New Salk Veracity ST

Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
On the side panel you can see what looks like a deer's head in the veneer.
DSC_0565_00001.jpg


The above photos were taken today. Compare them to the two photos that Jim Salk sent me 4½ years ago (below). As the cherry turned darker, the rope patterns stood out more prominently. In my previous post, the front photo shows how the veneer darkened more than the solid cherry strips framing the front baffle.
V-ST Ropey Cherry.jpg
V-ST Ropey Cherry close up.jpg
 
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Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
I had always heard how cherry ages, but never really seen it.
These speakers were clear-coated un-dyed cherry. I originally thought a medium red tone dye would look good on cherry, but Jim Salk suggested that a simple clear coat would look better, especially after a few years. He was right.

They gradually darken, mainly from exposure to daylight. In this photo, you can see the 'tanline' below the lower woofer. The grill does that. My wife wants the grills on, but I like them topless. I'll have leave those grills off for a few months to make that tanline less prominent :)
DSC_0571_00001.jpg
 
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ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
After being asked by many why I chose Blue, other than those Veracity ST photos being so intoxicating... I don't really own any wood furniture like that. So for me, matching decor or anything like that wasn't a criteria. Also, after shopping for the better part of a year and seeing things like bright yellow woofer cones, or automotive paint jobs that'll match your whip (Mercedes) or Porsche or Ferrari, I was really comfortable with the idea of going for a statement piece.
Before Dennis took time off to recover, he (and Jim, separately) both teased me with a job that was in cue prior to mine that was a pair of Phil3s and 3 BMR being done in matching blue. :rolleyes: They never shared the photos with me, unfortunately, but it worked to rub a little salt in my wait. ;)
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
These speakers were clear coated un-dyed cherry. They gradually darken, mainly from exposure to daylight. In this photo, you can see the 'tanline' below the lower woofer. The grill does that. My wife wants the grills on, but I like them topless. I'll have leave those grills off for a few months to make that tanline less prominent
You'll have to put some Blue Lizard on the bottom half so the top half can catch up. :p

I do know that the blue dye (other colors too) can be unstable in uv light, so I keep my south facing clerestory windows covered during the day (blackout blinds and curtains), and then the main window is North facing with no direct light coming in: I keep that blind a little lower than half-mast during the main part of the day.
 
little wing

little wing

Audioholic General
On the side panel you can see what looks like a deer's head in the veneer.
View attachment 45308

The above photos were taken today. Compare them to the two photos that Jim Salk sent me 4½ years ago (below). As the cherry turned darker, the rope patterns stood out more prominently. In my previous post, the front photo shows how the veneer darkened more than the solid cherry strips framing the front baffle.
View attachment 45309View attachment 45310
Beautiful. I noticed he has quite a few transmission line speakers on his site. I don't believe I've heard one. I wonder if transmission line speakers have different characteristics in their sound compared to say a 3 way design
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
I learned a new trick today with large, high resolution photos. They look great, but they're too large to email or upload them to web pages like AH.

I had my camera, a Nikon D3400, set to make photos that are 300 dpi. They were still too big for AH. Nikon provided some software (Nikon Capture NX-D) with the camera that allows me to shrink the file. (The software does a lot more, but I've only scratched the surface.) It was quick & easy to convert 300 dpi to 200 dpi. That's all it took to upload it to AH.
1614723277623.png
 
