Aluminium Drivers:RBH, Monitor Audio, Thiel

[hemiram]

I've never heard an aluminum, or any other metal domed tweeter that sounded "right" to me. I almost always end up with silk or kevlar now. The metal ones just have an edge to them that annoys me. I haven't heard that many of the insanely priced systems using them lately though, so it might be different on those. But since I can't afford them anyway, it's not that big a deal.

The cabinets on Thiels are awesome though, sounds like they are made of granite when you rap on them. A friend had a pair years ago, and they sounded ok, not worth anything near what they cost though.

 

[davidtwotrees]

My Mordaunt Short 500 series 5.1 have all 6.5" aluminum midbass speakers. They sound wonderful at their pricepoint and I would bet know one could tell if you switched out the aluminum with paper........
Plus the Aluminum looks Hot.......

 

[WmAx]

The cabinets on Thiels are awesome though, sounds like they are made of granite when you rap on them. A friend had a pair years ago, and they sounded ok, not worth anything near what they cost though.

Like granite? I examined the newest flagship Theil (CS 3.7), and it tout's the cabinet as being an advance for Theil, and being inert, but if you knock on it, you begin to question this claim. Sure, it seems much stiffer than the normal cabinet, but certainly not inert. Consider the large surface area of this full size speaker, and it seems like it may radiate a considerable amount of energy from the walls. I did use my standard reference (a modified DT880 Beyer headphone) that is essentially resonance free and compared it directly, and I heard what sounded like very audible broad timbre coloration. About the same as most higher end speakers produce. There are few exceptions. The B&W 802D is just a hair more expensive than the CS3.7, but the 802D has what seem to be completely *silent cabinets in which I can not detect timbre distortions. From there, you usually have to go to systems that cost tens of thousands in order to get inert cabinet systems.

-Chris

* Silent in the context of practical use. If you were to rap on the bottom woofer enclosure of the 802D, you would hear some resonance. But this is a modular system. The resonance in the bottom enclosure is above the passband frequency range of the woofers used in that cabinet, and the midrange module is attached via a suspension system, thus decoupled from the woofer enclosure, to prevent the mid-range module from exciting the resonant band of the bottom module.

 

[WmAx]

My Mordaunt Short 500 series 5.1 have all 6.5" aluminum midbass speakers. They sound wonderful at their pricepoint and I would bet know one could tell if you switched out the aluminum with paper........
Plus the Aluminum looks Hot.......

Would that not depend on the paper drivers used? Most paper drivers have a high number of resonances in the pass band(and this would becom audible at a point). There are exceptions; but these are rare.

-Chris

 

[Pheaton]

Hi

Well this guy claims thiel speakers are amazing which is understandable to each his own !

Link:
http://thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/PDF_files/PDF_reviews/CS2_4R_pdf/CS2_4R_AP.pdf

His site
www.audioperfectionist.com

Then he goes on ahead to state that monitor audio and rbh speakers sound nasty.

we all know these are 2 reputed companies ..... they might not sound as good as the thiels but his comments are harsh and metallic sound.

i doubt either are that bad ?


comments and opinions

Well as a new Monitor Audio Gold Series owner I can tell you that I don't think my GS60's sound harsh or metallic. I can't tell you how they compare to thiels or rbh since I have not heard those, but for the money I thought they were the best speaker that I was able to demo. Not sure why this guy felt it was neccesary to bash other brands of speakers when reviewing thiels.

Pheaton