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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 22:12:57 GMT
This old Grandad of a speaker deserves a thread. I only know ES11. How does the 14 sound in comparison? Do both have a close relation in the midrange? Similar traits etc?? Jesus wept, imagine if Robin Marshall saw this thread! Can see him calling me a stupid person. S.
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Post by pauld on Jun 12, 2018 22:48:15 GMT
The ES14 is like a big version of the ES11 and is the original Epos model. It has similar traits but with a deeper bass and bigger sound overall. Great speaker.
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Post by dsjr on Jun 13, 2018 7:07:39 GMT
The E11 sounded muted in comparison and we never had any difficulty selling up. I suspect the Es11 is 'technically' the more 'accurate' one, but the 14 just *communicates* so very well. Ugly tall stands aside, I'd have another pair and work with them, but probably in walnut this time and with replacement foam grilles if I could find some, as they just took the sting out of the tweeter.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 13, 2018 8:43:21 GMT
They certainly have “something” that makes them special. I really think there was more to be had from the design too. The cabinets and stuffing were weaknesses. The stuffing was horrible hard foam which did something really nasty to the sound IMO. Far too much of it too. The cabinet brace was ineffective and (IMO) badly designed and they rang like bells when unstuffed. Brace the cabinets, throw away the foam and damp the cabinet walls and I reckon they would be even better.
Sorry, if I’m being blunt, but there’s so much more I feel you could do to them.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2018 8:58:43 GMT
You should try telling that to Robin's face S.
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Post by antonio on Jun 13, 2018 9:22:48 GMT
In hindsight, he might have agreed with Westie.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 13, 2018 11:09:06 GMT
You should try telling that to Robin's face S. He put quite a bit of thought into the bracing, but I do think he would do it differently today. I remember reading his thoughts on speaker cabinet effect. He wasn’t fascinated with how well behaved small plywood cabinets were. He came to a conclusion that it was snotty down to small panel size. He put a metal tension rod inside the Epos to hopefully cure this. I’m not convinced it was a good choice. For one thing it isn’t least effective when the cabinet expands and most effective in preventing inward movement. That doesn’t seem logical to me. Secondly it was resonant. I know, because I tapped it! I’d have fitted a horizontal “shelf” brace with a large cutout, I’d also have ditched that god awful foam and used perforated steel plates on the cabinet walls, fixed with flexible mastic adhesive. I’m convinced perforated steel is better than solid steel. For one it’s less cumbersome., but I also like the way the flexible mastic adhesive wells up into the perforations. Not only does it make for a strong bond, it also damps any ringing for the steel, I did this in my DIY cubettes and I was convinced it was better than steel plate.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2018 12:15:04 GMT
Have you ever met Robin, Andrew?
S.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 13, 2018 15:23:20 GMT
I’m afraid not. I followed every word he said for a number of years though, I found him incredibly honest about what he had done wrong or failed to consider fully in his own designs. If you are never wrong you cannot evolve and improve. He struck me as someone who was always learning and always open. Dave knew him so he will know far more
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Post by dsjr on Jun 13, 2018 15:44:11 GMT
I'd have said it to Robin's face too - and he'd have come back with a witty and almost sarcastic reply as well You're right Andrew. He did learn and refine his skills as he went along and put his all into his designs. The ES14 side tie wasn't ever supposed to be tightened up, but should rotate under fairly firm twisting (It was pre-torqued). I've heard that lining the boxes with ceramic tiles can improve them a lot, but never tried it myself. Now, this whole internal cabinet/sonic damping thing! PROPER designers KNOW why they put this stuff in and how much too as it tunes the bass balance as much as anything else and is taken into account with proper designers when the drivers and their damping characteristics are designed as well! - it's not guesswork or the fact that 'Everyone else does, so why not me!' with the people who really know and have full control over what they're doing rather than buying in third party drivers and cobbling a commercial design together. The bloody later ES14's honk if you take the foam bung out and removing all the internal wadding would make it even worse as well as adding to any midrange colouration! Sure, you get a different 'effect' by doing this, but taking it all out isn't better because it's different you know... Maybe a better grade of stuffing, but at the time I'd never contemplate doing this without discussing it properly with himself first! I wanted to bi-wire mine and 'upgrade' the tweeter cap. Robin kindly gave me four matching sockets and two poly caps and told me what might happen. He was spot on - the tweeter could spit even more with the reduced resistance in the better 'caps' and the bi-wiring made next to no difference. I can't remember if they did eventually offer bi-wiring after the move to M-S, but as soon as he started there, Robin effectively lost Epos and had nothing more to do with the brand, including the fussy floor-standers they made subsequently. He wanted to re-work the tweeter and rather than add an inline resistor to tame the sparkle in the later version, he wanted to improve the whole thing. Such a shame he never got the chance and in a later interview, I got the impression that Epos for him was a tiny piece of his history not to be revisited. He may well have retired now, I don't know.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2018 13:29:38 GMT
