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Whilst awaiting for registration at another place I thought I'd post my review here.
I went to ISE to listen to the best Quested speakers after talking with Peter (you've got mail!) I'm looking for a massive and powerful sound field that can punch through microperf without the grating nature of horns/compression drivers. I want speakers that embrace the room and let me set up the sound signature the way I want via diffusion and absorption.
I went in expecting Atmos to rule and Auro to be far behind - looking at tech specs and room layouts. The opposite happened and Auro was spectacular. I'm ruling out Atmos for myself, whatever claims are made it's a channel based system and my ceiling is too low and I'd want to spec at minimum 10 speakers up top. The future of encoding ideally will be layered streams with a 3 space vector describing position of each sound and the end application decides speaker count and mapping based on room dimensions.
Some people also commented on demos being either too diffuse up top without localization or highly localized and not diffuse enough. Localization is tricky, with 4 ceiling speakers we're going to get 4 distinct sound locations, hardly immersive unless in a tiny room. Change out to very diffuse speakers and you've effectively got VOG with minimal localization, can't have both with low ceilings and 4 speakers. This is where Auro:VOG channel appeals to me, an array of the same channel for even coverage and good processing / delay to give it that sound from above.
I think Atmos with less than 10' ceilings (ideally 12') and an array of at least 10 speakers is not going to cut it. It'll always be easy to localize just like each demo at the show, except Steinway which used angling and 12' or higher mount position in a 24' tall room to pull it off. If you have the height then go for it. I look at it like this: have I ever sat 4' from a wall of sound and had it be truly immersive and spacious? No. Then how would ceiling speakers 4' or less away accomplish that. All of this is subjective and depends on the individuals hearing abilities.
Wisdom - great room design by Italy HTE, low ceilings of about 7'. Clean dialog, massive dynamics, but 'hollowish' sound. Not diffuse enough for me. Technology is interesting and would be beneficial as surround sound so it has a more even spl across a row. I wish they made a more diffuse product, it was like listening through a razor aligned diffracted sound field where the rays didn't want to blend with their neighbors but just march straight to the back of the room. I felt dialog frequency range was purposefully bumped up. A slight amount of flutter behind the screen was there, especially on the hobbit track.
James Loudspeaker - point source in wall was amazing with huge sweet spot. The big in walls (reference beryllium?) had a sweet spot of maybe 1', diffuse and big but very very very narrow. Website specs are limited so how do I know what to choose? More demos.
All their speakers had sound though that was the closest thing I've heard so far to mimic a live performance taking place. Big and clean, listening from a few booths away the sound signature stayed the same, again it tricked me into believing it was a live performance. Might be epic for music but I want to hear some movie tracks on them first.
Quested - as has been covered and some of uncles notes are my observations. Clean but tiny, sound scaled for a 50" tv. Atmos layout was completely off, it actually hurt the demo. They have a killer near to midfield monitor but price may be higher than pro Adam audio/EVE which sound better for this application vs the new Z series. I'll cut them some slack as others said the speakers just rolled off the line. I prefer companies that make their own drivers in-house as they have larger control over the project, they could have gotten a bad batch too or not to their specs if they're ordering custom. Not making excuses for them but hopefully the coax design posted here comes though. I think only SLS audio has ever offered something like that.
My concern in going with the smaller LT24 right now is the very narrow dispersion.
Alcons - contacted US sales department a few times before discovering Quested. Not much response and not really interested in a sale so I didn't bother demoing them. Again another ribbon pro sound company, popular elsewhere for cinema installs.
B&W - too bright up top, I didn't hear or feel any bass impact as others have. Except for the harsh highs it sounded like Focal, 100% for 1/10th the price. I really wonder if the Trinnov unit is truly neutral or making everything sound thin. It all sounded very very digital, not much life. Too many factors in that room, too many components, and overly dead for my taste. The open air setup outside (TV room) sounded much better.
