Now to the sound quality of the open baffle planar desktop mated to the 6x12 servo arrays. Music used to voice them started with Classical and Jazz recordings as follows:
Reference Recordings-Exotic Dances HRx
Reference Recordings-Crown Imperial HRx
Reference Recordings-Pomp & Pipes HDCD
Reference Recordings-Post Cards HDCD
Telarc- Fanfare For The Common Man -Aaron Copland
RCA Living Stereo – The Reiner Sound DSD
RCA Living Stereo – Beethoven Symphony 9, Fritz Reiner DSD
Dave Brubeck Quartet-Time Out CD
Julie London-Time For Love CD
Frank Sinatra –Various CD
Elvis Presley – for Avoosl CD
Mannheim Steamroller-Fresh Aire III CD
Rock and lots of it.
The first thing you notice is the sense of space around the instruments that I think of as the hallmark of open baffle speakers. Soundstage width and depth are very good and very dependent on the replay volume for the recording. No vocal sibilant emphasis on either female or male voices. Voices have body and room presence. This all helps suspend the sense of it being a recording.
The melding of the open baffle planars and H-Frame open baffle servo drivers are amazing. One important detail is to be able to time delay the planars to match up with the servo subs wavefront output. The one drawback is that mating a point source mid-tweeter array to the line array servo subs changes the sense of size of instruments. The good part is that the subs work up well into the vocal range to add some sense of scale to everything. You also have to be more on the sweet spot of the planars than a full line array.
After hearing the open baffle line array’s at Danny’s, it became obvious that some of the sense of ease of reproduction with line is missing with just the single planar midrange and tweeter. This takes away a small part of the overall reproduced experience, but not a huge part.
The servo subs are in a class by themselves. One thing about hearing a pipe organ in a large space is the sense of air movement. It comes from all over, not just one direction. The organ really is the venue. The organ low pedal notes from the Reference Recordings with the servo subs gives me that sensation at my listening chair. Does it give me the whole body resonance like the REFIII’s, no, but very good indeed. Drums are amazing in tracks like the Aaron Copeland. It creates the wall of sound the real instrument does in a large venue. Double bass has the growl and power you would hear in live settings out in the audience. It really is difficult to explain the sense of involvement when you have really good bass response. It all starts at the foundation and recordings with low frequency room noise are easily heard and felt.
Hope that gives everyone an idea of the sound quality of the open baffle planar desktop servo sub array setup in my listening room.
