green mountains

03-28-12: Prdprez
...........
Just one error though.......
Meadowlark and Thiel ARE time and phase coherent speakers.
........

yeah, I know that Thiel does advertise that their speakers are phase coherent but I do not believe that to be true hence my statement the way it was written.
Here is some proof to back up why I do not think that Thiels are phase coherent:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs6-loudspeaker-measurements
This is for a Thiel CS6 speaker. Look at Fig 1 which shows the impedance & phase plots. The phase is all over the place going from -45 deg at 45Hz to +22.5 deg at 20KHz & every phase angle in between. IMHO this is hardly phase coherent!

http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs24-loudspeaker-measurements
This is for a more recent Thiel CS2.4 speaker with the review done in late 2005. Again, look at Fig 1 which shows the impedance & phase plots. It's worse the older CS6 speaker as there's even more phase shift in the 20Hz-20KHz audio band!! Once again, hardly phase coherent; au contraire, it's quite phase incoherent.

In comparison, look at the impedance & phase plots in Fig 1 of an older Green Mountain Audio speaker - the Diamante. This review was done in 1998. Look how flat the phase response is in the 200Hz - 20KHz range. Very nice indeed! Now, this sort of speaker is distorting the phase minimal hence far, far more phase coherent. There is a dip in the phase to -30deg at 70Hz due to the bass enclosure (the bottom rectangular box).
http://www.stereophile.com/content/green-mountain-audio-diamante-loudspeaker-measurements

GMA has a white-paper on its web site concerning time allignment and phase coherance and the relationship between the two. About half way into it, they make the point that time coherance is the condition for phase coherance-- not the other way around as mentioned above.

http://www.greenmountainaudio.com/time-and-phase-coherence/

I recently had a two-week audition of the Eos-HX monitor. The HX reportedly reduces phase shift to +/- 1 degree across a wider frequency range than with prior Eos iterations. I liked these speakers very much-- particularly good value at their $4K MSRP.

Bombaywalla, perhaps I'm the one that's mistaken, but I think you might be confusing electrical phase for mechanical phase?

Thiel's previous products before the use of concentric drivers had different plots, e.g.:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs2-2-loudspeaker-measurements

http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs36-loudspeaker-measurements

http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs5-loudspeaker-measurements-0

BTW, for those that might not have been aware of this (IMHO, perhaps the best thread to ever appear on Audiogon):

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1032037028&openflup&151&4#151

I agree with Bombaywalla's post. Although I have not heard the RIOs, I did hear one of the last Europas at GMA and I own a pair of the first EOS made (recently upgraded by Roy to EOS HX). Each EOS is supported on LF by a GMA Hammer Lite using an Audio Control Richter Scale III low pass xver at 48 Hz, no high pass filter used for the EOS. Each of the 4 speakers are fed by ~200w monoblocks - new Hypex NCore for EOS, W4S SX-500 for Hammer. I listen mostly to acoustic music - classical, country, folk, and some classic rock and jazz. The 200 watts is much more than is needed to drive these speakers to very loud levels. The EOSs provide very accurate and realistic music reproduction, be it seated at the "sweet spot", standing 3-4 feet behind, or even in the next room (listening to a CD of the same musician playing the same Bach violin sonata on the same Strad that I heard live at a local performance while walking in the foyer of a local hall). I have no reason to change to anything else; the GMA speakers - EOS and Hammer Lite - are bargains in the current market.

Georger,

I feel the same way as you do about my C3 HDs. Sometimes I have fleeting thoughts about upgrading to something else, then I spend a few hours with them and those thoughts are chased away.

Shakey