TAS Total Victory Review

I read the reived, and I disagree with your assessment. I think HP had some trouble with a sibilance from the single ribbon used, and was curious if multible ribbons were used instead, and or if some of the sub-cabinets were larger. He would definitely use them for multichannel systems and states this in the review. This could make Coincident a lot of green.

I believe he found them a fascinating review since they revealed the sonic characteristics of the amplifiers used so effectively. I took his criticism as a challange to Israel Blume, the designer, to make small modifications that would then make this speaker the killer of the Alon's, Pipedreams, and other high five to six figure speakers. Just imagine a $12,000 speaker that beats the pants off of the no limitation exapmles, among others (I'm sure they are super fine, but not everyone has unlimited funds). It would be beneficial to you to reach the previous years or so issues of TAS with HP giving teases as to what came in the review. My take was he wanted them to be the "giant killers". I would also look for Mr. Blume to respond, this would be very insightful, at least to me, and I am tempted to e-mail him.

Finally, as a lover of Rock and Jazz, but not classical, these may be great speakers with moderate watt tube amps for me. Not everyone needs to reproduce the orchestra in their home.

Try them out, don't let the "old man" deter you if you like them.

Regards,

Tubeperson

I own these speakers, and I just read the review. My reaction was that HP overall really liked the Total Victories, but found a couple of areas where their peerformance wasn't to his taste. Fair enough, though it says something about his perspective when he characterizes a $12,000 speaker as being essentially in the middle of the pack :-/

Do I agree with his assessment? Well, I've never identified the shortcomings he described (a problem in the low range of the tweeter, and another glitch around 100 Hz) in my own system. This could be due to several factors. My highly damped 12x18 room is probably very different from his. My amps (Wavelength Tritons) are very different from anything he tried. My digital front end (an Audio Note 4.1x Balanced Signature) sounds better through the entire treble range than any other DAC I've heard. My preamp (a Bent Audio TVC) adds very little character to the signal. My cables (Argent Audio Pursang) are by a wide margin the very best I've heard.

There are other reasons I may not have heard these shortcomings. I certainly don't have the experience or standards for comparison that HP does, and it might also be that the music I play doesn't highlight the problems.

So, it could be that the problems he discusses just aren't there in my system, or maybe they are there but I can't identify them. I really can't say which is more likely (though I know which I "want" to say is more likely...).

I had a get-together with four other audiophiles over the weekend, all of whom are very experienced (TAS Issue 1 subscriber types) who have extensive exposure to various models of Israel's speakers. The consensus was that my system is doing pretty much everything right.

So what can I say? HP is one man, albeit a very experenced and astute one, listening in the context of his own systems and his own expectations. In the context of my system and my expectations, I find the TVs to be utterly satisfying, even magical music-makers. IMO they're worth every nickel of $12,000. And anyone who takes the printed word of one man over their own judgement is missing the point of this hobby.

Israel Blume's speakers are very well designed and executed, and any time you're trying to build a very high efficiency speaker you'll have to make some compromises. That being said, how many upper-90's efficient, easy-to-drive, low coloration, slim profile, yet still having a very nice bottom end speakers are out there? Sure HP picked a nit or two, but I wonder how many speakers whose midrange he wouldn't fault can rival the liveliness of the big Coincidents, much less for same ballpark price.

Nope, I don't sell 'em - but I do admire 'em.

Duke