• Welcome to The Audio Annex! If you have any trouble logging in or signing up, please contact 'admin - at - theaudioannex.com'. Enjoy!
  • HTTPS (secure web browser connection) has been enabled - just add "https://" to the start of the URL in your address bar, e.g. "https://theaudioannex.com/forum/"
  • Congratulations! If you're seeing this notice, it means you're connected to the new server. Go ahead and post as usual, enjoy!
  • I've just upgraded the forum software to Xenforo 2.0. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm still working on installing styles... coming soon.

Upscale Audio's Kevin Deal spews false tropes mixed with good advice

Flint

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar

This guy says some good things about Focal, but he also misinforms quite a bit.

  1. Focal is not the only speaker company who manufacturers their own drivers. Klipsch, Paradigm, JBL, Dynaudio, Morel, PMC, and others make their own drivers and also sell those drivers to others to use.
  2. He handles Beryllium!!! That stuff is extremely toxic to humans and should never be touched - EVER!!! The fact he is touching two cones which are supposed to be Beryllium leads me to believe that neither was actually Beryllium or they were coated with some protective material which prevents them from exhibiting the properties he is attempting to demonstrate.
  3. He makes a blanket statement that it is the "ringing" in drivers which causes listening fatigue. Well, it is true ringing will contribute to listening fatigue, but there are tons of other non-pleasing aspects of audio systems that also contribute to listening fatigue.
  4. His comments about how closed back headphones are more intimate kinda irks me. I would not use that term as a blanket statement, but there are cases where the closed back nature of a headphone contributes to that sensation. I agree that closed back headphones sound stronger in the bass range, but sometimes that is a bad thing.

Overall, I got more and more irritated as I watched that video because it continues to spawn stereotypes which are not true. This hobby has so many widely accepted "givens" which are not actually true that I want to throat punch the "experts" who keep them alive.
 

And he continues!!!

