Quote:The suspense! The anticipation!
Won't be long and the waiting will be over and several of us will have ERRs in the living room!
Life is good!
:)
Can't wait to hear impressions.
Well I believe that I can offer the earliest of impressions of these speakers auditioned within an acoustically acceptable room, powered by Decware components and non-Decware components. I can also base my perception of these in respect to past experience with the very first radial models ever produced. Things have come a long way here across the board, as not only the look and build reveals, but also equal by proportion to the broadening of sound improvement as well.
What always struck me about the early radial designs was the effortless sound dispersion that maintained an impervious nature for which to counter bad room acoustics.
Unfortunately, the very foundation which made these speakers sound so special was also that which became its worst detriment. That being the limitations of the cylinder itself. The sound did not relate to the coloration known to typical box speakers, this of which the cylindrical shape was directly responsible. The drawback was limitation in the low frequency response.
The continued modification of the passive-loaded base design of the RL-2’s and beyond offered a tremendous degree of improvement over the original design. This was however taken to the maximum potential for which the cylinder could offer. This concept deserved better. This meant that a total revamp in design was necessary to progress beyond these boundaries.
What really evolved here was the hybrid formation of the best factors concerning the cylinder radial design and that of the much costlier RL-3 design. The best of both concepts merged as one to create a better sounding speaker then either of the predecessors for which these design factors was derived. That which evolved into the current model.
I always preferred the sound and overall attributes that the larger radial driver revealed in the cylinder design. The thing that became immediate to me when I first heard future models built with the smaller diameter radial drivers, was the absence of what made the original drivers sound so special. At the same time, the balance went the other direction with improvement in the lower end, this directly related to the pyramid design. Keep in mind that the older RL-3’s utilized an open passive radiator approach, which depended upon the distance of the floor surface, as well as the composition of the floor for which determined the response. While the improvement seemed significant over the cylinder approach concerning bass issues, I never felt the magic that seemed so apparent in the original radial model concept. There always seems to be a compromise when alterations are made. In this case, I would have opted to maintain the mid-range qualities of the larger driver in the cylinder design over the bass improvement obtained by the newer RL-3 models. The RL-3 models had a completely different nature to them which to me, just seemed to follow all the other standard cabinet designs as far as sound quality was concerned. This all leads to the premise that “The sum of the parts are greater than that of the whole” and it is clearly proven within the following analysis.
So, what was learned from all of this? That neither design had fully obtained a maximum level of quality possible in their limited form. Taken to maximum potential, the sum of the whole now balances out the sum of the parts.
Prior to the new radial designs, (EER’s) as they are now tagged, as revealed at last years Decfest, I was asked to sit down for a listening session with my eyes closed so that I would have no idea as to what was being played in the room. Up to this point, I evaluated the prototypes as they were undergoing different design approaches. One of these approaches involved the use of a full range modified Fostex driver in conjunction with the larger Radial driver as used in the original designs. I liked the sound of that combination very much with a sense that it would have found wide acceptance among most listeners.
We generally listened to the system changes with the exact same source, music selection, and volume to keep things in perspective. Any changes are therefore revealed in a controlled manner that is more easily confirmed.
Well, being that the EER’s were the focus of the previous week with the most concentration applied toward their final form, I suspected that some combination of the radial speaker would be used in this blind test. That was the whole idea. My memory was to serve as the basis for analysis without any visual confirmation to lesson the impact of the final conclusion.
Upon the initial start of the evaluation, I immediately knew that something special had once again abounded my senses for which had been silenced for a very long time. As memory would serve, the first thing that came to mind was the effortless sense of ambience within the room, resembling that of the larger radial drivers used in the early cylindrical designs. There was uniqueness to this sound that separates itself from any other speaker by comparison. At the same time, as the element of surprise revealed, for the first time I was not only re-experiencing the sound quality that always made the larger radial driver sound so special, but now in perfect unity with a seamless progression deep into the lower registers with a sense of speed that was sorely missed in previous designs.
When I first revealed the presence of what I had listened to, it did not surprise me that the Radials were part of the system. What did surprise me was the driver arrangement. An almost exact replica of the original layout concerning the driver array was now integrated into a much superior pyramid foundation. For the first time, the best of old met the best of new and the answer we had desired finally revealed itself in form for which soon came to be the ERR model.
The new approach to using a tunable variable port base assembly for the passive loading proved to be the ultimate advancement. It proved so worthy that we wasted no time modifying older designs with this concept, all with superior levels of gain. This quickly became the standard in design with benefits that were previously unobtainable.
To go back and listen to any cabinet without this modification will noticeably sound bloated and constricted by comparison. The modification allows for far more precise detail to be heard with a sense of deeper cognition to information, which now conveys important relevance to its substance. There is a strong sense of rhythmic pace, snap, and emotional connection that seemed out of sync prior to the modification.
To sum up: what is available here is the answer to what so many requested the ideal speaker to sound like. The one thing that most radial owners wanted was for improvement in bass response without losing any of the special qualities in the mid-range which made these speakers so alluring from the start. This latest radial design represents full circle evolution to what the concept should have been in the initial concept. Time has definitely made a marked improvement here as most previous owners of past designs will quickly agree. I can definitely proclaim that the magic is back and it just got better!