Steinway - even bass, good tech, married into their system for life is a big negative. They don't want bass trapping so I'd want to see some room measurements on resonance first. Interesting technology, especially the idea that a single frequency sweep at a fixed location over a tiny delta time doesn't tell the whole story, that's quite accurate. We don't know what the frequency response looks like a microsecond later, perhaps room perfect is doing a lot of things right so it "sounds right" but doesn't necessarily measure right using our home brew measurement systems.
Nice group of people overall, passionate about what they're trying to do but marketing it wrong in my opinion as I said to them. Room was the advantage here, the bigger the room the easier it is to EQ it out of the equation I think. Sound was not as big as I want. I was told the open profile S15 will sound bigger by default because of it's design, they might even work better on a ceiling I think. Expensive for sure but not so much depending on how high you're going with all the other components.
Procella - not my cup of tea or mug of coffee. It sounded like a PA system, it needs a lot more tuning I think, there's no way people buy these if that's the sound signature unless they buy without listening. Again Trinnov or setup to blame, so I'll give them a pass like the others. Fit and finish looked mediocre for the price though.
Dbox - I want one. The lady kept insisting the 3" or 6" range models are too powerful and I'll be thrown out of my chair, but that's exactly what I want and will sign any waivers required. How can I get them?
Trinnov/Datasat - can't decide off a single show. Trinnov may need some work, calibration might have been off for everyone seeing as how new the box is. Datasat will be great for those that want auro now and don't care about going above 16 channels. Unless someone wants multiple layouts in a room and/or has a massive room I think 16 is more than enough.
As I said to Peter, going to the 32+ channel count opens up a host of other options too and at that level I believe your best bet will be a commercial installer with a proven track record. For me speakers and room dictate the vast majority of the sound so at a $30k processor it wouldn't make sense that the rest of the room/speaker budget is anywhere below $100-$200k minimim.
The clear winner? To dabble in 3D audio right now and let the other formats emerge and placement guidelines develop without locking yourself into a very expensive processor the LS10 is a no brainer; especially if Datasat confirm atmos and dtsx support is coming.
I went to ISE to listen to the best Quested speakers after talking with Peter (you've got mail!) I'm looking for a massive and powerful sound field that can punch through microperf without the grating nature of horns/compression drivers. I want speakers that embrace the room and let me set up the sound signature the way I want via diffusion and absorption.
I went in expecting Atmos to rule and Auro to be far behind - looking at tech specs and room layouts. The opposite happened and Auro was spectacular. I'm ruling out Atmos for myself, whatever claims are made it's a channel based system and my ceiling is too low and I'd want to spec at minimum 10 speakers up top. The future of encoding ideally will be layered streams with a 3 space vector describing position of each sound and the end application decides speaker count and mapping based on room dimensions.
Some people also commented on demos being either too diffuse up top without localization or highly localized and not diffuse enough. Localization is tricky, with 4 ceiling speakers we're going to get 4 distinct sound locations, hardly immersive unless in a tiny room. Change out to very diffuse speakers and you've effectively got VOG with minimal localization, can't have both with low ceilings and 4 speakers. This is where Auro:VOG channel appeals to me, an array of the same channel for even coverage and good processing / delay to give it that sound from above.
I think Atmos with less than 10' ceilings (ideally 12') and an array of at least 10 speakers is not going to cut it. It'll always be easy to localize just like each demo at the show, except Steinway which used angling and 12' or higher mount position in a 24' tall room to pull it off. If you have the height then go for it. I look at it like this: have I ever sat 4' from a wall of sound and had it be truly immersive and spacious? No. Then how would ceiling speakers 4' or less away accomplish that. All of this is subjective and depends on the individuals hearing abilities.
Wisdom - great room design by Italy HTE, low ceilings of about 7'. Clean dialog, massive dynamics, but 'hollowish' sound. Not diffuse enough for me. Technology is interesting and would be beneficial as surround sound so it has a more even spl across a row. I wish they made a more diffuse product, it was like listening through a razor aligned diffracted sound field where the rays didn't want to blend with their neighbors but just march straight to the back of the room. I felt dialog frequency range was purposefully bumped up. A slight amount of flutter behind the screen was there, especially on the hobbit track.
