Rob181's Fantastic ML2 Limited's

[Ray H]

  On 07/06/2013 at 8:24 AM, Rob181 said:

Jim Salk has the same philosophy as Mike when it comes to speaker cabinets...the more rigid & inert they are the better. Jim uses all Rythmik electronics...he believes he has made a significant improvement over the Rythmik subs with his boxes. My subs are almost twice the weight of the Rythmik equivalents and it is all in the subs boxes. It is a gamble though...I have never heard a Rythmik sub nor a Salk speaker but both do have very good reputations. They have been here for 5 months but have not been used as yet...waiting until the garage conversion is complete...Rob

Rob, intrigued by your system, sounds like it will be very impressive when you get it running. Also interested in the Salk sub's, had a quick look on the Salk website after I saw your post. Are the subs listed on the site at 1500-1800 the completed Salk subs ? And are they a rhythmic amp and driver in an upgraded cabinet ? They certainly look pretty impressive for the money, I am guessing they cost a bit to ship given the weight, I would be interested to know the cost of getting one to Australia.

Cheers,

Ray

P.s, all of these Lenehan owners still awake at all hours makes me think Mike Lenehan must be getting something very right..

Edited June 7, 2013 by Raeyz

[tktran]

"Amazing" and other early impressions adjectives is not what I care about.

Long term natural bass I do.

Only tolerable for short periods is a other clue of higher order distortion causing listener fatigue. Like the 30W solid state amplifier turned up really high so the speaker plays loud, vs a 100W amplifier cruising along effortlessly into the same speaker, or a 94db/W woofer with only an 8W SET used to hit over 100dB, this does not cause listening fatigue.

As I say, I don't want to engage in subjective opinions because listening room and personal preferences affect a lot to it.

[kdoot]

"Tolerable" is in respect to the fear of hastening the inevitable hearing loss, not to do with any aspect of the audio quality.

 

But OK, you've made your point: you have a subjective opinion backed up by objective theory as to why small drivers are vastly inferior to large ones for bass reproduction. But without you hearing ML2s you can't know whether these exhibit the same behaviour as you're expecting, and without any of us hearing a good large-driver speaker we can't make our own subjective comparisons.

 

Anybody over here in Brisbane got a big-driver speaker they would like to let me come and listen to?

[Once was an audiophile]

  On 07/06/2013 at 3:18 PM, tktran said:

I am not going to engage in a debate with audiophile power words using vague, non-descript or useless words. But small woofers have always managed to sound good at low to moderate listening levels, and this can sound "punchy" "rich" or "warm" in tonality. eg. Linn Kan. But on a large scale it becomes congested and thick and muddy.

Tktran your welcome to hear my small woofers fed by v8 el34 power amp and a few thick power cords judge for yourself if they become congested thick and muddy.

[Lenehan Audio]

  On 07/06/2013 at 3:18 PM, tktran said:

The best bass I've heard are from tympani, dipole bass from quad 18" woofers and tapped horns with 94dB/W sensitivity.

 

I'd love to listen to the ML2, but even more so the better more expensive ML3 (with the bigger 8" woofer surprise surprise), in my experience all the 6.5" midwoofers I've had (ScanSpeak Revelator, Illuminator, SEAS Excel, Accuton, Audio Technology) in a vented alignment give nice bass in my small 4x5m room, but not my 6x9m L shaped room at near-live levels.

 

 

As for theory, bass distortion causes audible harmonics above the fundamental. It's not "theory", it's data (ie. measurements taken in practical real life situations).

 

I am not going to engage in a debate with audiophile power words using vague, non-descript or useless words. But small woofers have always managed to sound good at low to moderate listening levels, and this can sound "punchy" "rich" or "warm" in tonality. eg. Linn Kan. But on a large scale it becomes congested and thick and muddy.

Hi tktran

What your talking about here is FOA or force over area transducers ! They can produce very good results in themselves and theoretically have claims on the SOTA. In the seventies and eighties this approach was where we pointed most of our efforts. Because we had tons of theory which we would garner from physical libraries we could launch ourselves on various building projects.

