Epos ES11

Still a speaker I have yet to hear or even see in the flesh. My mate, Ricky, has had a few pairs but he gets rid of stuff so quickly I never managed to grab a listen. I do remember at the time, the bass units used to blow quite easily. They were a FOTM at Audiophile magazine and a few reviewers used them and blew them.

Yep, they have a resistor across the tweeter in addition to the series cap, which could usefully be upgraded here to a poly type if not done already...

I found them a little too restrained after the ES14's, but that's not a bad thing at all and a livelier amp and modern digital source would do them proud I think. I'd suggest keeping them away from walls a bit and get them as high as possible while keeping the tweeter at roughly ear level.

YES!!!

The seller dropped the ES11 over a few days ago. Before parting with my money, we wired up the ES11 just to quickly test them. Left them playing for 10 min.

Now maybe the seller could have just been ''blue-pilling'' me with pleasant lies. But he had a slight look of regret on his face and then grinned at me and said ''oh, wish I hadn't sell these now'' Carries on saying the ES11 are sounding better than before. I did give the seller a chance to take the ES11 back home. But then afterwards usual wife story came out....blah, blah, blah!

The transaction was fun and the seller was decent.

Anyway, I'll stick with the ES11 for a while. If I ever spot a decent looking pair of ES14 (Locally) I'll snap them up.

S.

Thanks God my wife is as mad on the gear as me. She has a real flat earth liking though. But then I guess I do too in many ways.

Does she have her own system at the moment? If not, will she attempt on building one?

S.

So she likes a 'forward' kind of sound. Judging by the description above.

S.

Valve amps have a nasty bit or iron and hundreds of feet of wiring in the signal path - it's called an output transformer! Damping factor usually goes to hell with the majority of these amps and the frequency response of a typically crossovered two way speaker is greatly altered as well as the crossover slopes themselves, hence some of this 'valve sound' bullshit!

SBL's have a second cavity already woofing slightly after the initial bass impact. heard at it's worst in Credo's and Intro's, it's still there in SBL's but much contained. the worst part of SBL's is the crossover, which slugs the mids a bit and makes highs sound a bit chrome plated. Going active sharpens the tweeter (I needed to turn it down in level slightly) but the bass and mids are rather better, midrange especially.

The best I heard SBL's passive was with an Arcam FMJ pre and power amp (both needed careful support for some reason for best 'musicality,' I don't know why...) and also the large Meridian 557 which was a really good power amp I recall.

I heard many SSSSS BEEEEE ELLLLLssssss in my time and conventionally Naim driven, the treble sssssounded off like a chrome plated buzz saw - strings just don't sound that way, sorry! if I were to experiment with a pair (and I've been tempted by the occasional walnut pair I've seen), I'd need to definitely have the better later bass drivers and I'd replace the ghastly Scan squeaker with something better of similar sensitivity - the Scan unit has a nasssssty resonance at 9khz clearly measurable too and even the damped version that Spendor and pro-Ac used had a 'whistle' up there when I could hear clearly at those frequencies.

I suppose I traded the chrome plated strings for dirty Vifa reproduced ones in the ATC's I had, but the big actives I owned were actually benign up top although the 20 ASL pros I had until ten years ago could be acidic and gritty. Don't get me wrong, I like sparkle, but not a distorted one. The HF1300's in my Spendors are very good indeed, but rather useless today as their 'bandwiddth' is so limited, needing a super tweeter to assist the perception of 'air' at the very top.

Found it. Vifa D27 TG.

I guess I either don't hear the peak, or it doesn't bother me

Maybe I actually like the effect? I think the latter is probably most likely and also probably why others have liked it too. I also think I'm not that sensitive to frequency response and there are places where I like it better when it's clearly not flat. Upper bass boost seems to be a "like" for me.

But then there's another side to me that things like Sonneteer tune into. I think that's why I sometimes run 2 systems. Most obvious when I ran a Rock/Xenon/Dynavector with Glastonburys in one room and an LP12/Ekos/OC9/Intek (or Nait) and Kans in another.

With vinyl, you won't notice it as much as the hf dynamics of vinyl sources aren't great. With master analogue or digital sources, it can be heard and one consequence of Rega digital sources being justifiably popular, their current RX speakers are much better integrated and still full of life

+1

The RS3's have a delightful midrange but the spiky top put me off. the current RX3's weigh twice as much (it seems), have a lightly doped mid driver and an almost sweet tweeter. I heard them last at the Signals 'Audio East' show last November and I have to say the sound of the complete Rega system (Planar 6/Ania/Fono MC/Brio R) was in a better musical world to any of the Naim and Chord amp based stereo's on dem there (the expensive NEATs were absolutely dire and the Focal Kanta's droned boringly I thought!)

Current Naims don't sound anthing like older ones. To me,  they just sound grey and bland these days and they sell on past glories.

I did hear some Utopias once and they were everything I feel wrong with so called top end gear. All sound and no music. I may go on about the Scan tweeter in another thread, but at least there was some FUN in the music coming out.