Description

Ease, coherency, large staged sphere-like presentation, virtually unlimited full-range dynamics and a relatively natural tonality are some of the core traits pursued and achieved with the fully actively driven pro cinema speakers, Electro-Voice TS9040D LX, and tapped horn subwoofers. 

"Full-range" with a proviso; to some what is full-range covers down to or even below 10Hz at full click, but in my use of the term I "merely" refer to honest 20-25Hz, which my corner-loaded pair of tapped horn subs will be able to achieve up to +125dB's - at the listening position. I never use their full SPL envelope even when being "liberal" with the volume control, but that's the whole point behind ample headroom: it translates into absolute effortlessness at any desired volume, while also making you more comfortable at higher SPL's (but be sure to project your hearing and avoid extended exposure to higher SPL's). 

Some may ask: why actively driven pro cinema main speakers and tapped horn subwoofers in a home environment? To put it shortly, because well-implemented - which goes for all speaker categories - they can sound great and absolutely effortless at that, and at a price level that calls for one to self-scrutinize when comparing them to "high-end" speakers/subs costing a downright fortune. 

So, what's the catch? Mainly it boils down to looks, size - and prejudice. Even price, but I'll get to that later. Aesthetics are very important to many audiophiles, more so than many will admit, and very large pro cinema speakers with their typically black Duratex surface and rugged industrial looks don't appeal to audiophiles with interior decoration demands, be they self-inflicted or by their spouse. Even if it doesn't concern interior design audiophiles often want or expect their speakers to have a particular "audiophile" look, which typically translates into a slender and deep enclosure with smaller, inefficient drive units. Finish-wise high gloss lacquer surfaces with (concealed) wood or other beneath it, are very popular. That's HiFi speaker looks in a nutshell. 

Size is another, huge factor. Audiophiles at large would rather pay dearly for smaller high-end category speakers than have much larger, cheaper and less "fancy" looking alternatives with pro or DIY origins in their homes. Because high-end speakers of limited size are refined, cultivated, voiced-by-ear and naturally adapted to home environments, whereas large pro cinema speakers and horn-based subs are brutes, coarse and only about playing hellishly loud - right? Wrong. What's mostly incorrect are the assumptions aimed at the latter, while the former severely lacks dynamics, presence, scale, fullness and effortlessness of reproduction - something the latter has in spades AS WELL AS resolution, coherency and refinement - not least actively driven. It's about letting physics have their say, properly implemented, and cutting loose prejudices and vanity. 

Which leads me to: price. Audiophiles have been more or less breastfed with the notion that you get what you pay for, but I find that in reality it only partially applies - relatively at that. All things being equal a bigger speaker will cost more than a smaller, which goes without saying; more material equates into higher price. However, the relative part comes into play when comparing a large high-end speaker with a large pro cinema speaker. Even when the former is smaller than the latter, the former will be outrageously more expensive, but will it actually sound better to justify its higher price? I don't acknowledge sound perception as such being subjective, it's rather about the aspects of what we hear that we prioritize (not least seen through the prism of what's brought up in the paragraphs above). With that in mind my answer to whether an über-expensive, large and lower efficiency high-end speaker sounds better than a much cheaper and even larger pro cinema speaker, is a resounding NO. With care taken implementing pro cinema speakers and not least driving them actively, they will serve up a sound that in core aspects obliterates most any lower eff. high-end speakers. Actively driven they will at least equal if not better resolution, while having a typically clearer, fuller and more uninhibited presentation. Some pro cinema speakers may roll off at 17-18kHz, but let those quarrel about that who can't find more important issues to raise. 