The end result was stacked ESL57's and FOA bass or the best we could do with more conventional subs. I'll go on record as stating that conventional box bass produces superior results ! Not because of the bass reproduction itself but because of other integration problems with FOA transducers. What I'm going to say is specifically our IP and I'm only going to say it because it's value is quite low now in respect of what we are now doing and the impact that FOA's can have on us. The large surface areas required for FOA's in a listening environment re propagate power range and midrange information in that very listening environment,even the Xover frequency from the FOA subs is set at say 50hz and 24 db/octave. Put more simply and succinctly they catch or scoop up higher frequencies and re launch them at the listener with time smear.

If the goal is to reproduce an event or should I say correctly conduit the program FOA's in the bass and WHOOO get ready for this I'm Gonna cop it sweet for this one Quad ESL57's or any other are at a significant disadvantage. I'm not saying here they don't have some superior aspects to how they reproduce sound I'm saying for the job of reproducing bass in the context of musical/accurate voracity they are behind conventional systems.

Also a 6.5inch bass driver reproduces bass with LOWER distortion ,better articulation and is

much faster than a 12 inch bass driver ! Are you talking about turning the level up so loud that the 6.5inch emissive diaphragm can't move the required air and hence then produce excessive distortion ? Or perhaps that the 12inch driver can be tuned to a lower frequency and hence have a lower F3 ( albeit with much slower transient response)

It's a huge subject tktran ! What are your thoughts ? Regards Mike Lenehan. LenehanAudio

[bhobba]

  On 07/06/2013 at 11:27 PM, kdoot said:

The ML2 is better than ML3 in almost every respect. Doesn't quite match it in extension, of course. 

 

Yes.

 

This is the issue Mike has - it's a bit of a tossup which is better - the ML2 Reference or the ML3 Reference - most prefer the ML2 - as do I - but a few prefer the ML3 with its better bass and scale.  The Limited's are a different beast entirely - they are clearly and obviously better than the ML3's in virtually every single area - its just a bit of bass extension the ML3's have over it.  But its so clearly and obviously better everyone that has heard them have opted for the Limited ML2 which is about the same price as the ML3 Reference.

 

And guys that are into low down bass and scale that the ML3's produce are really lucky - me, my friend in Canberra, and other's I know are all selling their ML3's and others will be getting them for a real bargain over new price.  It makes me want to weep - I would love to be able to sell them for more - but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

Thanks

Bill

Edited June 8, 2013 by bhobba

[bhobba]

  On 08/06/2013 at 2:20 AM, LenehanAudio said:

 Put more simply and succinctly they catch or scoop up higher frequencies and re launch them at the listener with time smear.

 

I can vouch for the truth of this.

 

I got one of those newfangled Martin Logan Depth I subs that are supposed to be the bees knees.  Resonance cancelling driver arrangement, servo controlled drivers, basically all the modern design tricks thrown at it.

 

And it sounds good - make no mistake.  Anyway its down at Mikes now to check out on my ML2 Limited's when they are finished but Mike went to the trouble of setting them up properly using Clio.  I heard it engaged and not.  I always personally preferred it engaged but I well remember one track where some tambourines were playing - with them engaged they were less distinct and smeared.  I asked Mike - whats going on - he responded with exactly what was said above.

 

Personally these days I mostly only engage my subwoofer for HT duties.

 

Thanks

Bill

Edited June 8, 2013 by bhobba

[tktran]

G'day Mike,

 

 

  Quote

"Not because of the bass reproduction itself but because of other integration problems with FOA transducers."

 

I appreciate that it is challenging to integrate larger woofers for a full range 3 or 4 way. This argument is the same as arguments from proponents of single driver "full" range systems. The apparent difficulty or limitation of integrating even 2 drivers together using a crossover is so detrimental to the sound that the only way forward is using single speaker in a relatively large cabinet. But that it not to say that it cannot be done- your 2 way speakers with small mid-woofers are perfectly integrated, from all reports. Sure design is the balance of compromises, and once you crack it, your 3 way with dedicated midrange and woofer will be even better than your current range of 2 ways.

 

I'm not sure of the point of the comparison the Quad ESL57. But if you're using it as some kind of holy grail or reference, then you don't want to hear from me. I have heard so many loudspeakers that best the old Quads (with or without bass augmentation) and maybe for you they are a reference for you but not for me.

To clarify, I'm not talking about subwoofers or bass bins or the difficulties of integrating a subwoofer with a main. I'm talking about music and I'm not interested in dinosaur footsteps or crashing UFOs over anything below 40Hz.

