search
For anyone who wants to be up to date on all the audio products available in North America, Audio's Annual Equipment Directory is an indispensable source of information. (So is the publication you're reading now, of course.) The 1992 Directory (aka Audio's October issue) arrived when I was finishing up the review of the Acarian Alón IV (see February 1993, Vol.16 No.2) and about to start seriously listening to the Unity Audio Signature 1s. As I leafed through the issue, I wondered how fledgling loudspeaker manufacturers feel reading the section on loudspeakers. According to the Directory,…
The speakers also proved to be dynamic in the usual sense: They played loud, with little apparent strain. At what for me are very high levels (+100dB peaks, C-weighted, "fast" setting on the Radio Shack SPL meter), the Signature 1s lost some of their composure, with a curtailment of depth and the sound becoming generally harder. (There was no indication of clipping from the Bryston 7Bs' warning LEDs.) In normal listening, I never felt that the Signature 1s were approaching their dynamic limit, but the speakers may not be ideal for large rooms and/or those who feel that a really good speaker…
Sidebar 1: Revealingness vs Forgivingness
It's often said that audio design involves tradeoffs. But what differentiates good design tradeoffs from the indifferent and the bad? In my opinion, this has to do with the relationship between "revealingness" and "forgivingness."
By "revealingness" I mean the component's ability to pass on the information in the source material in complete, unexpurgated detail. Lewis Lipnick has used the expression "ruthlessly revealing" to describe a particular component that he felt had a lot of this characteristic. We all know components like that:…
Sidebar 2: Review System
Analog front end: Lingo'd Linn, Ittok, and AudioQuest AQ7000, replaced in the latter half of the review period by the new AQ7000nsx (footnote 1), which, believe it or not, is even better than the cartridge it supplants. Digital: McCormack Signature (footnote 2) CD player, and, for most of the listening, the same player acting as transport, feeding a PS Audio UltraLink via TARA Labs Digimaster coax. Late in the auditioning period, I had to return the McCormack Signature to its manufacturer, and so had to regress to using my old Philips CD-650 as transport. Don't…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Unity Signature 1 with serial number 4405051. The Signature 1's impedance magnitude and phase are shown in fig.1. The cursor position—2.7 ohms at 138Hz—reveals the speaker to be a very demanding load; although RD didn't have sonic problems with his low-powered Luxman tube amps other than limited loudness, I suspect that this speaker will generally work much better with good, current-capable, solid-state designs. The large difference in impedance below and above 1kHz means that the speaker will tend to sound uptilted in response with an amplifier…
Sidebar 4: Specifications
Description: Three-way, ported, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" silk dome tweeter, 7" cone midrange, downward-firing 10" cast-frame woofer. Crossover frequencies: 155Hz, 2.4kHz, 18dB/octave. Frequency response: 34–20kHz ±2dB. Sensitivity: 90dB/W/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 7 ohms minimum. Amplifier requirements: 30-100W.
Dimensions: 44" H by 9" W by 9" D. Weight: 58 lbs.
Serial numbers of units tested: 4405051 & '5052.
Price: $2995–$3295/pair depending on finish; $250 for bi-wiring (1993); no longer available (2017). Approximate…
RSL is the house brand of a California chain of retail stores, Rogersound Labs, that is part-owned by the leader of the RSL loudspeaker-design team, one Howard Rodgers. (Rogersound Labs also owns the Upscale Audio high-end store in north Los Angeles.) The range offered by RSL is unbelievably wide, with models addressing just about every market niche and price category. The Speedscreen II, however, is Howard's attempt to produce a true high-end loudspeaker at an affordable price. To the casual observer, the Speedscreen ($898/pair) appears to be a planar design; however, its shallow, braced…
Sidebar 1: Review Context
The speakers were positioned for the best sound (with only one pair of loudspeakers in the listening room at a time), generally some 4' from the rear wall (which is faced with books and LPs) and approximately 5' from the side walls (which also have bookshelves covering some of their surfaces). Source components consisted of a Revox A77 to play my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troikasetup sitting on a Sound Organisation table to play LPs, and Kinergetics KCD-40 and Proceed CD players. Amplification consisted of a Mark Levinson No.25…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT techniques (using the MLSSA system from DRA Labs described elsewhere in this issue) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. The speakers' impedance phase and amplitude were measured using the magazine's Audio Precision System One.
Looking first at the Speedscreen's impedance, its magnitude (solid line) and phase (dashed line) are shown in fig.1. Only dropping below 6 ohms in the presence region, this is an easy load for any amplifier to drive. The tuning is of the…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floor-standing loudspeaker with passive bass radiator. Drive-units: ribbon tweeter, 1.4" (36mm) soft-dome midrange unit, 8" polypropylene-cone woofer, 12" passive bass radiator. Crossover frequencies: 600Hz, 9.5kHz. Crossover slopes: 6dB/octave, 12dB/octave. Frequency response: 30Hz–—0kHz ±—dB. Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Amplifier requirements: up to 250W.
Dimensions: 48" H by 19" W by 5" D (base is 12" deep). Weight: 60 lbs each.
Finishes available: oak veneer or black, with a black grille…