Ah, I missed that. Interesting that Arnie could give it such a great performance even when using just an existing cabinet design. And interesting such a “small“ speaker can be a IRS killer.
From pure specs alone your new speakers seem to be extremely promising!
Two questions;
why didn’t you design more tweeters into the mid one, so that it also has a complete line source in parallel to the midrange ribbons? Just cost reduction measures?
what do you guess how much a design like the one of Arnie‘s prototype would add to MSRP? 5k, 10k?
As speakers often stand in living rooms, design plays a bigger role than with components…could be worth the expense. Arnie’s speaker has a much reduced impact and appearance compared to the above draft. But it seems you didn’t want to use the side firing woofers…
Hi Paul! I’ve a question and a comment about the Model 1, $20k, pair. How much power will the 8” powered woofers get? Wouldn’t dual 12” horizontally opposing subwoofers reduce cabinet vibration thereby distortion over a single 12” sub.
Wau Paul.
I am looking forward to owning a set. In the old Quantum Line Source / QLS-1 there was also a good base between 200-600 hz. Believe it was a philip’s unity. Developing speaker is a cool process. I am looking forward to visiting the new PS audio factory. I am looking forward to seeing the loudspeaker machine room at PS audio. More love from Denmark
There are some advantages to twin opposing woofers but I’ve never been a fan of them unless you can keep the frequency super low. I’d prefer the woofer pointing forward from a performance standpoint. We built hundreds of front facing 12” subwoofers that worked great.
Those are good questions and like I said, we’re not set in our final designs including numbers of midranges. We may add more tweeters to the middle one once we get to voicing. It’s certainly not out of the question. I would be very hesitant to copy the industrial design of another manufacturer so the idea of that doesn’t appeal. Also, while the design is slimmer its shape is a more polarizing type. More people either love it or hate it, something not good if you want to move a lot into homes.
Thanks Paul, I certainly didn’t expect you would want to copy a design exactly, but yes, maybe the consideration to exchange a typical box design towards something slightly more daring and little slimmer. But anyhow, these speakers will be gorgeous, I’m sure. I still wonder if you might design an amp matching exactly the needs of this mid/top range at a later time.
Paul will most certainly correct me if I am wrong. Since the PSA speakers will be voiced with BHK, Stellar and Sprout amplifiers, woulndn’t the mid/high matches go something like this; BHK 300s for the model 1 speakers, BHK 250 or Stellar Series for the model 2 speaker and Stellar Series or Sprout for the model 3 speakers?
What I meant was, that an amp that has just to serve midrange and tweeter might have different design priorities than an amp like the current BHK‘s which certainly also had a strong priority to deliver geat bass performance.
My guess is that an amp designed specifically for just the mid/top frequency area might sound better there than a big BHK, maybe even at a lower price. Would be interesting.
At last many will experiment with various smaller tube amps I guess.
Jazznut, Paul stated in one of his later videos, that a 400Hz instead of 50/60Hz switching frequency did wonders for the mid/high frequencies…?!?
So a Power Plant with 400Hz and a specially designed 400Hz amp seems like an idea…
Speakers of course look very interesting, but I’m a little disappointed you only plan on one 12" woofer…reminds me of my old Infinity IRS Epsilon. While the quality of bass was excellent, the quantity just wasn’t there and I lusted for Betas instead…
But of course, your upcoming stackable subs will likely solve that problem…
The BHK 300s are more renowned for mids & highs than their bass.
In fact Stereophile’s conclusion is the BHK 300s are great amplififiers for mids & highs. We can’t fault Bascom, Arnie and/or Paul for this because they all use/d systems with powered subwoofers to handle the bottom octave as we all should.
Lastly, Paul mentioned the upcoming speaks would have a 97 dB efficiency (sensitivity) rating and could produce 120 decibels of uncompressed sound. In order to get the mids & highs of a speaker specced at 97 dB to produce 120 decibels, you need an amp rated at 256 watts per channel. Aka Stellar M700s, BHK 250 or BHK 300s.
Just to remind people that the Fremer stereophile review above only used the BHK 300’s with single ended inputs, so I’m not sure that any deficiencies noted represent what the amps can do in a balanced system.
Now that we know the folded ribbon midrange is part of the design I think this bodes very well for the potential of the speaker.
A friend recently found a pair of Adam powered speakers (with folded ribbon tweeter) being discarded. Once he replaced a faulty switch, the speakers worked perfectly, and we sat them on top of a pair of elac unify bookshelves, and powered them via sprout 100’s variable output.
Adding a ribbon tweeter to the elac created a much more airy extended top end and sence of height and staging (once I blended the two speakers levels and position)
I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of Heil driver but now that I have I really can’t wait for ps audio’s implementation.
Thanks again to Paul for sharing these early renderings of the speakers.
My personal travel from mesh dome tweeters (which I preferred to metal domes even in the car) over magnetostatics, electrostatics and Fostex ribbons ended at the AMT‘s. They are fantastic and you’ll hear a lot of differentiation others can’t.
Thanks Paul for sharing the artist impression of the speakers.
Is it just me, anybody thinks the speaker doesn’t look very PS-Audio-ish? Perhaps I’m used to the clean lines of the power coated silver aluminium finish look on the DAC, transport, etc. And due to the polished walnut (?) finish on either sides of the speaker, it looks a bit grandpa style.
I’m guessing there will be other more modern finishes to choose from? And probably the safer (higher Wife Acceptance Factor) piano black? Or other matte finish wood veneers?
@Paul do you reckon the smallest speaker would still have a low frequency performance similar to the bigger siblings? Approx how low can these dive? Below 30Hz?
Agree. I imagine it to be a very difficult task to design a good and modern looking speaker with a front facing 12 inch woofer. The speaker needs to be quite wide and therefore looks bulky in most cases.
Maybe aim for a cleaner and more retro-modern design like the JBL L100 Classic or ATCs SCM series.
Or take a look at the Beolab 50 from B&O. Those speakers are the best example of how to build a gorgeous and modern looking speaker with a big woofer at the front.