 

  Quote

"Also a 6.5inch bass driver reproduces bass with LOWER distortion ,better articulation and is much faster than a 12 inch bass driver!"
Are you talking about turning the level up so loud that the 6.5inch emissive diaphragm can't move the required air and hence then produce excessive distortion?
Or perhaps that the 12inch driver can be tuned to a lower frequency and hence have a lower F3 ( albeit with much slower transient response)

 

No driving any driver to the point past where the coil leaves the gap, or playing so much low bass content so that the woofer unloads below the tuning frequency is detrimental. I'm not even talking about tuning a 12" driver with a lower extension.
But I can see that when we talk about bass, it seems that we mean a lot of different things. When I'm talking about bass, I'm talking about the authority, the power region 40-80Hz where eg. kick drums live, and in this range, size matters. You may be an eminent speaker designer, but based on the best available data I will have to disagree with you. Non-linear (harmonic) distortion is NOT lower for a smaller woofer.

I've never been happy with adding a single subwoofer to a music only system, and smearing or decay related problems >200Hz is exactly the problem, due to the poor integration above the crossover point. In what frequency region does the tambourine live? Well surprise surpise.

 

Sometimes you don't have to put your hand into the fire to know it's hot.

The best available data suggests that a single 6.5" has MORE non-linear distortion below 100Hz than a larger woofer of the same make. You can measure it, you can hear it. But how you describe may be different to how I describe it. Some like it rich, I like it clean. Some like to fast, I like it with dramatic and with full scale impact.

Mario,
I'd love to listen to your system some time Mario. Will contact you in November when my schedule clears up.

Edited June 11, 2013 by tktran

[Rob181]

  On 07/06/2013 at 11:54 PM, Raeyz said:

Rob, intrigued by your system, sounds like it will be very impressive when you get it running. Also interested in the Salk sub's, had a quick look on the Salk website after I saw your post. Are the subs listed on the site at 1500-1800 the completed Salk subs ? And are they a rhythmic amp and driver in an upgraded cabinet ? They certainly look pretty impressive for the money, I am guessing they cost a bit to ship given the weight, I would be interested to know the cost of getting one to Australia.

Cheers,

Ray

P.s, all of these Lenehan owners still awake at all hours makes me think Mike Lenehan must be getting something very right..

 

Ray,

 

The ones I purchased are 2 x 15HP down firing black cone with 600WRMS H600PEQ3 amp "single shot" Piano Black @ $1495.00 each.

 

Jim can organise airfreight but the cost was significant...about $900 each plus local delivery, GST etc...so I went with sea freight. MUCH cheaper but takes around 3 months form departure to arrival. Mine arrived and even the outer cardboard boxes were in perfect condition. Please note though these are NOT small subs & will be the biggest single item in any room...there is nowhere to hide them.

 

Given the reputation that Rythmik subs have...marrying Rythmik electronics with Salk Sub Box build philosophy just made sense to me...so I rolled the dice but still do not know if I have a winner...I will paste some photos once the room is finished...hopefully before Mike departs for his OS holiday...Rob 

Edited June 8, 2013 by Rob181

[Ray H]

Thanks for the info Rob, they certainly look impressive for sure. I would be surprised if they don't have a positive effect in your system.

Best of luck,

Ray.

[bhobba]

  On 08/06/2013 at 8:23 AM, tktran said:

A single 6.5" driver sounds richer and more detailed than the larger woofer of the same make is not being it because it has MORE non-linear distortion below 100Hz, not less. You can measure it, you can hear it. But how you describe it is different to how I describe it. Some like it rich, I like it clean. Some like to fast, I like it with dramatic and with full scale impact.

 

I am a bit confused here.

 

I know Mike measures a lot of stuff with his speakers including distortion, so if he says its lower distortion then I suspect it's from measurements.

 

I guess Mike is the only one that can clarify it.

 

Thanks

Bill

[Luc]

But do they play Tina?

[tktran]

Good point Bill,

Mike could you provide a sweep from say 20Hz to 200Hz for the fundamental and their harmonics F2-F6 (or higher, if available) for the ML1 vs ML2 vs ML3?

I don't mean 100dB, just 90dB/1m (2-4 watts will do it)

Edited June 8, 2013 by tktran

[Rob181]

  On 08/06/2013 at 11:51 AM, Luc said:

But do they play Tina?

