Salk Sound is closing

[Docks]

I had a pair of salk silks and the treble from them felt like it was going to make me deaf/my ears bleed. I'm not sure if it was the tuning/crossover or the 70-20XR (although I've heard the lesser ascend bookshelves without the issues). These botique brands can't compete on a financial, technical or testing level like big dogs like Harman can.

Probably a fun hobby, but the margins can't be huge. These guys need to eat.

 

[D Murphy]

I had a pair of salk silks and the treble from them felt like it was going to make me deaf/my ears bleed. I'm not sure if it was the tuning/crossover or the 70-20XR (although I've heard the lesser ascend bookshelves without the issues). These botique brands can't compete on a financial, technical or testing level like big dogs like Harman can.

Probably a fun hobby, but the margins can't be huge. These guys need to eat.

The treble voicing on the Silks was actually very conservative. I think you must have received a defective pair. I've consistently voiced the tweeter on my models lower than Ascend.

 

[TLS Guy]

I had a pair of salk silks and the treble from them felt like it was going to make me deaf/my ears bleed. I'm not sure if it was the tuning/crossover or the 70-20XR (although I've heard the lesser ascend bookshelves without the issues). These botique brands can't compete on a financial, technical or testing level like big dogs like Harman can.

Probably a fun hobby, but the margins can't be huge. These guys need to eat.

Well, I don't know what you did driving them, but you likely did something stupid.

This is the FR of Salk Silks.

As you can see it is NOT hot on the top end.

Actually many of these brands you refer to as "boutique" make many of the best speakers available and Salk are in that category.

 

[D Murphy]

The Silk is an old design and I've learned how to deal a little better with the ups and downs of the Illuminator 5" woofer (which I find inferior to the less expensive Revelator 5"), but I'm not seeing anything in the treble that I would want to change. From a human hearing standpoint, the brightness range is in the 3K to 8k region, and that area certainly isn't emphasized on the Silk.

 

[Docks]

Well, I don't know what you did driving them, but you likely did something stupid.

This is the FR of Salk Silks.

As you can see it is NOT hot on the top end.

Actually many of these brands you refer to as "boutique" make many of the best speakers available and Salk are in that category.

Doubt it. Have an RME ADI-2-DAC FS and an ATI3002.
I've ran lots of speakers (towers and bookshelves) through this setup, it was specific to the silks. So "likely stupid" is a bit of a stretch there. Yes, I've seen the frequency response 1000 times. I've heard, bought and owned the speakers, remember?

It was specifically the silks for me. Its hard to explain but it was like blasting this supersonic frequency with music, it was deafening, even at low volume. I thought it was likely due to the RAALS until testing out ascend bookshelves without issue.

I'm thinking something defective in the drivers or crossovers themselves. But yeah, felt like my ears were bleeding at the lowest of levels.

 

[Docks]

The Silk is an old design and I've learned how to deal a little better with the ups and downs of the Illuminator 5" woofer (which I find inferior to the less expensive Revelator 5"), but I'm not seeing anything in the treble that I would want to change. From a human hearing standpoint, the brightness range is in the 3K to 8k region, and that area certainly isn't emphasized on the Silk.

Yeah, It was far beyond 3-8k range. This was a few years ago and I swear it's likely above 15k. I had always wondered the reasoning for implementing the illuminator over the revelator. I assumed that choice was made for a bit of extra power handling/excursion. This however wasn't likely related to the upper raggedness the illuminator was known for, the crossover design seems to remedy that.

 

[D Murphy]

Yeah, It was far beyond 3-8k range. This was a few years ago and I swear it's likely above 15k. I had always wondered the reasoning for implementing the illuminator over the revelator. I assumed that choice was made for a bit of extra power handling/excursion. This however wasn't likely related to the upper raggedness the illuminator was known for, the crossover design seems to remedy that.

