Which brand makes the best quality loudspeakers?

Who makes the best speakers

  • Aperion Audio

    Votes: 22 3.1%
  • Axiom Audio

    Votes: 18 2.6%
  • B&W

    Votes: 154 22.0%
  • Harman (JBL, Infinity, Revel)

    Votes: 155 22.2%
  • Klipsch

    Votes: 106 15.2%
  • Martin Logan

    Votes: 59 8.4%
  • Paradigm

    Votes: 79 11.3%
  • Polk

    Votes: 40 5.7%
  • PSB

    Votes: 24 3.4%
  • RBH Sound

    Votes: 42 6.0%

  • Total voters
    699
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I reckon it's these speakers you're referring to

MB2S XBD | PMC Loudspeakers

So do you think they equal or surpass what you can do with your TL designs?
I guess I already know the answer to this question :p

It seems like these speakers are different to many other TL designs in the way that they employ two completely separate lines, unlike most other designs that I can remember with two bass drivers, where the norm is to put both drivers in the same line.

From what I can find these speakers are around $40K per pair... :D

Do you have any idea or conception about the performance of the PMC Transmission line subs, there's not really so many companies out there making commercial TL subs, is there anyone else than PMC?

The PMC subs seem to be the same pricey as their speakers, are they that good?

XB2 | PMC Loudspeakers

XB3 | PMC Loudspeakers

TLE1S | PMC Loudspeakers

TLE1 | PMC Loudspeakers
They were certainly good speakers. I played some of my masters that I know well and they acquitted themselves very well.

My speakers go a bit deeper, and these had no subs. what was interesting was how similar these speakers sounded to mine. I was reassured that even though I have had to place a crossover at 2.8 kHz, I don't think there was any odds in the mid range.

Now those are older speakers with the mid range sourced from ATC. The newer speakers have the Volt knock off of the ATC driver, which I have not heard. So may be these are better.

All PMC drivers are made for them by Volt now.

The BBC seem to be happy with their PMC speakers and they are hard to please.

Different rooms make comparison hard, but I thought my dual lines had the edge in the last two octaves. However if you tried to produce my speakers, they would be considerably above 40 K.

I don't know of any manufacturer other than PMC who make TL subs.
 
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haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Spartan
The MB2S PMC speakers you refer to here is like two stacked XB2 subwoofers, these subs are passive and around £5000 a piece so that a pair will set you back about £10k, which is about $15500, and as these are passive you need sub amps in addition.

[imghttp://www.pmc-speakers.com/sites/default/files/xb2-00.jpg[/img]

It is hard based on just these things to have any opinion about quality, and price / value proposition, but if you compare to competing brands it's certainly not winning on price. However, there's always been something very different in a positive sense with TL's and as such... it's probably hard to find better anywhere else, but the price of these things :eek:

XB2 is not their top of the line product, there's also an XB3 sub....

Even REL, that seemed to be quite pricey to mee is cheap compared to these things....

Yes BBC uses PMC, so does David Gilmour (Yes, that! Mr. Gilmour)
XB2 | PMC Loudspeakers

You can get a set of Vienna Acoustic, The Music for the price of these two subs, if you just add some extra money.... or you can get Thiel CS 3.7 plus a pair of subs from SVS... probably also Vandersteen model 5.... so competition here is tough....

I guess it would be interesting to have a qualified look into these PMC products by someone very qualified, is it so much better that it's worth this price penalty? :p
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
The MB2S PMC speakers you refer to here is like two stacked XB2 subwoofers, these subs are passive and around £5000 a piece so that a pair will set you back about £10k, which is about $15500, and as these are passive you need sub amps in addition.

[imghttp://www.pmc-speakers.com/sites/default/files/xb2-00.jpg[/img]

It is hard based on just these things to have any opinion about quality, and price / value proposition, but if you compare to competing brands it's certainly not winning on price. However, there's always been something very different in a positive sense with TL's and as such... it's probably hard to find better anywhere else, but the price of these things :eek:

XB2 is not their top of the line product, there's also an XB3 sub....

Even REL, that seemed to be quite pricey to mee is cheap compared to these things....

Yes BBC uses PMC, so does David Gilmour (Yes, that! Mr. Gilmour)
XB2 | PMC Loudspeakers

You can get a set of Vienna Acoustic, The Music for the price of these two subs, if you just add some extra money.... or you can get Thiel CS 3.7 plus a pair of subs from SVS... probably also Vandersteen model 5.... so competition here is tough....

