[audiojerry]

Danny is coordinating the journey. Chris in Madison Wisconsin will be getting them from me tomorrow. I'm meeting him halfway (40 miles), and handing them over to him. He will be told by Danny where to send them, but Danny is building two more demo pairs.

[Val]

Ho, hum, still waiting for all those Criterion reviews from. Where are they?

[Danny Richie]

They made a detour back to GR for repairs.

I received them back today.

Both will be fine tomorrow.

One had a small inductor that had come loose and was rattling a bit. The wiring was holding it in place.

The other had the same inductor come loose and tear the leads off allowing it to bounce around in the box a little.

For one, I originally did not build these to be shipped all over the place. The inductors had enough liquid nails on them to hold them in place here at GR Research.

More liquid nails was needed for this demo pair.

Cold weather and a bumpy ride may have been contributors as well.

Anyway.... it's all better now and I will put the drivers back in tomorrow after the glue has well dried and get them back out there.

A finished pair of Maple enclosures are on the way and will be here by the end of the week so it looks like a will have a second pair in circulation soon.

[audiojerry]

A finished pair of Maple enclosures are on the way and will be here by the end of the week so it looks like a will have a second pair in circulation soon.

Where did the finished pair come from?
What kind of maple grain pattern?
Any photos?  

[Danny Richie]

I had brian finish out a pair for me in Maple.

Nothing fancy, no curly, or birds eye, just plain Maple.

I will oil rub them and clear them with several coats of clear after they get here.

So no pictures yet.

[Brian Bunge]

Jerry,

Well, I see Danny already posted.  So you know where the cabinets are coming from!  I've already got them boxed up so I can't take any pictures.  I just have to stop the local UPS guy as he goes flying by.  

They don't have the best grain I've ever seen on maple, but it's all I had on hand.  And I don't think Danny wants to pay for curly or birdseye maple veneer.  It's HIGH!!!

[Danny Richie]

I just sent the Cherry pair back out on the road again.

They are on their way back to Michigan.

I took care of the internal damage, and hopefully it will not be a problem any more.

I also added a little extra dampening on the inside around the port to further minimize any port noise. That seamed to have worked out real well.

I also added a Bybee filter to the tweeter.

How good can good get? Real good! The highs sound great!

I listened to them for about an hour today. It was a good listening session. I love my job, and hated to send them back out.

I need to get some more demo pairs finished up just so I can have another pair here for me.

[jackman]

Danny, I wish I had this Van Alstine gear when I was testing the Criterions. They sounded great but I bet they would sound even better.  The AVA gear has much better bass than my old system and is much smoother. The Criterions certainly aren't lacking in the smoothness department!  They were as smooth, yet detailed, as anything I have ever heard. You know how to design a speaker!  Now they have Bybees...this is truly a "cost is no object" little monitor.  Great job!

Jack

[Bob Reimer]

Sometime in February I will have a pair of Criterions, a pair of ELF 1.5s and a pair of Jordan JX92S minimonitors available for evaluation by potential clients in Canada.

Stay tuned!

Bob

[audiojerry]

Danny wrote:

I listened to them for about an hour today. It was a good listening session. I love my job, and hated to send them back out.

I need to get some more demo pairs finished up just so I can have another pair here for me.

This admission come from the designer, a guy who could listen to the Alpha LS all day if he wanted to, but the Criterions are intoxicating. Danny, I told you they were magical.

When Jack listened to them on my system, he may have been too distracted to fully appreciate what the Criterions were doing.

No fair, I want to hear them again with the Bybees's!  

[george king]

Danny,

Would the addition of a Bybee filter make much sense (ignoring cost) on the AV-1s?  Would you expect a significant improvement?

[Danny Richie]

I have used Bybee filters on our A/V-1's.

I did not notice a lot of difference on the woofer, but I clearly noticed differences on the tweeter.

Differences were clear cut enough that my wife (who could care less which pair of GR Research speakers she listens to) could clearly tell a difference 100% of the time in a double blind test I put her through.

I would describe the effect of the Bybee filter as having less noise. Highs were clearer, without question.

At $80. a piece is it worth using them in an A/V-1?

For some yes, for some, no.

If you consider the cost of an A/V-1 kit starts at only $229. it may seam like a considerable cost.

If you consider what an A/V-1 would cost in completed form through typical distribution channels or what is available in the retail market that compares to the A/V-1 and what that might cost then maybe the Bybee filters are a small additional expense.

[ehider]

Here's my "miniature" review of Danny's latest wonderchild speaker.

