That’s pretty close. Hoping for Q1 of 2019 but…
I’ve addressed some of this in tomorrow’s post of which your question sparked. Thanks for that. Much has to do with voicing and the energy distribution between frequency transducers.
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Paul, is the active mid & bass section designed like an active speaker (no passive crossover, one amp per chassis) or is it one amp driving into a crossover then chassis?
There will be two separate internal power amplifiers, one for the midbass and another for the woofer. Each has its own servo system and active crossover. The woofer will be DSP controlled while the midbass a simple active analog crossover. Each has very specific tasks that have to happen which is why they are separately amplified and controlled and could never be done passively - and why the speaker’s expensive to build.
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Can be hard to remove the room from the toe-in equation. I guess you can talk about how they work in free space, but probably most users setups are less than ideal in that regard, and minimizing sidewall bounce, etc. with a bit of toe-in usually helps.
One speaker I can think of - sadly leaving behind in my move : ( - are Quads. Dipoles, like the IRS, and like to be out from the wall quite a bit. They both can be toed in right at your head (or just behind) giving imaging like a giant pair of headphones, yet still fill a room beautifully in a way regular speakers don’t. It seems to be about how the big time-aligned wave propagates from their big surfaces.
Awesome!
I recently looked at Vandersteen‘s flagship, which is a nice and very small (42,5“ tall) extreme high end speaker. While such speakers i.e. also share the active bass module, the other design aspects and ingredients of the PSA speakers still look (probably sound) much more promising. This being said, the Vandersteen is 62k while the corresponding PSA AN3 is somewhere at 10k. Fascinating.
It think if you also care for cabinet rigidity and design, you really create an exceptional bargain, even is it gets a little more expensive by some design adjustments caused by feedback.
While many speaker designers claim wide dispersion. it is exceedingly difficult to accomplish in practice. Sound becomes more and more directional with frequency and the smaller waves do not “curve around” surfaces as do bass waves.
To produce perfect wide dispersion one needs an infinitely small point source with no baffle. (Which, as an aside, is essentially what acoustic instruments do - many, many point sources of sound all over the instrument - and one of the reasons I believe speakers never sound like an actual instrument.)
Even hideously expensive, highly regarded speakers high frequency response falls off rapidly horizontally and, perhaps more significantly, vertically (even just 5 degrees above or below the listening axis). That is, they become highly directional.
Many speakers exhibit wonderful dispersion below 5kHz or so. The vast majority of musical information is covered within this frequency range. However, the real magic is getting it right above this which, as a matter of physics, is exceedingly difficult.
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Maybe this is why omnidirectional speakers‘ sound is so close to a real orchestra’s performance but so far from our hifi habits.
And it is why I wonder when it’s tried to achieve both, as they often contradict each other.
Apropos off axis response and radiation angle. There’s a new initiative of a wide radiating AMT driver…something for Paul‘s new speakers to get a wide sweet spot? 
Beautifully worded and absolutely correct, Elk.
This was invented by a friend of ours, EJ Christiansen of Colorado. It’s a neat design. Not an AMT, though.
Wild. They look dangerous.
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strange, I just read it in a hifi magazine…the headline is „british start up revolutionizes AMT design with omnidirectional driver“
[quote=“jazznut, post:330, topic:3431, full:true”]
Maybe this is why omnidirectional speakers‘ sound is so close to a real orchestra’s performance but so far from our hifi habits.
I have used omnidirectional Shahinian Diapason speakers for over 25 years. Currently on my 4th pair. When I listen to any other speaker, even the latest models getting rave reviews in the magazines, they all sound Hi-FI compared to the Diapasons. I bring home new speakers to try out and I do my utmost to get the best sound possible in my room but, I always gravitate back to the natural sound of the live performance from the big omni speakers: - through conventional box speakers I listen to the loudspeaker ….! Classical music and Jazz I am in a live space with the performers… it’s compelling. Rock music as well. They excel with acoustic instruments…… they sound so darn real, the acoustic space of the venue, - just an effortlessness performance all round…
The sound of omnidirectional speakers is part of me now… no cure. I remember John Atkinson reviewed them and he slaughtered them. But they mustn’t have been run-in – either that or his ears were blocked – the run-in is brutal on Shahinian Diapasons…
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I am very intrigued by the mid bass on these speakers.
When you think about it the midbass region is where you get a lot of resonance from a lot of instruments. Many people don’t realize that the bass and midbass have to be in the right proportion or the music loses its real ness. By having them indepently adjustable is really exciting!
I could be wrong but it sure looks like EJ’s omni ribbon tweeter.
indeed! wouldn’t be the first time a magazine is wrong.
I have the same memory from the Diapason‘s in my school era that were standing in the music classroom. There’s nothing better than omnidirectional if one wants to listen to music without having to sit at a dedicated sweet spot.
I am very interested in the AN-3 but only if it has a front firing woofer like shown earlier in the thread. I personally hate narrow speakers, they represent compromise based only on domestic harmony. I may be an exception as my current speakers are 28.5 inches wide.
The renders posted by Paul are beautifully balanced. Side firing woofers would steer me to the Magico A3’s.
Agreed. In fact it is the most exciting feature of the entire loudspeaker in my opinion (other than maybe the AMT midrange). The ability to set there speakers up for best imaging and use the midbass control to dial in tonality is a freedom rarely enjoyed by people. Extraordinary results happen when you enable this feature.