So any thoughts on the two pairs of songtowers compared to the Phil 3's???
The $64,000 question… We all know that talking (or typing on a keyboard) about how speakers sound is like dancing about architecture. But this is AH, a web forum, so I'm not going to give up and say it can't be described, you'll have to hear them for yourself. Almost, but not quite
.
All Dennis Murphy designed speakers have as flat a frequency response as possible. And all his speakers do not have audible distortion or noise. Nothing resonates, shrieks, howls, or breaks up. So comparing those reveals little.
Let's separate descriptions of speaker sound into these categories:
- Tone range
- Tone balance
- Imaging
- Presentation (for lack of a better word)
The differences in
tone range of the Phil 3 and the two STs are the easiest to hear and describe. The bass of the Phil 3 goes down to 25 Hz, and the two STs go down to just below 40 Hz. You will notice that first. That does not mean that STs have unsatisfying bass, but the Phil 3 clearly has deeper and more powerful bass. The differences in the upper end of the audio range are much more subtle, and it's hard to describe clear differences in tone range. We know either of those ribbon tweeters can produce sound smoothly well above 20,000 Hz and the dome tweeter doesn't. But that doesn't matter at all unless you're a dog. And recorded music doesn't go that high anyway. I will have more to say about ribbon tweeters, but their high frequency extension is not what makes them sound different or better.
Let's define
tone balance as the overall balance of sound of a speaker, bass heavy, neutral, or treble heavy. Dennis strives to achieve neutrality in tone balance. Any differences between speaker models are subtle and often depend equally on musical selection and room location of speakers and listener. The Phil 3s produce more bass, but their tone balance is still more similar to the STs than it is different. Another example – while listening to my STs and Alex's ribbon STs, I thought I heard mine were a little warmer or had a little more bass. My STs were closer to the wall behind them and his were standing out into the room more (see the photo Alex posted earlier.). I've moved mine into a similar location before, so I'm familiar with what happens to the sound. It becomes a little less warm. So those differences I heard Saturday could be explained by room location, and not by differences in the speakers.
Imaging. All these speakers are among the champions of audio imaging. They have a tangible and wide sweet spot. The most noticeable difference is the STs are monopole speakers with drivers mounted on the cabinet front, and the Phil is a modified bipole, with an open back midrange operating from about 650 Hz to 2700 Hz. You can vary the amount of rear wave you hear by adding or removing polyfill stuffing from the cabinet behind the midrange. This can generate significant differences in the depth of the audio image. You can make them sound like monopoles by fully stuffing the cabs, or you can achieve a electrostat-like effect with very little stuffing, or some place between those extremes.
And now,
presentation. I'm on less solid ground here, because I don't have a good handle on this word as a description of audio. It's a catchall for all the rest that I can't describe well. It includes overall dispersion of sound in the room. Because I own MTM speakers, I have become familiar enough with their "presentation" that I think I can recognize an MTM's presentation when I hear it. (As soon as I say that, someone will no doubt say, "Oh yeah, prove it!" My answer is "Be fruitful and multiply", but not in those exact words
.) At least sometimes, I can hear differences between MTM speakers and 2 or 3-ways. The STs are wonderful MTM speakers (among my favorites) and the Phil 3 is an excellent 3-way with uncanny ability to create large audio images of unusual depth.
To sum up, these speakers have much more in common than they have differences. The Phil 3s are obviously more different. The differences between STs with a dome or ribbon tweet are very subtle and I can only identify differences after carefully compare them listening to a wide variety of music. If I had to put it in words, the ribbon tweeter is ever so slightly less noisy. And the ST dome tweeter is among the very best dome tweeter I've ever heard. So choosing those words to try to identify differences exaggerates the real differences I think I hear.
I hope I've been clear, OK?