 

Only if she has VERY BIG balls....Rob

[AudioGeek]

I have a single forward firing 15hp sealed rhythmik sub. It can keep up with my electrostats!

You will not be dissapointed with the salk subs. And you will be able to quickly identify any structural issues with your house.

[Rob181]

  On 08/06/2013 at 7:38 PM, AudioGeek said:

I have a single forward firing 15hp sealed rhythmik sub. It can keep up with my electrostats!

You will not be dissapointed with the salk subs. And you will be able to quickly identify any structural issues with your house.

 

AG mine are also sealed...you loose a bit of bottom end but you gain with speed & accuracy...though so far that is based on theory only...Rob

[AudioGeek]

When I was looking at the rhythmik range they could not make the downward firing version of the 15hp as it jumped around too much. So I guess salk have overcome this. My sub is allready 50kg and a pain to move around. You must have arms like tree trunks!

There are lots of movies to test subs, but not as much music. I have a collection of bass tracks in flac, free downloads from a variety of places. I can pass them on if you like. I can imagine that 2 sealed 15's would do some serious damage!

[Cafad]

  On 08/06/2013 at 11:51 AM, Luc said:

But do they play Tina?

 

  On 08/06/2013 at 12:25 PM, Rob181 said:

Only if she has VERY BIG balls....Rob

 

So that would be Turner, not Arena!

[bhobba]

  On 09/06/2013 at 2:08 AM, Cafad said:

So that would be Turner, not Arena!

 

It's physical

Only logical

You must try to ignore

That it means more than that

 

Thanks

Bill

[bhobba]

Hi Guys

 

Heard Rob's speakers again today - this time with the ground-planeing connected and special stands for the crossover.

 

It sounded cleaner and clearer to me - not so much an increase in detail - but a cleaner sort of a sound.  I had a careful listen to Dianna Krall - A Case Of You that I know really well - I couldn't really hear the audience talking I had heard with other limited (the ones with the copper) but it was definitely cleaner and clearer. 

 

The other thing we tried was bi-wireing.  It was subtle but it was felt to be a worthwhile difference - it sounded slightly richer and more natural to me - it also seemed to be material dependent - on some we couldn't hear any difference at all.  If it wasn't a fairly cheap thing to have done I personally wouldn't bother but since its not that expensive its probably worth a go.  The other thing I would like to try some time is actual passive biamping which would be interesting.

 

Thanks

Bill.

Edited June 11, 2013 by bhobba

[ljmac]

  On 11/06/2013 at 11:14 AM, bhobba said:

Hi Guys

 

Heard Rob's speakers again today - this time with the ground-planeing connected and special stands for the crossover.

 

It sounded cleaner and clearer to me - not so much an increase in detail - but a cleaner sort of a sound.  I had a careful listen to Dianna Krall - A Case Of You that I know really well - I couldn't really hear the audience talking I had heard with other limited (the ones with the copper) but it was definitely cleaner and clearer. 

I'm very curious about this - I can imagine some improvements from the copper, but obviously greater detail retrieval isn't something I'd expect. I rejected the copper partly on the basis of cost, but mostly on the basis of weight - something I haven't regretted while I've been setting up my own pair over the past couple of weeks. :-)

  On 11/06/2013 at 11:14 AM, bhobba said:

The other thing we tried was bi-wireing.  It was subtle but it was felt to be a worthwhile difference - it sounded slightly richer and more natural to me - it also seemed to be material dependent - on some we couldn't hear any difference at all.  If it wasn't a fairly cheap thing to have done I personally wouldn't bother but since its not that expensive its probably worth a go.  The other thing I would like to try some time is actual passive biamping which would be interesting.

 

Thanks

Bill.

This is of great interest to me as well - I was considering getting mine bi-wirable as well, until I heard the bybees and considered the cost of two sets of them (along with two sets of speaker cables)! Mike was adamant that bi-wiring made negligible difference to his speakers (with previous speakers I've owned the difference was huge), so it's reassuring to have this confirmed.

[Rob181]

  On 11/06/2013 at 4:20 PM, ljmac said:

This is of great interest to me as well - I was considering getting mine bi-wirable as well, until I heard the bybees and considered the cost of two sets of them (along with two sets of speaker cables)! Mike was adamant that bi-wiring made negligible difference to his speakers (with previous speakers I've owned the difference was huge), so it's reassuring to have this confirmed.

