This is what every speaker manufacturer should be doing : http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages...T/srtmeas.html

These are Eric's words....this was posted on in another forum about 2 months ago. Where he said if you have a question about his brilliant designs just pick up the phone and call him. .....

"Tekton Design was far from the first loudspeaker company to publish SPL measurements as we?ve disclosed for years now and if this is the biggest shortcoming found within the Double Impact I?m thrilled! It even looks like someone has already figured out the 2.0V 4 Ohm SPL on this thread. At least I have the courage to advertise it as a 4 Ohm speaker since a few of our competitors (famous mainstream manufacturers) disguise their 4 Ohm loudspeakers as 8 Ohm models - they?ve done this for decades.

Regarding the patent claims... it?s real folks. No P.T. Barnum going on here and the patent examiner agreed with us and gave us a patent allowance.

Respectfully, anyone having trouble grasping the concept of speaker cone moving mass and it?s integral relationship to musical sources: will you please call me prior to making me out to be a bumbling idiot on here. I?ll gladly walk you through it.

I can also see how my claim of others speakers becoming subtly obsolete might be considered inflammatory or even offensive to some. I tend to be candid and frank in my thoughts/opinions. I make the claim and I stand behind it. We have something truly special going on here - you?ll discern it or you won?t. I?m not trying to take over the loudspeaker world nor sell hype... I?m simply want to offer high-quality high-value loudspeaker products.

Sincerely,

Eric Alexander
President
Tekton Design LLC"

I guess that would help but some loudspeakers are not able to be tested with this method. There is no standardization nor will there ever be. The best method for testing is still listening tests followed with some measurements to validate the listening test conclusions, such that is done by Stereophile magazine.

Most people buying Bose have never been to a high end audio store ever. They have nothing good to compare their system with. To post a link like that here , just makes you look desperate to prove your point. Comparing Bose owners to tekton owners it's kind immature and disrespectful. Personally I feel sad for you , your thinking will prob stop you from listening and owning an amazing speaker for an amazing price. Your claims about numbers is not important to most of us.....after putting the double impacts in our room and listening...the only numbers we think about is the amount of friends we will call to show off our system.

It's kind of bad form for a loudspeaker manufacturer to to criticize another manufacturer's product. Especially when the person doing the criticizing has not heard or tested the product he is calling in question. That is not to say the design can't be criticized but the criticism should be based on understanding the concept rather than calling the designer an idiot.

To BFM....I respect your opinion....everyone is interested in different things and we are entitled to our own opinion...what I don't respect is the fact that you do not take the time or are even interested in listening the product yet you still assure it's most likely to be a bad design. If I was a speaker designer I would do what all mayor companies Do, I would purchase the (competitor's) product make my own review...have my own direct experience in order to understand and even maybe learn something from it...then apply what ever I learned( if you learned anything)to my products..

It amazes me that the same folks that claim that all that matters is whether they like a speaker or not, and measurements don't matter, are so quick to criticize Bose owners.

Bose owners like their speakers and you like your speakers. What separates the two groups?

If not measurements, then the answer is nothing. Which was Bill's point.

To criticize without having heard the speakers or without the benefit of measurements is, to put it charitably, unfair. Others may have less refined adjectives for this sort of behavior.


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All loudspeakers can be tested by this same method and it is indeed fairly standardized. There is a standard on how to take a polar response or a sound power response etc. Basically the same method (and equipment) that Stereophile uses (and most of the top engineering / research based loudspeaker companies.) Harman (under the direction of Dr. Toole) established these many years ago. Certainly not all loudspeaker companies believe or adhere to Toole's correlations of measurement results to perception of good sound (hence so many different and enjoyable speaker designs available) - but the measurement how-to and accuracy (provided the right equipment and knowledge) is undeniable.


That stated, this gear is expensive and can be quite complicated to use if one doesn't have experience with it or understand what a maximum length sequence is. I'd be happy to measure these (or any other) speakers under the correct conditions to generate a reference standard polar response, or really any requested measurement within reason. Our system is fully automated and a 72 measurement polar response would take about 30 mins to complete. It would be dead-on accurate and fully repeatable from approximately 250Hz - 32kHz, or even higher if need be.

If anyone is local to us and is interested, just contact me privately. Measurements would be yours to keep (posting / sharing them is up to you) and fully confidential.

Well said! Don't you know they have super special golden ears and the Bose lovers don't? The cognitive dissonance in some people is incredible.

