11 hours ago, Ittaku said:

Thursday afternoon GTG cancelled due to inadequate attendees. I would need more time to plan if people wanted to come now.

 

😄 I'm sorry to hear that the standard is slipping here on SNA with the quality of persons it attracts.

 

 inadequate attendees.   would suggest an IQ of below mine and that is pretty low if I am honest.

 

Come on you Mensa folk, show Con some love 😛

 

Best of luck with the next batch Con.   Give them some Sudoku as a test before you let them in the front door.  🥸

 

Regards Cazzesman   My wife say my IQ just crests my age.  🙄

If Con ever moves to Sydney I’ll be the first to put my hand up. 

16 minutes ago, PKay said:

If Con ever moves to Sydney I’ll be the first to put my hand up. 

 

Pity the poor northerners.  I've never even been to the yearly show   

Sorry guys, had a great get together with an old friend I hadn't seen in over 20 years instead with a one on one hifi and wine afternoon which was lovely in its own way. Turns out he's an audiophile too so was magic. Not scheduling any particular time for the next get together now; will wait till I have enough people.

Geoff at Heynowhifi contacted me to tell me the new PS Audio FR30 speakers are in for auditioning. I thought it'd be fun to check them out and he said I could invite as many people as I like to come along since he's obviously keen to have people listen to them. Anyone want to join me to have a listen some day next week and we can organise a group? Maybe Wed afternoon?

Yeh, at this stage I have that day off, so sounds good.

I've booked with Geoff for 2pm Wed 11th. There's room for plenty more if anyone else is interested. Suite 202/22 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda VIC 3182

Edited May 8, 20223 yr by Ittaku

19 hours ago, Ittaku said:

I've booked with Geoff for 2pm Wed 11th. There's room for plenty more if anyone else is interested. Suite 202/22 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda VIC 3182

If there is still a free spot I would be interested  to join. Couldn’t make it for last weeks evening launch. 

Just now, digoxin said:

If there is still a free spot I would be interested  to join. Couldn’t make it for last weeks evening launch. 

There is tons of space, see you there. Same completely open invitation is to everyone out there; it's not my hardware.

Had a listen to the PS Audio FR30 prototype speakers this afternoon, and they are just prototypes. Geoff tells me there are only 6 pairs in the world and the design is still being finalised.

 

They're an interesting speaker for sure, but there's nothing revolutionary about their approach. That itself isn't such a bad thing if you take known existing techniques that work, and I guess they've been thinking hard about their target audience as well in terms of the type of speaker that would mate with the PS Audio sonic signature, electronics, and aesthetics. They're a hybrid planar magnetic tweeter/midrange with 4 8" aluminium cone woofers and 4 10" side mounted passive radiators. Interestingly there is also a rear firing planar tweeter with adjustable controls that vary the "depth" and volume, thus making them a bipole at the high frequency range. The speaker is mounted on a bizarre single plinth base which looks like it's going to rock side to side with no effort, and to my disappointment - does. Now I can't say for certain that this is going to be of some audible disadvantage since the drivers are mounted in a front to back arrangement (the passive radiators are mirrored so forces should cancel out) but I can say that it certainly won't help the sound. It screams of aesthetics over functionality and even before I listened to them I commented on them. The speakers themselves weigh a nice stonking 105kg, but interestingly are two separate enclosures - the midrange and treble component isn't even coupled, it simply sits on top of the woofer tower. Even weirder is the top box is as deep as the woofer tower even though the planar drivers can't be more than 10cm thick front to back. Once again this is for looks so they don't obviously appear to be a hybrid the way ML ESL hybrids are for example, but I can't imagine it's particularly functional though Geoff tells me it's meant to absorb all the rear radiating energy to make them a true monopole. Not sure they need to be 65cm deep to achieve this. Rapping on the boxes they sound reasonably solid, and the top enclosure has a significantly higher frequency "note" to its tap. Allegedly 87dB efficiency, 8 ohm "easy to drive". Anyway enough of the design, there'll be plenty about it in countless online reviews that will wax lyrical about it on PS Audio's behalf.

 

We listened for a couple of hours with them mated to mostly the PS Audio BHK electronics - the top 300W mono power amps and preamp, but a different brand R2R DAC I'd never heard of, and an Aurender music server. The sound was refined, smooth, very easy to listen to, and a bit lifestyle-like. The midrange is excellent, that part I was very pleased with, presumably a well controlled planar driver is responsible for that. The tweeter wasn't glary or hard whatsoever, but was slightly shouty. Another person commented on that and Geoff turned down the volume on the rear tweeter and sure enough that actually helped quite a bit. Stage was reasonably well defined in the midrange and above, without particularly great depth, but the room also wasn't enormous. Stage focus was more diffuse than I was expecting; no razor sharp imaging, but it was also more forgiving than I was expecting, allowing a reasonable amount of movement from the sweet spot without destroying the top end or stage; quite a good achievement with planars (they have gentle wave guides). Bass was very controlled, tight, and well integrated with the planars... but it was way too polite, and there was virtually no focus or localisability to the bass. They sounded like well controlled standmounts, despite being hefty sized speakers. The last octave was virtually non-existent, and some notes in music I'm familiar with almost disappeared below a certain threshold. The specs say they're supposed to be 3db down at a generous 28Hz, but these almost felt like they didn't even reach 40Hz. I did some more walking around the room to try and find the bass, in the hope it was room modes, but I could only elicit those lower frequencies with my back up against the rear wall. The 60Hz punchy bass region was far better though, with great tight punchy bass.