I'd have said it to Robin's face too - and he'd have come back with a witty and almost sarcastic reply as well You're right Andrew. He did learn and refine his skills as he went along and put his all into his designs. The ES14 side tie wasn't ever supposed to be tightened up, but should rotate under fairly firm twisting (It was pre-torqued). I've heard that lining the boxes with ceramic tiles can improve them a lot, but never tried it myself. Now, this whole internal cabinet/sonic damping thing! PROPER designers KNOW why they put this stuff in and how much too as it tunes the bass balance as much as anything else and is taken into account with proper designers when the drivers and their damping characteristics are designed as well! - it's not guesswork or the fact that 'Everyone else does, so why not me!' with the people who really know and have full control over what they're doing rather than buying in third party drivers and cobbling a commercial design together. The bloody later ES14's honk if you take the foam bung out and removing all the internal wadding would make it even worse as well as adding to any midrange colouration! Sure, you get a different 'effect' by doing this, but taking it all out isn't better because it's different you know... Maybe a better grade of stuffing, but at the time I'd never contemplate doing this without discussing it properly with himself first! I wanted to bi-wire mine and 'upgrade' the tweeter cap. Robin kindly gave me four matching sockets and two poly caps and told me what might happen. He was spot on - the tweeter could spit even more with the reduced resistance in the better 'caps' and the bi-wiring made next to no difference. I can't remember if they did eventually offer bi-wiring after the move to M-S, but as soon as he started there, Robin effectively lost Epos and had nothing more to do with the brand, including the fussy floor-standers they made subsequently. He wanted to re-work the tweeter and rather than add an inline resistor to tame the sparkle in the later version, he wanted to improve the whole thing. Such a shame he never got the chance and in a later interview, I got the impression that Epos for him was a tiny piece of his history not to be revisited. He may well have retired now, I don't know. I've been thinking this for a long time. I dare you to repeat this on HFS. Some people will try and Doc Mod anything apparently.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2018 13:38:32 GMT
I like how my ES11's sound. I'll be leaving them well alone.
S.
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Post by dsjr on Jun 14, 2018 14:23:47 GMT
I'm not doing much on HFS right now.
I was in at the 'take all damping out' scene thirty odd years ago when old friend Jimmy Hughes heard a difference by doing so and pronounced it automatically 'better!' SOME old speakers like Mission 720's were stuffed to the gunwales with wadding and the bass disappeared when we had to replace a couple of bass drivers in a pair, the results much better in comparison with other speakers when half the wadding was removed from each speaker. Maybe the original drivers needed it all in there as I remember the 720 with great (funky) fondness when they were new.
Many of the speakers I've seen the innards of don't 'usually' have much inside and foam lining aside, me old Spendors are hollow, but on the couple of speakers I did try removing stuffing from in the past, voices could sound more hollow and coloured sounding - my take only of course... Believe me, I don't care what others say, we hear voices every day and if a speaker can't 'do' voices very well, it ain't got much chance on convincing music - my take - and I can't demonstrate the fact now, so just words. Each to their own, but I can't come back with properly researched indisputable reasoning.
I just remember a pair of Celestion DL8's which as standard had a smoothly integrated sound, being modded. The restrained upper mid died, the tweeter was replaced with a compression driver and I shudder to think what they sounded like after (I think they were quietly buried!). The Kevlar drivers used for the main Doc-Mods seem to work really well after doping and the pair of speakers made up into heavily modded B&W 303 boxes really sounded great, if a little 'monitor-relentless' for general listening and after Nick G had them, they measured pretty well too, although by this time they looked as though they'd travelled the world a bit and I'm useless at cabinet/finish restoration sadly. There was something else, which had been carefully designed as a cheap pair of reasonable speakers and all manner of mods were done which basically ruined the original performance, which had been carefully conceived by qualified engineers to be good value for money - removing an internal brace and replacing with steel plates and so on...
