Pump up the volume

Now settled down and singing beautifully in the music room of top St. Luke’s Hospital urologist Dr. Randy Barba, the pair of loudspeakers we displayed during the November 2012 Hi-Fi Show didn’t take long to break in.

As the first foray into speaker design of JV Sound Concept (the audio business I put up with my good friend, electronics engineer John Alegre), these speakers sounded smoother and more remarkable than we had expected.

We had intended our Hi-Fi Show exhibit last year to highlight the concept behind the speakers, rather than the actual finished product. The whole concept system should sound good, but we were never really sure until we tested and later showcased it in the show. Those who heard the speakers swore they sounded much better than foreign-branded ones.

I was prepared to keep the speakers for myself, but decided to let Randy hear them in the comfort of his listening room a day after Christmas last year. I wasn’t able to bring them out of that room again. I had to let go of JV Sound Concept’s first “babies.” They had been adopted by someone who I knew would take good care of them, in a home where they would be allowed to sing their hearts out.

Joy was written all over Randy’s face as John and I tweaked the speakers to his room’s parameters.

Although the concept is nothing new and has been done before, the theory has been relegated to oblivion giving way to the proliferation of so-called high-end speakers with jaw-dropping price tags. In our design, we just modified how the drivers were to be arrayed and what the speakers would finally look like. The result was a head-turner and a good-sounding pair of transducers which President Benigno Aquino III himself described as “world-class” when he visited our room during the Hi-Fi Show.

Each speaker is composed of carefully chosen vintage and rare drivers, the value of which appreciates over time (woofers: Gauss 2842 Alnico magnet speakers, 12-inch; mid-range: Altec 291 with Tractrix horns; tweeters: Acculine planar ribbon, 21-inch vertical). All the drivers have average sensitivity ratings of approximately more than 100 decibels! We chose these high-sensitive drivers because they can be driven even by low-powered Single-Ended-Triode (SET) amplifiers. Simply put, if two speakers are rated at the same power, the one with a higher sensitivity will yield a higher sound pressure level (SPL). Likewise, if two loudspeakers are rated at the same SPL, the more efficient loudspeaker will require less power to move the air that produces sound.

Why SET? Any engineer worth his salt will describe an amplifier’s ideal technical characteristics that SET is not: low distortion and noise, high output power, high damping factor, low output impedance, ability to deliver current to low-impedance loads, generous dynamic headroom, and wide bandwidth, among many others. But why are SETs, which are not supposed to produce a good engineering-textbook sound, sing so magically? I can only answer it by quoting audio engineer and revered member of Audio Engineering Society (AES) Richard Heyser: “One of the worst-kept secrets in audio engineering is that what we hear does not always correlate with what we measure.”

“Measure conscious” audiophiles often discard what can be heard, and instead insist that nothing more can be known about an audio component beyond its technical performance and that a modern amplifier with 18W of output power at three percent distortion is pure trash. But wait until that 18W SET amps power high-sensitive speakers. 

No scientific specification will tell us how the combination of SET and high-sensitive speakers imitates timbre with such sensitivity that you get pleasant chills up your spine. SET, when used wisely and effectively, would baffle scientists as to why the “wrong” sound sounds so right The SET’s resolution of reproduced sound’s inner detail in high-sensitive speakers produces a vivid picture of the instrument creating the sound.

Our concept is simple: each driver should be powered by a dedicated amplifier in the tri-amp configuration. This makes the job of each driver a lot easier. This is how you get that pleasing headroom and dynamic range which are not supposed to be technically feasible on SET. From sweet to really loud passages, you can pump up the volume without straining your ears.

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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.