Huh? Conclusion was they where a GREAT LOUDSPEAKER. Jimmie D. Lane played gave some fine results. Are you reading what I am reading? JA's own system in comparison sounded Lilliputian etcetcetc. Great bass, no muddyness, no distortion at great volume levels, just think what they will do with some good sounding WIRES!!!!!! And a non audio grade extension cord feeding a few of the components, I really gotta get moving and run the 3rd line in from the service panel, to eliminate the extension.....Reveiw from both sites seems to me they are sounding liek GREAT stuff...they sure do to me.....

What difference does it make? The Whisper is enormous, expensive and ugly. No one who has anything else in his life besides the worship of sound equipment would consider buying a pair. Given the great columns by Mike Fremer and Art Dudley and Wes' review of the new AKG headphones it is easy to ignore the Whisper review as well as the pointless opener by good old Jason. All in all, this August issue beat the usual summer offering by a mile.

I know of some people that are enormous,expensive,UGLY. At least WHISPERS sound good. Big ugly people usually sound as bad as they look. When the Whispers are put close enough they are the best headphones I ever heard. You think Wilson jagged, all non sysmetrical boxes look good? they look like a proto type, when are they gonna finish them, they look like constant added on parts. the B&W look like an unfinished vacuum cleaner. The dumb mounting of the tweeter out on top, like an eyball.

I'm with Dup on this one.You may argue about anything else but Legacy loudspeakers are real value-for-money for what they offer.

As always, there is the listening and the measuring. Loudspeakers are notorious for measuring differently from the way they sound. Amplifiers, program sources, wires, room sizes and shapes, room sound treatment approaches, and line conditioning all come into play. Unlike any other component, a loudspeaker requires you to measure air movement with electronic instruments. Certain broad parameters come into fashion and out of fashion, over time, for blaming or praising loudspeakers. I have heard speakers that measure weakly in the bass outperform speakers that measure flat to 25 Hz, for instance, and we needn't even get into midrange and tweeter performance, the variables are so numerous.

I have heard the Legacy Whisper models on 4 different occasions, over a 3-year period, all in completely different set-ups. The things they do well come through in the review. Most of the doubts are in the measurements. Even though I give DUP a lot of good-natured crap about his monomaniacal fixation on DB levels, I must admit that these are outstandingly musical performers. They are not for me, but I admire them for the things they do well. Compared to other speakers in this price range, which most often shriek at you, the Whisper is smooth and musical on demanding recordings that attempt to recapture the experience of a symphonic orchestra. I would rather have them than any Wilson models I have ever heard, for reasons that have more to do with practicality and, again, my preference for symphonic music. I won't buy them because, at these price levels, they don't give me the sense of space that I demand, but I STILL admire the designer's achievements. To damn them because they measure ambiguously would be absurd, because they SOUND quite fine.

Anthony Cordesman, one of my favorite audio writers, loved these speakers. He didn't prefer them to HIS, but he loved them anyway. He did not measure them. He just listened. Which is all any of us can do. Graphs cannot do a well-designed speaker justice, if that speaker interacts with the rest of the system to produce beautiful music. If what I just wrote sounds ambiguous to you all, it shouldn't -- it's all in the combinations and the individual preferences. I thought the review was balanced and well-justified in its praise of what the Legacy Whispers do well.

I sampled the speakers amongst many others in their price range and above (even went to several dealers - as the first place I went paired them with gear that wasn't similar with my own - nor did they have anything comparable. I'm not even going to get into the mess that was their demo room.). After finding a suitable place to listen, I can honestly conclude that these speakers perform, to my ears, like something costing somewhere near ~8 - 15 grand more than the current whisper MSRP. Shame on me for using qualitative analysis butttttttt

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The lack of anechoic testing leaves this loudspeaker the red-headed stepchild.

Yes indeed. I am afraid that we dropped the ball on this. The logistics of getting a pair of bulky, heavy Whispers to my home for measurement were complicated and I had hoped that the opportunity to measure the Whisper's in-room performance in 2 rooms would offset the lack of quasi-anechoic testing. But it didn't. A followup including both quas-anechoic tests and measurements in my own room would be an obvious idea.

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It would have been something if further testing actually threatened those $40k speakers. DUP would be in hog heaven. And so would the manufacturer. Especially for a manufacturer that places full page ads in the magazine.

Sigh. I thought you were smarter than to raise the old advertising bugaboo, Culpeper. :-(

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

John, come on down, anytime, it's a pleasure. Maybe do some moving around of the speakers, see how it changes things. I haven't swapped the speaker wire yet, I gotta get some 10 ga. Let's see if there is any effects.