By all means, make your own speaker carcasses or buy ready built and damp them further, but it's my view that not all speaker design engineers are so deaf they never listen. hell, even Harbeth's designer does any hours of listening and fine tuning once the computer has told him what to do His business is growing fast still, they're rushed off their feet by all accounts and NO WAY will he compromise on his design goals if it meant losing sales and wrecking the company's growth.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 14, 2018 16:59:57 GMT
I'm not doing much on HFS right now.
I was in at the 'take all damping out' scene thirty odd years ago when old friend Jimmy Hughes heard a difference by doing so and pronounced it automatically 'better!' SOME old speakers like Mission 720's were stuffed to the gunwales with wadding and the bass disappeared when we had to replace a couple of bass drivers in a pair, the results much better in comparison with other speakers when half the wadding was removed from each speaker. Maybe the original drivers needed it all in there as I remember the 720 with great (funky) fondness when they were new.
Many of the speakers I've seen the innards of don't 'usually' have much inside and foam lining aside, me old Spendors are hollow, but on the couple of speakers I did try removing stuffing from in the past, voices could sound more hollow and coloured sounding - my take only of course... Believe me, I don't care what others say, we hear voices every day and if a speaker can't 'do' voices very well, it ain't got much chance on convincing music - my take - and I can't demonstrate the fact now, so just words. Each to their own, but I can't come back with properly researched indisputable reasoning.
I just remember a pair of Celestion DL8's which as standard had a smoothly integrated sound, being modded. The restrained upper mid died, the tweeter was replaced with a compression driver and I shudder to think what they sounded like after (I think they were quietly buried!). The Kevlar drivers used for the main Doc-Mods seem to work really well after doping and the pair of speakers made up into heavily modded B&W 303 boxes really sounded great, if a little 'monitor-relentless' for general listening and after Nick G had them, they measured pretty well too, although by this time they looked as though they'd travelled the world a bit and I'm useless at cabinet/finish restoration sadly. There was something else, which had been carefully designed as a cheap pair of reasonable speakers and all manner of mods were done which basically ruined the original performance, which had been carefully conceived by qualified engineers to be good value for money - removing an internal brace and replacing with steel plates and so on...
By all means, make your own speaker carcasses or buy ready built and damp them further, but it's my view that not all speaker design engineers are so deaf they never listen. hell, even Harbeth's designer does any hours of listening and fine tuning once the computer has told him what to do His business is growing fast still, they're rushed off their feet by all accounts and NO WAY will he compromise on his design goals if it meant losing sales and wrecking the company's growth.
I can honestly say my ripping the stuffing out of my Epos was all Jimmys fault! I was an avid reader of his adventures. Looking back, I think Jimmy was the most influential,reviewer for me..krells, Isobarik, Impulses and mad tweaks have all had a lasting effect. I can still remember the eagerness with which I read his monthly column. I would’ve loved to meet him and Malcolm Steward. The rest I couldn’t care less about.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 14, 2018 17:11:12 GMT
I'd have said it to Robin's face too - and he'd have come back with a witty and almost sarcastic reply as well You're right Andrew. He did learn and refine his skills as he went along and put his all into his designs. The ES14 side tie wasn't ever supposed to be tightened up, but should rotate under fairly firm twisting (It was pre-torqued). I've heard that lining the boxes with ceramic tiles can improve them a lot, but never tried it myself. Now, this whole internal cabinet/sonic damping thing! PROPER designers KNOW why they put this stuff in and how much too as it tunes the bass balance as much as anything else and is taken into account with proper designers when the drivers and their damping characteristics are designed as well! - it's not guesswork or the fact that 'Everyone else does, so why not me!' with the people who really know and have full control over what they're doing rather than buying in third party drivers and cobbling a commercial design together. The bloody later ES14's honk if you take the foam bung out and removing all the internal wadding would make it even worse as well as adding to any midrange colouration! Sure, you get a different 'effect' by doing this, but taking it all out isn't better because it's different you know... Maybe a better grade of stuffing, but at the time I'd never contemplate doing this without discussing it properly with himself first! I wanted to bi-wire mine and 'upgrade' the tweeter cap. Robin kindly gave me four matching sockets and two poly caps and told me what might happen. He was spot on - the tweeter could