Legacy Whisper Dunlavy SC V opinions - Page 5

Wow! The guy who turned me on to my first pair of Duntech (Sovereign 2001) speakers also worked for a room correction company! I haven't been able to get in touch with him in over 10 years and was wondering if by any chance you were him? He worked for Sigtech and his initials were D.D. out of Denver, Colorado.

Are you, by any chance, D. D.?????

Champ

I didn't get a chance to take the speaker apart this weekend. I've been too busy starting on the house we just bought, walking through it and determining what we need to do with this thing. ...I'll get to it ASAP.

In the meantime my fiancée and I have been a little excited and unfocussed because we're meeting our favourite music artist, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, for a meet and greet/dinner on Tuesday. We're watching the band at the side of the stage and then hanging out backstage later on when Jane's Addiction plays...we bought/donated to this VIP package so a lot is included in it...at least that's what we're told is gonna happen so we're keeping our fingers crossed for a good experience

D.D. was Dennis Doyle who disappeared from the face of the earth about 10 years ago. I believe he may be in CA which is where either his mother or his wife's mother lived. He and I worked together at SigTech, which is how I met him. GREAT guy!!

He was the one the turned me onto Dunlavy. I had only heard them once previously at a dealer where they were VERY poorly set up and I was not impressed. Once I heard his, not only did I purchase a pair of VI's (he had V's) I also became a dealer and was one for five years. Still never heard anything I like as well at any price. In the right room, they are amazing !!

Man, what a small world we live in!!! I used his initials just in case he wanted to remain anonymous, but I'm definitely glad to hear that nothing bad happened to him. The past few times I left messages at his old number I got a generic female operator greeting and never got return phone calls, so I never knew what to think. Denis (he spelled it with one "n") really was great!!

I bought his old Duntech Sovereign 2001 speakers just before he took delivery of his Dunlavy SC-V's. At the time, he already had a pair of SC-IV's on his main level and wanted the SC-V's for his listening room in the basement. The Duntech's were awesome in their own right, but it wasn't long before I too had to order my own pair of SC-V's! At the time I wanted to buy the SC-VI's SOOOOOOOOO bad, but I just couldn't justify spending the extra 10 grand. Especially since my room was already overloading! (Little did I know that a few years later I'd have a HUGE listening room just begging for those 15 inchers!)

But because of him, I was able to follow suite and have since converted at least 20 different people from all over the world. And the beauty is that most of those people are still die-hard Dunlavy/Duntech owners!

I love John Dunlavy's products! There, I said it...

Tha man must have been doing SOMETHING right!

what kind of amplification did you guys use/recommend for these things? (the IV/a, V, and VI)?

I'm using Theta Dreadnaughts (first version, 5x200) for my IV/a ...do you think they are suitable, or should I step up? I've got two Dreadnaughts so when listening to stereo, I have all channels off except one and use them as "monoblocks" so the whole amp can be dedicated to one channel.

What are your experiences?

The Dreadnaught is very good. As are Rowland amps.
I personally have been using B.A.T. for many years.

Whats the common theme here? Fully balanced. But more importantly, zero feedback.

I really think this design benefits a speaker that is time and phase coherant. Reduced phase distortion further up the chain.

My ultimate two channel system = Vinyl source, zero feedback Pre/Power, and Dunlavy transducers.
As time and phase correct as I can imagine from front to back.

Ahhhh, heaven!!! I've never heard ANYTHING that moves me like that type of system.

I tried several amps (ML, Krell, etc) and ended up withe Bryston Mono Blocks.

A friend I sold a pair of SC_IV's to uses Audio Research 300 watt tube amps and they sound AMAZING. And the guy that bought my VI's uses Spectral (muy expensive). He tried the Theta amps and the bass was really poor. Those were early generation Theta amps.

You can find used Bryston 7B's on Agon at a reasonable price. Brystons have GREAT bass control.

All that said, you would be hard pressed to screw up the sound of the large Dunlavy's with ANY reasonable amp.