To conclude re: price, many audiophiles find that speakers (and audio products in general) can be too cheap for them to consider a purchase, because they've been told higher price means better sound - irrespective of anything, really. Starring at industrial looking large pro cinema speakers that cost much less than a smaller high-end speaker would lead to a clear case of cognitive dissonance if an audiophile's preconceptions were tempted by being told or found out by his or her own (unbiased) hearing that the former performs equally, if different, or even better. That's what it is. 
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Room Details

Dimensions: 18’ × 14’  Medium
Ceiling: 8’


Components Toggle details

    • Synology NAS
    NAS-server
    • Asus Xonar AE
    Digital optical output, 24-bit/192kHz. Used in a DIY Windows 10 Pro 64-bit music server. JRiver MC30 playback software. Fidelizer Pro.
    • Blue Cheese Audio Roquefort
    DAC/Digital preamp.
    • Xilica XP-3060
    Digital crossover, 3 inputs and 6 outputs
    • MC² Audio T2000
    2 x 625W/8 ohm class A/B fully differential balanced studio amp, horizontally bi-amped over the EV MF/HF horns.
    • MC² Audio T1500
    2 x 1025W/4 ohm class A/B fully differential balanced studio amp, horizontally bi-amped over the EV bass section.
    • MC² Audio T2000
    2 x 625W/8 ohm class A/B fully differential balanced studio amp, driving the tapped horn subs.
    • Electro-Voice TS9040D LX
    2-way pro cinema speakers, actively driven. Electro-Voice DH1A 2" exit and 3" titanium diaphragm large format compression driver and DL15W woofer/mid. The DH1A is loaded with the large format EV HP9040 Constant Directivity horn, and is used from ~600Hz on up. LR6 slopes throughout. 
    • MicroWrecker Tapped horn
    Tapped horn subwoofer x 2, ~23Hz tune with 15" B&C 15TBX100 driver. 20 cubic feet volume per cab. 97dB sensitivity. Covering 20 to ~85Hz. BW6 HP and LR6 LP.
    • Mundorf Silver/gold
    XLR Interconnects, with Neutrik connectors. Teflon insulated 24 AWG 99% silver/1% gold solid-core conductor, braided. Fed between BCA DAC/preamp output and Xilica DSP input.
    • Mogami 2549
    XLR interconnects, with Neutrik connectors. Fed between Xilica DSP and MC² Audio T1500/T2000 amps running EV horns and EV bass bins respectively.
    • Mundorf Silver/gold
    EV HP9040 horn + DH1A compression driver speaker cable. 19 AWG silver/gold conductor cable, solid-core, with teflon insulation. Balanced, highly resolved - excellent "monitor" cable.
    • Cordial CLS 425
    EV TL606DW bass cab and subwoofer cable with Speakon connectors. 4 x 13 AWG stranded copper cable.
    • Cordial CMK Road 250
    XLR interconnects, with Neutrik connectors. Fed between Xilica and MC² Audio T2000 amp for subs duties.

