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Recently, Innersound
has brought out Eros (I don't name these products. I'm just a
journalist.), a powered subwoofer with active crossover connected
to an electrostatic tweeter. Ambience starts with a ribbon tweeter
designed and built by Tony Moore. You won't find it in any catalogue,
which is too bad: as I discovered, it's a beauty. Woofer duties
are performed by a ScanSpeak driver, modified to Tony's specifications.
It's the same basic model used in the Wilson Watt, the ProAc
3.8, and the Merlin VSM: three excellent speakers, and all more
expensive than the unit under discussion. The filter is a passive,
crossing between drivers nominally around 400 or 800 Hertz with
third or second order networks.Two sets of gold-plated terminals
are mounted on the vented woofer module.Getting to Know You :
First Impressions I had heard the Ambiences at CES for several
years. Even in a hotel room cramped with several pairs of speakers,
with thin walls flexing to the rhythm played next door, with
people walking through and talking, I had been pretty impressed.
Those tentative notions were nothing compared to getting the
1800s into my living room. Cold out of the box - literally, as
they had been stored in the importer's garage - the big Ambiences
were remarkable right out of the box: dynamic, dramatic, full
of fun. Since they are dipole radiators, they project sound to
the rear, and make the entire room come alive. I understood at
once why Ambience speakers keep winning awards in the Far East. Maybe
conventional considerations affect only conventional speakers. Tall,
Dark and Articulate.
Ambience 1800
I began with
the 1800s along the long wall of my living room. This was a miscalculation
the editor corrected when he visited; even so, the speaker was
stunning. From the midrange through the limits of my hearing,
I can't think of a speaker system in current production that
sounds more like music than the Ambience. Voices are remarkably
clear, but without aggression. Stringed instruments have appropriate
pitch. Pianos have attack and decay just as in real life. Space
- the sense that the music is in the room - was outstanding.
When the recording conveyed a precise image, the Ambience conveyed
it to me. I haven't heard every tweeter in the world, but I don't
expect there are any which will tell you more about the music
and less about themselves than Tony Moore's. The owner's manual
does warn against driving the tweeter too hard, which is true
of any ribbon. (Talk to many experienced Magnepan owners and
you'll hear about shipping the dear things back to Minnesota
for tweeter repair.) I like my hearing just the way it is, and
my ears gave out before the Ambience tweeter did. I think you're
safe at any conceivably sane listening level. The most striking
aspect of the Ambience sound is spontaneity: the sense that the
musical event is occurring right in your listening room. A number
of people have tried to commit this experience to words. They
comment on feeling goose pimples; they talk about facing the
other direction, or standing outside the room to test the auditory
cues; the point is, the illusion is sufficient to convince the
listener it's real. What won't this speaker do? Properly set
up seven feet from the rear wall, the bass was not as tight or
deep as I wanted. Spiked feet helped, and so did a concrete block
I placed on the woofer commode. This is only natural. Seventeen
centimeter drivers can only move so much air: that's why Wilson
invented the Puppy, and Merlin employs active equalization. That
is the total of my complaints. At the time of this writing, the
Ambience 1800 costs about $4,500, and is substantially better
in many regards than speakers that cost twice that.Tear down
the walls-- Martin Balin and Paul Kantner Return with me to the
afternoon design studio. When I say "mini monitor,"
you think about a small box sitting on a metal stand. Inside
the box is a woofer (sort of) around five inches across, and
a one inch tweeter. The parts catalogues are full of "bassmidranges"
(one word) and dome tweeters that will do. There are lots of
stands, too. When you complete the project, allowing for crossover
parts, wire, the box, some cool terminals, and multiply by 5,
you've spent over $3,000, and what you have for your effort is
a cliché of a different sort.
What if it didn't have to be that way? The Ambience 1400 contains
a shorter version of the same ribbon tweeter and a slightly smaller
woofer which fires upward. I'll talk more about that clever feature
in a moment. The speaker reaches to the shirt pocket of a six
foot tall man, and is about seven inches wide. This is a bit
taller, but no wider, than the mini monitor you designed earlier.
I put the 1400s in my study, a room about 18 by 12 feet. I was
casual about speaker location, power cord polarity, resonance
control. To my surprise, the speaker end of the room came alive:
there were real musicians down there. I've had this
experience with speakers before, but not often, and mostly from
exotic, temperamental, and very expensive devices, such as the
mbl 101D ($33,000). You know about the tweeter, so I'll discuss
the woofer orientation. The duct fires to the rear, as in the
1800; and it's contoured to reduce wind noise. The important
difference is that this woofer shoots at the ceiling, not the
listener. Dick Olsher, who is responsible for the
Samadhi speakers, has a technical discussion of how this arrangement
works on his website (blackdahlia.com). Suffice to
say here that directing the lower frequencies upward can be sensible
engineering. Okay, for about three thousand dollars
you can buy a speaker that sounds terrific and doesn't take up
the room or block the view. What are you going to
drive it with? This is a very important question.
Some speakers, such as the mbl, are capable of greatness only
when fed by equipment of equally heroic price. It's
easy to build a speaker that sounds great with a thirty thousand
dollar amplifier. There are speakers that need current,
others that thrive on voltage, others that are so unstable they
drive amplifiers into protection mode and leave you sitting in
a silent room. I started with the Redgum integrated.
This is a wonderful solid state unit rated around
100 watts. To Ian Robertson's credit, it not only
sounds good, it doesn't cost much. The two companies
exhibit together at CES, and I've suspected that some of the
Ambience sound was the result of Redgum's performance.
The combination was terrific. But what about less
powerful units, and ones that cost even less money? I
pulled an Audio Innovations Alto off the shelf. The Alto is an
English integrated rated at 35 watts: an excellent value, but
it will never be mistaken for a super amplifier.
The 1400 accurately portrayed the Alto's characteristics, which
are extreme smoothness with a touch of warmth. I
never heard any evidence that the Ambience was demanding too
much of the amp. At the other extreme, the 1400 worked
beautifully with the VAC Renaissance 70/70, one of the best push-pull
tube amplifiers in the world. Redgum had sent along a prototype
CD player/transport, the Ugly DACling (remember: I just write
down what they say). This unit should be about five
or six hundred dollars when it grows into a lovely swan. It
did a nice job with the 1400 and the 1800. Then I
hooked up a Sony portable CD player and the Alto to the 1400,
and guess what? The Linn doctrine that you spend the bulk of
your money on source components and the remainder on speakers
may need revision. Buy the Ambience, scrimp on the
rest, and you'll have a very nice system. In the
fullness of time you can buy better source components.
The Ambience will show you how much progress you've made. Alas,
the time came for the Ambiences to leave my study and travel
to a store where you can fall in love with them. As
the importer and I toted the shipping crate into his van, I thought:
back in the box. Later that day I replaced them with
a very nice mini monitor - an Audax Aerogel woofer and doped
soft dome tweeter in a handsomely finished enclosure with lots
of internal bracing - and had the same thought. The
music was back in the box, literally. The Ambience magic was
gone, replaced by conventional engineering that yields conventional
results. In the little Ambience, what you get is
a brilliant, stunning, poetic, revealing, state-of-the-art, world
class midrange/tweeter mated to a very intelligent and well-considered
bass module.
H. Richard Weiner
Bound
For Sound
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