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My Dad (Paul Heath/Paul Heath Audio, Rochester, NY) helped Bobby Palkovic start Merlin back in the day, maybe thirty years ago. They sounded amazing, so dynamic. Unfortunately, Bobby lost his life to suicide.
How is it not relevant? He said his dad helped Palkovic start Merlin. That's literally saying his dad helped the founder of the speaker brand that is the focus in the video.@@alexhanna3921
I had Merlin 4+ 6’ monsters from Bobby. I liked those more than the VSM. The VSM used great drivers but I never got attached to them. Met Bobby a few times at CES . Sad he is gone.
Own it... LOVE it. I design and build power amps, the speakers are so truthful, used to evaluate my builds and careful build comparisons, and component (parts) selection. I trust this tweeter.
@@luisrodriguez8639 Indeed, one obviously cannot reliably compare, unless having them next to one other, but the general impression of unconditional clarity is certainly similar.
Amen bro Danny personally upgraded my crossovers ,but the mod was more for the newer post COVID tweeters which luckily I had a set and installed,after listening a few days with older T26 the improvement is awesome Thanks so much Danny
This is a good upgrade for these. I have played around with these raw drivers before and they are not well behaved. Even at full active they are very hard to control and requires a bit of EQ. A Really good crossover design works wonders to fix the issue.
good lord I cant believe they put this out for that money and folks bought them! The step baffle issue alone is a non starter. Suckers born every minute in this hobby. The industry has evolved soo much with brands like elac, emotiva etc which are actually affordable and well designed AND tested before they schlep them off to buyers. Even with those mods i wonder how good it really is. Great video as always.
They're not necessarily suckers. Try not to be a jerk. A lot of people (likely most) will choose speakers based on how they look and/or sound, or maybe based on price or a bunch of other things. They're not all audio engineers. I bought home theatre speakers that didn't sound all that great, but because they were build out of alloy with metal grills... I had a 3 year old son. They needed to be bullet proof.
@@toby9999 Exactly right. There are dozens of reasons why people choose speakers, and as I've said, if it sounds good to them, who am I to judge? Just because someone on RU-vid says they suck is kind of irrelevant.
At the same time, sometimes you can get something that's better without the high cost. But applies more to cables and even dare I say overly boutique crossover components. Speakers are usually the biggest differentiator
The Snake Oil Merchants within the HiFi Industry truly wish Danny never created a RU-vid channel. Expensive and shiny builds and "esoteric-ness" only ever unnecessarily add to the cost and mark-up. Better to have an unpainted DIY (at the most basic) but with a wicked good value component combo and proper cross-over design.
Agreed. I've put most of the money towards good matching drivers which are easy to cross so no notch filters needed and sound smooth as butter. The 50 ltr boxes are just some 18mm beech multiplex board with bracing, nothing special but it still sounds great! Another set with 22mm MDF and 2mm oak veneer sounds just as good. That base driver in the video, if you look at the impedance plot with the peak around 900hz tells me the base driver is at resonance there. This speaker shouldn't be used in a 2 ways system, 3 way would be more appropriate and crossing it at 200-500hz with the mid range driver.
@@imqqmi It depends on how much you want to spend, but pro monitors are easily the most bang for your buck . If your time has no value, then DIY is "cheaper". I spent 60 hours on my GR-Research upgrade. Was it worth it? Well, the B&Ws were clearly taken to a whole new level, sound-wise. But those small speakers didn't sound good enough to replace my non-WAF vintage speakers that were 4X bigger. Had I purchased, and upgraded, larger speakers, then probably, but I just don't have time to be messing with this stuff anymore with a baby in the house and working full time. I ended up getting the Adam Audio S3V monitors for my living room system and gave my large vintage speakers to my son. These Adams were $4500 per pair (a "no box" deal from Guitar Center). I don't see ever needing an upgrade from here. These speakers are phenomenal.
There’s a lot of black magic on being able to take money from consumers pockets , I do find it unbelievable that a brand can ( or should be cannot) design a decent crossover, Who are these guys, and where do they come from , ….do they just don’t care , or do they believe really that they are doing a good job !?
ONLY Danny... could "pull this off"... KUDOS brother. I could not (click) watch this video fast enough. I always went for a listen Bobbys room at CES, took many friends to his rooms, over the years... always liked his products. I own (and love my) Silverline SR17s speakers with the Esotar 330, have always been curious about "ways" of crossing it over. The simple 6db network Alan uses, clearly has it's advantages. Though I always wonder what a person with Danny's ear and experience could do?? Same with my Harbeth 30.2s, the horror (complexity) that must lie within, the speakers while very good are lossy, sad but true.
