Hi Gentlemen.
It have the 4 woofer (7" revelator) version of the Linesource Reference. I'm using them with the Behringer DCX2496 crossover and two amplifiers. The cabinets are extremely dead and an infinite baffle. I think he is using 1 "MDF and a heavy bracing pattern? They don't have a square edge or corner and they are heavy. I just checked his web page because he didn't have a lot of detail on them before, however he has a lot more now and has a new newsletter posted (Oct 2008). The picture he has shows the 6 woofer version with a 30" ribbon.
Mine are without the bottom two woofers and the oak on the ribbons along with the complete alignment with the woofers ties in really nice for the eye. I've used PMC's, B&W's and Magnepan's as well as lot's of others. The largest Magnepans that I had were the Tympani 4A's with the 60" ribbon and midrange panel on the same frame and two bass frames on each side for a total of 6' x 7' of speaker panels on each side. I spent hours and hours trying to tweak their position (same with every other speaker) to balance bass, imaging and depth. The Linesource design gives me the plus'es of the big Magnepan's without any of the minuses.
The speaker is incredibly independant of the room. No bass port, no di-polar (back waves), no ceiling or floor reflection (linesource and ribbon), no source time and phase problems (co-axial and linesource).
I mix and master recordings and the bass had always been the "wild card" while mixing and mastering. The Linesource have an extremely uniform response while not having the constructive and destructive peaks and valleys from ported designs. I can hear the Bass guitar versus the bass kick drum, versus the bass piano keys and balance them with confidence. I imagine the linesources pictured by gme 109 have that characteristic if they aren't ported??
The time alignment with the co-axial and Linesource design gives me great imaging and depth so it is much easier to place instruments and vocals in the mix as well. I use an old Ela and Louis, mono recording (it sounds better than pink noise
) to check that I am getting a solid center image while still getting depth. I set these up in less time than it normally takes to select a CD and track to listen to. I used the time delay function of the DCX2496 to offset the woofer to tweeter distance (subtle difference around the crossover area), try that with an old coaxial EV. aa
I set them in the classic triangle (without listening once), about 2.5 feet out from the walls, diagonally in a corner, put on Ela and Louis, moved the tweeters in about 1.5 degrees (yes you can independently of the cabinet aim them), listened to a recording that I made with only two ORTF, stereo microphones (like your own ears) and heard incredible depth and imaging from them. That was it. No big bass nodes to try and get rid of, no holes in the imaging, lot's of depth, no narrow sweet spot. And yes I did say diagonally across a corner of the room, usually just about the worst place to put them. I had room treatment panels set up in between the speakers and against the wall to stop reflections to help imaging while I was using PMC, FB1's (about 6' x 4' high). I had my daughter remove them while I listened and there was no difference. I jumped up and walk over to half of the way between the two speakers, then moved slowly from about a foot in front of them to just past the face of the speakers and everything went dead. My daughter thought that I had lost it as I rocked back and forth in amazement listening to full volume in front to nothing behind.
I don't use room treatment at all now. It's not a necessity now. With the PMC's and Magnepan's I needed it to get the imaging. Now I get better imaging without any required.
BTW I tried to create conditions to see if I could hear any problems with reflections off the back of the tweeter and I can't. It appears that it doesn't effect the wave front from the woofer at all. (I crossover about 1.4 khz, about a 8 inch wave length??)
So no it's not the old EV or Jensen "co-axial", it is however "having a common axis or coincident axes" which works extremely well. If I had to give up all of my higher end equipment except for one thing, it would be these speakers I'd keep. I would rather listen to an "off the shelf" receiver through these than have $100,000 worth of front-end electronics running any other speakers that I've owned.
Anyway, I hope this helps?
Cheers,
Tom eh