A little over a week ago I spent a bit of time with the demo Criterions. There are many positives that have already been mentioned here before, that I'll try to add some new perspective to my review:

In a nutshell, this is one damn fine speaker. Although it is absolutely limited in it's low end response, it by no means sounds small. Initially, I didn't expect this speaker to handle the power I was capable of throwing at it (My reference amps are 500wpc Acoustic Reality monoblocks). What really surprised me about the speaker, was it's freedom from compression as its little woofer pumped away trying to make huge SPL's. Ironically, I've heard many speakers with 8" woofers that couldn't even approach the clean levels that these speakers were capable of producing.

The most important quality for me is the ability of a speaker to disappear. This is more than just imaging mind you, it's also the ability of a speaker to properly launch a wavefront as if it was coming from only one driver. With ribbon tweeters and the like, this becomes especially difficult in my experience. Some say integration difficulties are due to the fact that cone drivers are slow as compared to ribbons. Whatever the reason, I very rarely hear a speaker with ribbons and cones that doesn't sound "disconnected", where I can readily identify each driver and what it is doing. Here is where the Criterion shines. This speaker does the trick of integrating both the woofer and ribbon tweeter into one coherent sound.

Sometimes I had to pinch myself to be reminded that this speaker is less than $900! Every comparison I made was to much MUCH more expensive speakers. In fact, I completely forgot to judge this speaker on it's price merits and instead judged it against big time benchmarks. (Currently I have a custom built pair of monitors with Scan Speak Revelators and Hiquphon tweeters along with another full range "big boy" system consisting of Legacy Whispers and additional 1000W subwoofers).

Regardless of my benchmarks, the Criterion did not show it's humble price point in terms of performance. Like I stated initially in this review, the Criterions are limited in their low frequency range, but they are not nearly as limited as I expected. When compared to my ultra high end monitors that use the Scan Speak Revelators for instance, the Criterions sounded like they were only missing an octave. You've got to realize that this is quite a feat because my reference monitors' Scan Speak woofers alone cost almost as much as the entire set of Criterion speakers! This just isn't fair. I'm actually comparing the Criterion to a $3000+ super monitor!

Now here's the great part. The extra money you save with the Criterion's diminutive price can go towards a decent sub. Voila! Now you have a full range system that kicks ass and can hold it's own against much more expensive speakers. Just to verify my hypothesis, I ran the Criterions full range and added my sub to the mix to re-inforce the bottom octave. This is where things really started to cook! I really couldn't believe how well this set-up sounded for dynamics. (You have to realize here that I could not eliminate the deep bass from the Criterions when I used the sub, but had to push them to play full range instead!). Again, I couldn't believe how well those little woofers kept from breaking up. Clean, loud and utterly dynamic monitors. With the sub, this system could give some $5000+ high end full rangers some serious competition and then some!

Now to the tweeter. I have always had serious reservations about ribbon tweeters in terms of their absolute freedom from coloration. Sure most ribbons have plenty of speed, but all tend to have some degree of a slight metallic sound IMHO. When you live with a set of speakers using the Hiquphon tweeter for instance, it really becomes apparent how many tweeters suck or fail to sound neutral in comparison (don't even get me started on how many domes suck!). Fortunately, this is where the Criterion's ribbon rose to the occasion. Although it had a slight coloration (as compared to the Hiquphon), it was MUCH less than any other ribbon tweeter that I have ever auditioned! In actuality, I found myself wanting the speed of this particular ribbon with complete and absolute neutral character of the Hiquphon. Many times, I couldn't decide which tweeter I liked better! Each had its strengths, yet they were much closer to each other than any other dome or ribbon that I have ever heard. That is really saying something! Whenever any tweeter meets or exceeds the capabilities of a Hiquphon tweeter this is benchmark level territory (many consider this to be the absolute best sounding dome, period). To re-iterate, I have never heard a better sounding ribbon tweeter (at last count, I've heard at least a dozen different ribbons).

Finally, as many have mentioned in other reviews of this speaker, the Criterion images great, sounds neutral, oozes the details and is very clean across the entire range that it is capable of playing. It does need a bit of juice to get going, but by no means completely inefficient. As long as you have at least 100wpc, I think you'd be happy with the capabilities of this mini-monitor (assuming you are looking for a mini-monitor in the first place).