I'm absolutely certain there was no problem above 15 kHz. The RAAL just doesn't do weird stuff like that. I'll take you at your word and accept that you found your Silks bright. But there is nothing inherently bright in the design.

 

[little wing]

I met Jim briefly at AH 2012 GTG and was so profoundly impressed by the sound quality of SoundScape 8's that I still consider it the best-sounding speaker I've ever heard at any price point.

Fun fact: This pretty photo from the show taken by yours truly, used in the AH article with my permission:

Jeeze, those are beautiful speakers! Just beautiful! I would be so proud to have those. And keep a good cloth on hand to give them a once over every day, lol

 

[squeedle]

I had met Jim a couple times over the years at audio shows and was always impressed with how his speakers consistently sounded and looked great, no matter what room or what model was being demoed. And Jim himself always comes across as such an effortlessly charismatic, knowledgeable, and trustworthy guy. It was always a dream of mine to own a pair of his speakers but they were always a bit beyond my reach.

But I decided a couple years ago to replace my old Vandersteen 2's, and I started researching possible replacements. I auditioned Perlisten R's and several other highly respected models. Some of them seemed like they would be perfectly fine, maybe excellent, but nothing really screamed out at me to drop many thousands of dollars. But when Jim released the BePure 2, I became almost obsessed with hearing them. After some emails back and forth with Jim, I had already gotten the impression that he was not wanting to keep his business running for much longer. Maybe a few more years at most. So my wife and I planned a trip that involved a stop in Pontiac, MI to see Jim's shop and audition the speakers in person.

Stopping by his shop and hanging out with him, getting the factory tour... I was basically sold on buying a pair of Salk speakers before I even got to the audition. He's such a good guy. His employees were happy, respected, and well treated. He told me about a long-time employee of his who couldn't work during COVID, and how he continued to pay him a salary even when he wasn't working. He answered every question so openly. This was a business I wanted to support. And this was a business whose products I wanted in my life.

Needless to say, the BePure 2's were everything I hoped they would be. They are the best speakers I've ever heard, at any price. And I loved that they would be made specially for me, in whatever finish I wanted. A truly unique pair of speakers. I ordered my pair on the spot. (And I had to wait an agonizing 10 months or so to get them!) But what meant a lot to me, and what differentiated them in ways that no other brand could compare with, was that I felt like I was buying more than a pair of speakers. And I am proud to have them in my home and be reminded of everything that went into making them.

It's sad that Salk Sound is closing shop. I feel bad that the loyal employees will no longer have jobs, and that the audio community will no longer have such a unique manufacturer in its ranks. But I think it is better for Salk Sound to go out in style and with honor rather than be purchased by another company, because all that could ever happen would be a downturn in quality. No one could fill Jim's shoes.

 

[Swerd]

@squeedle

Thanks for sharing your Jim Salk experiences. Many of us have similar stories about him.

My own Jim Salk story goes back to the release of the first Song Tower in 2007. I heard the development prototype as a Dennis Murphy project, and I loved it immediately. I had already built a small 2-way designed by Dennis (his CAOW1) that used the same drivers as in the Song Tower, so I was familiar with Dennis's voicing results. The ST's accomplished the same voicing in the crossover region, but added significant bass. At that time, I wasn't looking to buy new speakers, but after dreaming frequently about listening to them, I knew I was hooked.

It was Dennis's first effort at a mass loaded transmission line cabinet design. He eventually perfected it with assistance from another DIY speaker builder he knew online, Paul Kittinger, and the result was the Song Tower. Paul is highly experienced at using the transmission line design software developed by Martin J. King.

Dennis had worried that Jim might not want to sell such an inexpensive model, and he asked if I would contact Jim to talk about my listening experience. I did write Jim, and learned that he had already built a pair, and planned to sell them. He also became an early commercial user of the Martin J. King software for transmission line cabinet design, often relying on Paul Kittinger's help. I soon realized I was in way too far to not buy them, and ended up becoming an early Song Tower adapter. At that time, they sold for $1,500 a pair! For years, the Song Tower was Jim's best seller.