Comments 12

@phusis 

I'm running my system actively, using digital active crossovers and equalization via the HDMI output of my Mac Mini. It's definitely not high-end. The speaker arrangement is unorthodox. I'm using a matrix of 3 speakers for everything above 220Hz. These are all right next to each other, at 1 foot center to center distance, and all mounted on a single 2' x 4' board. The drivers are 10" midwoofers - open baffle, placed close to the back wall (because I have to) with absorber panels behind them. The 10" woofers go up to about 1200Hz, where they cross over to some horns, which are PT waveguide clones with JBL 2426H compression drivers placed directly above the midwoofers on the same baffle. There are capacitors on the horn drivers, which keep them safe and act as a pretty good EQ for the constant directivity waveguides, and keep amplifier hiss below audibility. 
My 3 speaker array, it achieves a wide soundstage through crosstalk reduction, which works better than I expected. The array mix is L-R, L+R, R-L. The idea was I wanted a center channel, and was wondering how much stereo effect I could retrieve with the side channels that didn't duplicate the center imaged sounds. I thought it might work with the speakers pretty close together, and it works really well! The reason I'm using the direct radiator 10" midwoofers is that I can't get a horn small enough to fit the 1 foot spacing. My calculations suggest that the wider spaced horns at 2' center to center spacing could still produce a wide stereo soundstage. I experimented with spacing the midwoofers futher apart than the tweeters, but that sounded odd. Center panned sounds did not seamlessly match side panned sounds. I'm wondering though if I could do a partial horn loading by placing all 3 woofers in a slot. So, they'd be loaded vertically but not horizontally. I've seen other manufacturers do things somewhat like this. I think Oswald Mills has a speaker that has wings going off the woofer that tilt to lightly load the woofer horizontally but not vertically. 
For the bass I have some corner horns, which are comprised of four cabinets stacked on top of each other. They're triangular shaped to fit in the corner, and use a split path folded 6' long horn. Each are driven by an 18" woofer. These are limited in the bottom end to about 30Hz, mostly due to the small backchamber size, according to hornresp simulations. They also have a problem with cancelation and resonance somewhere around 80hz. I don't fully understand this yet, but it seems to be a problem with the horn mouth being too narrow for the length of the horn, which has about a 6' path length. These bass horn stacks have a cabinet in the middle which contains a 2' long midbass horn that was designed to cover 200 to 2000Hz. This also has a coaxial tweeter horn right in the middle of it. These horns have problems, as you can imaging, with very uneven dispersion, with the midbass horn getting very narrow at 2000Hz, and then the tweeter starting out very wide above that. I did some testing to see what the midbass horn would do down in to the bass range, and of course it falls off dramatically below 200Hz. Interestingly, down at 80Hz it shows the same deep cancelation as the bass horns. Perhaps it's because of being right in between the bass horns. Perhaps I need to remove it from the stack and play it on its own to see if that's really the case. 
Anyway, my center array sounds much better in the mids and highs. The bass horns are flawed, but still quite beautiful and majestic. I prefer them to any non-horn loaded bass I've heard so far. With some EQ I've gotten them to measure flat down to 10hz according to REW. That means EQing the higher bass frequencies down a lot and then cranking up the gain for the associated channels on the receiver, which is just an old Denon 7.2 Surround receiver I got for practically nothing on craigslist. Since the horns are so efficient I can get some earth shaking bass and very loud playback without much amp power. I don't do that because on most music I'm perfectly happy if I can get a little below 30Hz before it starts to roll off, and I just feel better about not applying such drastic EQ.

asctim

Owner
@asctim --

Pardon my late reply, and thanks for your remarks! What are the particulars of your horn/direct radiator/horn setup, and are you running it actively or passively? 
Prior to my current main speakers I used passively configured all-horns, Simon Mears Audio Uccello's, which are an homage really to Paul Klipsch's Belle model. They were lovely speakers in places, but the bass horn was too small and had some upper bass peaks (~125Hz region), which marred the overall presentation with a chesty coloration. However it was still a bass horn, and the bass and lower mids quality and that special, organic "twang"-feeling - apart from the peak resonans in the upper bass - was great. Lovely mids too. 
It goes to show though a front loaded bass horn must be non-truncated and load properly in its entire frequency range to uphold both sensitivity and smoothes of response, and that takes more size. Same goes with a midrange horn, ultimately. Large direct radiators instead, as you've found out yourself, are a nice compromise. High sensitivity dual 15" pro mid-woofers per channel, not least high-passed >80Hz, can be seriously imposing in a domestic environment when fired up, but what surprises me is how well-behaved they are up to the ~600Hz range where they're low-passed in my setup to the horns above. More important they, like a mid bass horn, energize the power region in a way that smaller, low eff. woofers simply cannot equal. It just sounds more real. 
Ultimately I'd go with a properly sized, non-truncated midbass horn for the simply reason that I find they sound even better in this region, compared to anything really. The smoothness, clarity, vibrancy, dynamics and natural warmth that can be achieved here is downright outstanding. Someday I'll go there again - properly, without size restrictions. 
I've chosen tapped horns for subs duties being that a non-truncated FLH down to 20-25Hz would be about twice the size of the TH's I have now - simply impractical. Less extension with a non-truncated FLH would do - say, with a tune in the 30-35Hz region. Most importantly, I find, is choosing high eff. sub solutions (>95dB's) to attain the most natural and effortless reproduction, and there's a variety of ways to achieve this. TH's have excursion minima at the tune, and that offers some advantages in the lower octaves in particular, while having, fundamentally, the characteristics of a FLH. 