 

We went on to change amplifiers from the BHK range to the 600W icepower based amps also from PS Audio. The bass improved markedly. Not only was there significantly more authority low down, but the bass notes were much better rendered in the sound stage. The midrange got slightly honky and forward and the treble lost its delicacy, but the woofers definitely seemed to prefer the higher power and current of the class D amps. That said, they still didn't plumb the depths the way other full-range speakers in that price range might. I hinted multiple times to Geoff that I wanted to hear them biamped with the class D amps on the woofers and the A/B hybrid tube amps on the midrange/treble, and given both amps have identical gain it should have worked very well. Alas that may have been a bit impertinent of me as he seemed reluctant to go that far on my behalf (and also it's my personal approach to amplification so I'm awfully biased about that.)

 

All in all I couldn't shake off the lifestyle thought in my head when listening to them. They're very pleasant to the eye and easy to listen to, but hardly excited me. Given their RRP tag of $50K, that's an awfully competitive sector of the market. Considering they're almost 50% more than the Kii3s, and more than double the cost of the dutch & dutch 8cs both of which are even actively amplified) that sound similar but better, and a very healthy range of other speakers in a different range, like maggies, german physiks, Wilson Benesch, Vivids etc etc etc it sure is an uphill battle. They'll be featured at the hifi show so it'll be interesting to see what they end up sounding like there.

Edited May 11, 20223 yr by Ittaku

10 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

Had a listen to the PS Audio FR30 prototype speakers this afternoon, and they are just prototypes. Geoff tells me there are only 6 pairs in the world and the design is still being finalised.

 

I'm not sure about this: I think the design is finalised, and there are a few in the hands of customers in the US. PS Audio has done a few installation videos already

Just now, sakabatou said:

I'm not sure about this: I think the design is finalised, and there are a few in the hands of customers in the US. PS Audio has done a few installation videos already

Very interesting, that's not what Geoff tells me. I simply quoted him.

There were a few more things I forgot to mention in my review of the FR30s. I'm not generally a fan of box speakers as they almost always elicit a boxiness in some fashion. These were mostly free of that, there were only a few notes here and there from a range of piano notes (which is very good for finding troublesome spots) where there was a hint of the boxy resonance internally coming out but they were largely free of boxiness. Additionally they were very quiet in a way that only very low distortion speakers exhibit, good for blackness when present. I didn't feel they were quite able to extract the last word in detail, but that could have been anywhere in the chain and not the speakers. One property I should have made more of is they'd be very comfortable to listen to for many hours on end.

Edited May 11, 20223 yr by Ittaku

Very interesting and thoughtful review, con. 

Thanks. I wouldn't normally bother since there are new speakers coming out from experienced speaker manufacturers all the time. The thing is the publicity around PS Audio's first ever speaker iteration has been insane because of their marketing division. It's actually more than a little annoying. So I had to see if the hype was justified. I'm pretty sure my opinion should have come across in my review.

From what I have seen PS Audio have a great marketing department. $50k is a lot for speakers and out of the realm of most people so they would want to be pretty good.

 

You can get a very good car for $50k.

OP awesome brief summary of the FR30 speakers. cant wait to hear them in person.

Looks like MSB found a way to make their DACs even more expensive with the new "Digital Director". By all accounts it's a true isolator for all interfaces that reproduces what I currently have as a standalone component in the USB to ProISL interface.

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2022/05/new-msb-technology-digital-director.html#more

Am I tempted to upgrade? No, as it's simply going to do what mine already does with the outboard component, isolating all other inputs which I don't use, and charging a hefty amount more.

It's a strange addition to the lineup for sure. I will be intrigued to see how many of these get sold. 

Here is what's wrong with so many modern speakers.

 

This is from the latest edition of Stereophile. Thanks to modern software it's possible to design insanely complex electrical and acoustic crossovers that do remarkable things with respect to getting good phase, time, and amplitude alignment, but they do so at the cost of creating insanely difficult loads to drive, which the manufacturers don't seem to care about at all. These speakers are specified as being 4 ohm, but realistically thanks to stereophile doing the calculations for EDPR, we can tell they are at worst, like driving a speaker just over 1 ohm.  Honestly, if you have lots of well renowned equipment in your system but it never sounds as good as it does in reviews or showrooms, the speaker-amplifier interaction is the first thing you should be looking at.