How some people think that a poorly measuring speaker can sound "good" is beyond me. I guess they prefer it not sounding like the source recording. I would agree with Harman and Toole's research showing that people prefer a speaker that measures well.

Based on the incredible amount of audiophool BS on their website, I would definitely like to see the measurements.

How about loudspeakers that have 50% of their energy firing out the back? Or side firing woofers? Or rear firing drivers? What are you measuring then and is it a valid measurement to compare with a conventional loudspeaker? There is no one solution answer for these and other problems. Take my RS1Bs for example how do you measure two completely separate systems that combine into a single music source? They have dipolar mid range drivers, rear firing drivers and are in two separate enclosures?

Not any more. This doesn't quite do all that MLSSA does, but it does most of it, at a price anyone can afford.
https://www.parts-express.com/dayton...ystem--390-792

Oh please!!!! are you really trying to go there?The only person trying to criticize Bose owners was Bill with his post. But to compare the Bose system of the link to the sound of the DI is a little too much, almost every person on the high end audio industry dont look at Bose system, for what ever reasons they have. ( I know mine) And there is a LOT that separates them.

Perhaps you should explore this. A few posters have opened their doors. Best outcome might be a new friendship even if you find the Double Impacts not to be your cup of tea.

Yes, but... a vertical line array does that, the longer the line of tweeters the narrower the vertical dispersion. I have 48 tweeters stacked per 6 foot line and it's dispersion angle is in the single digits. My 3 way line arrays when layed horizontal will beam like crazy. Educated a buddy of mine why you don't do that, layed them on their sides and told him to move his head side-to-side.... very educational and obvious.

The snowflake or side-by-side and up-and-down is weird. Will it beam? You betcha! Will it matter? Heck, to some folks it will. Will it matter to everyone? I'm not everyone so maybe it will be great for some people. Heck, Bose did the side-by-side and up-and-down with the 901 and the Sweet 16 with a 4x4 configuration came out in the early 60's so it has been done before. Both of those designs had beaming issues but some people like them.

Then there is the quasi-D'Appolito alignment--and it is also waaaay off with that one with center to center distance measured in feet.

So, since Tekton has claimed they have somehow fixed these problems with driver spacing and horizontal arrangement of tweeters, OK...prove it! On and off-axis frequency response and some waterfall charts with decay will give a clear indication they have the goods. It would be really cool if they have solved the beaming issues and the problems with the D'Appolito alignment when spacing drivers too far apart.

They can use the measuring techniques that are commonly used for line array setup and calibration--works for them and critical to get the things to work properly...they don't have a guy that yells "sounds good!" All that stuff is measured when those monster systems move around the world.

For 12 large, I'd expect extensive test results to be proudly displayed with their speakers. I don't expect spinorama level done with robots in a chamber, just the beaming and dispersion testing they do commonly for line arrays to show what they can and can't do.

It is an interesting design, I'd like to see the results they have worked hard to achieve. Never know, it just might work and measurements can prove the theory. For now, I just eat popcorn.

Makes no difference because the mic is picking up the energy produced the same as a human ear would at a specific point in space. Keep in mind that a polar response and even more so, sound power response, measures the energy produced from a full 360 degrees (that means even with the front firing drivers facing the back). Sound power at 360 degrees horizontally plus 360 degrees vertically, and having calculations weighted to give decreasing influence the further off-axis the speaker is. One can than use this data to calculate the directivity index of the speaker, another very telling and useful measurement. Problems only arise measuring the low frequency response, but there are methods for this too.


Even a simple on-axis frequency response can be properly gated to include the influence of a rear-firing driver (or any unconventionally mounted driver) One measurement I find most useful is just a basic on-axis response but for which I "gate" to include both first and second reflections in the same room environment. It is often a rather messy looking measurement, one that most consumers who have some level of understanding would criticize due to a lack of true understanding, but one that can be quite revealing.

Thanks Bill, swept sine or MLS based? If MLS based, might have to give it a try and compare results. I have tested so many of these over the years, have always found significant reasons to stick with MLSSA, especially for time domain measurements and the fact that MLSSA is fully programmable and outputs a TTL signal so we can automate measurements with our Outline turntable.


This does look like a perfect portable solution though, something I wish was around 2 decades ago when I used to carry around an old massive COMPAQ with MLSSA (was it really once considered a compact computer? ) to take various room and venue measurements. You know those days

Probably because most all loudspeakers measure poorly. It depends where that "bad" measurement occurs and how important that range is to you.

