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Thread: Array 1400 at CES 2011

  1. #46
    Administrator Robh3606's Avatar
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    while i heard and can confirm the 1400s as a mighty fine speakers for rock, electronic music, even old school jazz, i'm not sure how it will handle minimalist vocals or chamber music with natural acoustics, and minimal processing in the studio...

    also i should note, i only heard the 1400s with tube amps (el34s), which was lively but not bright....i'm not sure if solid state will fare as well. doesn't the sound turn bright? i can only assume a MOSFET amp with its rounder sound may tame the balance.

    your thoughts, especially from the owners.

    cheers
    I have to agree with Widget. I have not found anything to trip them up as well.

    Rob
    "I could be arguing in my spare time"

  2. #47
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sweet212 View Post
    I have never heard the 1400's but from what I have read here and elsewhere they are a combination of smooth mothers with a dash of JBL dynamics. Can't get better than that.
    Seriously I have just plonked down a heap of Federal Reserve Notes for a demo pair of 1400's in Arizona.
    After having a 40 year obsession with JBL from Lancers, L200's, 4350's and presently 212's. I hope I have finally hit audio nirvana.
    I will let you know.



    Of all the things I have lost - I miss my mind the most.
    Look elsewhere. These people are mean.

  3. #48
    Senior Member MikeBrewster77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    Look elsewhere. These people are mean.

  4. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeBrewster77 View Post
    double that...

  5. #50
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    "I have never heard the 1400's but from what I have read here and elsewhere they are a combination of smooth mothers with a dash of JBL dynamics. Can't get better than that"

    That's all I'm saying. A JBL an audiophile could fall in live with.

  6. #51
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    I didn't get an obtuse joke from Titanium, but it's all good.

  7. #52
    Member tarior's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Widget View Post
    Well... the cabinets for the "Made in USA" 1400 Arrays were made in China with US made drivers and final assembly. I am not sure but I imagine the networks were built in China as well. Now that the Arrays will be "Made in Mexico", I assume the only change will be the location of the driver fabrication and the final assembly. They will likely have initial hiccups, but there is no reason that production can't eventually be up to spec.






    Widget
    I just have a major problem with buying a product from an American company that isn't US made. Especially considering the price. It's got a Made in USA price tag, but but built overseas. In my mind that is total B.S.

  8. #53
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    I worked for Nakamichi at the end (early 90's). One of my goofy assignments was to figure out exactly how little USA input would be required to stick a "Made in USA" sticker on an upcoming product line. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't even know why they asked me. That's how crazy it was back then. But we did get that 1000 series out which was just glorious.

  9. #54
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tarior View Post
    I just have a major problem with buying a product from an American company that isn't US made. Especially considering the price. It's got a Made in USA price tag, but but built overseas. In my mind that is total B.S.
    That's just the way things are these days so I don't let it bother me anymore. Back on topic, do you think that the market failure of this series - the 800s and 1000s are NLA- all we have is GT's most glorious triumph, is due to:

    1. How incredibly ugly they are?
    2. Overpriceing?
    3. Horn prejudice?

    These are amazing speakers, I just don't get it.

  10. #55
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    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    That's just the way things are these days so I don't let it bother me anymore. Back on topic, do you think that the market failure of this series - the 800s and 1000s are NLA- all we have is GT's most glorious triumph, is due to:

    1. How incredibly ugly they are?
    2. Overpriceing?
    3. Horn prejudice?

    These are amazing speakers, I just don't get it.
    Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder. I find the Array Series to be more attractive than at least half of the speakers on the market. Others don't like their looks. I'd say that's the least likely cause, as many folks buy really ugly stuff that's more expensive.

    Overpricing could be a factor, if you're talking about the perception that they cost too much. At full retail they're probably about right given the normal margins on a such a product, but the perception among the average person is that's way too much for a pair of speakers. "Hey, I can get Bose, Polk, or Klipsch for less than that." Then the second part of the value equation comes in: "They cost how much and they're JBLs? Are you kidding, I saw some JBLs at Best Buy, and they're not worth that much. I know a guy who bought some used JBLs for $2000 that were huge, but they were from when JBL was good."

    I think horn prejudice may be a small factor among the high end crowd. The average person doesn't care, again because they'll never spend that much and if they did it wouldn't be on JBL.

    IMO the biggest factor is a failure on Harman's part to sell the product. I got the feeling it was almost a deliberate neglect, as if to say, "See we built these weird, high end speakers, and nobody bought them. The market segment is gone elsewhere. Now let's get back to the iPod docks and car systems where the real money is." Of course, if there's no advertising, no place to audition them, no dealer network that wants to support them, and no way you can sell a $5k+, $8k+ or $11k+ set of speakers over the Internet and effectively ship them, then I think the outcome is predictable.
    Out.