  1. Saying a $7,000 speaker from 15 years ago would sound better than a $7,000 speaker today solely because of inflation is 100% BS!!! How dare he make that statement!!!! I angry at him for saying such a stupid thing!!! Yes, some parts of a speaker will go up in cost with inflation. However most of the parts in a speaker in fact have gotten significantly cheaper over time due to engineering, manufacturing processes, and new factories where manufacturing is vastly less expensive can produce the new speakers. Basically, a cabinet which may have cost $200 to manufacture 15 years ago might cost less than $100 today - and the modern cabinet can be made with more variety in materials, with more complex shapes and angles, and better incorporate the drivers into the baffle. Drivers are the same. A $500 tweeter 15 years ago would struggle to sound half as good as a $500 tweeter today. Seriously, that's not a joke. Crossover components have gotten cheaper as well. Basically, the cost to produce an audiophile grade speaker has come down over the past few decades, so Kevin is talking out his ass on this one.
  2. He claims that "everyone" was buying drivers from Focal before they were making complete speaker systems. That wasn't remotely true. While it is true their drivers were used by many high end speaker system companies, there were also great competing drivers made by Seas, Accuton, Morel, Scan-Speak, Skanning, Dynaudio, and others who made drivers of similar or better performance. He is insane!!! LIES!!!
  3. He claimed the higher efficiency design is inherently better, but that is also not at all true. Yes, a high efficiency driver can sound loud enough with low power amps, so a single ended triode tube amp can be used without lmiting the output, but that doesn't make them inherently better.
  4. He claims that using three 7" woofers gives you "quicker" bass because they are smaller and lighter than one larger woofer with the same overall cone area. Again, this is complete BS!!!! There is one, and only one, way to determine how "quick" a woofer is - measure its frequency response and the higher it can play the quicker it is. But to reproduce 100Hz, the cone speed will be exactly the same for every woofer out there, period. The speed is what is required to make a 100Hz tone and nothing else. Either the woofer can move fast enough to produce 100Hz or it cannot. Period. Since the speaker he is talking about is a three-way design, the "speed" of those woofers need to be fast enough to produce whatever the highest frequency they need to produce - I imagine it is about 250Hz, or so. So, can a 15" woofer or 18" woofer or even 21" woofer produce 250Hz? YES!!!! That's what they do!!!! Making the woofer smaller does NOT speed up the ability to produce 250Hz!!!! I would argue that one larger woofer that costs the same as those three woofers to manufacturer would, in fact, perform better with lower THD, less resonance, and more dynamic impact than those three woofers (assuming a proper enclosure is used). This guy is a fucking moron! Hell, if small woofers are SO much better, why do the top of the line Focal Utopia speakers use a 16" woofer for the bass and an 11" woofer for the mid-bass. IDIOT!
  5. He makes claims about the larger midrange driver doing vocals better - again he is flat out wrong about why he like larger midrange drivers. He claims he needs to hear "openness" from vocals, not "honkiness" where he cups his hands around his mouth to demonstrate what he is talking about. Well, a smaller midrange will always be more "open" than a larger one because it will disperse sound more widely than a larger cone. The beaming of larger cones at high frequencies actually causes the "honkiness" he is describing. ALSO, he claims he like the "chestiness" of male voices, and avoiding making a gay sex joke here, he is completely wrong to assume any midrange driver has anything to do with chestiness. The chestiness in vocals in most three-way speaker (and definitely in these speakers) is created by the woofers which operate in the low register of what makes the male voice. In fact, I imagine even female voices produce the bottom end of their range using the woofers in these speakers. So, he is just flat out wrong about why a larger midrange driver might be a good thing. I like larger midrange drivers as well, when designed into a speaker properly, but for reasons which actually go along with the laws of physics rather than totally made up bullshit this idiot is spouting.
  6. He goes on and on about Beryllium, which is indeed a very interesting development in speaker design. Most smart speaker experts agree it is a great material for speaker domes because it is more pistonic than most other materials while being lighter. However, like all metal cone materials, it is still going to ring at high frequencies - it just rings less and it tend to ring at a higher frequency than aluminum or magnesium. But, one could still argue that soft domes made from silk or other pliable materials are better. Also, like all metal domes, Beryllium should have a phase plug mounted in front of the dome to correct the phase issues created by the stiff dome. I would write forever about it, but I'll add a link to that info later.
I hate everything this guy is saying about speakers. He is wrong on almost everything, and it saddens me because it just ensures ignorance remains widespread and people make decisions not on good information and deep knowledge but on ignorance and misunderstanding.
 
Deacon said:
Why don't you start a youtube channel?
Click to expand...

I don't have the skills or patience to do the video editing and I cannot afford to hire anyone to do that right now. If someone would do the editing, I'd do it in a second.
 
Deacon said:
Sounds like a job for your ex-son-in-law!
Click to expand...

He does that for a living and earns more than I ever did in any job. I cannot afford him. As a former musician, I know better than to ask people to do what they make a living at for free just because I'm a friend or family.

But, I have had this conversation with him to get advice on how to do it properly to get the best results. I have a strategy, just no free video editors.
 
college intern? There has got to be some trade schools around there that would love to take you on as a project for the students.
 
I Have a vision of doing a channel where I discuss common audio concepts in 3 to 7 minute clips. Each topic would be part of a series of clips and each topic would be made into a playlist so one could sit through all the clips in order if they want it all at once. Then I could make longer educational videos with graphics and examples over time as I get the resources to create all the content with enough quality to be worth sitting through. I could also make response videos for the shit I started this thread over.

Ultimately, we need more truth, acceptance, and realism and less BS and idiots making stupid claims
 
This months issue of HiFi News has a review of Focal's top of the line speaker, Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo. It costs a $159k in British Pounds, it has a "field coil/electromagnetic woofer (no permanent magnets). They gave it an Editors Choice Award, which is ironic since it only scored an 80 on their scale of 1-100. The frequency response was kind of uneven, but not as bad as some B&Ws in the same issue, but no where near as smooth as KEF's R3 also same issue. I was surprised to find the bass only went to about 39hz, for such a big and expensive speaker.

