Squires Natural Reference 1 - Compression and Distortion

Comparing the 95 db and 70 db signals.  What errors you can see are probably due to me being lazy and using the Logitech Squeezebox volume control.

Distortion elements

Please note that while the shape of the distortion in these charts is accurate the scale is NOT!   You cannot read the actual distortion values off these charts due to a limitation (or feature) in OmniMic.  The distortion figures on on a scale not shown.  What I will say here is that the actual distortion figures are ridiculously low all the way to 100 db. :)

Distortion at 70 db

Distortion at 80 db

Distortion at 85 db

Distortion at 90 db

Distortion at 95 db

Energy Storage, flat EQ

Focal Sopra - More Business than Hi FI

Focal has recently introduced the Sopra line of speakers and demonstrates two things:

• We live in a time of mid-fi $16,000 speakers
• Focal has terribly good business acumen

From a technology stand point, the Sopra line is a continuation of the Profile and Electra lines.  Despite the hype, there is very little new here.  All of the drivers are fairly similar to the previous drivers with some inexpensive changes made.

Cabinet

The cabinet is bent pressboard. A fancy type of cardboard. I wouldn't buy a trash can made like that, let alone a speaker. I'd venture to say that the real reason for the "infinite horn loading" section is that it makes the design of the cabinet very simple. Construct two cardboard, excuse me, pressboard, tubes of identical cross sections and glue together with a wedge of particle board to hold the tweeter and you are done. Outstandingly cheap to manufacture. Now if they'd add a foot pedal at the bottom I would have an easy place to dispose of the cat lint that accumulates here daily.  That would definitely add class to this joint.

Tuned Mass Damper

Essentially new surrounds with slightly more complicated profiles than we've seen before. They may be effective, but from a price point, the surrounds are just not very expensive.

Infinite Horn Loading

The middle chamber allows Focal to mate an open back tweeter a horn to essentially absorb the rear wave.  They call it "infinite horn loading".  As mentioned, structurally the chamber serves the purpose of connecting the midrange and woofer drives in a very sexy and terribly inexpensive enclosure.

Little innovation here, and indeed, an irrelevant application of older ideas. The concept, as far as I know, was first seen in the B&W Nautilus lines, and continues in the latest B&W loudspeakers. In a nutshell the tweeter is a dipole, without anything to block the rear wave, and therefore eliminating the possibility of reflections internal to the tweeter housing from causing distortion and frequency response comb effects. Focal has been making different "grades" of the same tweeter by changing the rear chamber.

Of course, the proof is in the compression and distortion measurements.  While I haven't seen distortion figures, I can say the measured compression at 90 db is terrible for what should be class-leading dynamic performance.

Crossover Components

I've had exactly one glimpse at the crossover used in the Sopra in a video showing the making of them.  It looks like the same relatively inexpensive parts used all the way back to the Profile line. What's worse is that I discovered an impedance lowering circuit in the crossover of the Profiles, and the chart for the Sopra seems to take full advantage of this. This is a circuit that did almost nothing for the frequency or phase matching, but lowered the woofer impedance into the 2 Ohm range. Why would any reasonable person do this? Because it makes the speaker appear more discerning. A 2 ohm speaker is a snob, and can only be well driven by a hefty amplifier. That same speaker at 4 Ohms looses it's aloofness and plays well with any amplifier.

Own one? Open it up and count the number of high power resistors. If it's around 8, I win.By the way, those resistors are super cheap.

The Bottom Line

The Sopra 2s are tuned like ghetto blasters, with a nice big smile.  Measurements taken for SoundStageNetwork also show huge amounts of compression in the tweeter, no surprise there, and   very low impedance around 100 Hz. In addition, the line appears to use fairly old crossover design, due to essentially inexpensive woofer and midrange motors.  Instead of adding more powerful magnets to the low efficiency and low impedance woofers, Focal has done very little and has created a "discriminating" speaker.  Again, cheap drivers, inexpensive and inadequate cabinetry and poor crossover design say I.