I don't own one myself, so I don't know. I've been using HolmImpulse for quite a few years, after seeing it recommended by Earl Geddes. It will do swept sine or MLS. It doesn't have the charting options that the PE rig does, but it's sufficient, it's freeware, and I already had the mic on hand.
I remember doing plots totally by hand before I owned a PC.

And you'd expect him to post anything different?

Listen, with no offense to Eric, the dude is a self-taught guy who, AFAIK, doesn't have a degree in physics or acoustics. So, he may have went to the school of hard knocks, and some patent office official having even less a clue about physics and acoustics may have agreed with him, but that doesn't mean the patent has a foundation in real science -- it doesn't!

As for his response -- Eric doesn't have to walk me through anything, because the moving mass of a speaker driver is but one part of the equation. Motor strength is another. Plus, moving mass isn't just the cone weight. There's the spider, the surround stiffness, and other facts that combine with the motor to impart differences in how the driver will respond. They also effect its sensitivity among other things. That's not even to mention how the driver's diameter will effect the frequency at which it begins to beam. Then there's the fact that cone rigidity effects breakup, so the mass of the material having the break-up properties you want will also determine the cone's weight. I'd like to think Eric knows all that, but if all he's concerned about is the cone's mass, I question whether he does.

Plus, it's not like he designed any of the drivers in his enclosure, so...maybe he doesn't! AFAIK, he didn't chose the exact cone mass to produce the instruments per his patent (or any of the other factors which determine the driver's overall performance). Rather, the designer of the stock part (e.g. Eminence, for the bass drivers I believe) did that. I suspect, though, he may have chosen the driver that hit his price point and sounded like he wanted...just like most every other speaker designer on the planet -- nothing new there! Of course, then there are speaker companies that build their own drivers (ahem, JBL, you know, the guys who make my speakers which are "just alright" lol) who can chose every little detail to tune the driver exactly how they want it. Don't be surprised, though, they could give a crap less about the moving mass of the instrument(s) that driver will reproduce when making those choices -- they probably do care, however, about the frequency range they want it to play, the sensitivity they want, the off-axis response they want, etc.

Further, the man still doesn't address how the moving mass means anything when many, many, instruments don't even have a "mass" that moves -- say any brass instrument whose sound is produced within the instrument's body by the player's lips. Maybe their lips are the mass, lol?! Maybe we should get some lips on a scale to see what the average trumpet player's lips weigh so we can design the perfect speaker to play trumpet! Moreover, as I've already said, even in those instruments having a moving mass, much of the sound comes from the resonant body of the instrument (e.g. in an acoustic guitar, the body imparts lots of the sonic signature, possibly even more than the mass of the strings).

And, again, anything played through your speakers was picked up by a microphone (or pickup) at some point...does its moving mass matter in this whole equation? Y'all do know a microphone is a speaker (of sorts), too, right?

So, yeah, I don't have to waste my time listening to him explain this over the phone to know it's BS. I highly doubt the conversation will be anything but a waste of time. But, if you all would prefer to believe it, that's fine. Just don't call it science on a science forum, please. I'll allow Eric to call it whatever he likes over on his forums in his echo-chamber.

That said, if Eric would like to come over here and try to school us in his science, then by all means, I'd love to get into it with him! I won't hold my breath though.

Finally, none of this means your speakers sound terrible. I don't know how they sound. I do know, however, that the patent is B.S. and the design is atypical for a reason. Whether or not Eric has the wherewithal to design around those design idiosyncrasies is unknown to me, but if his penchant for pseudo-science is any indicator, I'd give a resounding no. That doesn't mean he didn't get "lucky" from many years of experience.