spit even more with the reduced resistance in the better 'caps' and the bi-wiring made next to no difference. I can't remember if they did eventually offer bi-wiring after the move to M-S, but as soon as he started there, Robin effectively lost Epos and had nothing more to do with the brand, including the fussy floor-standers they made subsequently. He wanted to re-work the tweeter and rather than add an inline resistor to tame the sparkle in the later version, he wanted to improve the whole thing. Such a shame he never got the chance and in a later interview, I got the impression that Epos for him was a tiny piece of his history not to be revisited. He may well have retired now, I don't know. I've been thinking this for a long time. I dare you to repeat this on HFS. Some people will try and Doc Mod anything apparently. My take on it is that foam or wool damping is a negative, but it may be less bad than the cabinet resonances it treats. I can imagine many instances where removal is undesirable..I’ve tried it on many speakers so I do have some experience. There’s also a difference in damping materials. Block foam is worst, followed by that stuff which resembles duvet material. The coarse grey woolly stuff is least worst. There’s also a question of how much to use. The ES14s were totally full, which I think was to address the ringing cabinet. It worked but at a price. ES14s would be my no1 candidate for modding because foam removal gave the biggest uplift in life and clarity, but it also caused the biggest ringing problems of any speaker I’ve dabbled with. I totally agree with the point Dave has made before about harming the value of a speaker. Anything worth a few hundred quid and upwards I wouldn’t touch. Truth be told, I don’t really like modding anything, as I like my items to be stock where possible. WIth damping though, it can make a huge difference. Lining cabinet walls isn’t too intrusive and I’d retain alll foam materials so I could return to near stock if selling on. I don’t want to drift another thread but I don’t like too much doping on drivers. It kills efficiency and responsiveness for me. The Bison Kit ring around the dust amp as a natural crossover aid is brilliant though.
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Post by dsjr on Jun 14, 2018 17:51:32 GMT
It's not there to stop cabinet resonances, but to tune bass (damping) I believe and possibly 'slow down' and possibly help dissipate backwards radiation of the drivers. I'm no engineer so can't give chapter and verse, but the effects of this stuff has been researched and catalogued - it's not just made up rubbish in my opinion! If a totally sealed box works properly without it, then absolutely fine!
Jimmy is a messer at heart, playing around with little real knowledge and utterly lovable with it! Before our ladies took both our lives over (well, mine mostly), he'd angled his huge Impulse speakers to the wall between them and it made the music disappear. He was a huge fan of Bose 901's I remember (I can't stand the effers) and he refused to be shaken when, that lunchtime, we trotted down to the Barbican hall lobby/foyer, where Humphrey Littleton and his band were playing (I'd seen them shortly before at Wavendon, sitting close to them on both occasions). Now, if a trumpet or sax is playing to you, the musician is playing directly at you and the pressure and intensity can push you backwards. They're not playing to the rear wall or the ceiling, but straight at you. They're recorded directly in front as well, often at the mouth of the horn (!) and that's what I like to hear. Angling the main drivers well away creates to me, an artificial sound little like how it's heard live - and the shitty room acoustics adds its own 'sound' to this - ugh - TO ME!!!!!! Jimmy's speakers set that way sounded absolutely awful to me and I couldn't understand at all why he thought it so good. At the time, I had the big ATC's and when I got home, heaved a sigh of relief. No Peter Belt, no fancy strips or blessed water or odd equipment feet, just truly lifelike dynamics and at the right volume setting, a realistic sounding facsimile to the real live event heard close-to. BIG pro monitors can do this I find and the ATC's I owned were small compared to the mighty ATC 300A's - I heard the 200A's once and the dynamics were frightening on well recorded music... Things have moved on and the current big ATC's are different in all the drivers and active crossovers to mine, so not sure how flat they're balanced (mine were in free-space and I had the measured plots I saw being taken) as I think modern ones are upper-mid forward these days.
As for Malcolm Steward, I'm desperately sad for his current physical (and mental) condition after his accident, but he was a tosser of the first order in his writings (and a piss artist at shows too from what I saw of him...) - totally brainwashed into a narrow channel way of thinking with little way out. he did an article on some computer cables shortly before his accident and it wiped out his credibility in what's left in this industry. At least Paul Messenger admits to having to favour certain brands in his reviews although he uses all kinds of gear at home...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2018 18:15:46 GMT
Piss artist at shows? Is that an exaggeration, Dave?