Alternatives

Consumers could find much better values in this price range, but there is no denying that Focal is doing everything right, business wise.  Limited R&D investment, inexpensive manufacturing combined with creating the aura needed to create the perception of a speaker commanding over $10,000 dollars.


If you are looking for speakers with a similar frequency profile but worth their manufacture, and with a more natural and dynamic presentation in the same price range I would encourage you to look at the latest Magico S1 / Mk II instead.  It's not only a better performing speaker, with better components it's also more beautiful and smaller.

Magico S1 Mk II - The First Review

Magico, of Hayward, California has officially announced the launch of the S1 Mk II in a press release and on the Magico website.  Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, I can finally blog my initial impressions of this truly beautiful speaker. Thanks to a generous invitation extended to the San Francisco Audiophile Society by Magico I was able to audition these about a month before the general announcement.

The S1 is a diminutive, 43" tall 2-way floor stander starting at $16,500 a pair.  The driver compliment includes the Magico uber-high tech Beryllium/Diamond 1" tweeter along with a proprietary 7" carbon fiber and graphene driver.  Sensitivity is listed at 87db.

Magico has a really enviable listening room which, in addition to the S1/MK IIs they also hooked up Convergent Audio Technology preamp and the eye-wateringly expensive CAT JL3 amplifiers, known for having apparently endless power and current reserves. I forgot the source appliance, but it streamed through the Berkeley Reference DAC, another Bay Area manufacturer.  I find the Berkeleys a bit too cool for my tastes, but I don't think they'll affect my comments here.  This was also my first time listening to CATs in any situation, so if you are familiar with them, apply your own adjustments to my comments accordingly.

The listening room itself was heavily treated, with large, integral bass traps in each corner as can be seen in this Stereophile article. 

When we listened to the S1 MK IIs the paint had not even been applied. It actually occured to me the S1 would be just as beautiful in polished aluminum with a lacquer clear-coat instead of painted but according to Magico, the cost could easily double or more due to the expense in polishing the aluminum to the standards needed to be presentable. Still, I couldn't help but remember how sexy an Audi R8 in polished aluminum looks while we began to listen.

The Good

The S1/IIs shows tremendous energy and the ability to fill up the room we were in down to the low registers of all the music we listened to.  They also showed great horizontal dispersion, listening far off center you could still hear a good image and when recordings had it, with plenty of air and space appearing between the speakers.

In terms of music listening, they seemed to have nothing missing between the treble and bass and played loudly and convincingly without distortion. In my too-brief audition I thought the treble in particular was very smooth, extended and complete, the better of the B&W 802D's or Wilson Sasha's I have heard.

The Not so Perfect

Before you go on, keep in mind I do think these are very good speakers, but taking full advantage of them requires the right setting. What the S1/MK IIs won't be is all things to all people.  Please think seriously about how you really spend time listening to speakers before reading more. The S1/Mk IIs have some distinct characteristics a buyer should consider before purchasing.

The Room

Despite their relatively small foot print these speakers needed quite a lot of room to sound their best.  They need lots of room behind them, and to the sides.  Cramp them in any way and you'll end up with a muddled mess of sound.  They will hate corners and being backed up against a wall.

The Timbre 

To my ears, and where I was sitting, these are not neutral speakers.  I heard excess bass in the lower parts of a male voice, as well as in piano recordings. The treble also had extra sparkle, if not scintillation that, while fun and exciting, is not what I would call neutral.  My guess is they would measure closer to this other Magico Q5 speakers as reviewed in Stereophile.  These characteristics will make these fantastic background music speakers as well. Even at low levels you'll be able to hear the full range of music.

On the positive note, the extra treble also had more treble.  That is, it wasn't just a matter of being tilted upwards, but octave by octave the Magico's displayed no gaps at all, especially when compared to the latest Wilson's and the B&W 802D. Give me the same smoothness, coverage and dynamic range with a more neutral presentation and I'd have nothing to complain about at all in terms of the performance. As a heretic, I might say that these plus a digital equalizer could very well be the best small footprint speakers (but not small space) available.

