Eikon speakers Gayle Martin Sanders!

[JonFo]

... My guess is that Gayle saw how well the Bohmer tech worked with Legacy (Legacy showed the Wavelet paired with their speakers as early as RMAF 2014) and since Bohmer is offering the Wavelet as a turnkey product, he decided to make speakers that paired even more tightly with the Wavelet. I don't know for sure, but another guess is that by giving each output channel of the Wavelet a dedicated amp to dedicated driver pathway, they can more finely tune the results of the EQ data for more specific output on a per driver level. Eikon then can sell it as an end to end DAC/DSP-Amp-Speaker solution even though the first part isn't his company's IP but touting how the speaker makes best use of the technology. On the upside, he sidesteps years of research and lots of money spent to develop it, but on the downside there's a reliance on Bohmer and their ongoing commitment to the platform. ...

This is quite a rational choice, and one even much larger outfits, like Harman of all people, do. The JBL Synthesis processor is a customized version of the Trinnov Altitude32.
I hope some more boutique speaker outfits follow suit and give players like Bohmer (on the high-end) and miniDSP (on the lower end) enough business to continue development and support.

And yes, with a channel per driver, one can achieve a tremendous level of integration, both intra-speaker and speaker to room. And many of the designer choices here go to the 'voicing' of the resulting speaker. Those of us who can do this ourselves (Ken (RUR) and I here on the MLOC, but tons of others on DIYaudio or AVSForum) know full well just how sensitive things are to even minor adjustments and to the incredible results one can get when the effort is put in. It's also a lot more fun and predictable than swapping cables or amps

 

[JonFo]

I just finished spending a couple of hours reading up on the Bohmer room correction process, and I have to say, very impressed. Their consideration for the timing elements are indeed critical and likely do yield superior results.

Although it seems to be predicated on monopole speakers, as dipoles have huge amounts of energy in that 5 to 25ms window they identify as critical to the interpretation of instrument size (and to some degree, position). So not sure how well it would do with a pair of dipole ESLs.

I'm actually getting closer and closer to going monopole on my ESLs, as the more I learn about psychoacoustics, and the more I analyze the measurements I make, the more I realize the rear wave of a dipole system is a bug, not a feature.

 

[RUR]

I just finished spending a couple of hours reading up on the Bohmer room correction process, and I have to say, very impressed. Their consideration for the timing elements are indeed critical and likely do yield superior results.

Although it seems to be predicated on monopole speakers, as dipoles have huge amounts of energy in that 5 to 25ms window they identify as critical to the interpretation of instrument size (and to some degree, position). So not sure how well it would do with a pair of dipole ESLs.

I'm actually getting closer and closer to going monopole on my ESLs, as the more I learn about psychoacoustics, and the more I analyze the measurements I make, the more I realize the rear wave of a dipole system is a bug, not a feature.

I hear you Jonathan, and the siren song of SotA monopoles is hard to resist. OTOH, I've had a pair of JBL 708i in my room for nearly two years. As you know, their measurements are crazy good in every aspect yet, when I do a casual A/B with folks in my room, everyone prefers the big dipoles - There's just something about the big, airy presentation that (for some people) trumps actual accuracy to the source. Maybe if I had a pair of Salon 2's, eh?

Can't say I've ever had any trouble using RC effectively on dipoles, though the correction algorithms do analyze both direct and power response. Attributes of either/both measurements are configurable by the user before filter calculation.

 

[sharok]

I hear you Jonathan, and the siren song of SotA monopoles is hard to resist. OTOH, I've had a pair of JBL 708i in my room for nearly two years. As you know, their measurements are crazy good in every aspect yet, when I do a casual A/B with folks in my room, everyone prefers the big dipoles - There's just something about the big, airy presentation that (for some people) trumps actual accuracy to the source. Maybe if I had a pair of Salon 2's, eh?

Can't say I've ever had any trouble using RC effectively on dipoles, though the correction algorithms do analyze both direct and power response. Attributes of either/both measurements are configurable by the user before filter calculation.

Hi Ken,
I have a couple of questions about your MacMini/Jriver.
Do you use and external hard drive connected to MacMini for your ripped music?
Is there any difference (delay. quality, ...) between using an internal or an external SSD hard drive (USB) connected to MacMini (with Jriver installed on MacMini) for music? Since MacMini does not offer a large capacity hard drive.

 

[RUR]

Hi Ken,
I have a couple of questions about your MacMini/Jriver.
Do you use and external hard drive connected to MacMini for your ripped music?
Is there any difference (delay. quality, ...) between using an internal or an external SSD hard drive (USB) connected to MacMini (with Jriver installed on MacMini) for music? Since MacMini does not offer a large capacity hard drive.

Hi Sharok,

Guess I've got to update my sig, since I pulled the MacMini a few weeks back for a Windows laptop, purely for convenience reasons. However...when I did use the MacMini I ran Win7 with bootcamp since Mac/JRiver was still in development. The Mac has a 500gB drive and that's where the music library was. Now that I'm using the laptop, I've got an external 500gB SSD to hold the library. Both internal and external drives sound exactly alike, as one would expect, so just buy the capacity you need.

FYI, I use a USB>AES/EBU converter to send PCM to the Trinnov only 'cuz my last two Trinnov's had no HDMI input, though I s'pose I could do HDMI now.

Hope that helps!

/Ken

 

[sharok]

Hi Ken,
Many thanks.
Did you use boot camp because of the Windows convenience or because it runs Jriver better on Mac?

 

[RUR]

Hi Ken,
Many thanks.
Did you use boot camp because of the Windows convenience or because it runs Jriver better on Mac?

Sharok,

When I first purchased the Mac Mini and set up the system, JRiver for mac was still in development and I didn't want to be a beta tester. Purely a matter of convenience.

 

[JonFo]

Sharok, I run JRiver 22 on an i5-based Server 2012 platform, and all my sources are pulled over the network from another Server 2012 box running as a file server.
I feed the preamp via HDMI, works great for 2 or Multichannel content. Even use it to play back ripped movies and such.
Audio quality is indistinguishable from physical media played on the Oppo 103.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Most recent issue of TAS has an interview with Gayle on his new company.