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In Reply to: RE: 30 Years ago, The Absolute Sound ran my review of Wilson Benesch's A.C.T. loudspeaker (Issue #119) posted by John Marks on July 20, 2024 at 08:06:00
I hav TAS up to #115, which was December 1998. Therefore, your review in issue #119 must have been from 1999. If you have the Wilson Benesch ACT One since 1994, then it took about half a decade, for the review to be published :-)
We had the stand-mounted Wilson Benesch ARC.
The ARC was "sensitive" to cables. It did not like the XLO S2-5.4BW. It also didn't like the various AudioQuest, Kimber, Nordost, Shunyata, Stereovox, and Wireworld cables we threw at it.
Hopefully the ACT One was much better than the bland, underwhelming, and boring ARC. Overall, the ARC was most comfortable with our Jeff Rowland (with Cardas) or Meridian (with Tara Labs) amplification.
Follow Ups:
My collection runs until HP left.
Yes! Excellent Issue.
My subscription to TAS commenced in the very early-90s. That issue from Nov/Dec 1988 was bought from, I don't recall, some San Francisco book or record store.
In college in those early-90s, I'd bounce audio ideas off of my friend (none of whom was an audiophile). Bless them, their reactions, questions, and feedback made you take a step back from audio, think, look in the mirror, and just become more honest. My friends noticed that I subscribed to both TAS and Stereophile. And when they asked for my honest take on those two magazines, my answer was that, in general, TAS' reviewers, by using a greater variety of music, and connecting the music with audio, were more relatable and reliable. Stereophile's reviewers had really weird musical tastes, nothing a regular popular music fan could relate to. Moreover, you'd go to a store, check out a product which Stereophile had reviewed, and not square that to what was written in the review.
If you were continuing to be honest, you told your friends that you wished TAS would do measurements. Stereophile's measurements may or may not correlate with what you hear, but the measurements could tip you off about incompatibilities.
In 2004, John Marks reviewed the Wilson Benesch A.C.T. without a number at the end. Time has gone by so fast, we blink, and 2004 was a whopping 20 years ago.
With measurements, that speaker would likely show a challenging radiation blend at the top of the 7" midrange's range getting pushed to a 5k crossover (2.7" wavelength).
Who does that today? Even JBL (finally) lowered the transition for their 5" midrange to 2.2k with their monitors to provide uniform frequency radiation with the tweeter.
If you wanted to combine a 5 inch mid driver or drivers into a horn, to add fully coherently into one acoustic source with the HF driver at the apex, the distance across the horn can only be about 4 inches and one is limited to a crossover about 1200Hz or below. This is that "less than 1/4 wavelength" rule for coherent single source addition that must be followed inside a multi-way horn.
I'd love to get a pair of Wilson Benesch Precision 2.0s to review, but they are in short supply.
WB listens to their own Different Drummer.
The woofer in the Precision 2.0 rolls off at -6dB/Oct.
Even better, the midrange Runs Wild! No networks; it is connected directly to the amplifier!
I can't think of anyone else who does that for a three-way design. (The 2.0 looks like an MTM, but the bottom cone is the woofer and the top cone is the midrange.)
john
A number of companies have created "crossoverless" midranges. It's nothing new. One that comes to mind is Verity, since the 1990s. The company closed up recently, but one of their hallmarks was always no crossover on the midrange, which created some issues of its own.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Great job! JM.
I can't think of anyone else who does that for a three-way design.
Most have learned better than to run a driver more than an octave past its ideal range. Instruments spanning midrange and tweeter would sure sound funky with the disparate polar response.
They were using some Morel drivers with extended flat response at both ends. IIRC, they also used isobarically loaded pairs or trios for each driver. Morel happily sold them LOTS of drivers!
... and that the midrange drivers were beamy and forward.
I am totally aware that Bob Ludwig loved his Egglestonworks Ivys, but those were voiced to Bob's room and his preferences by having the crossovers' key parts swapped out, once the loudspeakers were set up in his room.
ciao,
john
Triple isobaric makes no sense. Isobaric claims constant pressure on the outer driver because the inner driver moves in parallel. But it doesn't. The inner driver is loaded by its box and at some point the inner driver, of course, rolls off, causing the outer driver to also roll off. The main advantage of isobaric is a smaller box for the same bass roll off for the outer driver but at a price, 3 dB loss of efficiency since the inner driver out put is lost but it still uses power and the impedance is halved which can be low enough to make many amps cough(figuratively). A second inner drive only multiples these negatives.
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