I have heard a shorter but still wide model sound great at one show. However if I'm spending this kind of money, I would expect more performance, usually when HiFi News measures the large models there is a breakup in the midrange cones for some reason.
 
TitaniumTroy said:
This months issue of HiFi News has a review of Focal's top of the line speaker, Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo. It costs a $159k in British Pounds, it has a "field coil/electromagnetic woofer (no permanent magnets). They gave it an Editors Choice Award, which is ironic since it only scored an 80 on their scale of 1-100. The frequency response was kind of uneven, but not as bad as some B&Ws in the same issue, but no where near as smooth as KEF's R3 also same issue. I was surprised to find the bass only went to about 39hz, for such a big and expensive speaker.

I have heard a shorter but still wide model sound great at one show. However if I'm spending this kind of money, I would expect more performance, usually when HiFi News measures the large models there is a breakup in the midrange cones for some reason.
Click to expand...

1) Doesn't their rating take cost into account? The best speaker ever could be rated low because it costs a billion dollars while a cheap speaker which sound vastly superior to its cost could get a higher rating. That's how I understand it.

2) Frequency response is only one of dozens of measurable characteristics of what makes a speaker sound good or bad. Things like phase, impulse / step response, THD, dispersion, and dynamic accuracy are all also VERY important - but those other characteristics are more difficult to measure and discuss with laymen.

I haven't seen field coil magnets since the olden days of Western Electric horns used in movie theaters before good permanent magnets could be manufactured reliably. I would love to see the standard array of Kippel measurements run on that field coil motor structure.

Other than using metal materials for some of the diaphragms, I believe the large Utopia speakers from Focal are using all of the critical characteristics of great speaker design. Large baffles, aiming the drivers, and large drivers all add up to my own philosophy about great speaker designs. As such, I tend to give them the benefit for the doubt.
 
Flint on Sound

Speaker Sound Cyber Sessions

An Accomplished Audio Authority About Accurate Acoustics
 
I've heard the beryllium tuning fork from a Paradigm salesman a couple of years ago, thought it was pretty cool. I also like their very expensive headphones, I thought they were equal to my HiFiMan 1000V2's.

The front part of the store looks pretty conventional, but the stock room for all the speakers and especially all the tubes seemed huge.
 
Last edited:
I have heard some of the more affordable beryllium tweeters, and so far I am not terribly impressed. They are better than magnesium, aluminum, and titanium tweeters, but to me they still exhibit the attributes when make my dislike nearly all metal domes. When fabric domes sound so damn good, I am not sure why we need another metal.

As for the tuning fork experiment, the comparison between a tuning fork and a thin contoured dome isn't right. They are two different things. Also, anything made from solid Beryllium is basically poison and could kill you if you hold it, so any claims that you actually heard a Beryllium tuning fork was a lie of some sort. Either the tuning fork was coated with a lacquer of some sort to seal it in, or it was coated with another metal. Either way, it wasn't pure Beryllium and thus it wasn't resonating as pure Beryllium.
 
I was very impressed with Revels beryllium tweeter for the brief time I heard it last year. I would say it was one of my five favorite speakers of the show and It does have the phase cap you recommend on it too. Of course it could have a coating on it also, outstanding imaging is what I heard.
 
Flint said:
He handles Beryllium!!! That stuff is extremely toxic to humans and should never be touched - EVER!!! The fact he is touching two cones which are supposed to be Beryllium leads me to believe that neither was actually Beryllium or they were coated with some protective material which prevents them from exhibiting the properties he is attempting to demonstrate.
Click to expand...

I'm by no means an expert, but from what I understand Beryllium is safe in solid form, but the manufacturing process can be pretty toxic. Likewise, if a Beryllium tweeter is broken, the dust is quite toxic as well. As such, I wouldn't ever want to hold Beryllium either, even in solid form, just to be safe.

