An evening spent 'tweaking' Avidyarthy's ATL Speakers

[avidyarthy]

The IT Head of Fortis Hospitals (residing close by) dropped in after hearing that the speakers have come in. Audition was not planned for, but he seemed interested for a hear. So, played for him ....

Ustad Bismillah Khan (Shehnai) --> Whitney Houston --> Kailash Kher --> Baul Geet (Bengali) ... for an hour and a half or so.

The man ain't an audiophile just as me, and he looked stumped by the time audition had come to an end. I did not have the chance to hear the above yesterday ... was pretty done in after the rectification work, so had crashed early.

In the Shehnai concert, could easily make out the sitting position of the 2nd and 3rd guy playing it, with a clear demarcation of the main man's central position. The table, on the other hand was sitting far behind and the tabla beats were resonating from behind with a 3-dimensionality. Mindblowing! This effect would improve drastically after my wifey returns .... she knows where the curtains & carpet is lying in storage. Needless to say, the other three vocals were stupendous ... absolute proper sound separation and soundstage.

anm is expected to drop in this evening .... feel sorry for his Thiels! Expect a Delhi Thiel sale shortly

Also to visit today is the gentleman (a lawyer and not a FM) who sold me his Krell. He is an avid DIYer. He 'could' be your prospective buyer Hari.

Have to split ...... yet another neighbour has come in .... a TranSwitch Design Director .... well, the house is becoming a sort of a pilgrimage!

 

[BLASTO]

anm is expected to drop in this evening .... feel sorry for his Thiels! Expect a Delhi Thiel sale shortly

Ask him to carry the NADs. Waiting eagerly.
Have you heard his thiels earlier to come to this conclusion? :?

 

[avidyarthy]

Ohhhh ... Blasto also has the Thiels!!!!!!!

 

[srinisundar]

anm is expected to drop in this evening .... feel sorry for his Thiels! Expect a Delhi Thiel sale shortly

I dont think so if anybody will sell the thiels and switch over to some other brand if addicted to that

 

[anm]

ok - I should find a buyer before I leave for his house. Anyone willing to buy Thiels for 2L

 

[avidyarthy]

Thiel-wallas trooping in ... all guns blazing ....

 

[mpw]

hari - launch a discounted groupbuy for HFV guys after a week or so.. this will add to the population of your speakers and get critical mass in various cities... a few thoughts do come tio mind for marketing but i will leave this to hari's discretion.

rgds,
mpw

 

[mpw]

avid,

if possible..please play some pink floyd, explosions in the sky, a few tracks of U2, scorpions and metallica and please post your listening impressions.

rgds,
mpw

 

[avidyarthy]

See anything? .... hi-res

Pictures by avidyarthy - Photobucket

 

[avidyarthy]

avid,

if possible..please play some pink floyd, explosions in the sky, a few tracks of U2, scorpions and metallica and please post your listening impressions.

rgds,
mpw

Neighbour's son played Led Zepp just now, followed by U2 ....... sorry, not ma cup of tea! But sounded great as per them.

 

[Hari Iyer]

My personal design preference is that speakers like guitars, ought to be high gloss regardless of paint or veneer. Otherwise it's a waste. Mind you that's a personal preference. You don't need to follow it as a hard and fast rule.

Here are some images which may inspire

These finishes are excellent and the selection of the gloss and veneer is great. I had offered the glossy laminate paint option to Avid but it was not fitting the cost parameters. As rightly mentioned by Avid the finishing cost = bare speaker cost with my vendor depending upon what finish you opt for.

 

[Hari Iyer]

I also tend to agree with core maybe it is a personal preference for me piano gloss black anyday. Well let me also pen down some listening impressions regarding yesterday's auditions.

Sorry no photos maybe will avid will do the honours

Visual appearance, fit and finish

The speakers as may be seen in the initial posts are quite good looking. They are little tallish and have a curved top which looks nice. A 2inch square platform is at the base beneath which there are spikes (the speaker has four nos of cylindrical peices mounted on the base which are adjustable).

The veener is somewhat glossy in appearance and it is different and should look pretty good after a coat of polish and removal of the residue left behind by the packing tapes.

Listening Impressions

The pairing was simple Marantz CDP 6003 > Krell > Hari's ATL Speakers.

First Avid played back some Violin instrumentals from a CD. As the room needs some curtains to absorb the reflections. Well the sound felt like something was missing like you can say that the highs were being somewhat subdued. There was a noticeable low frequency overhang. After this we changed to CD of Carpenters - Gold to hear the vocals, it was here that we changed the amps and plugged in the CA in place of the Krell and by this time we were aware that the left tweeter had problem.

Some impressions of the speakers - they had good imaging, and nice sound stage, quite good lows well have to reserve comments on the highs as I would want to listen to them again after the fixing. Regarding the amps the Krell sounded better than the CA.