 

This was my "must have" companion to the external crossovers...my speakers can be run using the external crossovers or by removing the crossovers altogether & using a DEXQ (or similar) with multiple amps.

 

Not many speakers give you that flexibility...it is easy to do while they are being built...but much more expensive after the fact...Rob 

Edited June 11, 2013 by Rob181

[Lenehan Audio]

  On 11/06/2013 at 4:20 PM, ljmac said:

I'm very curious about this - I can imagine some improvements from the copper, but obviously greater detail retrieval isn't something I'd expect. I rejected the copper partly on the basis of cost, but mostly on the basis of weight - something I haven't regretted while I've been setting up my own pair over the past couple of weeks. :-)

This is of great interest to me as well - I was considering getting mine bi-wirable as well, until I heard the bybees and considered the cost of two sets of them (along with two sets of speaker cables)! Mike was adamant that bi-wiring made negligible difference to his speakers (with previous speakers I've owned the difference was huge), so it's reassuring to have this confirmed.

Hi Lee

             yes there was a small but identifiable improvement across the board with bi wiring ! there are two reasons for this I think.

 

             1. Both highpass and lowpass sections of the Xover are correctly star grounded to there respective ground posts. This means that every component that has to go to ground (black terminal) within the Xover gets it's own uninterupted personal wire back to the black ground post.  Most second ,third and fourth order Xovers have from 3 to 5 ground components in the tweeter Xover HighPass alone and then 2 to 3 grounds in the woofer or Lowpass part of the Xover.

 

                 With a normal production speaker this means a little more cost in parts and a ton more in time and labour . In your typical off the shelf $5000 biwired standmount with an el cheapo Printed circuit board Xover this could mean an extra $1 - $3 in parts and $10- $15 in labour ! Thats a big no no for a loudspeaker that has to have the typical 10:1 sell price to manufacturing cost ratio.

 

                With any of our loudspeakers from Reference level on up we use handbuilt copper ribbon wiring kits for all the internal Xover duties. each kit for Reference (for two speakers ) takes about 5hours to build not counting the installation time into the Xover proper. In the case of the ML2 Limited the Ribbon wire is cut in a proprietary fashion and also in different widths ( AWG ) in respect of it's Voltage duties.

 

               Ground wiring within a loudspeaker Xover is very very important ! it's not generally exposed or spoken about much in the industry because ! Hey ! it's inside ! it's not flashy and come on !! how much extra Pride of ownership does this invoke when you cant see it ?

 

               The next big move forward in Loudspeaker wiring will come with our new StarDrive wiring platform which will run in the case of the ML2Limited 8 separate wires from the Xover all the way to the amplifier terminals. This will extract all the performance that the commercial Bi Wire easy to implement protocol promised.

 

               More on this later I gotta do some work               Best Regards Mike Lenehan        LenehanAudio  

[Lenehan Audio]

Hi  Lee         sorry I forgot the second reason we could have got such a great result with bi wiring Robs speakers.    We were using Cat5 wire as the jumper links when running  with one pair of RibbonTek speaker cables. Cat 5 sounds quite OK actually but this was a variable that should be mentioned.              Regards MIke Lenehan

[ljmac]

  On 11/06/2013 at 8:23 PM, Rob181 said:

This was my "must have" companion to the external crossovers...my speakers can be run using the external crossovers or by removing the crossovers altogether & using a DEXQ (or similar) with multiple amps.

 

Not many speakers give you that flexibility...it is easy to do while they are being built...but much more expensive after the fact...Rob 

Hi Rob. Isn't what you're referring to a function of having external crossovers anyway? Of course my speakers have separate runs from the tweeter and woofer to the crossover - I would still be able to replace the crossover with DEQX as you suggest.

 

  On 11/06/2013 at 11:09 PM, LenehanAudio said:

Hi  Lee         sorry I forgot the second reason we could have got such a great result with bi wiring Robs speakers.    We were using Cat5 wire as the jumper links when running  with one pair of RibbonTek speaker cables. Cat 5 sounds quite OK actually but this was a variable that should be mentioned.              Regards MIke Lenehan

Hi Mike. Yeah, this is always a major complication when doing bi-wire comparisons. Given how small the difference was, it could be explained by this alone I suspect (but I don't actually know of course).

 

I'm very interested in the "star drive" as a future upgrade though, depending on how significant its effect is.