phusis

I like the looks of this setup, and sure I'd be happy with it too! Like you, I'm running horns top and bottom with direct radiators in the middle. I wanted to be a horn purist, but the middle is logistically tough, and high efficiency direct radiators that aren't pushed too low can definitely keep up in a domestic environment.

asctim

Owner
[deleted]

phusis

Owner
@dadork  --
Pardon my late reply. Oh, I love my Belles SA30, so I can understand why you're very pleased with the SA100 - being they're so very much alike with one being class A and the other A/B. Apart from that they're virtually similar. These amps combine musicality and insight/honesty in quite a singular way, I find. What speakers do you use with the SA100?

phusis

Nice system. How do you like your Belles? I have the SA100 amp and the Belles A28 preamp and think they're great!

dadork

Nice system! How do you like your Belles? I have the SA100 amp and the Belles A28 pre amp and I think they're great.

dadork

You're not the only one that forgets about  posts. I finally saw your response this morning. Thank you for your comments regarding my system. I love my system, if I could, I would be in my listening chair all day everyday.

It's a very rewarding system to listen to, never tiring, and hard to leave. I listen late at night. I wake up in the morning many times and the system is still on, but that is the time when I can enjoy it intensely without disturbing anyone.
 I've just got to keep everything working, which over years in time takes some effort, and a fair amount of money. It's worth it, though.

best regards,
Dan 

islandmandan

Owner
Hello, Dan
Sorry for never getting back to you until now! Thanks, it's a powerful and, sorry to be immodest here, very well sounding setup - I certainly find so myself, and (audio-)friends of mine also. One mayn't expect pro cinema speakers to be a natural fit in a domestic environment, nor 20 cf. tapped horn subs for that matter, but overall the sound is actually very resolved, coherent and tonally quite accurate. 
I looked at your setup as well, and it looks to be an extremely musical system - kudos! At one point I may explore going analogue (i.e.: turntable) again, but that's not in my current plans. 

Regards,
Mikael

phusis

Hello Phusis,

Man, you are one horny dude! I mean that in the best possible way! I think your horns would be a very good fit in my home, with my equipment. I'd enjoy hearing them..

Very nicely done, enjoy! Regards,
Dan

islandmandan

Owner
Hello friend :)

Only just saw you reply - must find out whether there's a notification feature to inform me of incoming posts.

Thanks for your input. I auditioned the Uccello's in Brighton, initially on a Pass First Watt Class-A solid state amp (can't remember the exact model), which sounded very good, and then later via a 300B tube based amp built by David Wright - even better sounding; more full, rounded, "gelassen" (German for relaxed, in a sense), and less mechanical - simply more natural, I'd say. With that in mind I'm certainly aware of the potential here, and an SET will enter my setup eventually for testing - no doubt!

Aah, OMA - I've visited his site many times already, a great inspiration in many ways. Just reading about and seeing pics of The Mill is a joy, as well as knowing about some of Mr. Weiss' past and doings. His blogs are interesting as well - I like reading them. I appreciate his thoughts and views, can't say I always agree on certain aspects, but fundamentally I find what he shares is important and essential. I've seen all videos on OMA as well - don't believe there are any I have missed!

Do you have any experience with Mr. Weiss' products - have you heard some of them? Sadly I haven't. Do you use horns and SET's yourself?

phusis

Friend

SET Amplification and Horns are quite a match!!!!!! There is no doubt you have great components; however, once you start comparing - that's when all the thoughts and considerations begin to flow. Visit Oswalds Mill Audio Website, they have alot of great information about SET Amplication and Horns. Spend time on the entire site and watch the YouTube Videos.

I'm not saying you have to purchase their equipment, but they go into the history of Audio with full explanation. Of course, Budget will dictate your purchases when and if you decide to make a move.

studio1

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