Loudspeaker Shock Discovery

I recently put together a budget hifi system for my brother based around XX (of course) a NOS DAC (not NOS1 as funds would not allow) and my old Gainclone amps (pre my current bridged GC amp). I will post separately about his new budget system soon but the SQ from that cheap system turned out to be outrageously good and far exceeds what I expected from it.

Anyway this post is about the loudspeakers. I knew the front end deserved good speakers but I was at a total loss as to what speakers to get as funds would only stretch to around £400. Don't laugh but yes that was the budget for the speakers.

In the end I settled on a pair of S2tlm RT1.3WE Ribbon transmission line speakers from IPL Acoustics. There were some good reviews and whilst they needed some hard work on my part to build them at least fitted the budget. I was not expecting particularly great things but thought they may be OK and the best compromise for a budget system.

So after building them the time came to try them out. I fired them up in my system (taking care to move speakers out of the room) and sat down to listen hoping they would sound at least "OK". I sat there open mouthed I could not believe what I was hearing. These were very fine speakers indeed and then after about 20 hours burn they really started to perform.

And here is the shock they actually sounded better than my own speakers. How could that be? I was not tempted to bring my own speakers back into the room. The sound from the IPL's is more neutral, more detailed top end better controlled bass. And the S2's are no where big enough for my huge room.

My friend David (who has very expensive highly regarded transmission line speakers with Musical Fidelity front end) came for a listen and was astounded with what he heard. So much so I agreed to build him a pair of IPL S4 speakers which he now has replaced his old speakers with. I have to tell you that the S4's absolutely trounce Davids other speakers in just about every area. This is what David emailed to me yesterday:

"The speakers now are quite literally light years ahead of what we heard from --- speakers, I have never, anywhere, at any price, heard sound of this quality, now they are just sending little shivers with each new disc. just listened to Tom Waits, voice was just so amazing, listened to Floyd and scale of image just blew me away, I am now addicted to a Weather Report again because the huge scale of sound, musically and sheer rhythmic coherence- just makes it an absolute blast. I am holding back on the ultimate of Massive Attack."

And I agree with David these speakers are truly outstanding I ran them in my system for a week and they produced easily the best sounds I have heard from any system.

The most impressive characteristics of the SQ of these fine speakers is they are so neutral - I have never heard any box speaker that is so clean and neutral sounding.

I have now had a number of discussions with Ivan of IPL and I am very very impressed with his engineering and technical approach. I really think that Ivan is to speaker design what Peter is to PC/DAC front ends.

So now I am building the top of the range IPL S5's and cannot wait to get them finished.

Pictures attached of the S2's and S4's

	Author	Topic: Loudspeaker Shock Discovery (Read 14797 times)
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