I guess it would be interesting to have a qualified look into these PMC products by someone very qualified, is it so much better that it's worth this price penalty? :p
Yes, TLs are worth the trouble and price. They have always been expensive, the IMFs were and the Radfords before them. TDL speakers commanded a high price. John Wright of TDL was a very nice guy, and not in the business of ripping people off. Back 30 years ago his top model sold for just under $24,000 per pair.

Over the years a lot of poor commercial designs have come and gone. This coupled with a bunch of misinformation has added to the fog. Basically a correctly designed TL is a tapered stopped pipe, with a speaker placed to avoid exciting the third harmonic and critically damped to suppress one peak of impedance, but only just! The pipe must have the correct length and volume to optimally load the driver. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.

That is why TLs have in the main been the preserve of DIY designers and builders like myself.

As far as PMC, I have only heard one set of their speakers. I liked it very much, but I have seen third party data on some of their models and they are not correctly damped.

Since you are interested in TLs here are the impedance and phase angles of the five lines in my studio here. There are 9 lines in all with only the center not being paired.

First the right and left mains which are dual lines.



The mid line exits at the port just above the upper 10" driver.

Note there is a broad peak of impedance from around 30 to 80 Hz. There is one peak of impedance so the line is critically damped and rolls off 12 db per octave. The impedance peak correlates well with the region of driver support.

Now the bass line which exit either side right at the top of the speaker.

You will note a peak of impedance centered at 32 Hz with the base of the peak from 18 Hz to about 50 Hz. So there is driver support in this region. For measurement I had to parallel the two 10" drivers, but they are driven from two separate amps, both operate below 60 Hz and the upper driver carries the BSC for the mids.

Note that the peaks of impedance of the two lines are one half octave apart. This is a trick of John Wright. This leads to very smooth bass support in this system from 20 Hz to 80 Hz.

Now the center line.



This shows a peak of impedance at 49 Hz the base is from about 24 Hz to 75 Hz. Again I had to parallel the drivers, but again they are driven from separate amps, the upper driver providing BSC for the lower driver, which has the coaxial tweeter connected.

Now the rear backs.



The mid line driver is the Dynaudio M75 with a lower response limit of 90 Hz. This is a biamped speaker, with the first crossover at 180 Hz third order. So the goal of this line is to damp this mid driver and avoid any hint of "boxiness". The line is over damped and tuned to 90 Hz.

The impedance curve shows a small peak of impedance at 95 Hz. The line exits from the slit between the top KEF B139 and the M75.

Note the crossover performance. This is the crossover that was 10 years plus in development, and the longest in gestation of any of my designs. The crossover to the upper three drivers is almost purely resistive. It is a first order crossover and the first crossover is an unusual series crossover the 5 kHz crossover is parallel. The drivers are time aligned

The amps don't have anything to complain about with this crossover.

These strange animals are very good speakers indeed. They were my monitors for a quarter century.

The bass line exits at the top of the speaker.

The KEF B139s are tricky to load. They have a gentle roll off beginning just above 50 Hz, first order, and then fall away faster below 30 Hz.

So this line cheats a little. As you can see there is a peak of impedance just below 60 Hz to assist the drivers, the line is very slightly under damped to extend response down below 30 Hz. You will note a very small secondary peak of impedance at 25 Hz. This arrangement keeps the B 139s pretty much flat down to about 33 Hz and with highly significant extension below that. In fact they sound better than the vast majority of subs.

Now the surrounds.



These are 2.5 way sealed Qb2 boxes, using Dynaudio drivers.

As expected there is one peak of impedance and it is centered on 90 Hz.
The F3 is 53 Hz with second order 12 db per octave roll of.

Now a ported box. These are the speakers in the first level great room.



As expected there are two peaks of impedance associated with the LF tuning at 12 and 38 Hz, which puts the system tuning at 30 Hz.

You can see three way crossovers are tricky. To make the significantly negative phase angles coincide with peaks of impedance took 27 components per crossover. The speakers are easy to drive as you can tell from the curves.

As you can see the studio TLs are quite a juggling trick.

However I think it was very well worth the trouble. Bass is deep and without bloom. This allows for a piano for instance to sound exactly like a piano, totally convincing.

Yet when the grandchildren arrive with the BS they have saved for there are peals of delight. They were here with Real Steel recently. The robots walking about shook the floor, like they were in the room.

The boxing matched caused peels of delight from the children. As Ethan pointed out you really know where your liver is.

In the final boxing match the effects were superb, and you felt as if you were in the arena. Giving joy to the grandchildren like that is just icing on the cake.

The spls were pretty high but nothing sounded stressed and the amps only just got warm. Despite this huge power and effect, the LFE channel is set -3.5 db below the rest of the system.