Well thanks Avid for having us at your place at such a short notice and well last but not the least the lunch was delicious.

Thanks for the feedback. Will be grateful if you could review them once again after the fix for an accurate assessment. since one of the component got open due to the transport the left speaker was a band-pass filter and not allowing frequency above 600Hz to the tweeter and @ - 6dB/octave and hence there was a major loss of frequency in the left speaker. Also the lower end got restricted due to the capacitor at around 2KHz.

 

[Hari Iyer]

The IT Head of Fortis Hospitals (residing close by) dropped in after hearing that the speakers have come in. Audition was not planned for, but he seemed interested for a hear. So, played for him ....

Ustad Bismillah Khan (Shehnai) --> Whitney Houston --> Kailash Kher --> Baul Geet (Bengali) ... for an hour and a half or so.

The man ain't an audiophile just as me, and he looked stumped by the time audition had come to an end. I did not have the chance to hear the above yesterday ... was pretty done in after the rectification work, so had crashed early.

In the Shehnai concert, could easily make out the sitting position of the 2nd and 3rd guy playing it, with a clear demarcation of the main man's central position. The table, on the other hand was sitting far behind and the tabla beats were resonating from behind with a 3-dimensionality. Mindblowing! This effect would improve drastically after my wifey returns .... she knows where the curtains & carpet is lying in storage. Needless to say, the other three vocals were stupendous ... absolute proper sound separation and soundstage.

anm is expected to drop in this evening .... feel sorry for his Thiels! Expect a Delhi Thiel sale shortly

Also to visit today is the gentleman (a lawyer and not a FM) who sold me his Krell. He is an avid DIYer. He 'could' be your prospective buyer Hari.

Have to split ...... yet another neighbour has come in .... a TranSwitch Design Director .... well, the house is becoming a sort of a pilgrimage!

Thanks for the feedback and good to hear that the end user is enjoying the music with the combination. It really delights me when the end user is happy with the sound signature.

Also refer to some tips about speaker placement and associated furniture in the speaker user manual. I am sure you are aware of them, but a gentle glance to the manual could be of some help.

Enjoy

Also thanks for promoting my speakers to other music lovers and hoping to bank on their orders too if they too are interested. Maybe i should float a group buy as mentioned by mpw and will initiate it by today evening after discussing with my brother. There are other priorities too.

It really delights me when my years of R&D and efforts is paying and my quest in getting the perfect sound signature that everyone is yearning for. Also will like to mention the efforts of my elder brother Vijay who helps in building the cross-over and also sourcing them.

 

[Hari Iyer]

Ask him to carry the NADs. Waiting eagerly.
Have you heard his thiels earlier to come to this conclusion? :?

I have not heard the Thiels but once during my conversation with Rajiv Dsouza of Lithos India, he mentioned that it required very high power amplifers due to extensive use of components in the cross-over network.

Personally, i will always like to take a minimal approach to cross-over networks as more the number of inductors & capacitors in a cross-overs to adjust driver anamolies the greater the energy storage, ringing and settling issues. Also it will be difficult to tweak the cross-overs after listening test due to many components involved. The earlier Thiel Audio first order cross-over use to have 32 passive components in the cross-over. Why? To just adjust the waveform to have the perfect response for the speakers. Or is it to compensate for driver anamolies? This is one of the reason they demand very high power amplifiers. If the driver itself is good enough then they need not have too many compensation.

 

[Hari Iyer]

hari - launch a discounted groupbuy for HFV guys after a week or so.. this will add to the population of your speakers and get critical mass in various cities... a few thoughts do come tio mind for marketing but i will leave this to hari's discretion.

rgds,
mpw

I would love to launch a discounted groupbuy for HFV guys. I have already discussed this with my carpenter and he is okay to build 5 to 10 pairs in one go and would not be interested in just a pair as it does not make any business sense for him. Have not finalized any rate with him for the group buy though. If there are 5 pairs to be build then it should be good.

I am badly looking out for a marketing guy to market my speakers but i am not able to find a single good guy since past one year. Any body interested??? PM me then we can discuss this in detail.

 

[Hari Iyer]

See anything? .... hi-res

Pictures by avidyarthy - Photobucket

I could see them this time. Thanks Buddy.

 

[hifiashok]

Looking very nice.....

 

[avidyarthy]

^ Come over ... you are a stone's throw away!

 

[malvai]

^ Come over ... you are a stone's throw away!

i'd like a listen as well... esp since I am going the TL way soon, as well!

and once mine arrive, you are welcome to a session!

 

[avidyarthy]

@ CorElement .....

Your Majesty .... you were right. The Krell-ATL combo is tending towards 'tubey' sound. I took a whole day of listening to come to that conclusion ... something, you pointed out in half an hour!

Thats the demarcation, I guess ..... an audiophile versus just another music lover.