Sidebar 1: Rooms & Radiation patterns
A loudspeaker's perceived balance in a room has to do with the ratio of direct to reflected sound heard by the listener. A very directional speaker will maximize the proportion of direct sound in the mix, whereas an omnidirectional design will increase the relative amount of room-reflected sound heard. Although it would be foolish to claim that either approach is inherently "correct," which one the speaker designer uses has considerable consequences for the listening experience.
It depends on how big a role the listening room plays in the…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floorstanding, reflex-loaded loudspeaker. Drive-units: two 1" (25mm) horn-loaded titanium-dome tweeters, two 6.3" (160mm) pulp-cone midrange units, three 6.5" (165mm) pulp-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 350Hz, 3.5kHz. Crossover slopes: 24dB/octave. Frequency response : 35Hz–20kHz, ±3dB. Sensitivity: 93dB/W/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 3 ohms minimum. Maximum power handling: 300W.
Dimensions: 57" (1447mm) H by 11" (280mm) W by 13.4" (340mm) D. Weight: 122 lbs (55.5kg). Bases: 1.75" (45mm) by 15.75" (400mm) by 13.4" (340mm).
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Sidebar 3: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable (modified), with Rega RB1000 tonearm and Linn Akiva cartridge, Magnum Dynalab MD 102 FM tuner.
Digital Source: Naim CDS 3 and Burmester 001 CD players.
Amplification: Naim NAC552 preamp, Naim NAP500 power amplifier.
Cables: Vertex AQ, Chord Company and Naim.
Accessories: Mana, Townshend, Vertex AQ and Naim supports.— Paul Messenger
Sidebar 4: Measurements
When I measured the first sample of the Triangle Magellan Concerto, I was disconcerted to find that it drastically lacked treble, with both front and rear tweeters well down in level. The lower trace in fig.1 shows this sample's frequency response, compared with the response of the second speaker of the pair (top trace). All the measurements therefore refer to the second sample; I assumed that the first sample was faulty. The important question is whether this fault had occurred before Paul Messenger performed his review auditioning. Paul told me that the…
Dr. Richard Cabot is one of today's foremost authorities on audio measurement and testing. Formerly an instrumentation designer at Tektronix, Dr. Cabot is now Vice President and Principle Engineer at Audio Precision. The company's System One, a computerized audio test set (used by Stereophile), has revolutionized the way the world measures audio equipment. Dr. Cabot holds B.S.E.E, M. Eng., M.S. Mech, and Ph.D.E.E. degrees, all earned by the age of 23. His dissertation was a study of sound localization in multi-channel reproduction systems. In addition, Dr. Cabot has served many posts…
Harley: Bill Rasnake? Cabot: [Nods] He keeps telling me that one of these days he's going to come down and prove to me that [CD Stoplight] is audible. I haven't ever listened to it. I have doubts based on my conviction that when the data coming off the disc is right, it's right. But turning it into audio is a whole different story.
Harley: It's generally believed that CD transports and interconnects between transports and digital processors have different sonic qualities. In theory, all transports should sound the same. What's your reaction to this?
Cabot: I have not seen…
And I'm also admittedly not as critical a listener as some people are. I have a friend here in town who does live location recording, and he can consistently hear things that I don't hear at first pass. But the more I listen to them with him, I can find those things later that he heard the first time through. But I just didn't notice it. I guess that's maybe a lack of training at hearing those differences. Most of the experimental psychoacoustic work I've done has related to sound localization. I tend to be pretty good at picking out things related to imaging and localization. Harley:…
They listened to it and found it sounded terrible. They started doing things like turning off the compression and just putting the signal through their system and back out again with no compression. It still sounded terrible. They ultimately determined that the problem was all these filters that broke the signal apart and put it back together again. They were all linear-phase filters, and when you plotted the frequency response, it was ruler-flat from DC to Nyquist (footnote 2). But the problem was that those tiny ripples in the frequency response, just fractions of a dB peak to peak,…
When someone is described as having "written the book" on a subject, it is generally taken as a figure of speech. But veteran speaker designer Joseph D'Appolito, PhD, quite literally "wrote the book." His Testing Loudspeakers (Audio Amateur Press, 1998) is an invaluable resource for those of us who, lacking any talent for designing speakers ourselves, nevertheless find the subject of speaker performance endlessly fascinating. So when Snell's PR consultant, Bryan Stanton, contacted me a while back about reviewing the LCR7, the first design D'Appolito had seen through from start to finish for…
And the quality of the Snell's bass was simply superb: tight, controlled, and free from the boomy upper-bass overhang that naïve listeners often mistake for "good bass." Other than lacking a bit of fundamental weight, my Fender-bass channel-check tracks on Editor's Choice had an excellent balance between the leading edges of the notes and the body of the tone. There was enough upper-bass energy present to allow Jerome Harris's rather reticently mixed Taylor acoustic bass guitar on his Rendezvous (CD, Stereophile STPH013-2) to fully support the higher-frequency instruments. And on Eric…
