An evening spent 'tweaking' Avidyarthy's ATL Speakers

[denom]

Had the pleasure of having a listening session of FM Avidharthy's ATL Speakers designed & made by none other than ATL specialist & FM Hari Iyer, this evening. I was accompanied by yet another FM Santy for this 'responsible' task.
We paired the ATL's with a Sansui AU-D7 & a Marantz CD5400 (Both courtesy another FM Hemant Waghe)

Tracks heard were as follows:

FM Spirovious 'Test' Reference Audio CD :lol:

Black Velvet - Alannah Myles
The Show Must Go On - Queen
Lets make it a night to remember - Bryan Adams
Crazy - Aerosmith
EVery breath you take - The Police
Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
Human - The Killers
Don't phunk with my heart - Black Eyed Peas
Poker Face - Lady Gaga
Desert Rose - Sting

PS: All wondering why my 'kind' of music was not played, 2 reasons A) Due respect to Hari's Family B) No Time

Pics

Quick obersvations:
Cosmetics:
* The speakers were in tweak mode, hence the Xovers were out of the cabinet for instant access for the tweaks. Cabinets were bare & sans final cosmetic finish. The carpet surrounds around the drivers were to dampen the reflections, were stop-gap & finally black felt sheets will be used for this purpose.

Sound:
* Awesome Bass, really awesome, due thanks to the ATL design. Quite shocking for a person to find only a 5.5" Kevlar cone driver producing it. One would think a subwoofer is hidden somewhere in the room:lol:

* Wide Soundstage in 1st cross over tweak, not so in the 2nd one & better in the 3rd

* Bass was overpowering the mids & highs in tweak #1, then subdued in tweak #2 & finally just about right in tweak #3

* Vocals were recessed in tweak #2, slightly thinner in tweak #3 Mid range improved drastically in tweak #3 along with nice separation.

Hari was getting ready for tweak #4 but we had just run outta time to listen to it & hence left.

Yet another FM mpw had just heard the ATL's prior to our arrival & he conveyed similar views as ours to Hari.

I request FM Hari to divulge on the details related to the ATL's, driver specs et all.

Hopefully Avidyarthy will find the ATL's a good match for his 'powerful' Krell amp & that his 'gamble' pays off

 

[Flash]

Nice denom ...
Avidyarthy is a lucky bloke.

BTW is that the Peerless M13kh Kevlar driver mated with the Peerless T25AM Alu tweeter ?

 

[BLASTO]

Nice looking speakers..
Aren't they a bit high for ear level in sitting position?

 

[spirovious]

Nice review Denom,I couldn't make it this time.Crossover tweaks can be confirmed with Avidyarthy depending on how krell sound is,bright & warm.

 

[anm]

speakers are already looking awesome! Hari - I am sorry I left our conversation in the middle as I got busy with other things. Will continue learning from you on speaker design/ measurement.

 

[gvenu]

Hello Basak,

Will come to your place when next time I am in Delhi...

Venu

 

[avidyarthy]

Venu ... Do you need to ask? Anytime .... need just a phonecall to intimate the time/date of arrival and to confirm whether I am at home or at some remote crude oil Refinery / Paper plant / Power Station etc etc etc .... .

Just don't have words to thank Denom, mpw and santy. Thane isn't all that close from their place of stay & to top it, the inclement weather ....... thats passion! 'Had' to get a peek into something new! Yeah, I too am like that. And I have this self-endorsed impression that I am the best and the most accomodating. Well, I am not alone, and I am glad. Hemant, thanks for your toys! Have to take the lot of you ... on a 'day' out .

@ Hari .... fantastic wood-work. The carpenter looks real good! I never expected the speakers to turn out so good. The top curvature is something to vie for ... exquisite. ITS ALREADY LOOKING BETTER TO THE FAMED SUGDEN TL SPEAKERS!

Yet another thing .... the woofer would be out of 'easy' reach of any 5 yrs old nuisance kids, my own's classmates who frequent home often!

Spoken to you last night and the feedbacks from the guys have been very positive. Let me say, those guys already at your place would be in a better position to judge and help you tweak, than me!

Would drop in on Monday evening, and have 'something;' myself, if anything's left ..

Now, to get the final tweak right .... get the thing polished (walnut finish) ... ship loose, the height adjustable 6 spikes (3 per speaker) .... properly crate pack ... dispatch by GATI .... still, a long way to go before voila!

 

[avidyarthy]

Nice looking speakers..
Aren't they a bit high for ear level in sitting position?

... errr, I stand and listen ...

 

[spirovious]

... errr, I stand and listen ...

OR need a high sitting position,a stool?