What ever the patent is, what ever drivers he used, what ever his background is........at the end of the day no speaker around that price point comes even remotely close to the DI's performance. Its just the reality. Every single person that hears the speaker loves them. So far I've had around 25 guest come to my house and listen to them, regular listeners and high end audio friends. They ALL leave my house speechless..... I'm still waiting for someone to ask me how they measure...hahahahaha. Just had a little chat with the guy that came to calibrate my protector..... he said...." I've worked in mansions with theaters that cost a fortune .....and I've never heard any system that sounds like yours". I gladly sent him the link to tekton and he just called me to tell me he placed an order for some DI. True story

Purchased the DIs under duress. My wife has always loved my 804s B&Ws and her approval was... "if you buy them, save the boxes." Then my 28 year old daughter weighed in with, "You aren't seriously thinking about replacing those speakers are you?". Sooooo, I ordered them late Monday with the upgrade package. They arrived late Friday. They were well packed and the are solid (read as HEAVY). The finish is very good. They fit nicely next to my screen and in front of the corner bass traps. Basically black on the black traps so they disappear in the room. All good.
Skipping to the trial by fire. After a couple of hours of break-in my daughter visiting for mothers day and my wife appear in the HT door with hate in their eyes. (this is where the haters are going to state this is not a scientific test and these people are unqualified to make an assessment. Please stop reading now. Thank you!) Set up with both speakers unequalized in any way, I feed some familiar songs from my music server through my ifi DAC to my Denon 4520. I then switched to my Thorens/AT440 for a bit. At this point my wife hasn't walked out of the room. A good sign for the DIs. My daughter states to my surprise and my wife's horror, "Those are the best sounding speakers I've ever heard. It sounds like the lead is standing right there and I can pick out things I haven't heard before". My wife just knew she had her back covered with my daughter and here she's been hit by friendly fire. I stayed VERY quiet. So the wifer is now looking for mud to sling, and she actually finds some. The DIs are not as bright as the well know bright 804s and she interprets that as a lack of clarity in the upper end sound of the DIs. We did some A-B stuff between the sets and it was noticeable that the curves/voices were quite different. Of course we have the room tuned for the 804s effectively eliminating their bright tendancies, that I feel is their only character flaw.

So I did some measuring and EQing with the DI's over the last couple of days and basically matched the DIs with the B&Ws freq curve. Brought the wife in on a blind AB test and she picked the DIs. There you go. I REALLY had my doubts going in. My impression is, the high end was where she wanted it and it was totally clear. The DIs brought out some midrange tonal deficits I never knew the 804s had. The DIs just sounded more natural. And it looks like it may be time to re-analyze the room acoustics. It really is very dead in there. That I knew. I could be wrong though. It may be we're just use to the brightness. But really flat frequency curves don't sound good. That's why we add room curves. Right? But I have some experimenting to do.

Other interesting facts... to equalize the speakers output I had to add 8db to the B&Ws. And I thought the 804s were efficient. Also, the B&Ws really needed a sub. The DIs absolutely do not. The low in is all there. Very tight and very defined. The speaker is very natural sounding. The imaging is better than the 804s which is significant in my opinion. I would like to hear it with a tube amp and some good vinyl. You certainly don't need a lot to push it.

But the other end of the spectrum was even more dramatic. We watched a couple of movies with these. They are very dynamic. In fact I forgot to re-incorporate the sub in the system so we watched the first movie with the DIs handling the LFE too. And didn't notice it. I'm sure it was down some but it wasn't anything dramatic for sure. If you buy these for nothing else, use them in your HT.

Bottom line, they aren't going back. They are superior to my much loved 804s. They won over my two most critical, and in this case, most negative reviewers. They perform from LP playback to LFE chest beating modes. I don't care if they are made out of old beer cans and bailing wire crossovers. They work in my system and are a great value with uncompromising results. And it's the results that count in my book. If all you have is $3K for speakers, buy these. And if you think there are some haters on this thread that are hard to convince, you haven't met my girls!

I think Eric doesn't have to come here and explain, certainly not to a person that it doesn't matter what he hears he will still think he is right. You don't wanna learn...you don't wanna explore new possibilities, All you want is to bash a patent. What you don't realize....most of tekton owners don't care if the patent is valid or not...we did not buy the speakers because of the patent hype...we bought them because they are freaking awesome....even if someone can prove the patent is bullsh...t...that wouldn't change how the speakers sound...So we would still keep them.

Glad you like them, but I've never heard a pair of B&W speakers I liked. Every one of them sounds like its midrange is under water to me. So, if that's your family's reference sound then I'm not really surprised; anything with an on-axis response that is closer to flat with a bit of a bass bump would be superior to anything I've ever heard from that company.

That said, I wouldn't go "un-treating" your room just yet. You may find you dislike these speakers if you do, because I assume their off-axis response is currently being absorbed up by your dead room; that's probably a good thing. I'm sure these speakers do better in treated environments than untreated. While that's true of most speakers, it's less a requirement for speakers having even and controlled off-axis response and dispersion.