So yes, I firmly believe good TLs are worth the trouble and expense.

I have chosen not to publish this much detail, on the off chance someone might want a set. However they really are so complex the cost would put off all but the most devoted and wealthy souls.
 
P

pongaselo

Enthusiast
enclosure vs Drivers, an observation

There are two schools, maybe many permutations on the concepts and no one hears the same, but two basic philosophies. Forward firing drivers and omnidirectional. Not intended as a treatise, just an observation. I have heard a speaker system using a barrel, actually recycled oak aging barrel wood made into smaller barrels. Since the barrel is allowed to participate as a transducer itself, it effectively bridges the gap in these two basic approachs in a unique way. The barrel not only avoids the geometrically aligned reflecting surfaces but also makes a significant positive contribution to the staging and imaging. They have terrific detail from about 60 cycles on up and a unique detailing in upper midrange and lower treble ranges. They also create true depth and location of voice piano, brass percussion and stringed instruments. Its a startup that got lucky on an idea according to the designer. Unfortunately they have no marketing plan or money and will likely go the way of the dodo bird. Shame because the speakers are also forgiving of source although better electronics do make an audible diff. Any ideas?
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
There are two schools, maybe many permutations on the concepts and no one hears the same, but two basic philosophies. Forward firing drivers and omnidirectional. Not intended as a treatise, just an observation. I have heard a speaker system using a barrel, actually recycled oak aging barrel wood made into smaller barrels. Since the barrel is allowed to participate as a transducer itself, it effectively bridges the gap in these two basic approachs in a unique way. The barrel not only avoids the geometrically aligned reflecting surfaces but also makes a significant positive contribution to the staging and imaging. They have terrific detail from about 60 cycles on up and a unique detailing in upper midrange and lower treble ranges. They also create true depth and location of voice piano, brass percussion and stringed instruments. Its a startup that got lucky on an idea according to the designer. Unfortunately they have no marketing plan or money and will likely go the way of the dodo bird. Shame because the speakers are also forgiving of source although better electronics do make an audible diff. Any ideas?
Yes, and oak barrels ring. You would have to brace it if you used a barrel which would be very difficult.

Have you not heard the term: - "Rings like a Barrel!"
 
haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Spartan
Barrels.....? Is this an april 1st joke :confused:
According to what I know the only way to make a cabinet work .... is to make it as silent as possible, preferably absolutely totally "dead silent"
Perhaps a lot of beer will make the barrels sing in a way that may be in a symbiosis with the music, but then we're past hi-fi :p

Thank you TLS for your detailed answers to my questions, I really appreciate this and I can only imagine the efforts going into this to make such a complex system work seamlessly...
Of course you can only do this properly with a bunch of Norwegian drivers forming the base of the system.... the Seas Excel Magnesium drivers are easily recognizable :p
Also the "golden" ring on the milennium tweeter :D

Still I'm a bit stunned by the complexity that there seem to be about TL's.... those who make them sometimes claim that you have to make 10, 20 or even more cabinets before you get it right... A DIY'er cannot afford this, well the local wood shop will be happy but your wife is not :p

In my view there is no compare to the bass of a properly designed TL, too bad there is so few choices around :confused:

I would really like to audition the PMC subwoofers :p

By the way, what is it that PMC labels as ATL (Advanced Transmission Line), to me they just look like regular transmission lines, some are more folded than others, but in general just different permutations of a TL, in the fact-8 it's stated there is a resonant chamber at the end of the TL that helps to dampen some higher order resonances, never heard of anything like this before, does this work or is it a marketing gimmick....


http://www.tnt-audio.com/tours/pmc_e.html
 
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TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Barrels.....? Is this an april 1st joke :confused:
According to what I know the only way to make a cabinet work .... is to make it as silent as possible, preferably absolutely totally "dead silent"
Perhaps a lot of beer will make the barrels sing in a way that may be in a symbiosis with the music, but then we're past hi-fi :p

Thank you TLS for your detailed answers to my questions, I really appreciate this and I can only imagine the efforts going into this to make such a complex system work seamlessly...
Of course you can only do this properly with a bunch of Norwegian drivers forming the base of the system.... the Seas Excel Magnesium drivers are easily recognizable :p
Also the "golden" ring on the milennium tweeter :D

Still I'm a bit stunned by the complexity that there seem to be about TL's.... those who make them sometimes claim that you have to make 10, 20 or even more cabinets before you get it right... A DIY'er cannot afford this, well the local wood shop will be happy but your wife is not :p

In my view there is no compare to the bass of a properly designed TL, too bad there is so few choices around :confused:

I would really like to audition the PMC subwoofers :p
I built quite a few in my young life.

