I had today off and the house was empty so I played in audio land.
I wanted to compare a technically very nearly "perfect" loudspeaker and my Project Widgets which are not phase coherent, time aligned, low diffraction, or correct in any of the modern "critical" ways if one is to believe all they read.
I brought home a pair of Meyer Sound Acheron Designer speakers. These are 2-way self powered speakers with built-in DSP phase, time, and frequency correction. They are designed to be used with one of several Meyer Sound subwoofers. These speakers were designed for use in high end cinema mixing and screening rooms, a modified version is used in the Meyer Sound Bluehorn system which is arguably one of the most accurate speakers currently available.
The Acheron Designer speaker has a 4" aluminum domed compression driver with a 1.5" exit on and exceptionally well behaved 50° by 80° horn. Below it is a 4" voicecoiled 12" high power woofer.
https://meyersound.com/download/ache...=58b9e6f0d9b9a
I placed the Acheron Designers on a pair of small project boxes to elevate them off the floor. I didn't feel like lugging home the matching 18" subwoofers so I ran them full spectrum. They extend into lower 40s without a sub.
Listening:
The imaging was incredibly solid. I attribute this to the controlled off axis response as well as their being phase/time coherent. Even though there is no tweeter, the DSP is able to extend the 4" driver nicely and there is no hard sound that is often present when you push the output of a driver running well up into its breakup mode range. The sound was very natural and effortless. I did miss the bottom octave plus, but that is not fair since these are designed to always be paired with a proper sub. The image is a bit more forward than I am used to and holographic in a headphone sort of way... that may be due to placement though. I set the Meyers outboard of the resident Project Widgets and I didn't feel like rearranging the furniture.
I was concerned that the built in electronics and DSP might suppress the transparency that I appreciate with my all analog system, but I was impressed with the inner detail and the stage depth. Years ago when using the second generation DEQX preamp with my Project Widgets, I was never able to get much stage depth out of them. Moving over to very high quality analog, the depth and additional inner detail came alive. The Meyer Acherons were very surprisingly good in this area.
All that said, when I switched back to the Project Widgets, the slightly more diffuse image with a bit more inner detail, and slightly darker sound was really appreciated. Am I biased because I am familiar with their sound? Do they sound the way they do because I built them to my ear? Maybe. For me I really preferred the sound of The Project Widgets over the sound of the technically superior $35K a pair speakers. (List price including an X400C sub per side.)
Widget
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