As for your comments about subs...well...let's just say I'm a big believer in using subs to optimize their room location separately than the mains. Plus, it'd be a very rare tower (maybe the JTR monster) that would satiate my needs for sub-bass, especially for movies and electronic music, but, admittedly, I'm a nutcase there, lol. I'm sure, however, these DIs can play lower than your B&W's, so, again, if that's your reference, it's not hard to believe they can tear them up in that regard, too.

Best of luck with them. I hope they continue to impress you and you don't find yourself wanting to take your 804s back.

Congrats!!! When you first posted that you where going to compare the DI to the 804 , I didn't want to mess with your impressions, so I was waiting to hear them, but the 804 was the very first speaker I heard next to the tekton Pendragons on a high end shop in Utah. The only high end shop Eric allowed to sell his speakers for a while. And the Pendragons just outperform the 804' in so many areas, I did not hear the 804 next to the DI( not created yet), but I knew that the DI would come out a winner. Now relax and enjoy your upgrade. When you wanna upgrade from the DI , get his new ULFBERHT for 12k or save 25k to get a comparable performer from another brand.

@Bullitt5094

Happy to hear you and your family are loving your new Tekton Double Impacts. Thanks for sharing your early impressions and looking forward to hearing more!

Agree with the subwoofer comment. Yes the DI have really really good bass, but they do not replace a well built or bad ass sub. IMO they will outperform some middle end subs, but they will not replace a high quality 15 or 18 inch sub.

LOL, that's the problem with this world today -- facts and science don't mean anything to way too many people. I don't "think I'm right" I have SCIENCE, KNOWLEDGE and FACTS to back me up. I've presented quite a many of them very accurately in this thread. If anything, Eric could use a simple lesson in physics and/or driver design if he honestly holds the belief that the only thing that matters is matching the cone's mass to the mass of the instruments you want to play. If he further believes, as his patent implies, that the moving mass of the instrument should dictate what the driver's mass needs to be then he simply doesn't know how sound reproduction in instruments and speaker drivers works! That is FACT!

There are no new possibilities here, the patent is simply NOT BLOODY TRUE! And for that reason, and that reason alone, I'd never bother with this company. I don't care what their speakers sound like, they are liars and pushers of pseudo-scientific crap, and this world doesn't need more of that!

Moreover, there are a significant number of speakers out there, some even under $3k/pair, that are designed with well known scientific knowledge about speaker design and probably sound as good or better than these. Some of them even publish their measurements! So, why would I chance my money on this guy's junk-science designed speakers even if they happen to sound good?

That's my problem with them, and you trying to dismiss me as "not wanting to learn anything" is downright ignoring the fact that I know a thing or two about PHYSICS and SCIENCE -- to be honest it's insulting! But, I suppose I deserve it, I'm dissing a speaker you obviously love. Well, actually, I'm dissing the company that makes it and questioning how good it could possibly sound, but...close enough to bunch your panties. For that, I apologize.

That said, I've again wasted too much time in this thread and I am starting to wonder if it is really worth the effort. The people that have any knowledge agree with me, the rest of the thread is an echo-chamber of love-fest for the speaker...as it should be, I suppose, in an owner's thread. So, I suppose I should just bow out unless someone posts something new that's utterly and provably false.

I sincerely believe you. I'm in the other camp. I ONLY care about how a loudspeaker sounds. How it does that is interesting but secondary. I'm buying a product that is designed to play music and that is all I care about. YMMV.

I don't know why I'm bothering to respond, but I feel there's an implication here that I don't care how a speaker sounds and that's certainly untrue. But, I certainly feel that there exists a sound that is statistically preferred and this sound can be designed into a speaker and it just so happens that this sound coincides with measurements that show excellent off-axis response that very much tracks the on-axis response of a speaker along with a generally downward sloping and smooth frequency response.

Show me the Tekton's have that and I'll audition them because it'd be worth my time -- probably still wouldn't buy them because the way they are marketed leaves a foul taste in my mouth, but certainly I'd eat every word I posted in this thread about them most likely sounding bad (still not backing down on the science side of the patent, because no matter how good they sound or measure it won't make that piece of crap true, lol).

Of course, this comes with the same caveat I've posted a million times here-in -- different strokes for different folks. Certainly the sound that pleases me may not be what pleases everyone else in this thread.