[fishinbob]

"And they start to sing and before you know it you are mesmerized." 

[glangford]

Their review of the Salk is up.


http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/home-audio-speakers/73340-official-3-000-speaker-evaluation-home-audition-event.html#post682698

They have some jazz tunes, but only one classical as far as I can tell.  So there is some acoustic in the mix.  But too much heavy metal for my tastes for a speaker trial.

[Big Red Machine]

They have some jazz tunes, but only one classical as far as I can tell.  So there is some acoustic in the mix.  But too much heavy metal for my tastes for a speaker trial.

Agree.

And the sibilance issue to me is due to their electronics.  But hey, they did a tremendous amount of measuring and placement, so while we may not agree with the songs and gear, when it is all said and done it will be interesting to see how all 6 stacked up after their hard work.

[JonnyFive]

And the sibilance issue to me is due to their electronics.

The Onkyo?  The Emotiva XPR? 

[Big Red Machine]

Dac and pre are my suspect parts.  Not the amp so much as it is down the stream. 

[jsalk]

There is another possibility.  Some music tracks are mastered to perform well on less-than-stellar speakers.  In many cases the mastering engineer boosts certain bass frequencies and sometimes he will boost the high end as well so that small, full-range speakers without tweeters (some automobile systems, etc.) will reproduce decent treble levels.  These tracks are often mastered "hot" on the high end.  That way, they perform well on lesser systems.  But a speaker like the Supercharged SongTower is extremely detailed and accurate (as you can see in the plot below.



If there is sibilance in the track, many speakers will mask it.  The Supercharged SongTowers will not.

Perhaps this might an issue related to the track itself.

- Jim

[fishinbob]

I was about to venture a guess that perhaps it exists in the soundtrack and that my truck system would probably not reveal this issue but Jim took care of that, reaffirming my thoughts.
Has anyone here a copy of Ms Menzel's recording, or the Gardot cut, for some first hand comments on the engineering?

[glangford]

I have the Melody Gardot CD. Sounds very nice on my set SC Songtowers.  I'll listen to that test track tonight and see if I detect anything, but I haven't before. The only thing I've ever detected was a very accurate reprsentation of what's on the disc.

[Rocket]

Hi Guys,

I had a read of the impressions from the testing of the Songtower SC's and I'm a bit surprised in their comments especially about the bass.  Some of the equipment doesn't appear to be in the class of the speakers imo and  I've always said that Jim's speakers rise to the occasion with every improvement in equipment or the use of good quality recordings.  I recently sold my Salk Sound HT2's which were the non TL version and used LCY ribbon tweeters.  I always felt the bass whilst not really deep was good quality and did not sound like a one bass note which was unlike my Nuforce s9's.  Anyway, I went to my friends house for a music session recently and his room is much larger than mine and we had a really good thumping session listening to some really good recordings in both cd and vinyl and these speakers really rocked out.

Regards Rod

[ctviggen]

Here's a link to the thread where the results will be posted.  There are only some general hints about the process there now.  But more description is promised soon.

 http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/home-audio-speakers/73340-official-3-000-speaker-evaluation-home-audition-event.html

I guess since it is hometheatershack, it's ok to demo with those electronics, but it would have been nice to see some pure two-channel stuff employed.

Well, the Salks win for fewest drivers per speaker!  I have to say that 7 drivers for a speaker that small is a bit insane. 

[ctviggen]

They have some jazz tunes, but only one classical as far as I can tell.  So there is some acoustic in the mix.  But too much heavy metal for my tastes for a speaker trial.

I couldn't do a test with those songs.  AC/DC and Metallica?  How on earth can you judge speakers using that music?  While I'm not a big fan of using single woman songs either, at least some mellow songs can help.  When I was testing DACs, I used Johnny Cash, as it was relatively easy to hear how his voice changed with each switch between DACs.  Now, if you want to have some variety of music because you want to have the best "rock" speaker and the best "acoustic" speaker, that's a possibility, but they didn't seem to do that.

And equalization for speakers is quite dangerous.  It can kill a good speaker, and often a speaker sounds better without equalization, especially for 2 channel.