Years later, as I was about to retire late in 2016, I bought new Veracity STs as a gift for myself. They have a similar design as the Song Towers but with significantly better sounding drivers, and better overall performance, at a higher price. I still have them, and love them, now. Jim's cabinet finishing is so good, that I still find myself staring at them even if I'm not listening to music. No other furniture I own have finishes that come close to his excellent work. The veneer is unstained ropey cherry. The top & side rounded-over edges are strips of solid cherry.

 

[TLS Guy]

@squeedle

Thanks for sharing your Jim Salk experiences. Many of us have similar stories about him.

My own Jim Salk story goes back to the release of the first Song Tower in 2007. I heard the development prototype as a Dennis Murphy project, and I loved it immediately. I had already built a small 2-way designed by Dennis that used the same drivers as in the Song Tower, so I was familiar with Dennis's voicing results. The ST's accomplished the same voicing in the crossover region, but added significant bass. At that time, I wasn't looking to buy new speakers, but after dreaming frequently about listening to them, I knew I was hooked.

It was Dennis's first effort at a mass loaded transmission line cabinet design. He eventually perfected it with assistance from another DIY speaker builder he knew online, Paul Kittinger, and the result was the Song Tower. Paul is highly experienced at using the transmission line design software developed by Martin J. King.

Dennis had worried that Jim might not want to sell such an inexpensive model, and he asked if I would contact Jim to talk about my listening experience. I did write Jim, and learned that he had already built a pair, and planned to sell them. He also became an early commercial user of the Martin J. King software for transmission line cabinet design, often relying on Paul Kittinger's help. I soon realized I was in way too far to not buy them, and ended up being an early Song Tower adapter. At that time, they sold for $1,500 a pair! For years, the Song Tower was Jim's best seller.

Years later, as I was about to retire late in 2016, I bought new Veracity STs as a gift for myself. They have a similar design as the Song Towers but with significantly better sounding drivers, and better overall performance, at a higher price. I still have them, and love them, now. Jim's cabinet finishing is so good, that I still find myself staring at them even if I not listening to music. No other furniture I own have finishes that come close to his excellent work. The veneer is unstained ropey cherry. The top & side rounded-over edges are strips of solid cherry.
View attachment 63030

I think those are the same drivers I use in my mid TL lines. I use a different tweeter from SEAS. They are excellent drivers and very powerful.

 

[Swerd]

I think those are the same drivers I use in my mid TL lines. I use a different tweeter from SEAS. They are excellent drivers and very powerful.

My mid-woofers are the 6" Seas Excel W16NX-001 drivers, and yours are the larger 7" Excel W18s. They share voice coils & magnets assemblies. Seas managed to build a smaller diameter frame for the W16s using the W18 motor.

The tweeter is the RAAL 70-20XR ribbon. According to Dennis, the W16 crosses over to this ribbon more smoothly than the W18 with the same tweeter.

 

[D Murphy]

My mid-woofers are the 6" Seas Excel W16NX-001 drivers, and yours are the larger 7" Excel W18s. They share voice coils & magnets assemblies. Seas managed to build a smaller diameter frame for the W16s using the W18 motor.

The tweeter is the RAAL 70-20XR ribbon. According to Dennis, the W16 crosses over to this ribbon more smoothly than the W18 with the same tweeter.

I'll soon be designing a pair of monitors for Shady J to function as a reference point in his reviews. They'll use the W16 woofer along with the excellent Hiquphon OW2 3/4" dome tweeter.

 

[Swerd]

I'll soon be designing a pair of monitors for Shady J to function as a reference point in his reviews. They'll use the W16 woofer along with the excellent Hiquphon OW2 3/4" dome tweeter.

Interesting. I hope it will be in the same type of MLTL cabinet that the Veracity ST comes in.

