VSA Chief Engineer Albert Von Schweikert and son Damon, who is the CEO/Production Manager, just returned from a trip to Manila, Philippines, where we modified two pairs of VR-9 SE and one pair of VR-11 SE to our new "Mk2" spec. There is a series of photos at the end of this article that will give you an idea of this immense project that was started almost 3 years ago.... Jimmy (our client in Manila) had a goal to find out if "unlimited money would bring live music" to a home environment. Well, it all started with building a Concert Hall.....
As Jimmy owns a pair of VR-11SE (front "mains") and VR-9SE (for rear ambience), he wanted VSA personnel to install the new Mk2 upgrade to his speaker system. What's another $40,000 after you've spent $2.6 million, anyway?
MK2 UPGRADE DETAILS
The new Mk2 upgrade for the VR-9 and VR-11 features newly-designed midrange drivers that more closely match the transient and frequency responses of the woofers and tweeters; in addition, the new driver has vastly superior transparency (we don't say this lightly). Since the impedance, phase, and frequency response of the new midrange driver is completely different from the original Audax 7" Aerogel driver, an all-new crossover circuit was designed to integrate the drivers together. The new circuit uses our "Passive Servo" control (Zobel-conjugate parallel filters) to integrate the midrange phase shift with the phase of the woofers and mids, in effect creating a phase coherent pulse from the entire frontal line source of concentric array of drivers. If you like the clarity and "sonic unity" of planar speakers, you'll understand why we developed the new circuit - in essence, the Mk2 upgrade enables the speakers to sound like a single driver planar system. However, the enormous dynamic range (sensitivity is 96dB @ 1 watt/1 meter) and the extremely wide bandwidth of 10Hz to 100kHz will put any planar system to shame.
The new midrange and tweeter crossover circuits feature OEM Teflon and copper foil capacitors (similar to V-Cap and Duelund units) combined with oil and silver capacitors (Mundorf) and Delphi Aerospace Teflon-coated Single Crystal copper wire. These premium components (see photos below) are hand-wired on a hand-built circuit board using star grounding instead of the cheap and commonly used PCB's (which suffer from constriction due to high resistance traces on plastic boards -ugh). We spent three years listening to different brands and types of capacitors and wires to find a musically valid (and highly accurate) recipe. This is "voicing" where the art of speaker design comes into play from the other end of the scientific side, where only measurements are felt to be valid (a false assumption) by engineers who are NOT musicians.
The additional Mk2 upgrade component addresses the cabinet vibrational modes. Instead of simply using an aluminum cabinet to reduce resonance, we used a more sophisticated engineering principle of resonance-cancellation based on opposing Q's of three different materials bonded together. Please read my White Paper on our website called "The Audibility of Cabinet Resonances and Pat.Pend. Triple-Wall Lamination for Resonance Reduction." In effect, we installed a very high Q layer of stone slabs on the inside of the cabinet walls, which vibrates at a different frequency and Q than the outer 2" wall of resin-impregnated HDF, which resonates at a lower Q value. These opposing Q's tend to cancel each other, reducing the overall coloration of the cabinet to a level comparable or better than that of any competing cabinet design. Yes, aluminum has now been surpassed by our new Triple-Wall Laminate design.
BACKGROUND
One of our customers in Manila named Jimmy (last name withheld to keep him anonymous per his request) has built a small Concert Hall on his property that I call "the Parthenon" and proceeded to purchase the finest system I've ever seen (Andy Singer would be jealous! Heck, Harry Pearson would die of envy). The huge room was professionally designed and treated with bass absorption by ASC and midrange-treble treatment consisting mainly of diffusion rather than absorption to keep a sense of "life" in the critical midrange.
According to Jimmy, he and Jack toured a few countries over the years to hear "statement" speakers and chose Von Schweikert speakers for the ultimate dream system. Jimmy runs VR-11 Mk2 in the front of the room and VR-9 Mk2 in the rear of the room. Many of his recordings are 4-channel versions, which immerses you in a sound field that is as close to live music as I've EVER heard (depending on the recording, of course). The VR-11 Mk2's are driven by a pair of VTL Sigfried tube mono blocks wired to the eight- 9" Excel magnesium Hi-speed woofers. The four rear-mounted 15" Dual Voice coil hexacone woofers with 40 lb magnetic structures are driven by on-board Ice Blok 1,000-watt amplifiers with a transient response that is as fast as the front-firing 9" woofers. Bass punch and speed using the VTL Sigfrieds is incredible, better than just about any solid state amplifier I've heard.
Driving the new midrange and existing tweeter arrays (ten drivers in all) are the VAC Statement mono block tube amps, which have the same type of sweet musicality of 300B SET's but have the muscle to drive ten midrange and treble drivers to 120dB without strain or any type of distortion. In fact, the entire VR-11 Mk2 system is so dynamic and integrated that you can't hear any drivers or amplifiers "working," the sound is virtually as transparent and effortless as live music (according to those who have heard it- and I concur).
The sources are incredible (they would have to be, right?), with twin phono systems, each with 4 tone arms/cartridges per table, for a variety of 8 different cartridges to replay any type of record made from 1950's up to today. It is a fact that different records sound better with one brand/type of cartridge, so if you want to have any type of sound you would enjoy, why NOT own 8 cartridges that you can choose from?
Digital playback includes gear from Edward Meitner's EMM Labs (including the excellent four-channel recordings) and the Eera Tentation to play standard CD's. Since Jimmy has thousands of Sony Redbook CD's (16 bit/44.1kHz), he chose the Tentation after auditioning so many CD players that he lost count.
As you can imagine, this is an incredible assemblage of the finest gear on the planet, in THE finest room I have ever experienced. I only wish that my local Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Concert Hall, built at a cost of $36,000,000, sounded as good as Jimmy's room! I have spent countless hours at DCP hall, and although it is admittedly a great sounding venue with just about any orchestra that plays there, Jimmy's room has more immediacy, greater air and space, and less coloration. Of course, being a bit smaller helps tame the room resonances.
Please enjoy the photos and feel free to ask any questions you wish about this system -what I call the Thrila in Manila" (and I believe you would call it that if YOU heard it!).
This is the outside of the "Parthenon" as I call Jimmy's concert hall.
Front of concert hall with VTL Siegfrieds and VAC Statements. Column in center is diffusor.
Our Distributor, Jack D, guarding 10 crates of VR-9/VR-11 upgrade parts!
Five racks filled with extremely high end and rare stereo equipment- eight arms and cartridges!
VR-11 SE's ready for "surgery" (upgrade to Mk2 status) on custom- built assembly stands.
Damon Von Schweikert removing drivers to install new stone slabs and crossover boards.
Damon installing new circuit boards for front and rear ribbon tweeters.
Testing of completed VR-9 Mk2's in the front of the Hall using the gear for the VR-11's.
Damon and I hope you liked reading about this project, it was a life-time ambition of ours to find a client who didn't have the drawbacks of a typical budget so we could hear what our speakers REALLY sound like.
Congratulations, Jimmy, for going "all the way" with your Dream System. It surpassed our high expectations!
Albert Von Schweikert, center, Damon Von Schweikert, left, and Jimmy, right.
