Ok, here's what I consider the first-most important paragraph from what the reviewer said at 6moons.
Even when spread 10' apart, center fill neither collapsed nor thinned out, allowing for the projection of a truly wide screen soundstage - without annoying black bars. Where the Loreleis made minor concessions to common sense? In the last word of midrange transparency. It's something that'd occur to you as nearly a given when considering that a 7-inch driver performs double-duty for extreme low bass and vocals. Accordingly, the Loreleis frolicked on the warm side of neutral. Capable of higher-than-good-for-you decibels without obvious compression or nastiness, they reminded me of the nOrh SM6.9s in their feisty mien, but with a more lit-up treble than the implementation of Vifa's ring radiator in the Thai drums manages. That latter ingredient is vital to Rolf Gemein's design. Without it, the bass prowess of these towers would nearly be too much of a good thing. As it stands, he strikes a judicious balance of control and bloom; midrange communicativeness and tonal density. He then adds a sparkly top for apparent speed and openess which counteract the weight from the lower midrange on down.
Here it's looking like a straightforward explanation of the use of the ring tweeter. From my perspective, I'm thinking that if you're going to increase the bass output, and somehow through it all, also increase the efficiency, you need to add coorespondingly more output on the tweeter end. So however it is, so that they balance. And I think that a speaker is a system, and it has to come together. I'm not referring to amp & CDP here, I mean the parts that the speaker is made of.
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Lot's of things I like to hear. I don't doubt also the mention of the warmth of the sound, but the reviewer's habits are also described as with high-efficiency horns, which tend to give a
very dynamic kick. These scanspeak drivers, perhaps with exception to the ring tweeter, I think tend to be warm sounding compared to that kind of experience, but also some folks just say, "huh? What'd'yah mean? They sound like all the other passive electrodynamics" yadda yadda.
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And then there's the matter of phase coherence from various positions. Not really complimentary on that score, (and not alot to say):
Directly on-axis, the extreme treble was slightly emphasized but quickly remedied by facing the boxes straight out.
So these tweeters are a little more directional than the 9500s I would have to guess, and also not possibly phase coherent from 0 to 40 degrees. What speaker is, really? While we're at it, they're all screwing at least 4 or 5 things up, they don't have a choice. We're not listening to 100,000 point sources each the size of a molecule.
Well, George Short never chased after the bottom octave with his designs, insisting the person go after a separate sub to complete the frequency range, even with the dual 8545s of the NCMS Rhythms. There are some designers who just won't do it. And I was egging Klaus, "go get 8 inch drivers, man". Meanwhile, I also have some speakers with 8" Vifa midwoofers, the lesser-than-scanspeak name brand, and they are not warm-sounding like the thick paper scanspeaks, but some folks would just say they like something about them better. They're light, they're high-thrust with a good range of travel, and there's nothing but a series x/o - 2 coils, 2 caps, one limiting resistor on the high-pass, and they've got quite a kick! Check out the writings of Roy Johnson of Green Mountain Audio some time. There's one fat thread at audiogon in particular:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1032037028&read&keyw&zzroy=johnsonFor phase coherence, I don't think he would use a driver of that diamter to produce low bass. In his own words, the diameter and the surface area don't come into direct contact with enough air. Then again, maybe he's an idiot, albeit a highly respected one, but he's going after the holy grail of sound, God bless him if he finds it, I'm sure he'll be the first. The next point he would make would be to say that phase coherence isn't going to hold when you get outside the ballpark of a driver's diamter across the frequencies that driver is responsible for, and where that is first going to show up is off-axis repsonse. Well, I'm trying to quote as best I remeber all I;veread fomr the guy.
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All in all, I'd like to bust things up just a bit, and say that if you've got 18 years on one pair of speakers (did you get them re-coned along the way?) and your second pair of speakers are the greatest thing in your experience, that maybe theres ways of opening this up into a more subjective field, something that has some room for play. I'm happy to be real curious about the sound of the Loreleis at this point, like short short list and all, and for giving them an honest listen. Can you send me a pair for a little while and I'll send them back to you? Ok, I'm kidding, I'd be having troubles driving them. But I would also say keep an open mind, there's more than one way to skin a cat. I get the feeling the 6moons review describes the kind of balance Rolf was after really well, it makes sense to me, and I thnk it sounds really cool what he's after.
And on a note I mentioned earlier, comparing these two may provide information, but I don't guess it would work very well. I've tried something like that, and as it turned out I didn't end up with such a high personal appreciation of myself for the comparison I made. I find it difficult to compare speakers with different frequency responses. Maybe it would be easier to couple the Borealis with a sub to compare against this full-range offering.
I don't think it's then end-all of reviews, for sure, but I like it. I didn't hear any mention of time coherency there, or really any specific talk about transient attack or dynamics, did I miss something on that? I've heard time coherency come up here somewhere. Any elaborations on the matter?
btw: thanks for all your time, I guess that one got a little windy.
