New Denon, Marantz & Definitive Technology 2023 Products Show Report

[Hobbit]

Reviews of Def Techs seem to waiver back and forth between great and ehhh since I can remember.

I had a 5.1 system with them, BP-x's, in the lat 90's-early 2ks. I actually really liked them for the home theater application. I would consider going with these if I was to make a dedicated HT system.

Conversely, they were a bit of a struggle for music. I could never get great imaging out of them no matter how hard I tried placing them. The imaging would wander about a little bit. Perhaps the Adjustable Bipolar addresses this to some degree? Or maybe Mirage had the right idea with the switch to turn off the rear speakers when you don't want them on?

 

[TLS Guy]

Review of Def Techs seem to waiver back and forth between great and ehhh since I can remember.

I had a 5.1 system with them, BP-x's, in the lat 90's-early 2ks. I actually really liked them for the home theater application. I would consider going with these if I was to make a dedicated HT system.

Conversely, they were a bit of a struggle for music. I could never get great imaging out of them no matter how hard I tried placing them. The imaging would wander about a little bit. Perhaps the Adjustable Bipolar addresses this to some degree? Or maybe Mirage had the right idea with the switch to turn off the rear speakers when you don't want them on?

Well, that is damning them with faint praise. Speakers should not get to pick and choose. Excellent speakers are good on all media. We play everything in this theater.

 

[Hobbit]

Well, that is damning them with faint praise. Speakers should not get to pick and choose. Excellent speakers are good on all media. We play everything in this theater.

In the last thread I posted in asking why no love for electrostatics, the response was they aren't good for HT. You just can't win around here

Still DT clearly added in Adjustable BP and other new features to resolve weaknesses. The article, and DT in general, gives me the impression they're putting a lot of focus on HT. The store that carried the Mirages (it's been 25 years, so it may be another BP design brand) said the switch to turn off the rear firing speaker was for music vs HT(bp).

I agree excellent speakers should be able to do it all. There's probably a price point where that's true.

 

[TLS Guy]

In the last thread I posted in asking why no love for electrostatics, the response was they aren't good for HT. You just can't win around here

Still DT clearly added in Adjustable BP and other new features to resolve weaknesses. The article, and DT in general, gives me the impression they're putting a lot of focus on HT. The store that carried the Mirages (it's been 25 years, so it may be another BP design brand) said the switch to turn off the rear firing speaker was for music vs HT(bp).

I agree excellent speakers should be able to do it all. There's probably a price point where that's true.

I don't recall your last thread, but you could use electrostatics in HT, but you should not use a center speaker. Electrostatics do tend to be power limited. The Quad ESLs are limited to 100 watts max, and to be safe 70 watts. So yes, they are not ideal in the HT environment.

Personally I don't think firing speakers at a close wall is optimal under any circumstances, no matter what you are playing. I can assure you that is not a route to accurate reproduction.

 

[ryanosaur]

I was really stoked for the steps DT took with the Demand Series. On paper, they looked like legitimately good Speakers; a little low Sensitivity for HT, though.

When I saw them going back to this BP format, I kinda feel let down. *shrugs

I get that they are popular with the Best Buy/Magnolia crowd. And maybe DT will be more honest about the capabilities. I’m hesitant to look too close, though. *sighs

 

[Danzilla31]

I was really stoked for the steps DT took with the Demand Series. On paper, they looked like legitimately good Speakers; a little low Sensitivity for HT, though.

When I saw them going back to this BP format, I kinda feel let down. *shrugs

I get that they are popular with the Best Buy/Magnolia crowd. And maybe DT will be more honest about the capabilities. I’m hesitant to look too close, though. *sighs

I owned the older bp9000 line. They are a lot of fun for movies. Just ok for music. You lose a lot of imaging to get that wider spacious Soundstage. I always wished for DefTech you could have a switch to turn the back speakers off. I was hoping they would have that for this new lineup. Then I'd be a lot more interested.

 

[Hobbit]

I owned the older bp9000 line. They are a lot of fun for movies. Just ok for music. You lose a lot of imaging to get that wider spacious Soundstage. I always wished for DefTech you could have a switch to turn the back speakers off. I was hoping they would have that for this new lineup. Then I'd be a lot more interested.

That's how I felt about the BP-xx's I owned. It looks like they somewhat addressed that with Adjustable BP array and the Forward Focus mode. I can't tell how this is implemented in the article and if it's user friendly?

 

[ryanosaur]

D@mnit. I'm getting sucked in to this. I'm gonna have to look at the marketing BS and everything now. *grumps noisily
When I had two different auditions of the BPs, 9060 and 9080 IIRC, they were atrocious sounding. Nothing natural about the SQ, and especially in the bass region. It was like old diet soda... stupidly artificial sweet with a nasty aftertaste. One of the auditions had a B&W 600 series tower that I also listened to... and of course that had anti-bass properties so when the guy switched from one to the other it was even more dramatic of a change.
Fortunately there were some other Speakers that behaved as they should, and even though not ideally set up, I was able to quickly rule both the BP and B&W out.

My gawd... please don't let me find that DT is still calling the powered bass section "Subwoofers." ...I will go all Johnny Storm on their a$$es.

 

[ryanosaur]

I shouldn't have looked.

I will stop myself from saying anything more than this:

At least they listed a more believable F3 and F10 and are not claiming infrasonic output...

 

[VonMagnum]

Always fun to watch people put their ignorance and personal biases on display as if they were facts instead of opinions. Def Tech isn't my favorite brand, but there is nothing wrong with bipolar designs for increased ambience (Mirage was successfully doing it long before Def Tech) or room loading bass to reduce standing waves (exactly what next gen DIRAC will take advantage of).

I use ribbon dipoles in my stereo room upstairs. They definitely have a "musician in the room with you" advantage with studio type material that doesn't include real room ambience in the recording.

For live stuff and home theater I prefer a dead room with loads of speakers to reproduce the out of phase ambience stored on real recordings (Auromatic does a good job on lower settings of bringing them out in lower speaker count recordings while Atmos can take advantage of up to 32 speakers for increased spatial resolution.

I'm up to 21 speakers in a 12'x24' room at this point with arrays set for Auro-3D and stereo options and it's pure bliss. Suggesting 11 channels is enough for everyone reminds me of Bill Gates with the 640k Ram thing in the 1990s (My Amiga 3000 had 18MB of Ram in 1992).

 

[Trebdp83]

 

[Gary Eickmeier]

Terrific interview by Matthew! These DT guys are getting scarily close to some right answers about loudspeaker design. Just a few corrections, or hints, to all of them, including Philip Jones:

1. Most of the pictures in the article show the speakers either positioned wrong or aimed wrong. It looks like they have them too close to the front wall and aimed straight fore/aft. They need to be 1/4 of the room width in from the side walls and the same distance out from the front wall. This will provide perfectly even spacing among all real and virtual (reflected) speakers. Then they need to be aimed 30° inward toward the listeners to get more correct angles for time/ intensity trading for a stable center and more importantly to strengthen the corner secondary reflections that bounce off the front and then side walls and come out as deep and wide as possible. I have tried to send DT an email on this, with a Powerpoint set of pictures that show why their owner manual recommendations are wrong.

2. I'm glad they have discovered the bipole radiation with adjustable pattern, but they still have it backwards. You need about 6 dB greater gain from the rear than the front, because the reflected sound has to travel twice as far as the direct.

It is NOT correct that the reflected sound messes up imaging! The early reflected sound focuses too, if you just know how to position speakers and/or make a drawing of the image model of the total horizontal pattern of direct and reflected sound that you are hearing.

Gary Eickmeier
Lakeland, Florida