The modeling programs help a lot now and really reduce the guess work. The understanding that driver VAS has strong relationship to Vb was a huge advance.

The thing that takes the most experience is the damping.

Too little, and you have bass bloom and defeat your purpose. Too much, and you might have just as well built a sealed enclosure.

The big problem, is you have to judge the damping before the line is finished and it is not usually accessible to add or remove stuffing once the line is built.

Cheap Polyfill works as well as anything. When I was younger I could not afford long haired lambs wool and now I'm older I know it is worse than Polyfill! You can see by the impedance curves that it works just fine. I enclose my damping in nylon net, so that it can't settle over time.

There used to be a lot of talk about fussing with different stuffing densities at different places in the line. We now know that uniform stuffing is best, but to end the stuffing a little bit ahead of the port or ports. This is intuitive really, as there is an antinode of pressure and a node of displacement at the closed end. That has to be true as its closed! There is a node of pressure and an antinode of air displacement at the port. So it makes sense not to impede air flow the port and its vicinity.

The rest is matching Fp, Fs, Qts and the volume of air in the pipe. Fp is obviously determined by the length of the pipe.

Quite honestly I fail to understand why there have been so many commercial designs that have been a disaster.

This combined with complexity have made people gun shy.

You are right about the natural bass reproduction of a well designed TL. Not only is the bass just like live, but the depth combined with the lack of bloom, really makes the rest of the system shine. So if everything is done well you get the clarity of an electrostatic without all their problems.

On the whole I like the SEAS drivers, I just wish the alloy cones did not have that dramatic break up mode. It is well dealt with, but I wish I could have the tweeter crossover at 3.5 kHz, but 2.8 kHz is pretty close.

We have a bloke on these forums who thinks the SEAS drivers are pedestrian, especially the EXCELs. He thinks I should have designed the mains with their tweeters at the same height as the center speakers tweeter! He also thinks I should use paper drivers with cheap corrugated surrounds, and a compression driver on top of the magnet as a coaxial. A very nasty looking thing of B & C. for $200.00
 
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haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Spartan
Audio Physic employed what they call Active Cone Damping to the Seas Excel drivers, this is some kind of a physical dampening that's attached to the cone that supposedly completely takes away this breakup modes so they can use simple 1st order crossovers on the bass/mid drivers without any audible clues to these resonances....

According to what I heard it works, exceedingly well.... the Avanti III is super !!!!
Now they moved on to newer models, but the principle developed by Joachim Gerhard is pretty good if you ask me......

Ref from Audio Physic website:
Active Cone Damping :: ACD
Active Cone DampingActive Cone Damping was first developed and implemented by Audio Physic in order to avoid resonances associated with metal cones. A silicone/rubber ring is mounted on the outer ring of the cone where it directly applies pressure on the cone. This is a highly effective means to eliminating the otherwise unavoidable ringing and therefore removes the metallic sound.
 
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TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Audio Physic employed what they call Active Cone Damping to the Seas Excel drivers, this is some kind of a physical dampening that's attached to the cone that supposedly completely takes away this breakup modes so they can use simple 1st order crossovers on the bass/mid drivers without any audible clues to these resonances....

According to what I heard it works, exceedingly well.... the Avanti III is super !!!!
Now they moved on to newer models, but the principle developed by Joachim Gerhard is pretty good if you ask me......

Ref from Audio Physic website:
Active Cone Damping :: ACD
Active Cone DampingActive Cone Damping was first developed and implemented by Audio Physic in order to avoid resonances associated with metal cones. A silicone/rubber ring is mounted on the outer ring of the cone where it directly applies pressure on the cone. This is a highly effective means to eliminating the otherwise unavoidable ringing and therefore removes the metallic sound.
Well I can tell you for a fact that if you don't deal with those break up modes, they ring like bells and loud ones!

They are very difficult to engineer into a system. You certainly could not use a first order crossover.
 
D

DS-21

Full Audioholic
We have a bloke on these forums who thinks the SEAS drivers are pedestrian, especially the EXCELs.
If you're going to allude to my posts, at least do so with a modicum of accuracy, OK?

I never expressly or implicitly compared the Seas Excels to the Seas Prestige line, which is what you're implying with the "especially" line. (As written, you're making a comparison between Seas Excel and other Seas lines.) If anything, it's you who don't seem to think they're different, because in your room you've found that one of them blends well with your Excel-based mains.