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John, come on down, anytime, it's a pleasure. Maybe do some moving around of the speakers, see how it changes things. I haven't swapped the speaker wire yet, I gotta get some 10 ga. Let's see if there is any effects.

Thanks for the offer, Carl. I may well take you up on it.

But for the quasi-anechoic testing, I really do need to get a pair of Whispers in my home. I will contact Bill Dudleston.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

John,
I want to piggy back here on the thread - but a different speaker. Quite often - especially in Sam's column - speakers are reviewed and measurements are never taken. A while back he had quite the string of Triangle reviews and even nominated the Celius 202 as Class A even though it was very inexpensive compared to thers speakers that have received that rating. In cases where a specific line is featured that much, someone nominates a product to a Class A level or it seems a paradigm is broken shouldn't measurements be required? (Yes I own the Celius 202 so I have a small hidden agenda)

Yeah, maybe even have Bill D. attend and measure with ya.....and make a VIDEO of it, so it can be played on the website!!!!!!! cool audio gurus at work!!!!! At least make sure Jeff takes a bunch of pictures.

http://www.musicdirect.com/products/deta...9&mid=13129

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In cases where a specific line is featured that much, someone nominates a product to a Class A level or it seems a paradigm is broken shouldn't measurements be required?

It's a good question and one that I have addressed before on the forum. The problem is basically one of time and resources: I only just have enough of both to measure between 5 and 8 products each month and my focus must be on the products that are being formally reviewed in each issue.

I do try to provide a measurements followup for some of the products that are featured in Stereophile's regular columns -- see "The Fifth Element" in April or the Musical Fidelity X-DAC followup in May, for example -- but inevitably the choice is going to be somewhat arbitrary.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

John

Thanks for the reply. I understand the logistics issue. Isn't there a possible compromise? With the cheap RTA programs available these days (used along with PCs) and simple meters/test equipment can't these reviewers do some basic measurements on their own? We should be able to get their in room measurements - levels, impedance curves, waterfall plots etc and simply note that these measurments were taken in a room that isn't a controlled venue (measurments like impedance should be valid anywhere). This way we could have the benefit of understanding the reviwers environment and biases. This data as well as the room independent data like impedance curves would enable us to make more informed decisions. (If these measurements showed some glaring descrepancy you could single those out for the controlled environment tests). Additionally I believe the in room measurements are far more useful anyway (on average). Especially when the reviewer has a room that is similiar in size and shape to the average listener's environment.

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I understand the logistics issue. Isn't there a possible compromise? With the cheap RTA programs available these days (used along with PCs) and simple meters/test equipment can't these reviewers do some basic measurements on their own?

This is an interesting suggestion. I have rejeected this in the past because a high prirority of mine for the magazine's measurements has been consistency: consistency of measurement methodology; consistency of measurement equipment; consistency of presentation. With loudspeakers, every one was measured under standard conditions.

This consistency has been the case since we started accompanying reviews with measurement data. Even though we had 3 people doing the measurements in the 1990s -- Robert Harley did all the digital, Tom Norton did all the amplifiers, I did all the speakers -- we were all familiar with the same test gear and could all, at a pinch, measure products that fell outside our speciality with reliable consistency.

When Robert Harley left Stereophile in June 1997, Tom and I split the digital measurement load. When Stereophile Guide to Home Theater relocated to LA and Stereophile to NY in June 2000, I took over his amplifier measurement responsibilities.

I don't think that essential consistency can be guaranteed with many people doing the measurements with different test systems, without significant involvement on my part in training. And again, I don't have the time to get a program like this underway. Sorry.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

PS: As an example of the problems, one of Stereophile's review team is experimenting with in-room speaker response measurements. He is using a good but uncalibrated microphone and a Mac-based measurement system with which I am familiar. Even so, I can't make sense of his measured results and suspect that there is some systematic error creeping in. However, I can only resolve this with a personal visit using my own test gear, which, as he lives several hundred miles away, would be far more consuming of my time than having the speakers shipped to me for measurement under standardized conditions.

With such a small full-time editorial staff -- music editor Robert Baird, managing editor Elizabeth Donovan, assistant editor Stephen Mejias, and myself, see http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/225/password//sort/1/cat/510/page/1 -- time management is perhaps the primary factor in my life.

It still comes back to the same basic criteria of "did you like how it sounded". I remember Michael Fremer really liking the WavAc amps ($350K) that truly measured more like speakers than a straight wire with gain, but that did not stop Michael from really enjoying the product.

From the Whispers article it is clear that what JA would measure in free space would still not impact how a speaker would sound in your or my home, as it would not at Dup's or Paul's homes. They were certainly different measurements and sound presentations, but that does not stop the owners from loving the sound they hear. The Bozak's did not measure particularly well, but the owner sure loves 'em.