I've been on AVS for a long time and just came across this thread! As an owner of a pair of Cherry finished SC-IVA's and an HRCC, I too have been thrilled with the music (and movies) that have come from them. I suspect I've had them six years or longer, and I know I'd regret it if I ever let them go. I'm finished putting two kids through college, so it looks like I dodged that bullet and won't end up selling them for that reason!

I use a Levinson 332 amp on the IV-A's, and have a pair of SVS 20-39PC+ 500 watt cylinders that do a pretty darned good job of mating in with them.
Currenty enjoying music with the two channel analog outs of an Oppo BD-83 player and the room correction circuitry of a Pioneer TXH94 receiver (preamp out to the Levinson on the front left and right). Maybe some of that gear doesn't sound real high end, but I've been down that road in the past, and I didn't acheive any higher level of happiness than the sound I'm getting today.

I missed out on an opportunity to buy five I-AV's in cherry from a guy on Audiogon that only lived a couple of hours up the road. I'd love to have put those as side and rear surrounds.....but he sold them off real quick . I think he was asking $2,500 for the set and I hem-hawed around about shelling out the bucks at the time. So much for my regrets!

I met John at CES a few times when I was writing for SoundStage! in the early days, and his demo's were always appreciated by me as a no ******** presentation.

...I remember when that guy was selling the 5 Ia/v set. I frequent Audiogon for Dunlavy regularly. Not really to buy anything because I believe I am done in this system of mine (unless something really really interesting comes up). I just check it for fun. To see what people have...and what people are selling...and to see their pictures. I still remember the Dunlavy website. Makes me wish I would have copied the pages way back when and stored them on my computer. I would have liked to give it a read again. Anyone have a flyer/brochure they want to scan and post??

Hey Michael Osadciw, I know this is probably going to get me a ton of requests to do alot of scanning, but I pretty much printed out the entire website way back when. There are a few pages that I've ruined or misplaced, but pretty much I once had every model they made. Looking back, I wish I would have PDF'ed it instead of printed it... Although I did lose a hard drive, so it's probably better that I printed them anyway!

I'm actually hoping that somebody else did the same and already scanned them, or even better that they have them in a .pdf file already. Anybody? Anybody?

Oh, and I just remembered; I also have the cardboard flyer/brochure I picked up at one of the shows, as well as the flyers/price-lists Dunlavy mailed me of their entire product line.

***bows down in humble respect***
YOU are tha man!

Not even the "way back machine" has any of those old website pages stored.

I have an idea though, if you were willing........
I have scanning and .pdf capabilities. (and, regrettably, the time now) If you were willing to trust a stranger with your treasure I would do all the archiving for you and then safely return the originals plus the digital copies to you.

...ummmm...and you've been holding out all of this time??!! Who's the "shocked one" now! ha hah!

I was always impressed by the combination of neutrality and musicality of the Dunlavy designs (despite that in some circles they had a rep for being too clinical and bright...which I never found to be the case).

I met John at a CES when I was writing for Stereotimes. Nice guy, and non-nonsense to say the least. He did have his "spiel" down I must say :-)

The Dunlavy speakers remind me of the Jim Thiel designs, at least in the competency of the design and approach, but also another well-regarded (ex) speaker manufacturer, John Otvos and his Waveform speakers. Like Dunlavy John had no time for most audiophile shibboleths, and swore by good engineering and measurements. And it's interesting that both "led-by-specs" companies, Waveform and Dunlavy, ended up with such different approaches; Dunlavy with it's tightly controlled dispersion and narrow sweet spot and the Waveforms with their egg-shaped mid/tweet module, allowing for wide dispersion and a wide sweet spot. The Waveforms reminded me of the Dunlavy speakers somewhat, but with a huge sweet spot. And speaking of mid-bass, I'm not sure I've ever heard a kick drum produced with a life-like kick and "WHACK!" as through the Waveform designs. (Something Dunlavy does well, too).

Anyone heard the Waveform speakers, either active (Mach 17) or passive speaker (Mack Solo)?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=300

That is just sick!

I've actually been to Andy's house and heard his Waveform set up, although I think that was before he had a Mach 17 for the center. Lucky guy.