Had you asked me, I would've told you that, while I don't have any experience with the Prestige (nee Basic) line except for the old G18 7" midbass and two iterations of the 7" coax (H1333 and the one before that), in the main I presume the Excels are better. They have more advanced motors with well-deployed copper. But they're still not very good in absolute terms. "Pedestrian" is a very good adjective to describe them. In some (read: most) areas, they're not even up to what JBL was doing driver-wise in the 1980s! (Now, that's not to say that JBL systems were better. In fact, their crossover designs were often quite poor.)

He thinks I should have designed the mains with their tweeters at the same height as the center speakers tweeter!
Obviously, front three mains should be identical in configuration, orientation, and elevation, yes.

One wouldn't do identical left and center speakers, with a different right. But they're all the front stage, so that configuration makes every bit as much (non)sense as identical left and right speakers, with a varying center.

He also thinks I should use paper drivers with cheap corrugated surrounds, and a compression driver on top of the magnet as a coaxial. A very nasty looking thing of B & C. for $200.00
First, how do you know the B&C's surround is "cheap." Given the B&C 8NDL51's (not the same driver, but similar) Klippel-measured suspension linearity, that's just an asinine comment.

Second, unlike you I've actuallyHaving actually used all of the drivers in question, I'm qualified to make that statement.

How many B&C 8" coaxes have passed through your hands, exactly?
 
N

norml4721

Audioholic Intern
Best speakers

Hi Guys :

Of the speakers on the list I quess I would pick B&W. Although if you like electrostatics then you woulf say Martin Logan. There are hundreds of speakers that are probably as good if not better than those on the list. There are hudreds of speakers that cost tens of thousands and a few that run hudreds of thousands of dollars(Not that cost represents quality but usualy it does I have a 7.2 system all Focal(J.M. Labs)Except for 2nd sub Rythmik Audio.That are just as good as the best speakers on the list. At least I think so. And I only have the midrange in there line. The Utopia there best line is way to expensive for me.

The 3 that I would pick on your list would be B&W, Paradigm and Martin Logans. But I have never listened to Axiom's but have heard good things. What speaker is best is a very hard question. Europe has quite a few high end lines that are not on this list. If you go to seven or eight high end stores and listen to there speaker lines you, in fact anyone would be impressed and none of those speakers are on that list. The main thing is do you like the speakers that you purchased. Or are you a little bit of an audioholic and always want something better.

Oh well thats my 2 cents. And I have been playing with this stuff for 40 years. So that qualifys me as an idiot. I have upgraded way to many times in my addiction for A/V equipment. It would be nice to have a lot of money. I have to save up and buy one piece of gear once a year

Best,

Norm L.
 
Selb4itkicksit

Selb4itkicksit

Audiophyte
EbenLee Audio speakers?

I've been looking at EbenLee Audio speakers. I don't really know much about them and they don't really have any reviews yet other than from buyers/customers. I'd guess they are too new to have reviews. I don't know.

Anyone else heard or seen them? I can't post links but if you enter their name in a search engine they come up on the first page.
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
Poles like this are fun but only truly reveal best marketing department. ;)
 
Selb4itkicksit

Selb4itkicksit

Audiophyte
Poles like this are fun but only truly reveal best marketing department. ;)
Can you elaborate on that? Are you implying that just because a brand is not well known it may not mean much? Or what?
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
Can you elaborate on that? Are you implying that just because a brand is not well known it may not mean much? Or what?
That's exactly what I mean. Its no reflection of quality or best speaker. Furthermore, everyone of these speaker manufacturers have several speaker lines, some of which I would not even look at. Thats not mentioned in this pole either for obvious reasons concerning logistics and what not. Its still fun but I would not put much stock into this pole.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Oh, now, come on, guys.

It's pretty obvious which speaker brands are the "best".

The same brands I own. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought them.:D
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
Oh, now, come on, guys.

It's pretty obvious which speaker brands are the "best".

The same brands I own. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought them.:D
Or the best weren't around for you to audition before your purchase. ;)
 
K

khorny

Audiophyte
Sorry guys, our forum only allows 10 options in a poll so I went with the brands most folks here are familiar with. I meant to disrespect to Ascends, Salk or others not mentioned in the polling options. As enough data is gathered, I will pick the top 3 to assign near future speaker reviews. thanks for your help.
You "meant to disrespect " those companies. I doubt that. I know you mean you "didn't" mean to disrespect them. If you don't like them please explain why as they seem to be great from the massive amount of positive reviews. I understand the list of what you guys see as the most popular consumer bought speakers. What about the people that ant a bargain? Can a 5.1 system for $1000 Usd be beat by anyone other than svs or DIY (time spent building DIY @ 20-30 hr. Included) realistically?
 

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