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ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Beautiful. I noticed he has quite a few transmission line speakers on his site. I don't believe I've heard one. I wonder if transmission line speakers have different characteristics in their sound compared to say a 3 way design
Some will say that the TL sound is less pronounced in a Mass Loaded TL as compared to a Tapered Quarter Wave Tube. Those people usually say the MLTL is just a fancy ported speaker. But there is something different to the way the bass sounds. I don't really have the words to describe it, myself, but perhaps the best description I've heard is that the bass couples to the room differently. And with my speakers being a MLTL, I find agreement with that.
I'm hoping to build a TQWT later this year, so perhaps I'll get to hear the difference. :D
In terms of how the sound is best equated, consider how a Pipe Organ is very resonant. Some of that is the space, some of it is the pipe. TLS is a big fan and likens the TL builds he does to Gedakt Organ Pipes.
I'm still trying to fully wrap my head around the theories here, so please take what I write with a grain of salt. In some recent conversation with Paul K, who does the TL design work for Jim and Dennis, I have learned exactly how much I didn't know I didn't know! In other words: most of the info out on the web on this topic is... not exactly technically correct. :oops: :rolleyes:
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Beautiful. I noticed he has quite a few transmission line speakers on his site. I don't believe I've heard one. I wonder if transmission line speakers have different characteristics in their sound compared to say a 3 way design.
When I first heard SongTowers in 2007, I was stunned at the bass. It wasn't just the amount of bass, it had a different sound quality than anything else that I'd known, sealed or ported. I still struggle to describe it in words, but I liked that sound immediately. Jim & Dennis prefer that sound too, as do others.

Jim Salk sells several 3-way speakers that do not have transmission line cabinets. There is nothing inherent about a 3-way that prevents using a TL cabinet, other than size. The Song3 series, Veracity HT3 (no longer available), and the SS9.5 all lack TL bass cabinets. They have ported or the closely related passive radiator bass alignment instead. Jim & Dennis would have preferred a TL type cabinet for these speakers, but they would have been so large and heavy that shipping was too expensive. One notable exception is the Philharmonic Audio 3 – it has TL bass cabinets that are separate from the mid/tweeter cabinet that sits on top. Ask @ryanosaur what he thinks about TL bass.

Edit: ryanosaur already posted on TL bass before I did.
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Furthering what @Swerd just wrote, I completely agree... Its not just tone of the bass, but an interaction that it has with the room around it. Also of note, a properly designed TL will be critically damped (having a system Q of .5 instead of the more common .707 you find in more conventional Vented or sealed designs).
I've often heard that a TL will perform strongly about a half-octave or so below the tuning of the line. I have not been able to follow up with PK about this yet, but I know that TLS has talked about the Line supporting the woofer and that at a certain point the resonance of the line down low is what is carrying the weight.
Now both of these gentlemen follow a different script when it comes to TL theory and design. TLS uses the Augspurger program and PK uses the Martin King program. Both were developed pretty much at the same time but using different analogs as the basis of solving the problems presented. It is generally said that each of their work confirms the other, so similar are the outcomes.
Again, this is only from what I've read while studying this... so... grains of salt. ;)
But yes, if it is true that the TL resonates in a way that somehow couples the bass to the room, and if it is also true that you get cabin gain effects from a TL as you may a sealed speaker, then you can begin to see that there is something different going on that is not easy to describe. But when you hear it, it is definitely there.
 
little wing

little wing

Audioholic General
(having a system Q of .5 instead of the more common .707 you find in more conventional Vented or sealed designs).
I was under the impression that a Q factor of .5 give you a tighter sounding bass than say .707. Is that true?
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
I was under the impression that a Q factor of .5 give you a tighter sounding bass than say .707. Is that true?
Yes. A Q of 0.5 is said to be 'critically damped'. Some listeners say it sounds 'tight', others say 'fast', some even describe it as 'dry' sounding. As I said earlier, words fail at this. As you get woofer/cabinet combinations with higher and higher Q levels, the sound gets different. It sounds 'loose' (as in the opposite of tight), 'slow' and 'wet' sounding just don't make sense to me. As soon as we get to 'wet & sloppy', we're not talking about audio anymore.

