(15-Sep-2016, 07:52)ogs Wrote: I was probably lucky when I borrowed Phantoms and Dialog from my dealer. The units remembered settings from the shop and worked without any setup. I used optical in on Dialog and noticed the noise. Around every minute... so it was quite annoying. Devialet confirms the error and has promised a fix this month, as you say.
The ESL 63 is indeed a point source design. One of the few time-coherent designs which one can see from the step response: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/archiv...ADFIG5.jpg . Stereophile even published square wave plots for the speaker! I am all for point source speakers and even more pro time-coherent designs. Unfortunately the Phantom I tried (White) is not a true time-coherent design despite being designed the way it is. Drive units are not corrected in the time domain even if the speaker has lots of DSP power available. Maybe (hopefully) this is one of the improvements of Golds.
EDIT: I guess this thread belongs under 'Phantom'? Rufus? Guillaume?
Interestingly, Peter Walker himself did not attach much importance to the phase true time aligned nature of the Quad ESL 63, which is more or less a consequence of the design. Few other designs are time-aligned and phase true, e.g. Thief loudspeakers are an exception. It's unclear how important time alignment is to our enjoyment of music.
Getting back to the music, one of the joys of owning the Phantom Gold is that you can finally start enjoying all your cherished organ music. Let's begin with the great French organist Jean Guillou. He made many fine recordings, but his best surely is for the late lamented Dorian label. These are minimalist recordings made with state of the art equipment. One of his most thrilling recordings is the warhorse Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. If you haven't heard this piece, it was originally written for the piano by Mussorgsky in memory of his friend, a painter.The idea behind the piece is that each track corresponds to a painting, and the piece evokes the idea of being in a museum of his artwork, and visiting it painting by painting. It has been scored for full orchestra by Maurice Ravel, the well known French composer, and this is the version most familiar to classic music listeners. There is also an organ version, and this is the version played by Jean Guillou.
https://www.amazon.com/Mussorgsky-Pictur...B000001Q80
This is an organ recording with truly low frequencies. When I played it back through the Phantom Gold's, with a volume of 55, my whole room was energized, and the windows were rattling, the bookcase behind started to shudder. Needless to say, my dogs freaked out! Truly low bass is felt more like a pressure wave, and this is what the Phantom Gold's can reproduce with great accuracy. This is a great demo disc for the Phantom's if you want to show off their low bass capabilities. Also, few loudspeakers can reproduce low bass with accurate pitch. The Phantom's low bass does not degenerate into mush, like cheap subwoofers. It remains articulate and well-defined.
A great example of the dynamic range of the Phantom is to play one of Tchaikovsky's famous pieces, the haunting Marche Slav (or Slavic March). Few composers could write music as haunting and melodic as Tchaikovsky. This is a beautiful piece for full orchestra, that begins very quietly with the main theme played softly back on strings, and then slowly builds up to a shattering climax. When the bass drum kicks in after two and a half minutes, my entire living room seemed to shudder. The speakers completely disappear in such recordings, and even though I have fairly high ceilings (10 feet), the sound soars above till the very top of the walls to the ceiling. The effect is completely mesmerizing.
The Phantom is one of the rare loudspeakers that makes you want to dig into all your favorite recordings to hear them again, in a new light.
Now if only Devialet would fix the pesky bug with the optical connection, that would be welcome!