 

[Hari Iyer]

Had the pleasure of having a listening session of FM Avidharthy's ATL Speakers designed & made by none other than ATL specialist & FM Hari Iyer, this evening. I was accompanied by yet another FM Santy for this 'responsible' task.
We paired the ATL's with a Sansui AU-D7 & a Marantz CD5400 (Both courtesy another FM Hemant Waghe)

Tracks heard were as follows:

FM Spirovious 'Test' Reference Audio CD :lol:

Black Velvet - Alannah Myles
The Show Must Go On - Queen
Lets make it a night to remember - Bryan Adams
Crazy - Aerosmith
EVery breath you take - The Police
Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
Human - The Killers
Don't phunk with my heart - Black Eyed Peas
Poker Face - Lady Gaga
Desert Rose - Sting

PS: All wondering why my 'kind' of music was not played, 2 reasons A) Due respect to Hari's Family B) No Time

Pics

Quick obersvations:
Cosmetics:
* The speakers were in tweak mode, hence the Xovers were out of the cabinet for instant access for the tweaks. Cabinets were bare & sans final cosmetic finish. The carpet surrounds around the drivers were to dampen the reflections, were stop-gap & finally black felt sheets will be used for this purpose.

Sound:
* Awesome Bass, really awesome, due thanks to the ATL design. Quite shocking for a person to find only a 5.5" Kevlar cone driver producing it. One would think a subwoofer is hidden somewhere in the room:lol:

* Wide Soundstage in 1st cross over tweak, not so in the 2nd one & better in the 3rd

* Bass was overpowering the mids & highs in tweak #1, then subdued in tweak #2 & finally just about right in tweak #3

* Vocals were recessed in tweak #2, slightly thinner in tweak #3 Mid range improved drastically in tweak #3 along with nice separation.

Hari was getting ready for tweak #4 but we had just run outta time to listen to it & hence left.

Yet another FM mpw had just heard the ATL's prior to our arrival & he conveyed similar views as ours to Hari.

I request FM Hari to divulge on the details related to the ATL's, driver specs et all.

Hopefully Avidyarthy will find the ATL's a good match for his 'powerful' Krell amp & that his 'gamble' pays off

A 'BIG THANK YOU' to Denom, Santy, Hemant and MPW to find time on Saturday to review this speakers. Without the Marantz CD player and Sansui Amplifier it would have not possible for me to judge the sound quality of these speakers. They sounded like from a different planet compared to my Pioneer DVD (DV-373s) and Denon AVR-1604. I am now totally convinced about investing in a CD player & Stereo Amplifier and it will be done very soon.

As rightly reviewed by Denom and also mentioned by Spiro the final tweak will have to be done with the Krell Amplifier and Atish's home, as the room boundaries too affect the tweaks and will need to be compensated for the dynamic headroom. This final tweak would actually take months to achieve after many hours of listening sessions and to know whats the best balance for the kind of music, the hardware setup and the room setup.

Hope Atish will have the patience to do this all alone with inputs and simulations from me (i dont know if he can get an inductor wound and measured from my instructions).

Flash: yes its the M134KH kevlar cone and T25AN tweeter from Jeetu Bhai.

Below are some more technical details about the speaker system for the technically minded,

Features - K300TL
Enclosure: Time Aligned enclosure
Diffraction and edge corrected baffle
Coherent sound stage
Wave guides for lows & mids
Guided wave Transmission Line enclsoure ensure no boomy bass stimulating atmosphere of live performance and extended dynamics
Harmonics balanced to ensure real life like performance of music and vocals

Cross-over: Zero phase-shift 1st order Butterworth filter ensures excellent transient response without ringing/ ripple effect and faster settling times for the filter ensuring Excellent Transient & Phase response. Lower crossover frequency of 2275 Hz for tweeter gives smooth mellow response for the tweeter and smoother dispersion & clarity for the mids. This also ensure no cone break-up.
Excellent on & off- axis response due to meticulous selection of cross-over point.
Zobel, Resonance, Diffraction & Impedance corrected
Kevlar paper cone for lows & mids for tighter bass and smooth mid-range
Drivers: Low resonating freq. Aluminium dome tweeter for smooth and mellow highs. Wide range drivers ensure optimum performance in the enitre frequency band-width of the speaker system

Technical Specifications:


Specification - K300TL
Power Bandwidth (-3dB): 38 Hz till 20KHz
freq response (-6dB): 28 Hz till 25 KHz
Nominal Impedance: 6 ohms
Minimum Impedance: 3.44 ohms
Continous Power: 130 Watts
Max Power @ 6 Ohms: 250 Watts
Enclosure Type: Advanced Transmission Line
Cross-over type: 1st order Butterworth
Cross-over frequency: 2275 Hz
Cone Break-In Time: Approximately 60 Hrs with moderate sound pressure
Woofer: 5.25" Kevlar Cone
Tweeter: 1" Low Resonating Frequency Aluminium Dome
SPL /w/m: 88 dB
Max Recommended Speaker Wire Impedance: 0.5 Ohms

 

[BLASTO]

They sounded like from a different planet compared to my Pioneer DVD (DV-373s) and Denon AVR-1604. I am now totally convinced about investing in a CD player & Stereo Amplifier and it will be done very soon.

