For many audiophiles, them's fightin' words. We've all heard speakers with flat frequency response that don't sound nearly as good as the measurements would imply. We've also heard speakers that, while far from exemplary in the measurement realm, nevertheless contrive to sound like music. We pride ourselves in having…
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"DAL firmly believes that a full set of credible measurements, made by qualified engineering staff using state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, can reliably predict the potential of a loudspeaker to accurately reproduce the complex sounds of music."—Dunlavy Audio Labs
Then there's the matter of the grille: The SC-IV manual states that the grille frame and cloth are "almost perfectly transparent," and that "the performance of the loudspeaker has been optimized with the grilles installed." Of course, I had to find out for myself.
The grilles are easy to remove and replace, so I spent a fair amount of time listening to music with the grilles on and off. My conclusion is that the effect of the grilles is admittedly minor, but, at least in my system, not negligible. With the grilles removed, the sound was just a bit more immediate, as if a veil—or, say, a…
Sidebar 1: System
Analog: Lingo'd Linn LP12 (Cirkus'd just a few days before the end of the review period), Ittok tonearm, AudioQuest AQ7000NSX cartridge. Digital: PS Audio Lambda transport, PS UltraLink processor, AudioQuest OptiLink Pro 2 ST datalink. Preamplifier: a Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Signature, with the latest Marigo Audio Labs AC power cable (highly recommended to CAT-lovers). Power amps on hand included a pair of Bryston 7Bs, Quicksilver Silver Monos, a Luxman MQ 68C, and a Krell KSA-100S. Most of the listening was via the Bryston 7Bs and the Krell KSA-100S.
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Sidebar 2: Singer's Corner
The term "loudspeaker" is something of a misnomer. Literally, it refers to the amplification of speech (footnote 1), and only at high levels. However, a high-fidelity "loudspeaker" is used mostly for the reproduction of music, and at levels that vary from soft to loud. Rather than functioning like a "speaker," the device is more like a "singer." In fact, I think the analogy between singing and music reproduction by loudspeakers has some interesting implications.
A trained singer (footnote 2) has to have a range that encompasses all music written for…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Fig.1 shows the SC-IV's impedance magnitude and phase, measured with the MLSSA system but plotted with the Audio Precision software for consistency with other reviews published in Stereophile. The former stays between 4 and 6 ohms from 37Hz to 2150Hz, with minimum values of 3.55 ohms at 9.5kHz and 3.15 ohms at 10Hz. Though the speaker will be quite demanding of current, with its benign electrical phase angle and high sensitivity—around 91dB/W/m—it will play loud with moderately powered amplifiers. In addition, because of the small variation of impedance with…
Sidebar 4: Specifications
Description: Three-way dynamic loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" soft-dome tweeter, two 5½" cone midrange units, two 10" long-throw woofers. Crossover frequencies: not specified. Amplitude/frequency response: 37Hz–20kHz ±2dB, approximately –6dB at 27Hz. Phase/frequency response: ±20° from 200Hz–10kHz. Sensitivity: 91dB/W/m. Impedance: nominal 5 ohms, minimum 3.0 ohms, maximum 7.5 ohms including bass resonance. THD: ±0.3% for an SPL of 90dB (re: 1m) at all frequencies above 100Hz. Pair matching: better than ±0.5dB up to 15kHz. Power handling: peak 250W for 10ms,…
Robert Deutsch wrote again about the SC-IV in March 1995 (Vol.18 No.3):
The $4995/pair Dunlavy Audio Labs SC-IV—which I gave a rave review in April 1994 (Vol.17 No.4), and which was subsequently named "Product of the Year" in December '94 (Vol.17 No.12)—has recently undergone some significant modifications.
Manufacturers modify products for a variety of reasons. If a product has been around for some time and sales are dropping, the manufacturer is virtually compelled to come out with a New/Improved/Series II/Signature version just to stay competitive. However, the Dunlavy SC-IV…
According to the conventional wisdom, companies selling consumer products fall into two categories: those whose sales are "marketing-led" and those whose sales are "product-led." Marketing-led companies tend to sell mature products into a mature market where there are no real differences between competing products—soap powder, mass-market beer, or cigarettes, for example—whereas product-led companies tend to sell new technologies, such as personal computers and high-end hi-fi components. In the audio separates market, conventional wisdom would have a hard time categorizing any individual…
Sidebar 1: Review System
The pair of speaker was positioned for the best sound (with only one pair of loudspeakers in the listening room at a time). Source components consisted of a Revox A77 to play my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troika setup sitting on a Sound Organisation table to play LPs, and Kinergetics KCD-40 and Meridian 206 CD players. Amplification consisted of a Mark Levinson No.25/No.26 preamplifier combination driving a pair of Mark Levinson No.20.5 monoblocks via 15' lengths of AudioQuest LiveWire Lapis balanced interconnect. Speaker cable was 5'…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Regarding measurements, I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT techniques (using the MLSSA system from DRA Labs) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. (Stereophile's measuring microphone is a calibrated B&K 4006.) The speakers' impedance phase and magnitude were measured using Stereophile's Audio Precision System One.
Looking first at the speaker's impedance (fig.1, note that the phase angle is incorrectly inverted), the sealed-box woofer tuning is revealed by the peak around 75Hz. As the impedance…