 

[TLS Guy]

My mid-woofers are the 6" Seas Excel W16NX-001 drivers, and yours are the larger 7" Excel W18s. They share voice coils & magnets assemblies. Seas managed to build a smaller diameter frame for the W16s using the W18 motor.

The tweeter is the RAAL 70-20XR ribbon. According to Dennis, the W16 crosses over to this ribbon more smoothly than the W18 with the same tweeter.

Yes, it was hard to tell from the picture. Mine are the 7" woofers. The problem is both those drivers are very hard to design for, because the cones start to break up violently just above 3K leading to an enormous peak in response. So the trick is to make the low pass crossover components do dual duty for HF roll off and notch filter. This you can do if you juggle with it.

The 10" breaks up even more violently. So for active use you still have to put a notch filter in the speaker lead. If you don't even the small amount of noise of even my Quad 909s, which have an S/N second to none, still will produce audible hiss if you don't notch out the break up mode between amp and driver.

People only tolerate this, as in the pass band of the drivers those magnesium alloy cones are absolutely rigid, and so have a wide and very flat off axis response.
But you can not let any significant audio through in those monstrous break up mode frequencies. That is the downside of really rigid cones, that they produce one hell of a peak when they do break up, and it is really violent. That is why so many just won't touch those drivers.

 

[Swerd]

Yes, it was hard to tell from the picture. Mine are the 7" woofers. The problem is both those drivers are very hard to design for, because the cones start to break up violently just above 3K leading to an enormous peak in response. So the trick is to make the low pass crossover components do dual duty for HF roll off and notch filter. This you can do if you juggle with it.

Here's Seas published frequency response curve for the W16 drivers. You can see that huge break-up starting by 3 kHz, peaking just below 5 kHz.

Compare that to the frequency response of the W18 driver.

Salk made a similar MTM speaker, called the Veracity HT2-TL, with two W18 drivers and the same RAAL ribbon tweeter in a larger (9" W × 17" D × 44" H, 80 lbs.) MLTL cabinet.

It's interesting to compare the size & weight of the Veracity ST (8" W × 12" D × 42" H, 62 lbs.) to that of the HT2-TL. Their performance look similar on paper, but the HT2-TL has a wider dynamic range than the smaller Veracity ST. Not too surprising.

I don't know the full details of the low-pass filters Dennis designed for either of these drivers. But he starts with a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley type filter, with roll-off curves measured acoustically. Same for the tweeter. RAAL claims its 70-20RX ribbon tweeters can operate as low as 1.8 kHz if they're used with a 4th order L-R filter.

As usual for Dennis, he adds LCR trap filters in parallel to both the woofers and tweeter driver. He aims to achieve a flat frequency response, both on- & off-axis across the crossover frequency range, with roll-off & roll-in curves as symmetrical as possible with each other on either side of the crossover frequency.

However, I do not know the crossover frequency he selects, full schematics, nor any of the values of the crossover components. All those are Salk's proprietary details.

 

[D Murphy]

Here's Seas published frequency response curve for the W16 drivers. You can see that huge break-up starting by 3 kHz, peaking just below 5 kHz.
View attachment 63033
Compare that to the frequency response of the W18 driver.
View attachment 63034
Salk made a similar MTM speaker, called the Veracity HT2-TL, with two W18 drivers and the same RAAL ribbon tweeter in a larger (9" W × 17" D × 44" H, 80 lbs.) MLTL cabinet.

It's interesting to compare the size & weight of the Veracity ST (8" W × 12" D × 42" H, 62 lbs.) to that of the HT2-TL. Their performance look similar on paper, but the HT2-TL has a wider dynamic range than the smaller Veracity ST. Not too surprising.

I don't know the full details of the low-pass filters Dennis designed for either of these drivers. But he starts with a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley type filter, with roll-off curves measured acoustically. Same for the tweeter. RAAL claims its 70-20RX ribbon tweeters can operate as low as 1.8 kHz if they're used with a 4th order L-R filter.