The Amplifiers

While listed at 4 ohm speakers, Magico is no stranger to low impedance designs, and I fear that is how they are getting their output, by creating low impedance, high current drivers that demand a lot from the amplifiers.  This is what some reviewers charitably call "discriminating" speaker design.  I call it cost-saving.  Anyway, I have not seen the impedance graphs, but my gut, and only my gut, warn me these speakers may need some pretty stiff amps to sound well.  

The Bottom Line

While these speakers show an incredible amount of craftsmanship, unique designs and high tech cabinetry resulting in small speakers with really amazing output they are not for long term critical music listening.  If you truly need speakers to act as transparent windows into a recorded environment that can be listened to for hours and never tire of I think you'll find these speakers too hot and seasoned for your needs unless you have matching hearing loss in which case they may actually be perfect. This is a subtle thing though, other speakers currently in vogue are far worse. They would however lend themselves very well to a little digital EQ before your DAC, if you aren't averse to a transparent sounding tone altering.

I think these speakers are going to be great as part of an entertainment system where you host guests to watch movies, play games, or in a home where you would like to have music playing in the background without being forced to sit in the throne or use with a subwoofer.

The amplifier demands could also be challenging.  If you aren't going to use the speakers for critical listening, and are going to hide the electronics it makes no sense in my mind to go crazy with spending money here, but you will want to make sure any amp is up to the challenge.  Fortunately there are good, and good value, amplifiers that will have ample power reserves such as the Parasound Halo A21. 

Lastly, as mentioned before, the speaker's small footprint belies it's need for space. For an apartment dweller dreaming of high-end speakers to place in the corners and do critical listening with for hours-on-end these are just not going to be your speakers.  For a well-heeled executive who needs a small foot print, beautiful speaker to enjoy with friends in a medium to large den or living room and at times put out seemingly limitless amounts of clear sound, my friends and oligarchs, your ideal speakers may very well have arrived.

Measurements

Thanks to the good people at Soundstage Network we have been able to examine the test results produced by the National Research Council of Canada, and have a follow up discussions here. 

Your Next Steps

Of course, if you are at all interested in these speakers, go give them a listen, and get an in-room audition before committing.  Lots of things may be different between this author and your situation, so at the end of the day it's your wallet and therefore your tastes that should rule all.  I do hope however that I've given you some pointers as to what to pay attention to so that if you buy these speakers you'll end up completely satisfied with your choice. I look forward to your own comments and impressions. 

Noes - XSin vs. Actual

A big thanks go out to Bill Waslow for his excellent and free XSim.  Together with OminMic and DATS I did in weeks what it would have taken me years if ever.

To make the long story short, here is a comparison between the simulated crossover, and XSim's expectation.  Blue is simulated.  Differences in phase are probably due to inexact placement of the microphone between early measurements and now. 

If we take that data, and overlay it on the simulation from LEAP

Need less space in your speaker cabinet? Get bigger caps!

I love XSim! 

Here is the test schematic

Sorry about the part numbers.  I can't reorder them.  On top is the 2nd order design, on the bottom is the first order. 

Here we have the impedance of each, seen from the amplifier's point of view:

The top, yellow curve is the 2nd order filter, the bottom green line is the first order. 

Next, let's take a look at the power dissipation in the series resistors in each. 

R1 and R6 are part of the first order , R3 and R5 part of the second order filter.  You can see in each case the power of the 2nd order filter lags (is lower) than the first order filter, except at the very end for the first resistors in the circuits.  

Here are the simulated frequency responses, but please bear in mind having a good response was not part of the experiment.   Tweaking the crossover becomes very arbitrary.  The goal of this experiment was just to examine how power and impedances changed based on 1st vs. 2nd order.  Also, the first resistor is not really needed, it's again there for the investigation.

 

XSim - Simulated Noes Xrossover

A quick posting for the currently simulated crossover.  As soon as the real one is built we'll compare!  

And here is a weird pre-ringing issue with the tweeter.  minor, but weird.

 

Noes - Desesperation Crossover

What do you do when you have a long weekend, great new speaker drivers and your crossover parts are still a week away?  Improvise!

