Hope you had a great RMAF 2016!
Yes we did, thanks.
Any further info on AT/BE version at this point? Though I can imagine a more focused & refined speaker, I personally wouldn't want to change the overall character of the sound; I really loved the detailed ease of the presentation at Axpona. How does this version differ?
We are just starting to veneer the first pair today. So it will be a few weeks before we have a chance to give them a listen. Until then, it is hard to say. I am anticipating the same overall sound quality with a bit more refinement. But time will tell.
Anyways, since this seems to be the bug Jim & Dennis thread, I hope its not too annoying to ask a couple more...
There seems to be much praise for the Satori here, but if size wasn't a constraint of the design, are there any larger drivers that would perform better? It may be only a sighted preference on my part, but I'm always most impressed with the bass performance of 10-12" drvers (15+ probably wouldn't work in my room).
I'm sure a version with a 10" or even 12" woofer would work just fine. But it would likely be a much larger speaker. And if you were moving in that direction, then I think you would want to look at the tweeter and midrange drivers as well. In short, this would end up being an entirely new speaker design (and probably much more costly as a result).
The fact is, the Satori driver is actually quite incredible. If you look at many drivers in that size range, you will see that they are mostly 84db sensitive. As you move up in sensitivity, cabinet size requirements get quite a bit larger and you lose bass extension rather quickly. The cabinet volume requirements for the Satori driver are reasonable. The sensitivity is 88db and we were able to tune the design resulting in an F3 of 33Hz. That is a pretty remarkable combination of attributes that basically makes the Song3 design possible.
Again, it would certainly be possible to use a larger woofer. But it would be a totally different design from the ground up.
And if not, would putting the drivers on the wide side cause too many issues? It's probably a silly idea, but I find narrow towers in general a bit visually underwhelming; and in this instance it seems a shame not to show off such lovely finishes as much as possible.
Thanks again for everyone's time.
The crossover to the midrange in this design is too high to have side-firing woofers. Generally, you would want to cross at about 150Hz or lower to make it viable. Human hearing can localize sounds above that area and would know the woofer is not in the same plane as the midrange and tweeter. Crossing low enough to pull this off, you might have to look for a new midrange driver and then you would also be dealing with the midrange performance high enough up to cross to the tweeter. It is a balancing act to say the least.
I hope this all made sense.
- Jim