  11. #56
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    But they DO sell that stuff in Japan. They DO understand that there's a market for their high end. Now that they have some positive Audiophile reviews, why don't they try to market here in the US?

  12. #57
    Senior Member MikeBrewster77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    1. How incredibly ugly they are?
    Personally, I think the walnut cab models are hot. Aesthetics are a very personal thing -- I saw some monster $80K speakers just today in a high-end audio store that I thought were the ugliest things I'd ever seen. I was told they actually do sell...

    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    2. Overpriceing?
    Related to having been in a high-end store today, I heard loudspeakers costing double the MSRP of either my PS or TiK that simply didn't come close to out-classing them. I actually think these are very competitively priced given what they offer.

    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    3. Horn prejudice?
    Nah, doesn't seem to impact Klipsch's ability to sell high-end loudspeakers. People willing to spend the kind of money we're discussing here on audio equipment buy what sounds good -- provided they can hear them to reach that determination.

    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    These are amazing speakers, I just don't get it.
    Let me help:
    1.) Focus on other segments (auto, portable, etc.)
    2.) Piss poor marketing
    3.) Lack of dealer network
    4.) Virtual abandonment of US as a target market
    5.) Subsequent domestic brand reputation dilution

    And at the end of the day, most people are simply unwilling to plunk down $11.5K on speakers they can't hear from a brand they associate with cheap plastic iPod docking stations.* It really is that simple.

    *Emphasis on cheap and plastic because some higher-end speaker companies do manage to market these types of gadgets and maintain their brand exclusivity (B&W comes to mind as an example.) Again, it's largely dependent on marketing & maintaining a certain quality level across your entire product line.

  13. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    I heard the 1400s at the show as well. They started with a piano piece and I thought to myself, "Wow, that sounds like a real piano, but I'm sure they're going to fall apart on vocals and more complex musical material." Next came a Boz Scaggs tune and I was simply astounded at how "real" they sounded. I wasn't even in the sweet spot of the fairly small room, but I knew I was hearing something very special. By the time the remastered version of "What's New" by Frank Sinatra came on (which I own and am very familiar with) I had worked my way into the sweet spot. It was the most realistic sound I've ever heard from a stereo, ever, period.

    When I told the Harmon rep how good I thought they were he immediately started downplaying them, telling me I had to hear the K2s down in the truck at the Convention Center. After I pumped him for more information - they had no literature on the speakers whatsoever - he told me that Greg Timbers had stumbled upon the vertical mid/horizontal tweeter setup, but since they knew vertical horns would flop in Asia, they have never really tried to aggressively market the Array series. It almost seems as if they put these on the market to placate Greg (a total assumption on my part) but that all of the marketing effort goes to the K2/Everest line. I mean, who goes to a CES show without bringing literature?

    After hogging the sweet spot for about half an hour I left to listen to the new flagship Sonus Fabers. I'm sure this system was in the $500,000 plus range. Next I listened to the Wilson Alexandria x-2s with some incredible looking tube amps and associated gear. I happenned to see a price sheet for the whole system, it was around $670,000. These two systems sounded very similar to me. I would call them "polite." They certainly didn't sound anywhere near as real as the 1400s, but by this time I was starting to question my sanity. After all, the 1400's retail for a paltry $11,500 and use antiquated 1940s horn technology. How on earth could they sound better that the Wilsons which employ "anti-jitter technology" and which are constructed from "X material" which costs 14 times more than MDF.

    I returned to the Harmon suite after a few hours of this audiophile insanity to make sure I hadn't lost my mind, and sure enough the funny looking 1400s sounded every bit as wonderful as they had during my first visit.

    The next day I shuttled over to the Convention Center and located the Harmon truck out in the parking lot. This setup was more like a Disney ride than a somber audiophile listening session, but in between "rides" the nice folks at Harmon agreed to put their 7.4 channel Sythesis system into two channel bypass mode and play the two K2s with the same material I had heard the day before at the Venitian. Since I was the only non Harmon employee in the room I got the sweet spot. The K2s sounded excellent, really excellent but not as amazingly lifelike as the 1400s. To be fair, the truck had pretty horrible acoustics, no treatment, and they were using Synthesis electronics instead of Mark Levinson, so it wasn't a fair comparison.