The same goes for the new AKG 701's that JA did not measure except for impedence vs freq, but WP now has a new REFERENCE and at only $450. Now that is a high end steal if I ever heard one. I would bet money they would not measure ruler flat. I do wish that WP had the K601's on hand as well and could tell us how much was lost for $100 less in price. I'll bet it is not much, probably much like the Sennheiser 600's to the 650's

I am not sure that just knowing the freq response of a speaker really tells us any more than just knowing the distortion levels of a great amp tells us how it will sound. I do enjoy JA's measurements, but only in that they might be able to quantify some sound the reviewer heard, but can't quite put a finger on why. Often the enjoyment overrides any measurement issues for sure. Besides I would rather listen to another JA recording that read another speaker test.

For what it is worth, let me second the notion more of JA's time be alloted to more new recordings than to more speaker evaluations.

The problem with this on any particular piece of music is "you don't know" who put that spike or dip in the music. To explain: I had a decent tube mic pre that sounded good for what it cost. It has a "special knob" that allowed me to dial in the amount of "tube warmth" I wanted. The problem is that is wasn't tube warmth at all, but a huge "suck-out" at 12khz (-12db) . Turning your mic preamp into a lowpass filter is not what most of us who do recording really want.

The problem is that this freq abnormality is there and may not be your equipment's fault, but the recording engineer's or the mic pres manufacturer. You would not know. On a saprano's voice with edge this might not be a bad thing, but on everything else it is. You at home would (might) be blaming your gear or speakers when they are not at fault.

When I am listenting at home I try and listen to the music so hard that the gear is not what my experience is about. I would think most of us do the same. An equipment reviewer has the opposite problem. He is trying to correlate what he is hearing to a previous listening event. Very hard work indeed.

The speaker plays. The microphone receives. A graph records an abstract picture of the event. Spikes and dips are the norm. The human ear/brain complex receives and records the same event. Many of the spikes and dips are not processed as such. The human ear/brain has a reference, a memory of past listening experiences. Some are of live events (for most of us, that is...I have read a scant few comments by folks who don't attend live musical events), some are of events recorded by other systems under different circumstances. Some are even of the same system under scrutiny, but at a different time and under different conditions. The human reaction is endlessly complex. The graphic representation is a deceptively simple abstract, a simplicity useful for the designer (he must repeat his performance exactly, or change the design in a predictable way), but all too tempting for the listener interested only in the musical experience.

I shall never understand why the human listener would defer to the abstract graph for purposes of evaluation. It is a copy of a copy, and thus a degradation of the live event. Yet, time after time, listeners will refer to the graph as an arbiter of the quality of the event. I used to pay attention to graphs during my equalizer days -- my hope was to perfect the copy of some original event still alive in my memory. It didn't work, although the equalizer could render unlistenable software barely tolerable. I believe JA uses the graphs for quality control guidelines, as a check on design integrity -- a necessity for him, because his recommendations carry some weight among his readers, and he must carefully bow to that responsibility. Also, he is a scientist (as well as a musician) and, as I recall, has expressed the scientist's hope that future measuring sessions might somehow become useful for quality assessment. But I doubt that he worries much about these abstract representations when he listens for musical enjoyment. I guess the gist of all this is simply that I do not understand the urgency of the graph for evaluating the quality of a musical event. If it measures bad and sounds good, believe your ears, brain, and nervous system first...and look to refine the science of measurements later. The latter is a secondary issue.

I agree, Clay. Although I didn't care for the Beethoven Sonatas set, the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and Rendezvous are not only as good as anything I have ever heard, but better than just about everything. Still, JA has an obligation to readers interested in the correlation between abstract data and musical presentation. And, of course, there is the curiosity factor -- scientists have to proceed even when the data is most often unproductive, because that may not be the case in the future, if the research produces results. This is an incredibly complex field (i.e., speaker measurement) because of all the extraneous interactions -- the speaker can't be isolated from the matrix; it can only be compared to other speakers in similar experimental contexts and the memory of live events. And JA is one of the most unbiased reviewers anywhere, so I am always curious about what he has to say about the speakers he reviews. The magazine wouldn't be as good without his reviews, because he is somewhat unique in being both a technician and a musician. Happy tunes, Clifton.