The Noes design calls for a 2.8kHz crossover point with a 3-5 db tweeter pad, among other things.  My plan was to tinker with the crossover during the long Thanksgiving weekend, and have them close to finished by Monday.  So I had two choices:

• Do nothing and use the woofer full range
• Find crossover settings that would work with the parts I had.

Desperate, I chose the latter.  I ended up with a crossover point at around 6.8kHz with the tweeter about 5 db lower than desired.  Why?  I only had 10 ohm power resistors left in my arsenal, and this was the lowest I could cross the woofer over with the parts I had.

How does it sound and look?  Surprisingly good!

Thanks to Omnimic I was able to quickly tell I had to reverse the tweeter.  Not my favorite situation, but desperate times call for desperate measures!

I've had the opportunity to listen to some fabulous recordings via our local classical internet station, KDFC.  The Mundorf AMT's are spectacular, I can't wait to finish the real crossovers.

 The crossover breadboards.  The top section is the tweeter, bottom is the woofer. 

Noes - First Mesurements

I still don't have crossover parts, but that's no reason why I can't do some interesting measurements.

Fee Air ScanSpeak Impedance

 Fresh out of the box in free air the speaker resonance is around 49 Hz at around 31 Ohms.  I believe I read somewhere that ScanSpeak specifies the Fs after break in, so I should probably measure this again in a week or so.

 

To begin with, a full-range frequency response chart for the woofer.  Incredibly clean at the upper end of the spectrum, even when averaged at 1/24th octaves.  This is with the speaker on a chair and microphone 3ft away on the woofer axis.

Next up is the impedance measurement in the cabinet.  The woofers have only been playing for about 4 days with low to medium jaz 24 hours a day.  I'm going to have to go back to Lee to ask for help interpreting both of these.  From the first chart I worry the box is a little large.  Below is the chart I really don't know well, the speaker + cabinet impedance. 

I can see the port resonance at 24 Hz, and a second resonance at 69 Hz.  The valley's nadir is around 35 Hz, somewhat lower than the driver's Fs when first purchased.  ScanSpeak specifies the Fs at 33 Hz after break in, in which case the tuning would be spot on.

I have a week before I can assemble the crossover, so I have time to plan ahead.  With Thanksgiving coming up parts will be slow in arriving.

Of course, there will be more later.

My First Speakers

Well, at least the first speakers I have designed from the ground up, and I use the term "design" loosely.  Component selection was mine, cabinets are from Lee Taylor of Taylor Speakers, partial crossover design was from Madisound.  I say partial because they designed a crossover for a different tweeter than you see here.

The cabinet is much better looking than this, especially the veneer.  I'm afraid my phone doesn't do the quality of Lee's work justice, so please bear that in mind.  His web site has pictures much closer to reality.

In a sense, this is a fail.  I was trying to design some smaller satellites with these components, and Lee was trying to guide me to a floor stander.  These speakers are really very tall and deep so I'm not sure most satellite stands would work for them.  It's a bit like trying to have a baby and getting twins though, I am not at all unhappy!  I just got more than I was expecting.

Drivers

The original design called for a smaller Mundorf AMT tweeter but that was out of stock and weeks away from arriving in the U.S. so i went for it's bigger brother the Mundorf AMT 25CM1.1-R.  One weird thing about this driver is that it takes banana plugs, not spades or bare wires.

Thd mid-woofer remains the same though, the ScanSpeak Revelator 18W/4531-G00 7" driver.  The 4 Ohm version is more sensitive so mean less damping is needed in the tweeter section.   I chose the Revelator in part out of cost ($220 vs. $320 ea.) concerns but part was also that in the high end of the driver I liked the response better than it's Illuminator counterpart, then when I read that Zaph rated the Revelator better than the Illuminator in terms of distortion that cinched it for this design.  I admit the basket does not look as cool though.  

Despite the larger tweeter having a lower useful crossover point I'm keeping the crossover frequency the same for a number of reasons.

1. I don't want to redesign the crossover from scratch
2. Higher crossover frequency = higher power handling

 One big advantage here as well is controlling the vertical dispersion.  The taller the tweeter, the less floor and ceiling reflections and clearer the sound at the listening position.  Like ribbons and electrostatic speakers, we should get enhanced clarity and detail than with conventional round drivers. 