Among my speaker collection I have a pair of Waveform MCs - the egg-only ones Andy is using for surrounds. Lottsa fun.

Speaking of defunct speaker companies, I myself chased after some of the last existing Hales Transcendence T1 monitors and Transcendence Center Channel. Like Andy's situation, I bought the last existing T1 speakers from the designer Paul Hales himself, not too long ago.

They have a sound that I can't quite find anywhere else.

Hmm... I just realised another pair of my speakers are Meadowlark - another well-regarded but defunct speaker company. There's amazing value in finding speakers from excellent but no-longer-with-us audio companies. (And I just bought a re-furbished Eico HF-81 classic tube amp that sounds outrageously great for what I paid for it!)

(Although I continually find myself lusting after the MBL 101 or 121 speakers I see popping up on Audiogon. Must...control...myself...)

My theater has a pair of SC IV/A and 3 x SC-1 for center/surrounds. I also have a pair of the Aletha speakers for my living room which I believe are quite rare (due to their hexagonal cabinet) so can take photos / dig out the manual to contribute to this archiving project.

Last week I was in Singapore which has an entire shopping center mostly dedicated to high end audio and spent a couple of hours wandering around listening to different speakers to see if there was anything that sounded better than my Dunlavys. Its been 10 years since I bought the Dunlavys and I wanted to see how much state of the art audio had moved on. However the only speakers I found that were better were the MBL101's (altough several vendors were claiming that their top brands would better the Dunlavy), which was also the case when I was shopping for speakers 10 years back. The top of the range Dynaudio came pretty close and apparently uses a special cross over to remove the effect of the room, something my Dunlavys are particular about.

I'm also interested to hear what others have to say about using room correction with Dunlavy speakers. One flaw in the Dunlavy theory is having highly tweaked speakers with very flat response is one thing, but when you add the room effects, the room response is order of magnitudes worse. I have a heavily treated room (with a mixture of deadening, dispersion and reflection surfaces) and the Dunlavys sound great, but I have always wondered if electronic room correction would work well with my room and the Dunlavys.

Unfortunately I blew a tweeter on one of my SC IV/A's last year but was fortunate to have purchased the same Vifa tweeter driver that Dunlavy uses for a DIY speaker project that never got finished so was an easy swap. I know Dunlavy matches his drivers so swapping a driver is not a perfect fix, however I can't tell the difference before/after.

Another project I'm interested in for the Dunlavys is to swap out the cross over components for better quality components. Here is a link to a guy who had this done and says that it improved matters:
http://www.audioreview.com/cat/speak...8_1594crx.aspx

Electronic room correction can be helpful. I know of at least three guys using the Parc from Rives Audio with good results. But I believe manual room correction, if possible, to be better as it keeps the signal path cleaner. Rives created the Parc as a worse case scenario solution. But its still best to start with an accurate speaker because you cant get any better than the source. The MBL is a curious comparison as it is pretty much the exact opposite of a Dunlavy from an engineering standpoint.

As far as crossovers go, Dunlavy would describe the parts he used as "adequate". Being a measurement freak, his opionion was that the exotic parts did not measure any better than the ones he used so he never used them. This is maybe the only area where I disagreed with him. And there are several people who have ventured a parts swapping upgrade on several different models with good success. I've done it a couple times for close friends. Swapping out caps and resistors has the greatest effect. This is fortunate since none of the coils have their values labeled and using handheld inductor measuring devices are not nearly accurate enough to maintain the precise accuracy of the original design.
But swapping these parts can be expensive because there are usually quite a few in there. And unless you have the expertise to determine the ones used for frequency roll off versus the ones used for impedance correction you may as well just replace them all.
There is a guy on Audiogon who posted a detailed description of replacing parts in his 4A a few years ago. Though I am unconviced that he did it correctly in the end.

Anyway, anyone wanting to contribute to an archival project are welcome. Anything, no matter how trivial, would be appreciated. All original credits will be used.

And to deandob, if you are serious about "modding" your Alethas send me a note and I can save you a lot of time by pointing you in the right direction to start.