I think what's going on is best said with graphs – both frequency response graphs (frequency vs. loudness), and step response graphs (loudness vs. time in milliseconds). The first example below shows how the same woofer in different size cabinets can have varying system Q values, from 0.5 to 1.2 in the graph. You can see that higher Q values do produce more bass volume, but don't go as low as lower Q values.
1614733519664.png


The next graph shows several step response graphs. The woofer is given a single impulse, and it's response is measured over several milliseconds. They show that woofer/cabinet combinations respond for short time (as with a Q of 0.5) and for increasingly longer times as Q increases.
1614733656429.png


I mentioned above that a Q of 0.5 is said to be critically damped. Why use the word damped? Because the woofer/cabinet system controls the response of a woofer at it’s resonance frequency. Q of 0.5 is so well damped, that the woofer stops quickly after the single impulse. As Q increases, the woofer rings on and on. Woofers and subwoofers that play on after the signal has stopped sound slow and muddy. Most inexpensive speakers and subwoofers take advantage of a high Q alignment to produce a louder bass response, but their sound is muddy and rings on and on. That ringing bass covers up much of the upper bass and lower mid-range, resulting speakers that don't sound clear at all.
 
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little wing

little wing

Audioholic General
Yes. A Q of 0.5 is said to be 'critically damped'. Some listeners say it sounds 'tight', others say 'fast', some even describe it as 'dry' sounding. As I said earlier, words fail at this. As you get woofer/cabinet combinations with higher and higher Q levels, the sound gets different. It sounds 'loose' (as in the opposite of tight), 'slow' and 'wet' sounding just don't make sense to me. As soon as wet get to 'wet & sloppy', we're not talking about audio anymore.

I think what's going on is best said with graphs – both frequency response graphs (frequency vs. loudness), and step response graphs (loudness vs. time in milliseconds). The first example below shows how the same woofer in different size cabinets can have varying system Q values, from 0.5 to 1.2 in the graph. You can see that higher Q values do produce more bass volume, but don't go as low as lower Q values.
View attachment 45317

The next graph shows several step response graphs. The woofer is given a single impulse, and it's response is measured over several milliseconds. They show that woofer/cabinet combinations respond for short time (as with a Q of 0.5) and for increasingly longer times as Q increases.
View attachment 45318

I mentioned above that a Q of 0.5 is said to be critically damped. Why use the word damped? Because the woofer/cabinet system controls the response of a woofer at it’s resonance frequency. Q of 0.5 is so well damped, that the woofer stops quickly after the single impulse. As Q increases, the woofer rings on and on. Woofers and subwoofers that play on after the signal has stopped sound slow and muddy. Most inexpensive speakers and subwoofers take advantage of a high Q alignment to produce a louder bass response, but their sound is muddy and rings on and on. That ringing bass covers up much of the upper bass and lower mid-range, resulting speakers that don't sound clear at all.
Awesome info. I totally agree, words like wet and sloppy don't really have a place when it comes to describing sound. Your description of the q factor confirms why I use the high damping setting on my Rythmik sub. Thank you for the detailed graphs. It helps give a visual to understand this. This sir, is why you are a Spartan. Appreciated.
 
G

gr8eyes

Junior Audioholic
Big Surprise,

Congratulations on your speakers, they are beautiful.

y
You'll enjoy those for many years to come
 
S

Spdmn256

Junior Audioholic
Beautiful speakers, thanks for posting! Love the sunburst edges too. I also have a pair of Veracity ST’s in the works, along with a Supercharged SongCenter. Ordered in October and are about to get final top coat now so getting closer to completion. I live in Hawaii so I imagine shipping will take a little extra time but I’ll post photos once received as well.
-Jason
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Beautiful speakers, thanks for posting! Love the sunburst edges too. I also have a pair of Veracity ST’s in the works, along with a Supercharged SongCenter. Ordered in October and are about to get final top coat now so getting closer to completion. I live in Hawaii so I imagine shipping will take a little extra time but I’ll post photos once received as well.
Congrats Jason! I'm kind of certain you'll love them :).

What finish did you order? Once you get them, we'd love to see photos.
 
S

Spdmn256

Junior Audioholic
Congrats Jason! I'm kind of certain you'll love them :).

What finish did you order? Once you get them, we'd love to see photos.
I kind of already have so many different wood tones going on in my house I just ordered them in a solid paint color, candy apple burgundy. Can’t wait to get them!
 

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