You could call the EgglestonWorks Andra loudspeaker Bill's love-letter to his dad. Maybe even to the whole family—the name honors Eggleston's sister. Recently,…
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Bill Eggleston builds speakers because his father did. "My dad always told me that when he started, the only way you could get really good speakers was to build them yourself. We always had drivers and parts around, and I just began building my own so early I can't even remember. Much more important, my father passed on his wide-ranging approach to music. He listened to everything, and he taught me to be open-minded about music."
But don't assume for a moment that the cabinet is all glamor. This is one seriously solid speaker box. Assembly begins when two 4' by 8', 5/8"-thick sheets of MDF are hand-laminated together using a viscoelastic-damping industrial adhesive called Swedac. Swedac has a measured effect upon the absorption of vibration—Eggleston claims a solid 1.25" sheet of MDF has merely 1/10 the vibration loss of the two laminated sheets incorporating the adhesive. The laminated MDF is then milled on CNC machinery before the hand joinery commences. This, Eggleston points out, allows the company to set…
After all the work that went into the midrange, you'd be forgiven for thinking things would get easier. You'd be half-right. "I was familiar with the [Dynaudio] Esotar tweeter and I wanted to use it. The Esotar has its own aperiodic damping chamber. It has the biggest vent on its pole-piece I've ever seen on a tweeter—with that vent and its large chamber, the tweeter doesn't see any back air-pressure to speak of, so it fit readily into my driver philosophy. The tweeter's crossover is as simple as could be, consisting of one MIT capacitor and two Vishay resistors and an L-pad. The tweeter…
You might be tempted to assume that the speaker got hard at high volumes, but a rock recording, such as Warren Haynes' searing cover of "I've Been Loving You Too Long" from The Memphis Horns (Telarc CD-83344), simply has to be played louder to sound real. But outside of that envelope of loudness that might be considered accurate, this recording too lost life if played too softly; or ease, if played really offensively loudly.
However, when I matched the output to a believable re-creation of the original event, I could begin to appreciate the results of Eggleston's midrange obsession. To…
I can't point to the place on JA's charts that will show you where the Andra's ability to communicate the emotional portion of a performance lies, but when I listened to Duke Ellington play "Lotus Blossom," I didn't just hear a real-sounding piano—I heard Duke wondering how to reconstruct a life that didn't have Billy Strayhorn in it any more.
I can point to the descending motif in Mahler's Third that symbolizes sobbing, but that doesn't explain why we hear those sobs as so heartfelt. But through the EgglestonWorks I experienced them as though they were torn from my own chest. I could go…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Full-range, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" cloth-dome tweeter with large-diameter vent on pole-piece and aperiodic damping chamber; two 6" polypropylene-cone, double-magnet midrange drivers with 3" voice-coils; two 12" woofers in reflex-loaded, "pressure-driven" configuration. Frequency response: 18Hz->24kHz, -3dB. Sensitivity: 87dB/W/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 5.6 ohms minimum.
Dimensions: 15¼" W by 18¼" D (footprint); 37½" H. Weight: 210 lbs each.
Finish: Black with variegated granite panels.
Serial numbers of units…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
LP playback: Linn LP12 with Naim Armageddon Power Supply, Naim ARO tonearm, van den Hul Frog cartridge; VPI TNT Mk.III turntable with Immedia RPM tonearm, Lyra Clavis D cartridge.
CD playback: Mark Levinson No.39, Wadia 850.
Preamplifiers: Conrad-Johnson Premier Fourteen linestage, Premier Fifteen phono section; Ayre K-1.
Power amplifiers: Krell FPB 600, VTL 750 monoblocks.
Cables: Kimber KCAG interconnects, Kimber Black Pearl speaker cables.
Accessories: Audio Power Industries Power Wedge 112, MIT Z series power cables, Highwire Audio Power…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The EgglestonWorks Andra is moderately sensitive, my estimated 87dB/2.83V/m (B-weighted) reading agreeing with the specified figure. Its impedance plot (fig.1) suggests that the speaker appears to be an easy load for an amplifier to drive, the magnitude dropping below 10 ohms only in the high treble and below 130Hz, and the phase angle generally remaining low. However, it does reach 4 ohms in the low bass, around the tuning of the twin ports. There is a very slight wrinkle in the impedance traces between 300 and 400Hz, this generally indicative of a cabinet…
Predicting how these three nearfield responses will sum at the listening position is difficult; shown to the left of fig.4 is my best guesstimate, with the acoustic phase and path-length differences taken into account. The Andra's output appears to peak up slightly at 70Hz, then slowly rolls off, reaching its -6dB point at a very low 22Hz. In-room, with the usual amount of low-frequency room gain, the Andra should easily extend to 20Hz at full level. Note that both the woofer and port have slight peaks at 200Hz; while these result in a slight peak in this frequency in the calculated farfield…
It must be remembered that a loudspeaker's perceived balance doesn't depend only on the direct sound—that which first reaches the listener's ears—but also on the total radiated power into the room. Fig.7 shows how the response on the tweeter axis changes to the Andra's sides. (The data points are sparse in this graph, due to the fact that the Andra is too heavy for my automated speaker turntable. Again, the crossover suckout is worst directly on-axis, the "horns" between 2 and 4.5kHz to the sides of this graph suggesting that the speaker's total output into the room does not feature a lack…