 

Test Wiring

Per Lee's suggestion I'm going to keep the crossover external until I have tweaked it perfectly.  For this to work of course I'll use a separate pair of banana jacks for each driver.  Internally I'm using plain old 14 gauge zip cord which happens to be made by Monster.  I had it lying around from the surround sound installations in previous apartments.  It's thick, flexible, finely stranded and best of all, free and taking up space under my bed in the wiring box.

The white cable with the bananas of course goes to the tweeter, the pinkish cable to the SS woofer.  This being a test harness I didn't want to spend too much effort, but after installation and looking at the kinks in the wires I decided that the heat shrink was going to be necessary for proper strain relief.

The Sound! 

Of course, anyone with a checkbook and drill can get speakers this good looking, but how do they sound?  Magnificently quiet.  You've never heard speakers that disappear like these..... My secret?  They don't work yet! :(  Crossover parts were delayed due to a series of errors on my part but I should be able to start putting that part together soon.  Of course, being unable to resist, I am currently breaking them in by running the woofer's full-range.  They sound surprisingly good by themselves!  I had to go back to the charts and look but they have useful output to 10 kHz so I can run these as my main speakers without going completely nuts due to the lack of treble.

Focal Profile 918 - Final Charts

I'll be posting more info on this in the DIYaudio forums, but for now here are the pics.

The chart below shows the final measurements, taken from my seating position with 1/24 octave smoothing and a 2mSecond window.  The RED trace is with the grill (as recommended) and the BLUE trace is with the grill removed:

The image below is from the Sound and Vision review with the grill on.  Note in particular the 10K peak and ragedness around 5kHz which are gone, those are probably thanks to the liberal use of felt on the grill and tweeter housing:

 

And lastly the grill removed, which is the image most make fun of:

Not only is the grill less important, but the tweeter balance is different.  Instead of trying to push the tweeter up at the last octave, I've gone for a smoother response from 2-10k, that goes generally downward.  Crazy?  Well, by accident it actually measured much closer to the Focal Utopia's of 2004.  Check out this chart from Stereophile:

 

Of course, I'll never get the output, especially in the bass, of the Utopia, but it does sound much smoother and coherent than it did before.  Should you buy a Profile 918 and hack the crossover like I did to get a poor man's Utopai?  No way.  The value just isn't there overall.  The value IS there if you want to take this on as a learning experience though. 

Focal Profile 918 and Dayton DATS V2

I've been using DATS to test a few drivers and inductors I have lying around.  I also tried measuring the Focal Profile 918s and made a startling discovery.  The minimum impedance is around 2.3 Ohms!  Also, the impedance between 75 and 250Hz remains below 3 Ohms.

No wonder these speakers can tell the difference between a mediocre and stout amplifier.  They are just ridiculously difficult to drive for their class.

This low impedance is probably a direct result of the crossover topology, 2.5 way means that the mid/woofer and woofer are both working in the bass.  Since both are about 6 Ohm devices this would imply a minimum impedance of half this.  Ouch. 

Please note the maximum and rising impedance in the treble are probably my fault.  I've made some EQ changes to the treble which means this is probably not what a stock speaker would measure like above 1 kHz.

First Impressions of the Mundorf AMT25CM1.1-R

I was so excited to get one of these in the mail I wanted to start blogging right away.  I'll cover the response and harmonic distortion measurements in a future posting. 

  Electrical

Based on my handy dandy DATS V2:

 Fs = 1666
Re=6.105
Le=9.47 uH

As expected with such low inductance, the phase plot is practically flat.  Highest measured impedance was around 6.4 ohms at resonance.  Compared to dynamic drivers, this is a remarkably simple and resistive load.

Mechanics

The mechanical drawing, while accurate, doesn't really do the size of the body justice.  The body is really big about the size of some laptop chargers and the flange top/bottom are small and difficult to cut for. 