James Loudspeaker - point source in wall was amazing with huge sweet spot. The big in walls (reference beryllium?) had a sweet spot of maybe 1', diffuse and big but very very very narrow. Website specs are limited so how do I know what to choose? More demos.
All their speakers had sound though that was the closest thing I've heard so far to mimic a live performance taking place. Big and clean, listening from a few booths away the sound signature stayed the same, again it tricked me into believing it was a live performance. Might be epic for music but I want to hear some movie tracks on them first.
Quested - as has been covered and some of uncles notes are my observations. Clean but tiny, sound scaled for a 50" tv. Atmos layout was completely off, it actually hurt the demo. They have a killer near to midfield monitor but price may be higher than pro Adam audio/EVE which sound better for this application vs the new Z series. I'll cut them some slack as others said the speakers just rolled off the line. I prefer companies that make their own drivers in-house as they have larger control over the project, they could have gotten a bad batch too or not to their specs if they're ordering custom. Not making excuses for them but hopefully the coax design posted here comes though. I think only SLS audio has ever offered something like that.
My concern in going with the smaller LT24 right now is the very narrow dispersion.
Alcons - contacted US sales department a few times before discovering Quested. Not much response and not really interested in a sale so I didn't bother demoing them. Again another ribbon pro sound company, popular elsewhere for cinema installs.
B&W - too bright up top, I didn't hear or feel any bass impact as others have. Except for the harsh highs it sounded like Focal, 100% for 1/10th the price. I really wonder if the Trinnov unit is truly neutral or making everything sound thin. It all sounded very very digital, not much life. Too many factors in that room, too many components, and overly dead for my taste. The open air setup outside (TV room) sounded much better.
Steinway - even bass, good tech, married into their system for life is a big negative. They don't want bass trapping so I'd want to see some room measurements on resonance first. Interesting technology, especially the idea that a single frequency sweep at a fixed location over a tiny delta time doesn't tell the whole story, that's quite accurate. We don't know what the frequency response looks like a microsecond later, perhaps room perfect is doing a lot of things right so it "sounds right" but doesn't necessarily measure right using our home brew measurement systems.
Nice group of people overall, passionate about what they're trying to do but marketing it wrong in my opinion as I said to them. Room was the advantage here, the bigger the room the easier it is to EQ it out of the equation I think. Sound was not as big as I want. I was told the open profile S15 will sound bigger by default because of it's design, they might even work better on a ceiling I think. Expensive for sure but not so much depending on how high you're going with all the other components.
Procella - not my cup of tea or mug of coffee. It sounded like a PA system, it needs a lot more tuning I think, there's no way people buy these if that's the sound signature unless they buy without listening. Again Trinnov or setup to blame, so I'll give them a pass like the others. Fit and finish looked mediocre for the price though.
Dbox - I want one. The lady kept insisting the 3" or 6" range models are too powerful and I'll be thrown out of my chair, but that's exactly what I want and will sign any waivers required. How can I get them?
Trinnov/Datasat - can't decide off a single show. Trinnov may need some work, calibration might have been off for everyone seeing as how new the box is. Datasat will be great for those that want auro now and don't care about going above 16 channels. Unless someone wants multiple layouts in a room and/or has a massive room I think 16 is more than enough.
As I said to Peter, going to the 32+ channel count opens up a host of other options too and at that level I believe your best bet will be a commercial installer with a proven track record. For me speakers and room dictate the vast majority of the sound so at a $30k processor it wouldn't make sense that the rest of the room/speaker budget is anywhere below $100-$200k minimim.
The clear winner? To dabble in 3D audio right now and let the other formats emerge and placement guidelines develop without locking yourself into a very expensive processor the LS10 is a no brainer; especially if Datasat confirm atmos and dtsx support is coming.
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