 

I'm going to rehash a recommendation I made a while back in case people haven't seen me mention it before. When choosing an amplifier to match speakers, look at the speaker manufacturer's recommended power rating and impedance, and double the former and halve the latter if you're choosing an amp blindly without auditioning the combo. ie. if the speaker manufacturer says nominal impedance 8 ohms with recommended 100W, find yourself an amplifier capable of at least 200W into 4 ohms. If it's not even designed for half the "nominal" impedance of the speaker, it's never going to drive it well, no matter how many watts it's rated at. Please don't try to fix the problem with different power cables...

Edited May 12, 20223 yr by Ittaku

29 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

Here is what's wrong with so many modern speakers.

 

This is from the latest edition of Stereophile. Thanks to modern software it's possible to design insanely complex electrical and acoustic crossovers that do remarkable things with respect to getting good phase, time, and amplitude alignment, but they do so at the cost of creating insanely difficult loads to drive, which the manufacturers don't seem to care about at all. These speakers are specified as being 4 ohm, but realistically thanks to stereophile doing the calculations for EDPR, we can tell they are at worst, like driving a speaker just over 1 ohm.  Honestly, if you have lots of well renowned equipment in your system but it never sounds as good as it does in reviews or showrooms, the speaker-amplifier interaction is the first thing you should be looking at.

 

I'm going to rehash a recommendation I made a while back in case people haven't seen me mention it before. When choosing an amplifier to match speakers, look at the speaker manufacturer's recommended power rating and impedance, and double the former and halve the latter if you're choosing an amp blindly without auditioning the combo. ie. if the speaker manufacturer says nominal impedance 8 ohms with recommended 100W, find yourself an amplifier capable of at least 200W into 4 ohms. If it's not even designed for half the "nominal" impedance of the speaker, it's never going to drive it well, no matter how many watts it's rated at. Please don't try to fix the problem with different power cables...

I think the last sentence should have been in bold.

6 hours ago, Ittaku said:

Here is what's wrong with so many modern speakers.

 

This is from the latest edition of Stereophile. Thanks to modern software it's possible to design insanely complex electrical and acoustic crossovers that do remarkable things with respect to getting good phase, time, and amplitude alignment, but they do so at the cost of creating insanely difficult loads to drive, which the manufacturers don't seem to care about at all. These speakers are specified as being 4 ohm, but realistically thanks to stereophile doing the calculations for EDPR, we can tell they are at worst, like driving a speaker just over 1 ohm. 

I don’t think the impedance dips below 2 ohms from that graph.  Your point is still valid though.

 

6 hours ago, Ittaku said:

I'm going to rehash a recommendation I made a while back in case people haven't seen me mention it before. When choosing an amplifier to match speakers, look at the speaker manufacturer's recommended power rating and impedance, and double the former and halve the latter if you're choosing an amp blindly without auditioning the combo. ie. if the speaker manufacturer says nominal impedance 8 ohms with recommended 100W, find yourself an amplifier capable of at least 200W into 4 ohms. If it's not even designed for half the "nominal" impedance of the speaker, it's never going to drive it well, no matter how many watts it's rated at. Please don't try to fix the problem with different power cables...

Seems like good solid advice.  Very sensible.  I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone claim that different power cables will improve an amplifiers output power rating, but I guess common sense is never guaranteed in this hobby, so again, fair play.

 

8 hours ago, Ittaku said:

Looks like MSB found a way to make their DACs even more expensive with the new "Digital Director". By all accounts it's a true isolator for all interfaces that reproduces what I currently have as a standalone component in the USB to ProISL interface.

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2022/05/new-msb-technology-digital-director.html#more

Am I tempted to upgrade? No, as it's simply going to do what mine already does with the outboard component, isolating all other inputs which I don't use, and charging a hefty amount more.

Do you put much stock in their claim of “Advanced digital filters” and “unique DSP algorithms”?  I know you mainly use your own upsampled digital files, but perhaps they have programmed something new and worthwhile into this device, aside from all the buzzwords about isolation and power and clocking?

The EDPR drops to just over 1 ohm because of the combined effects of impedance and phase.

2 minutes ago, Stereophilus said:

 

Do you put much stock in their claim of “Advanced digital filters” and “unique DSP algorithms”?  I know you mainly use your own upsampled digital files, but perhaps they have programmed something new and worthwhile into this device, aside from all the buzzwords about isolation and power and clocking?

It's too early to tell what it really does to be honest since it's just marketing speak. I assumed it was just a digital to digital interface speaking proisl over optical fibre to the actual DAC.

The select version of the Digital Director costs $27500 USD. Yeah nah, no thanks.