Sir,

Don't get me wrong but it is surprising that you use a Pioneer DVD player and an AVR to test the sound of speakers you design and are not exposed to CD players and Stereo amps after all these years of speaker design.

Do you design speakers for HT application only so far?

 

[srinisundar]

Sir,

Don't get me wrong but it is surprising that you use a Pioneer DVD player and an AVR to test the sound of speakers you design and are not exposed to CD players and Stereo amps after all these years of speaker design.

Do you design speakers for HT application only so far?

Just an opinion!!! if any speaker sound good in AVR and normal DVD player, it will be sounding too good to with integrated amplifier and cd player. So tweaking to suit AVR and DVD player is worth.. Sure this will take to higher level with Krell.

Regards

 

[Hari Iyer]

Sir,

Don't get me wrong but it is surprising that you use a Pioneer DVD player and an AVR to test the sound of speakers you design and are not exposed to CD players and Stereo amps after all these years of speaker design.

Do you design speakers for HT application only so far?

Its plain laziness nothing else. I am more of an design guy and spend lots of time analyzing speaker curves, equations and the likes more from a mathematical perspective. I analyze semi-log graphs more than the actual sound of a speaker (frequency domain, time domain, group delay, filter curves, impedance curves, phase curves, impedance phases etc.) and i get more than 95% accurate results with the simulator and hence never found the need for high end stuff.

More over the room boundaries is going to influence in the actual setup and i do not have an anechoic room fore measurements. Hence real time listening test could at many times be misleading due to the various constraints that actual analysis of curves. But since both objective and subjective measurements are equally important for the final outcome, i leave it to experts like Denom, Santy and other FMs to decide and take a back seat there.

Yeah, this is the first time i have heard my speakers connected to some high-end gear and i was quite impressed and immediately decided to invest time and money to get one. Trying to figure out my budget and am thinking to be in the region of 2.0L for a decent CD Player & Amp. But will not be in a hurry to buy as i can also get them from the US as i keep going there due to my office work. Till then i will have to rely on my simulators and equations for the objective part of the analysis and am sure that Hemant, Denom and Santy will always help me with their subjective tests.

Cheers,

 

[Hari Iyer]

Now, to get the final tweak right .... get the thing polished (walnut finish) ... ship loose, the height adjustable 6 spikes (3 per speaker) .... properly crate pack ... dispatch by GATI .... still, a long way to go before voila!

Can you post some images of the walnut finish you are talking about. Last time you had mentioned about Cherry finish and i am not good at this area. Please check the last mail where i had suggested some finish with links of the finishes. Can you again get back with the walnut ones.

 

[spirovious]

Can you post some images of the walnut finish you are talking about. Last time you had mentioned about Cherry finish and i am not good at this area. Please check the last mail where i had suggested some finish with links of the finishes. Can you again get back with the walnut ones.

Its usually like this-




http://www.johnlewis.com/231193498/Product.aspx

Pls.confirm with Avidyarthy.

 

[Flash]

Hari,

I picked up a Virtual Crossover box a short while ago, I got it shipped from the US.

Audio Spectrum Analyzer and Acoustics Software

http://www.vidsonix.com/vidsonixnew/boxlit2.pdf

This should be in your list of purchases as well

 

[avidyarthy]

GLOBALContract

 

[corElement]

How does one get a walnut finish without a veneer though?

Colored Polish+ lacquer?

 

[Hari Iyer]

Hari,

I picked up a Virtual Crossover box a short while ago, I got it shipped from the US.

Audio Spectrum Analyzer and Acoustics Software

http://www.vidsonix.com/vidsonixnew/boxlit2.pdf

This should be in your list of purchases as well

Seems to be an interesting product. Have to check whether the circuits inside this box is also configurable as per requirement. I add circuits for tweaking the response of the woofers & tweeters, and is not like a standard cross-over design. Another option is to connect a pink noise source to the cross-over network and view the outputs in an oscilloscope (traditional dual trace CRT type) instead of the drivers. Since i have both a pink noise generator and an oscilloscope it will be easy for tweaking.

Cheers,

 

[Flash]

Yes hari a very interesting product.
Do go through the pdf file of the virtual crossover box as well as the review.

It helps cuts out hours of crossover tweaking.

I have found it to be a blessing in disguise