With the Criterion's ability to play quite loud and sound ultra refined with top notch electronics, this mini-monitor could serve as an entry level way for a budget audiophile to build a grand audio system without initially breaking the bank. He (or she) could add a subwoofer at a later date, then improve on their electronics as they work their way up to audiophile nirvana.

I congratulate Danny on his latest design, keep up the good work!

[Val]

Thanks for the review, a giant killer indeed. One question: does it reproduce image height reasonably well? This is my only doubt at the moment, but I haven't listened to it yet.

Val

[ehider]

Val,

This minimonitor seemed to re-produce the soundstage just as high as any other minimonitor that I've heard. I think that this question could be properly answered by a direct inquiry to Danny at GR. He may be able to shed some light on how the dispersion charactaristics of the ribbon may affect percieved image height (as compared to domes for instance).

[audiojerry]

Thanks for the review, a giant killer indeed. One question: does it reproduce image height reasonably well? This is my only doubt at the moment, but I haven't listened to it yet.

Val

Oh my, way yes!

[nathanm]

I got the Criterion demo speakers recently.  I give them a 10 out 10 on the crate alone!  That's the most full-ass packaging job I ever saw!  Nothing's gonna happen to these babies in shipping short of a drop out of a plane!

I got the ones finished in maple.  Never cared for any light-colored woods myself but the cabinet is undoubtedly built like a brick shithouse and then some.  Heck, maybe it's made from petrified maple.   The top and bottom edges of the baffle are not rounded over like I've seen in other pictures, I'm not sure why that is. No biggie I guess.

The sound is very clean and there's bass that belies their size.  A sub does come in handy, as always.  I spaced them out farther than my other speakers and moved my chair back a couple feet.  Soundstage was quite good but not quite "holographic". I probably could've spent more time playing with positioning, but it's hard with only one person doing it.  

The Criterions are definitely "serious listening" style speakers as the ribbon tweeters are more directional than cones.  I found that if I stood up and moved around the room the upper registers became muffled.  For my personal tastes and listening habits this isn't my preference.  Ideally, a good song will force me out of my chair, but with the Criterions the sound then changes quite a bit.  That's about the only thing I didn't like about them.  But if you like to plop down in front of them and don't move too much they are excellent.  That is not to say you have to bolt your head to the chair, but if you move your ears vertically the treble response will change.

They played plenty loud even with 9 watts from my SE-9 and they also did well with my 100-watt LeAmps.  I also powered them with a QSC PLX-1604. I would've loved to play them louder but GR-Research has my credit card info, so I wasn't about to take a $1500 hit for a pair of blown speakers! Ha! I can understand why you would like to keep bass below 50Hz away from them.  I could imagine the little woofers bottoming out on big bass resonances perhaps.  But they do take a lot of power nonetheless and still sound clean.

Overall, an excellently constructed and very nice sounding speaker, but ultimately not something I would buy based on it's small size and poor off-axis response.  That picture of the kit on the website is nutty!  Is there any room left for air once you put the crossovers in there?  Yeeowza!  As I said before, build quality is top shelf.  If a small compact bookshelf is your cup of tea I'd definitely give 'em a try.

[Ravi]

Nathan, as always I enjoy your no BS approach to hifi.  Thanks for your review.  Also good to know that the SE9 was able to drive them!

Ravi

[OBF]

Hi Nathan,

Does your review change any depending on whether you run a sub?  You mentioned that a sub did help, but also said that you didn't want to turn them up too loud for fear of bottoming the woofers.  Was that with no sub?  Also, were you high passing the Criterions or just adding a sub for the bottom end and playing the Criterions full range.

Thanks.

[Danny Richie]

Thanks for passing on the info Nathanm.

I spaced them out farther than my other speakers and moved my chair back a couple feet. Soundstage was quite good but not quite "holographic".

I had to toe them in for the sound stage to really hit the "holographic" level here in my room. Play with toe in a little and distance and it might get there for you.

They do need tall stands of around 29" to get you on the center axis. If your stands are short then tilting them back some may help (if you can).

The loss you are hearing in the highs when you stand up is not due to the ribbon itself. It actually has really good vertical off axis response.

See measurements: http://www.gr-research.com/lucidity/ver.htm

But as you stand up you are changing the distance of one driver to the other at your new ear level. This is like tilting the speaker down. The resulting change in physical alignment causes a slight drop out to occur in the crossover region as seen in the measurement.

And don't worry they will take all of the 100 watts of power you can throw at it so long as you are not sending them low synthesized bass notes.

Yes the crossover is quite big, but very little of it is in the parallel signal path. And yes, it barely fits in there.