The front of the tweeter.  Sorry about the rotation.  Note blemishes are due to the plastic shipping film still being on. Kind of a boring shot.

Here is a side view of the tweeter where we can see just how monstruous the body really is.  Mundorf provides a rubberized pad on the flange. 

Here are a couple of interesting things.  Unlike my expectations, Mundorf provides full sized banana jacks and a pair of banana spring clips to attach speaker wire to. I  was expecting spade lugs or quick disconnects.  The left edge is the bottom of the tweeter. Notice the big difference in the width of the flange on the sides (top) vs. the top and bottom (left).  As Lee Taylor of Taylor Speakers pointed out, this can be a real bothersome situation for a cabinet maker.  I suspect the choice was to make this tweeter more palatable for line-array speakers.   In fact I'm kind of tempted to start working on one next.

Also, the corner radius are very small and non-standard 4mm.  Just to be nice, I'll throw in the dimensions below.  As you can see there, there is a 5mm spacing on the top and bottom flanges.  That's not a mistake.  One last comment, the housing is rater flimsy.  It feels like a thin version of the poly carbonate material in the uber-expensive suitcases being sold today and there is no visible way to remove it.  Speaker makers using this would probably want to encase the driver in it's own, well damped, sub cabinet.

The Drivers Arrive

For me this is a bit like Christmas and my Birthday present.  Madisound was kind enough to drop ship one set of tweeter and woofers over to Lee Taylor over at Taylor Speakers. While he is busy with the speaker cabinets I can at least play with them and do some basic tests.  That's all fine and dandy, but something else happened I did not expect.  You can see the problem here. 

I did not realize that the speakers were packed in pairs.  Madisound did a fine job of packing and shiping, but if I had known this was the consequence I might have bought all the drivers at once.  Here's the same view of the tweeter box.

Welcome

I have gone far beyond merely upgrading with this project so I wanted to start a new blog for everything I work on and discover along the way.

In "Random Acts of Upgrades" I discussed modifying my Focal Profile 918's.  So far I've had quite  a bit of success but I decided to take the plunge and purchase real tools, as well as stop spending so much money on a pair of old speakers.

So far for this blog I have lots to talk about.  The Dayton Audio Ominmic and DATS V2 combination, the Focal's and how they measure, as well as a completely new speaker design I'm calling "No Es Nada" for now.  There's a famous kit offered by Madisound called NADA which got me on my way to my very custom speaker design. In Spanish "Nada" means "Nothing."  So, this design is not Nada and not nothing, so "No Es Nada" (NeN for short) means "Not Nothing."

First, for my skill level and experience I am spending way too much money.  I'm sorry.  I know this.  I wanted something compact and great sounding, but wanted to go my own way.  I disliked the idea of building a kit everyone else built.  Also, I didn't like the ragedness in the SS Beryllium's response.  So I went looking for alternatives and ended up at the NeN design, which uses a Mundorf AMT and SS Revelator.

So this blog will absorb my further Focal tweaks as well as the NeN build, and Dayton tools review.

I hope others come join me on my journey.

If this fails, I'm going to work on home brewed cruise missiles.  Maybe I'll offer cruise missile targeting as a web service.  You only get 60% accuracy per missile, but at a great discount.  Hah.  That's a joke, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone offers that within my lifetime.  Some one call me when it happens.

Most Overrated Speakers in the World

Yes, this is a troll to get traffic, but yes, I'm going to be sincere nonetheless. 

Bowers & Wilkins

There's nothing wrong with the sound, but also nothing right.  Just some of the most boring to listen to speakers ever.  And by this I don't mean transparent and neutral.  It's like they suck the flavor out of music.  On the other hand, they aren't particularly objectionable so I wouldn't get up to shut them off, but I also wouldn't pay for a pair.

Wilson Audio

I actually really like the sound of Wilson speakers, but not the prices.  For 1/10th of the price a mid-line Focal or high-end Monitor Audio would sound as good and take up less floor space.  The one area where they can excel is in dynamic range and bass extension.  Still, good subs from Hsu run a lot less.  Also, from the perspective of overall tonal balance, to me, they sound very close to Focals, so if you like the Wilson's, check out a variety of Focals with a subwoofer.