Also there are documented cases where Beryllium tweeters contain very little actual Beryllium, which you alluded to.

Flint said:
I have a strategy, just no free video editors.
Click to expand...

Reading along on your recent series of speaker building / measuring threads, the info is great and I was also thinking to myself you could probably make videos along the same lines.

I've been a hobbyist videographer/video editor for the past 20 years, one of my first jobs being a video editor for a company that edited and hosted training seminar videos online.

If we lived closer I would totally be up for helping to film and edit videos. But given the distance, the logistics probably don't make as much sense. You would need to film everything and we'd have to transfer large video files back and forth over the internet, and also tending to our day jobs, etc.

But if you have any thoughts or questions, you can always reach out to me!
 
team_tsp said:
I'm by no means an expert, but from what I understand Beryllium is safe in solid form, but the manufacturing process can be pretty toxic. Likewise, if a Beryllium tweeter is broken, the dust is quite toxic as well. As such, I wouldn't ever want to hold Beryllium either, even in solid form, just to be safe.

Also there are documented cases where Beryllium tweeters contain very little actual Beryllium, which you alluded to.
Click to expand...

Yes, the earliest Beryllium tweeters used a thin film, like Mylar, with a thin vapor coating of Beryllium on the surface which were marketed as Beryllium. But the current "pure Beryllium" domes are 100% pure made from a formed thin sheet of the molecule (Be-O2).

Just the same, even the most bold speaker designers I know are very careful when handling the stuff. They always wear gloves to keep the metal off their skin, where it can flake off in minute layers and attach to the skin where it can easily make the transfer to the eyes, nose, and mouth and get ingested. It doesn't take much of the stuff to make you very ill.

Just the same, he is an idiot for not showing that care. I also don't think the speaker maker would dare send him bare pure beryllium un that form. I imagine they coated it with some sort of lacquer to protect him from himself.


team_tsp said:
Reading along on your recent series of speaker building / measuring threads, the info is great and I was also thinking to myself you could probably make videos along the same lines.

I've been a hobbyist videographer/video editor for the past 20 years, one of my first jobs being a video editor for a company that edited and hosted training seminar videos online.

If we lived closer I would totally be up for helping to film and edit videos. But given the distance, the logistics probably don't make as much sense. You would need to film everything and we'd have to transfer large video files back and forth over the internet, and also tending to our day jobs, etc.

But if you have any thoughts or questions, you can always reach out to me!
Click to expand...

I really appreciate the offer. I don't have a good camera, so I have to decide if I want to film using my phone and a good mic or just put it off until someone with a good video camera can help out.
 
Flint said:
Just the same, even the most bold speaker designers I know are very careful when handling the stuff. They always wear gloves to keep the metal off their skin, where it can flake off in minute layers and attach to the skin where it can easily make the transfer to the eyes, nose, and mouth and get ingested. It doesn't take much of the stuff to make you very ill.
Click to expand...

Agreed, we (as consumers) just don't know how much Beryllium rubs off if handling it, I've always been kind of surprised speaker makers would use it in products we use in our home. (E.g. if you have kids and they poke the tweeter, etc.)

Back when Usher speakers was one of the first to start using Be tweeters, I wasn't sure how to feel about that since I was considering buying their higher end bookshelf model.

Out of curiosity, do you think there's any concern with Be being dispersed in a home from a tweeter's normal usage? Tweeters can vibrate quite fast after all...

Flint said:
I really appreciate the offer. I don't have a good camera, so I have to decide if I want to film using my phone and a good mic or just put it off until someone with a good video camera can help out.
Click to expand...

I feel if you're just doing interview / educational style videos, the video quality from any modern phone will be sufficient. Using a good mic for better audio quality will help a lot as well. But if you're planning to do a lot of color grading, post processing, etc, that might be a different story :p. But that's probably not what you're going after.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top