S.
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Post by dsjr on Jun 14, 2018 21:05:57 GMT
I never stayed there usually to get pissed at a show in the bar - oh, I remember I did once - Takes one to know one and I didn't get the hangover until two days after - I think I drank myself sober on JD that night (can't do that any more, age and meds and I hardly touch a drop now and haven't for many years now, believe it or not).
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 15, 2018 9:49:21 GMT
Great to hear first hand takes of JMH. I so wish I’d been there at the time. He and Malcom fought hifi to life for me. In different ways, they also brought things I love to my attention. Their writings also somehow managed to describe sound in a way I could understand and could relate to when I eventuallyI heard the things they talked about. Not every product they recommended worked for me theough. I tried 3 pairs of Arcam 2s (stuffed and unstuffed) just to be sure I wasn’t missing something
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Post by dsjr on Jun 15, 2018 10:18:30 GMT
Jimmy's modified Arcam 2's driven by DNM (his all but butchered Krell 50's had gone by this time) sounded very good *in his room.* he had a split-level room where the listener sat on the mezzanine level with the speakers set below. Perfect for a good pair of Isobariks and his taller speakers didn't seem to mind either. the Arcams were tilted back a little I seem to remember and they filled the room well surprisingly. I suspect in a smaller room they'd sound small and insignificant - faint memories of them in our dem room seem to back this up, but they never made an impression with me outside of Jimmy's place.
Lest anyone thing I'm running Jimmy down, on my frequent visits there, the MUSIC ALWAYS came first and his stereo set was a tool to reproduce it, so he could play around with things on the one hand, but never forgetting what it was there to do... When set up properly in conventional terms, it could sound wonderful, despite 'miles' of DNM solid core interconnects from preamp to remote power amp. Maybe his room or the mains added a little undesirable 'thickening' of tone which the solid core removed, I don't know... Again, all this stuff and Peter Belt 'treatments' worked *in his room* but not necessarily anywhere elses…
P.S. You can thank all my early LP12 knowledge down to JMH... he was one of the few in the early days who could get an LP12 singing as near properly as it could and I think he taught me very well! I'd love to get back in touch, as I miss those regular visits, but his flat looks fuller of general 'stuff' than ever judging by an article done on him a very few years ago - the downstairs part of his living area and the side walls there were bare in my day - no longer it seems, but the discs behind were there I remember, piled on the stairs before he put all the wall shelves on the staircase. LP's used to be opposite wall to the gear . He's hardly changed though in twenty odd years, unlike me Gawd bless him...
thevinyladventure.com/james-michael-hughes-vinyl-powered/
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2018 18:19:56 GMT
Great speakers wish I had kept mine. Nice ones are hard to find now.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 4, 2018 18:27:20 GMT
Funny how so many of us former owners miss them. They must have done something findamental right.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2018 18:27:57 GMT
Great speakers wish I had kept mine. Nice ones are hard to find now. What amp did you use? S.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2018 18:32:21 GMT
At the time I believe it was an Audiolab pre power combo Shane.
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 4, 2018 18:55:43 GMT
I could imagjne that working well. They didn’t have to be partnered with Naim, despite what the mags said. In fact most other things worked as well or better. Myst Tma3 was a very good match if you used a speaker cable it liked,
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2018 18:57:56 GMT
I find the ES11 to be a fairly pleasant listen. They don't quite draw much attention to themselves.
S.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 4, 2018 19:19:38 GMT
I still haven’t even heard a pair. I really should have done because the 14s didn’t so much right. I remember the mags saying they had blown a few pairs by playing them loud and it kinda deterred me. Until recently, loud and very loud were the only ways I listened,
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Post by dsjr on Jul 4, 2018 21:12:00 GMT
The 11's sounded more like a small version of the 'original' 14's, with smooth and slightly muted (perhaps) high frequencies. later 14's had a sparkle engineered in which was fine for the vinyl era - Robin altered the cap feeding the tweeter to better match the later bass unit, but wouldn't attenuate the tweeter down instead. This gave the later 14's their sparkle.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 5, 2018 2:23:24 GMT
Were the ES11 limited in terms of SPLs? I mean more limited than others of comparable size.
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Post by karma67 on Oct 2, 2018 16:11:06 GMT
if daves reading this,what are your views on the monitor audio 952md that robin designed,is that before epos or after?
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