As usual for Dennis, he adds LCR trap filters in parallel to both the woofers and tweeter driver. He aims to achieve a flat frequency response, both on- & off-axis across the crossover frequency range, with roll-off & roll-in curves as symmetrical as possible with each other on either side of the crossover frequency.

However, I do not know the crossover frequency he selects, full schematics, nor any of the values of the crossover components. All those are Salk's proprietary details.

It's actually quite easy to trap out the breakup modes on the the Seas magnesium drivers. It just takes a shunt circuit consisting of a capacitor and inductor. A resistor generally isn't necessary. I've inserted below the raw response of the W16, and then the response with a series inductor and the shunt trap circuit. The breakup modes are now at least 35 dB down, which will be inaudible on music. (Note that the vertical demarcations are 10 dB rather than the customary 5 dB, so the breakup looks less severe. That's the only way I could show where the breakup ends up after being trapped.)

The main objection to these drivers is that if you cross in the 1.8 kHz - 2.0 kHz region, which is about as low as you would want to go without a tweeter waveguide, the 3rd order distortion products in the region of 1.6 kHz will be smack in the middle of the breakup, and this will increase the 3rd order distortion over what it would be without the breakup. I think it's around 1%. Purists would certainly object to that, but I don't think it's audible.

 

[TLS Guy]

It's actually quite easy to trap out the breakup modes on the the Seas magnesium drivers. It just takes a shunt circuit consisting of a capacitor and inductor. A resistor generally isn't necessary. I've inserted below the raw response of the W16, and then the response with a series inductor and the shunt trap circuit. The breakup modes are now at least 35 dB down, which will be inaudible on music. (Note that the vertical demarcations are 10 dB rather than the customary 5 dB, so the breakup looks less severe. That's the only way I could show where the breakup ends up after being trapped.)

The main objection to these drivers is that if you cross in the 1.8 kHz - 2.0 kHz region, which is about as low as you would want to go without a tweeter waveguide, the 3rd order distortion products in the region of 1.6 kHz will be smack in the middle of the breakup, and this will increase the 3rd order distortion over what it would be without the breakup. I think it's around 1%. Purists would certainly object to that, but I don't think it's audible.
View attachment 63035

View attachment 63036

As they always say, there is more than one way of skinning the cat. I crossed at 2.5 KHz, and the tweeter crossover is basically second order but transitions to third order below I KHZ, to make sure tweeter output is well down at Fs. The wooder crossover is basically a second order filter but with an added inductor and a resistor in the circuit in parallel with the woofers, as an acceptor circuit to not excite the break up mode of the woofers. It is essentially a four element low pass crossover with a resistor added to adjust the Q of the crossover. Anyhow, it seems to work well, and helps minimize time shifts.

I have to say there are easier drivers to work with. I am happy with the result.

 

[Bucknekked]

Interesting. I hope it will be in the same type of MLTL cabinet that the Veracity ST comes in.

Swerd
I just read this thread for the first time so I am just now freshly bummed out about the news of Salk closing.
I can only echo the comments of those who have had good relationships with Jim Salk and his company. As well as those who have some of his fine speakers. I am proud to own a set, as you know, and have no plans to part with them. It occured to me this week I am considering a move next year. As such I'd like to have some packing materials for my Song Towers. I wonder if Jim is still selling stuff like that? Or if not, what's the best way to pack and handle them?

I am bummed at the news. It fits in with my post retirement life however. More and more friends, icons and landmarks are falling to father time. Its part of life but its still disheartening.

 

[Swerd]

It occured to me this week I am considering a move next year. As such I'd like to have some packing materials for my Song Towers. I wonder if Jim is still selling stuff like that? Or if not, what's the best way to pack and handle them?

Contact Jim Salk. He may have some packing material left, or know a good way to get your own from local sources.