JOHN DEVORE debuts long-awaited GIBBON X Production loudspeaker

3 AM...had no idea! No bad there.

 

Yeah, I used "rewards" travel for my plane ticket and chose a 6am flight to take me home from Denver. I did not think that one through.

 

You guys are way too nice to me.
Brad, you are correct.
There are tons of speakers that measure well but sound like, meh.
But in my experience speakers that measure, well let's just say not optimal, are not accurate.
I am exiting this thread and should never have entered as this arena is not in my wheelhouse so to speak.

 

I'll just say again that, IMHO, good measurements and great sound should go TOGETHER - and it's isn't just about frequency response. It happens all the time. An easy example is the work of Alan Shaw, but there are MANY more.

Conversely, there are speakers that sound great and measure poorly. While I think it's fine when listening for pleasure to enjoy these speakers, "monitors" should be expected to measure well so that measured signal going IN looks something like the measured signal coming out.

 

My experience tells me that low measured distortion, among other things, can often be much more important than flat frequency response. Take the KEF LS50 for instance.


They do not measure perfectly flat and they have a 4 to 5 db rise above 1kHz and in the 500Hz region but they have a balance of sound that reviewers and most listeners like.

 

3 or 4 db is pretty hard to make out. That measurement is pretty flat down to about 70db... one of the reasons I auditioned them, along with their many positive reviews.

 

I don't disagree, this might be so, but I had a lot of debates both online and in real life with people who thought that the LS50 measurements are extremely bad. For instance, Robert E. Greene, reviewer for Absolute Sound definitely thinks so. You can read his thoughts on how bad these measurements look at his yahoo forum.

 

I must be a Luddite but I never look at speaker measurements.

The only things that I care about are how does it sound (in my living room) and how does it look.

For my taste the Devore speakers sound fantastic but the O/96 was a bad physical fit in my living room (wife had an immediate veto). My hope is that this other shape will work better for her if or when I go the direction of high or higher efficiency speakers and lower powered tubes.

 

Just as a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy, so accurate-measuring speakers sound rather less so in the listeners' actual room.

 

Absolutely. And the KEFs distortion is extremely low. just a twinge of cabinet resonance immesaurable driver related distortion even at 95db output.

 

I own the Keg LS 50 and the Audio Note E and J. The latter both sound VASTLY better. But if you just read the graphs you would not glean this.

Stereophile doesn't do distortion measurements but the KEF has Twenty times more distortion than the ANs at normal listening levels. Stereophile also doesn't pair match. Ken Kessler noted that the top B&W was +/- 2.9dB while the ANs are -.4dB. It kind of helps if when you buy speakers the left speaker sounds like the right speaker. It is not the case with some expensive big name speakers. Indeed the Quad 988 was +/- 5.9dB. No wonder people can't position them.

 

Back to the original topic. Did anyone else get to hear the Gibbon X speakers at RMAF? I'm also curious about the turntable that John was using, the Spec GMP-8000.

 

That's a lot of bananas for the little monkeys (speaker pair). I want to like them but, I have never heard the Silverbacks or O/96-93 when they actually sounded as glorious as they were reviewed, even when usually paired to some awesome frontend gear. So, I am hesitant to applaud this endeavor as holding any unique quality. I know that Devore and this "tone club" based gear have a devoted fan club, including one of my favorite listener/writers. I just haven't had the same reaction to the Kool-Aid yet...

 

When you talk about AN pair matching, what does that mean in relation to the speaker? Is it the actual drivers, the crossovers components or the entire finished speaker assembly (cabinet and all components)? For instance once they have built a few speakers do they then measure them and pair the two closest matching ones or do the somehow measure the components prior to each step of the assembly, or something in between, etc.?

 

I was about to post my understanding of it but you can read the manual on page 6-7 here http://www.audionote.co.uk/downloads/manuals/AN-E Manual smaller.pdf

Drivers that don't make the .4dB cut but are no worse than 0.6dB are used in the KITS. Anything worse is scrapped.