Power Amplifiers: Ayre V3, Conrad-Johnson Premier Eleven A, Conrad-Johnson Premier Twelve, Krell Audio Standard.
Cables: Kimber KCAG interconnect, MIT balanced 350 interconnect, Kimber Black Pearl speaker cable, MIT 850 speaker cable, AudioQuest Crystal/Argent bi-wire…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
As I suspected from reading WP's auditioning notes, the Hales Concept Five is not very sensitive. Driving it with 2.83V raised just 84dB at 1m (B-weighted), which means that it does need to driven quite hard by a reasonably powered amplifier. As can be seen from fig.1, however, its impedance is generally kind to the amplifier, staying above 8 ohms through the midrange and bass, and dropping only briefly to just above 3 ohms in the low treble.
Fig.1 Hales Concept Five, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed) (2 ohms/vertical div.).
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I walked through my local Best Buy recently and didn't see one stereo receiver. Boomboxes, table radios, surround-sound gear, and computer speakers were everywhere. But the hi-fi staple of the 1960s and '70s—the plain-vanilla two-channel receiver—was not to be seen. Even if one or two were lurking there, the fact remains that high-quality two-channel audio is now so disconnected from consumer electronics that it's hardly at the "high end" of anything at all. It's a world unto itself.
But that doesn't mean it's without influence. To those who say high-end audio has a low profile, that may…
This sector of the music industry is becoming audiophile-friendly, no doubt. The real similarity between the two worlds, however, is the idea that underlies the booming interest in vintage equipment: There is no pure, distortion-free, and completely transparent way to capture the sound of a voice or instrument to tape or hard disk. Every piece of equipment in the signal chain contributes something to the sound. That's exactly why audiophiles care about cables, CD transports, even equipment stands and room treatments—potentially, everything matters.
What explains this convergence? Most…
Sidebar: Au revoir George
Five years ago as I write these words, I received a packet of articles from a Dr. George Reisch. An audiophile, a physicist, a philosopher, and a science historian who had earned his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, George felt there should be more discussion in print of the philosophical underpinnings of our hobby. Impressed by the clarity with which he expressed his ideas and by his identification with Stereophile's mission, I commissioned a bimonthly column from George, "Undercurrents," which would alternate with Lisa Astor's popular "Astor Place." George's…
TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE (soundtrack)
Jordi Savall, Christophe Coin, bass viols; Les Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall, dir.
Valois/Auvidis V 4640 (CD only). Pierre Verany Studios, production & engineering. DDD. TT: 76:00
Jordi Savall, Christophe Coin, bass viols; Les Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall, dir.
Valois/Auvidis V 4640 (CD only). Pierre Verany Studios, production & engineering. DDD. TT: 76:00
Tous les matins du monde is a film about the great 17th-century French violinist, Sainte-Colombe, and his celebrated pupil, Marin Marais. It is also about passion and art in every sense of those words. It is also the finest film about music I have ever seen. Briefly recounted, it tells of how the great master Sainte-Colombe, exiled from the world by his grief…