After 40 years of evolution, a new species of tweeter has appeared: the Linaeum TLS, which stands for True Line Source. This…
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It's been a long time since we've seen a really new tweeter design. Only five basic types have ever been developed: cones, domes, panels, ribbons, and ionic plasmas. And the most recent of these—the long-defunct DuKane "blue-glow" Ionovac—was introduced 40 years ago. Since then, tweeter development has been more evolutionary than revolutionary, a series of refinements that has made them more efficient, more reliable, and smoother and more extended in response.
On the other hand, the imaging is extraordinarily stable, largely due to the almost total freedom from picket-fencing. Without the center channel, I detected only five small fluctuation cycles across the entire area between the speakers; with the center channel, I found three, and they were so slight as to be barely perceptible even on pink noise. (Of all the speakers I've reviewed, only the Tannoy lODMTIIs [Spring 1997] were comparable to the Linaeums in this respect.)
Everything stays resolutely where it belongs on the soundstage, including sounds located midway between each pair of…
Sidebar 1: Review System
Equipment used for this review included a Pioneer Elite CLD-99 laserdisc player, Sony DTC-2000ES DAT recorder, Lexicon DC-1 THX surround processor, and three Boulder 102AE power amps.
The video display included a Sony 1252 line-doubled video projector and 84"-wide 16:9 Stewart Ultramatte 150 screen. Software included a handful of recent CDs and blockbuster laserdiscs, a compilation of digitally copied music and soundtrack excerpts on DAT tape, and some stereo LPs of varying vintage.—J. Gordon Holt
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Model 10: Floorstanding two-way, fullrange speaker. Driver complement: 1 Model TLS-1.5 soft-ribbon dipole tweeter; one 8" cone woofer in ducted-port reflex enclosure. Frequency range: 32Hz–20kHz. Sensitivity: 89dB. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms.
Dimensions: 34" x 10" x 15" (HxWxD) Weight: 82 lb each.
Price: $2500/pair, black or maple; $2700/pair, cherry (1997); no longer available (2019).
Center-Channel Speaker: Low-profile horizontal configuration. Driver complement: 1 Model TLS-1.5 soft-ribbon dipole tweeter; two 5.25" cone woofers in sealed…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Both Linaeum speakers have similar average B-weighted sensitivities at around 86dB/2.83V/m, While the Model 10's impedance (fig.1) doesn't drop below 6 ohms over most of the audio band, the Linaeum Center Speaker has an impedance of 4 ohms or below through the music and vocal "power region" in the lower midrange (fig.2), meaning that a receiver or amplifier rated into 4 ohm loads should be used.
Fig.1 Linaeum Model 10, electrical impedancwe (solid) and phase (dashed) (2 ohms/vertical div.).
Fig.2 Linaeum Center Channel,…
Which loudspeakers do audio professionals listen to? And why should we care? After all, it's not as if recording engineers are the kind of refined, sensitive, music-loving types who read Stereophile. As much as they may love music, many audio pros appear only to view the original sounds of musical instruments as raw materials to be creatively reshaped and manipulated. (Okay, there are exceptions. But recordists who care about the sounds of real instruments usually record them in real acoustic spaces rather than in studios, and use as little signal processing as they can get away with.)
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I installed a pair of the 1031As on 28" stands in my 16' by 20' main audio/video room, with the speakers and listening seat at the corners of an equilateral triangle. The rectangular cabinets were oriented vertically, placed symmetrically in relation to the room's side walls, and 4' from the back wall. The listener-to-loudspeaker distance was about 7', and the speakers were aimed straight ahead, as they'd been when I first heard them at Colorado Sound (and as they would be in most other studios). The surround channels went on 6' stands 7' behind me, near but not close to the room corners,…
Sidebar 1: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Pioneer CLD-99 CD/LD/DVD player, Sony DTC-2000ES DAT recorder, Toshiba DVD player.
Preamplification: Lexicon DC-1 DTS surround processor.
Cables: Canare Video Coax interconnects (sources to controller), Straight Wire Symphony II RCA-to-XLR cables (controller to speakers).
Room treatment: Owens-Corning 4" painted Fiberglas cloth.—J. Gordon Holt
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Genelec Studio Monitor 1031A satellite: Biamplified two-way speaker in ported enclosure. Drive-units: 1" metal-dome tweeter, 8" polypropylene-cone woofer. Frequency response: 48Hz–22kHz, ±2dB. Maximum peak spl: 120dB at 1m. Maximum short-term output: 110dB, 100—1000Hz. Continuous RMS output: 101dB, 100—1000Hz. Input impedance: 10k ohms (balanced).
Dimensions: 15.5" H by 10" W by 11.5" D. Weight: 28 lb.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 30348, 30353, 30378, 30817, 30818.
Price: $1999/pair in pebbled black, $2099/pair in matte black (1999); no longer…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Because it's a powered design, measurements of the Genelec Studio Monitor 1031A's impedance and sensitivity are irrelevant. The Genelec's cabinet was quite lively in the bass-reflex tuning region, with a single resonant mode also evident in the midrange (fig.1). The latter might add a hint of "slowness" to the satellite's bass quality, though predicting the subjective effect of the midrange mode is harder; it might be high enough in frequency and low enough in level to be more benign than expected.
Fig.1 Genelec 1031A, cumulative spectral-…