Golden Ear

Really painful treble.  It's a banshee in the shape of a speaker.   The current positive reviews astound me.  

Triangle

Same as Golden Ear, only it's not a screech so much as a sneaky ear needle.  I know it may be psychosomatic to think of them as ear drills based on the shape of the tweeter but to me the Triangle sounds very clean and distortion free compared to the Golden Ear, but still painful to listen to.  Like eating something very spicy, but you can't tell for the first two or three bites how spicy it is. 

Thiel

The third speaker in the "bad treble" group. 

Focal Sopra

Focal just introduced the Sopra speaker line.

I find it very interesting, and in some ways it's a marriage of the Profile and Electra lines, with a dash of Utopia thrown in.  The color finishes are pretty too, but I'm not really completely enamored of the shape.  At least I find them less ugly than the current Utopia line.  What I'm most interested in however is how "tweakable" it is.  Focal makes excellent drivers in many ways, especially low distortion and low storage of energy.  Flat, smooth frequency response however is not their forte. Also, their cabinets and crossover components below the Utopia line kind of suck by comparison.   There is some, but not extensive, internal bracing allowing unusually large amounts of vibration to come off the sides.   I can already tell by the pictures they have shown they are not particularly proud of the crossovers in this unit.  Not that they were ill designed, but probably did not have the highest quality components.

I'm sure we'll be reading about the performance of the Sopra's in gushing details from "unbiased" reviewers soon, and by that I mean to exclude all of TAS, but what I would really want to know is if the Sopra's are a few hundred dollars away in mods from being small Utopia's? 

The HSU VTF-15H MKII Subwoofer sucks

I could tell this as soon as I unpacked it.  Just look at this picture here:

Do you see that?  The lettering on the lower left side?  It is a font- ographical travesty.  How many different fonts do you need to label a product?  Dear Goddess Minerva have mercy.

OK, yes, that's all tongue in cheek but I wanted to illustrate some bad trends lately in reviewing products people haven't even been near, let alone listened to.   I've seen a lot of trash talking about the Pono player lately based on it's looks, or that (they claim) it can't technically sound better than other players.  Mind you, the looks are an aesthetic thing, and people are free to dislike it, but when people who have never heard it (I have) driving good headphones (again, I have) trash it I feel they are doing everyone a disservice.

The Pono player sounds really really good at any resolution of audio.  Go listen to a set yourself, and if you don't hear the difference, then the price ($399) for you may not be worth it's value, but for those of us who like that warm, rich Ayre sound, it's a bargain. 

The other terrible trend that continues to plague audio and video philes are feature counters.  People who evaluate the number of features to compare products without a care to the quality with which they are delivered.  Consider counting a Honda Civic as a better car than a Ferrari F1 due to the number of dashboard apps.  Mind you, in many cases a Civic may actually be a better car, but probably more to do with the four doors and trunk room a commuter or parent may need on a day to day basis.  To merely count features to determine product value is stupid and leaves us who like quality with fewer and fewer choices we can afford.

So to really get back to the HSU, I bought it for 17 reasons.  15" of woofer diameter, great reviews and really awesome, if sometimes overly enthusiastic, customer service.  Great job guys.  A real review will be coming up after I have re-hydrated myself from moving it into position.  

Go Theta Digital!

Kudos to Theta Digital for releasing the Casablanca III HD and Casablanca IV.   Also, congrats on the review of the beautiful  Prometheus 250W monoblock amps in stereophile.   It seems that the release of the Casablanca IIIHD has uncloged the pipes, so I hope we will see more rapid releases of new products in the coming months.

Since I am among the working poor in San Francisco, I cannot afford any of these, so I was hoping to see news of the replacement of the Casanova, the Supernova soon.  That is where my heart truly lies, but so far no mention of it in over a year.

I'm still stuck with the 16 year old Casanova until someone makes a DAC better than that for less than $2,000.  I'm checking out the NAD M51 soon, will keep you posted.  There's a reason they still sell for $800 on ebay.  They are just that good.