    I have been chasing the Holy Grail of a real sounding loudspeaker since I was in college in the 70s. When I heard Mark Levinson's HQD (Hartley Quad Decca) system at the Palmer House in Chicago at some ancient CES show I immediately went home and tried to duplicate it on a student's budget. I even founded my own speaker company, KAS Audio, and designed, manufactured and sold a line of speakers and subwoofers which hold their own to this day. After all, almost every speaker out there today, no matter how insanely expensive, ends up reproducing the highs with a one inch dome tweeter and a cone midrange, as did my designs. The Dynaudio/Morel MDT28 - or a clone thereof - that I used back then is still in use today in most megabuck systems. The difference is, I charged $1000/pair for my floor standing speakers not $200,000.

    In short, I think the 1400s deserve to be in every snooty, tubed up audiophile salon in the country, where they would put to shame all the lifeless overpriced hokem that passes as "state of the art" these days.
    I bought a pair of 1400s a little over a year ago, based on posts like this one. Earlier in the year, in the late spring, we had a pair of birds nest in the shrubs outside one of our bedroom windows. In the pleasant spring weather, every morning we awoke to them singing in the bushes at dawn. I stirred in bed one morning to that singing, then came awake enough to realize that it was still pitch black outside. I listened for a few minutes, then checked the time. It was 3 AM. My wife woke up as I moved around, then asked, "What's up with the birds? Is something stalking them?" We have cats and coyotes in the neighborhood, so they are vulnerable. After a couple of minutes of silence, the bird began again, this time from a tree halfway to the street and over to the left from the shrubs. After some wifely prodding, I got up, grabbed a flashlight and went to the rescue. Just as I opened the front door, it struck me. I turned around, went back to the bedroom and checked the stereo. We were streaming Carlos Nakai, including a track recorded in an outdoor setting, in a small canyon. We were listening to birds in his canyon, not to our own.

    We all know that we can convince ourselves that we're hearing almost anything we want to from speakers that we really like or want. This was a completely BLIND experience. We had no idea that we had the system on. Both of us (and we worked for several years in the outdoors, taking out groups on monthlong backpacking trips in the mountains) were convinced that we were listening to our own birds, and both of us could tell EXACTLY where the birds were located. After that experience, I have nothing but awe for the 1400s. I've never before or since experienced that sort of absolute realism in sound reproduction. These speakers are nothing short of astounding in their faithfulness.

  14. #59
    Senior Member audiomagnate's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by doodle6 View Post
    I bought a pair of 1400s a little over a year ago, based on posts like this one. Earlier in the year, in the late spring, we had a pair of birds nest in the shrubs outside one of our bedroom windows. In the pleasant spring weather, every morning we awoke to them singing in the bushes at dawn. I stirred in bed one morning to that singing, then came awake enough to realize that it was still pitch black outside. I listened for a few minutes, then checked the time. It was 3 AM. My wife woke up as I moved around, then asked, "What's up with the birds? Is something stalking them?" We have cats and coyotes in the neighborhood, so they are vulnerable. After a couple of minutes of silence, the bird began again, this time from a tree halfway to the street and over to the left from the shrubs. After some wifely prodding, I got up, grabbed a flashlight and went to the rescue. Just as I opened the front door, it struck me. I turned around, went back to the bedroom and checked the stereo. We were streaming Carlos Nakai, including a track recorded in an outdoor setting, in a small canyon. We were listening to birds in his canyon, not to our own.

    We all know that we can convince ourselves that we're hearing almost anything we want to from speakers that we really like or want. This was a completely BLIND experience. We had no idea that we had the system on. Both of us (and we worked for several years in the outdoors, taking out groups on monthlong backpacking trips in the mountains) were convinced that we were listening to our own birds, and both of us could tell EXACTLY where the birds were located. After that experience, I have nothing but awe for the 1400s. I've never before or since experienced that sort of absolute realism in sound reproduction. These speakers are nothing short of astounding in their faithfulness.
    I'm happy to have helped you find them. There's a great review of MBL speakers (my dream speaker along with Magico Ultimas) in Stereophile where the reviewer discusses the concept of LFAR, or Listening From Another Room. I am a huge advocate of this testing method. It looks like the 1400s pass the LFAR test with flying colors!

  15. #60
    Senior Member andywin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by audiomagnate View Post
    I'm happy to have helped you find them. There's a great review of MBL speakers (my dream speaker along with Magico Ultimas) in Stereophile where the reviewer discusses the concept of LFAR, or Listening From Another Room. I am a huge advocate of this testing method. It looks like the 1400s pass the LFAR test with flying colors!
    I've always used that test. A number of times now guests have asked who's plaing the piano in the other room, not realising it was a recording.

    An amateur pianist friend who heard these in Munich http://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipmen...ox_elysian.htm thinks my 1400's give a more realistic portrayal of music. I'm not sure that he's right but it does tend to reinforce how good the 1400's are.

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