If your only source is CD, then I see this differently. Digital out of the transport, digital into the room correction device, digital out of the room correction device and digital into the DAC.

I sold a room correction system for 10 years and whatever "slight" imperfections that the correction device might have added in an all digital system , the upside always far out weighed any potential downside.

And having wandered the USA installing these things, I can tell you that in MOST rooms, passive (or manual as you call it) EQ (which is the very best approach) SELDOM is sufficient.

If you also have an analog source, the rules change a bit but if you have high enough sample rate on the A to D converter on the correction device, the upside still almost always exceeds the downside.

And NOT ALL ROOM CORRECTION SOLUTIONS ARE CREATED EQUAL!

Hi

A little OT perhaps.. WHat happened to the Sigtech people? ... A superior product well (too) advanced for its time..

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm still amazed at how good these speakers sound 10+ years on. Champ04 - I would appreciate the pointers about modding the crossovers, I will look to do this for my 4As not my Alethas, as the Alethas are in a large room that is quite problematic for sound. I have tried the Aletha with room correction (from a HTPC) and although the sound in the sweet spot did improve, it was definitely worse from other positions. I may give the Vista room correction a try in my home theater with the 4As as it is a heavily treated (manual correction!) room, the digital room correction may not need to be as severe, leading to a better experience.

There is no doubt that room interaction is THE most influencial aspect to final sound. I've heard megabuck systems that sound absolutely horrible as a result of it. Room corrective devices ARE needed in most systems.
But if I were spending this much money on a system I'd definitely find a way to do passive correction. (again, IF possible) Then again, I never understood the point of putting a serious stereo system in any room other than a dedicated one. (by serious, I mean one that ends up being a significant monetary investment.)

Digital correction can and will induce jitter. And if you are an analouge guy, well, its downright sacriligeous to turn it digital!! LOL.

I was their Marketing Director for 10 years. The initial product was developed (late 80's/very early 90's) before PC's had enough computing power to assist in the filter computation so each SigTech has a pile of powerful (and expensive) Motorola chips in them. Tact and the rest were developed after PC's became more powerful and so most of the computing is done in a PC and hence no need to stuff expensive chips in each unit.

The owner of SigTech had been in the audio world for a long time (was the president of Pacific Stereo and key executive of another well known audio company - Acoustic Research) but he knew ZERO about audio. His designer was a brilliant guy named Ron Genereux who has done digital design work for lots of current well known audio companies.

Anyway, the owner would not invest in the necessary technologies to (a) cost reduce the unit by redesigning it and (b) improve the user interface so someone other than a mathematical/engineering whiz or other incredibly bright individual could perform a setup ... so I traveled around the country setting the units up in dealers and individual homes (and learned more about audio and rooms in that time than you can imagine). So if a user wanted to change anything in his room of significance (like move the speakers or chair or ..) I would need to revisit the site (which we did not do free).

I tried to get him to partner with firms like Theta and RPG but all he wanted them to do was to purchase a unit and THEN he would talk to them.

Had he played his cards right, he would be the Audyssey of today... and had a good grip on a high end version as well. In fairness to him, the potential die-hard two channel guys (those will stereos that cost LOTS) were troubled by the thought of adding an additional BOX between their CD player and DAC (or Preamp). But without exception, EVERYONE that heard it was blown away. Our close ratio was huge but the total volumes were not.

But he didn't and closed the business a number of years ago and retired to Texas (where some of his children are). It was (and is) an amazing product.

I'm stripping the planned Music/HT room apart and starting fresh in my new place. I'm gonna do my best with passive EQ. My only limitations right now is room size, which is smaller than I'd like. I can change the dimensions somewhat but I'm limited to about approximately 22' deep by 18' wide, and 7' high. That's smaller than the room I had in the house I was just in, but it'll be more "sealed" as I can go to town on it if I want. I'm redoing the room (tearing it all apart and starting fresh) and hoping to get it right along the way. I wanted to keep all of my Dunlavy's 10' from my listening position, but if I do that in this room 1) they will be closer to the walls than I'd like and 2) it would put me in the center of the room (lengthwise) and that's terrible for bass! So until I rebuild the house and add a larger dedicated theater, I'm stuck with this. I guess this is the compromise I'll need to live with for now. I still don't think I'd choose electronic EQ to compensate for whatever oddities begin to occur.