I think the measurements are needed so we can evaluate the evaluation. In room response curves can show us how the system should or could have sounded. If the data shows anything in question we might be able to hgain some insight in to the reviewers biases, hearing deficiencies or competancy (data points that show contridictions between what the reviwers hears and what the data shows may point to set up problems, incomplete choice of reference material that would make the problems known or biases the reviewer chooses to ignore). While textbook measurements don't mean the speaker is perfect and less than perfect measurments don't mean a speaker doesn't sound excellent (especially in certain rooms with certain media)they would still be helpful far more often than not. Especially when the subjective and objective clash. At that point a secondary review may be warrented or the measurments might have to be validated to retaken. This is why I think in room measurments should be taken from the listening position for every review (something that can be easily done nowdays). We and the manufacturers should be able to see if the data (objective) coorelates with the subjective review. How often has a manufacturer submited a response that says the system was set up poorly after a negative review or a problem is pointed out? Unless the speaker is flawed in some area we can't see the "system" data because in room measurements are not usually taken in the reviewed environment.
There used to be an arguement where people would debate whether the speaker or source were more important. I think the real answer is set up and the room (assuming the equipment is reasonably competatnt). Excellent systems can be made to sound like crap and mediocre systems excellent with the right set up and room. Given this we should have much more objective data taken from the listening postion of the reviwer at our disposal when we read these reviews

You are discussing the virtues and faults of measuring a Legacy WHISPER speaker and you use as comparison a Teac to Harmon Kardon receiver drving Sansui speakers!!!! Surely you are jiveing....teac was cheap and Harmon Kardon RECEIVER is high quality? Sansui.......you are funny. I thought Stereo Review has folded...

Yup.....hope to see WHISPER Part DEUX. It gets more and more interesting, I keep learning.

Now, now, DUP -- don't be a snob. Actually, some of the old Harmon-Kardon receivers were the best sounding among their competitors. I doubt they would "measure up" nowadays, though. Besides, the thread has morphed. It's not about the Wurlitzers any more. It's about measurements.

Which reminds me of a funny story about the golfer who got a new $500 titanium driver. First hole, out of bounds right. Second hole, out of bounds left. The pattern continues for the rest of the day. When he returns to the pro shop, the guy who sold it to him asks, "How did it go with the new club?" "Great," says the duffer. "My average drive was down the middle."

Here's a better one. A recent poll by the Wall Street Journal found that 60% of Americans feel the USA is headed in the wrong direction. Only 27% feel we're going in the right direction. I guess the other 13% were playing video games. Alan Durslag's comment on CNBC was that never in his experience had he seen such numbers when the economy was doing so well. Another of the studio's zit-faced loons, an economist, concurred. "It must be the geopolitical unrest," both solemnly agreed. I have news for you, boys and girls. The economy is only doing well if you're an economist. They use graphs and live on college campuses, with tenure, and they make a lot of money. They use graphs. If you don't live in a graph, the economy is not doing well. If you are among the statistical majority ( statistical, I note) who found a new job when yours was outsourced, it pays substantially less than your old one. If you strip spiraling food and energy costs out of the CPI, inflation is low. Of course, who needs food and energy, right? But that is the way of statistics and graphs.

I have been misquoted (misreferenced? misunderstood?) on this matter of measurements and graphs. I am not against them. If you reread what I posted you will see that clearly. My point is, when there is a conflict between reality and measured abstractions of it, believe the reality. A good example is the Eggleston Andra vs. the Revel Ultima Salon, a few years back. The former did not graph very well, the latter was nigh perfect. Yet, when I heard them at the same dealer's, the Eggleston was clearly more realistic. I owned the Dynaudio Evidence Master for a few months. Another statistical whiz. You can only play 10% of your software on it without running screaming from the room. Certain aspects of JA's measurements are most useful. Off-axis response curves give you a good idea of where to sit. Sensitivity measurements, along with the impedance and phase-shift information, give you a good idea of what kind of amplification you may need. Other than that, WHEN THE GRAPHS AND THE LISTENING ARE IN CONFLICT, believe the listener. That's all I said. Cheers, Clifton

Measurements aside, I can remember the HK's audibly trouncing the competition, mostly in the areas of harmonic richness, smoothness in the upper midrange and highs, and dynamics. Most of the transistor receivers of that era sounded thin and raspy.

I can remember when it was the Democrats who were accused of pandering to Israel's needs. How times have changed. We all know that these gnats have been buzzing Israel's flanks for a long, long time. Now that they decide enough's enough, they get flamed in the international press for an "excessive response." As far as I'm concerned, you mess with the bull, you get the horn. If some two-bit satrap tells me I should be removed from the planet, I guarantee I'm gonna get a few rounds off before the removal. If we wait for Iran to get their nukes, we deserve our fate. Israel won't wait, I can assure you. They've seen this movie before, and it ended in various ovens. Some things you can't ignore or run away from. If we're going to get involved, let's win the damned fight and come home. Iran included. If they're serious about the 10,000 virgins, let's give 'em what they want. Personally, I don't understand this fantasizing about virgins (like speakers, a little break-in ain't all bad...), but if that's their ideal, the least we can do is help 'em along the way.