Should I try the RPG room sizer? I'm not sure if it would tell me much, but if I can fiddle with dimensions just a bit to make it better then maybe it might be worth it...but will a computer program tell me about good sizes? Hmmm...sorry I think I may have went off topic a bit...ha hah...well, it's all about optomizing the Dunlavy in any scenario!

Audiogon has a set of 3 Harman Kardon Citation 7.2 LCR's that the owner claims were designed for HK by John Dunlavy - anyone know anything about these? They use an interesting MTTM design that I've never seen before, but they have the basic D'Appolito design of Dunlavy's speakers, as well as the inset, felt-surrounded tweeters. He's asking $1200 for all 3, which depending on the specs may be a pretty good deal.

I saw them as well, although never heard of them. Interesting...

...and to the person I'm supposed to supply crossover photos to: they will come, I haven't forgotten. I've been ripping apart and remodelling my new home all summer so when the dust settles I'll email them to you.

Hello and thanks to all you guys on here for your interesting posts.
I own a pair of Duntech Marquis that I purchased back in Jan. of 1989.
Dunlavy was at Duntech back then and had sent these speakers to be auditioned
at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas during the audio show back then. I bought them on the spot and they shipped them directly to my house after the show had finished. Not only did I buy the Duntechs but the electronics too. That included two Aragon 4004 amps and the Aragon 24k and the Scott Nixon tube hybrid cd player. All cables were the "blues" from Audioquest. I was blown away by the sound once I had everything hooked up. I am still, after 20 yrs, listening to thiese speakers and all the electronics too. Nothing has ever needed fixed or replaced. I did send the Aragon amps in to be upgraded to the MKII's
Now they have better bass. When I heard Dunlavy had moved to Colorado and started his own factory I wanted to purchase his new stuff for my surround sound setup. I ended up buying five SCI-av's. and purchased two VMPS subwoofers for added bass. Talk about
sounding the same. Nothing but Dunlavy sound. Doesnt get any better than this.
The end result is a 7.2 John Dunlavy sound system. If I only could find his subwoofers!
thanks for reading

Brian Cheney of VMPS and Dunlavy were in alignment on many of their designs and preferences.

If I am not mistaken, they were also friends as well as contemporaries in speaker design.

I was wondering if by any chance those crossover pictures you were referring to were from SC-IV/A speakers?

If not, does anyone else have either a schematic or some clear pictures of a Dunlavy SC-IV/A crossover? I am assembling a pair of SC-IV/A speakers and the only things I don't have are the crossovers or the rear plates. I already have a friend who said he would make the rear plates. And I have another friend who told me he would reverse-engineer the crossovers if I could get him the schematics, or an actual crossover. Since I doubt anyone will want to lend me a crossover, maybe some clear pics would work?

My neighbor across the street from me has my original SC-IV's, but I'm sure there has to be a significant difference between those crossovers and the newer SC-IV/A's.

I also have a friend in France who has my old Sigma's (which is basically an SC-IV/A with double thick walls, slightly different dimensions and weighs 250 vs the IV/A's 190 pounds) but my guess is because of that model's slightly better bass extention, the crossovers on those were probably different too!

So I'm left at the mercy of anyone willing to help...

In case anyone's wondering, the cabinets I'm using are original Dunlavy cabinets that I've had in my garage that have NEVER been out of the original factory boxes. They were from back when Dunlavy was about to go out of business and they had some extra cabinets left over. They already had the foam in them and even the internal wiring with the Dunlavy name on it! I've been putting off assembling them but figure this is just as good a time as any!

Please let me know...

Although the base design for a given model's crossover was the same, weren't they individually tweaked once the speaker was put into an anechoic chamber and measured? So if you exactly copied one speaker's crossover without first removing the parts specific to that speaker, you'd have a set of crossovers tuned to some other speaker's characteristics?