I had several spirited conversations with Bobby back in the day. He argued his crossover had "No suckout in the crossover point region" I said "then physics has been turned on it's head again" He used a 2nd order unit with both drivers wired in positive polarity. This creates a suckout at the crossover point. It also creates 180 degrees of phase shift at the crossover point. You honestly can't "fix" that, though most designers would flip polarity of the tweeter to smooth out that suckout. He stopped defending it when I showed his the John Atkinson measurements and when the Stereophile review said "Large suckout at the crossover point" Gotta love his conviction though. May he rest in peace.
Thanks for the video. It's nice when X-Statiks are compared to retail speakers and retail prices. Sure glad I found G R before buying speakers that needs corrections and improvement.
Im 64 yrs ive been in my church choir now for 53 years . I love music , i like listening only not playing but singing. Ive always enjoyed speakers , i never cared about graphs and how the woofers rolled off and all that stuff. I just listened and enjoyed . I cant read music never could but ive got a great voice and performed on stage in JCS MANY YEARS . I guess what im trying to say is. As long as the music plays who cares how precise , the production of sound isnt how well it sounds , just as long as you enjoye it.
For some people, poorly measuring speakers are not enjoyable. Do you sing one note much louder than the other when it's not a strain or climatic part of the song?
Likewise, I really enjoy listening to music, but listening to a speaker with ringing issues, cabinet resonances, amplitude problems, smeared sound, etc, is like trying to play a piano that is out of tune and missing some keys. The measurements are tools used to see what we will hear.
Another amazing improvement again from speakers that were not designed well to start with and a large price tag those drivers used not a good choice but Danny has done his magic
I'll be sending in my TSM-MMe in for the treatment. Eventually I'll build the EXOtica, but I actually like the little Merlins for near field desktop duty.
Gotta stay tuned for this. Also love my TSM's for nearfield studio but always wondered what they would do with like a Totem-esque phase response/room dispersion or whatever Danny would come up with. Morel drivers seem to have smoother response for starters.
I'd like to hear them with JDAM, Miflex or Teflon and copper foil V-Cap's, CuTF caps, bypassing the Sonicaps in the tweeter circuit. I find Sonicaps to be a sound but pedestrian capacitor. They beat many in their day, but they were never really great sounding to me.
I think it's a very capable speaker for near field. Bought used for reasonable price. For the era, the Hovland caps were miles ahead of the crap in a lot of stuff out there. Cabinets are bricks. 3/4MDF w/ double thick baffle and a brace. Love the single knob Cardas binding post. Are there better? Of course. But there are a lot far worse, even ones more expensive. 😆I'm sure Danny can create something truly special because I think the basic ingredients are here......just needs chefs touch to finish. 🤞
@@1moderntalking1 We have looked at a few of their models. Here is one of them: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-34ZLOMndBjM.htmlsi=Dc9kppXwibYT5yvT
That's a huge tweeter opening - the web of the front baffle between the drivers is almost nonexistent. I have to assume there is a brace/rib across the inside of it?
I immensely enjoy Danny's revealing videos on a variety of speakers. As an old (bad ears), ignorant fellow, I am terribly fond of my old Vandersteen 2Cs and don't even look for "upgrades".
Well, here we go again. I shell out thousands of my hard earned dollars for a high end audiophile speaker and they are basically unlistenable? Fingernails on a chalkboard? And even brand new, they have to be fixed? Talk about snake oil. At least most of those concoctions had some alcohol in them. A bottle might not cure your ills, but you'd get a nice buzz. Without the "must have" upgrade, all I have is firewood. I'm driving from Maryland to Texas this summer. I have GOT to check out GR-Research in person. I'll have my speakers and a match, because I doubt they will fare any better than the Merlins.
First: If you like your speakers, just enjoy them. Don't upgrade, don't worry about measurements, or any of that stuff. On the other hand, everything can be "upgraded". Whether or not you like the result is entirely up to your ears. Don't denigrate someone else, just because you don't believe what is presented.
My 1991 Mustang 5.0 ran just fine and I was able to bring it to a stop when coming up to a red light. And it did get me from point A to B. But it was just a Fairmont underneath, and a parts bin car. It had Pinto drum brakes in the rear. At that time, it looked and sounded bad ass. However, when pushed a bit its shortcomings very quickly manifested themselves, and the car I absolutely loved when I first drove it home from the dealership lost its luster in very short order. Thousands of dollars later, and a complete upgrade to the entire drivetrain, it was the car it should have been when it rolled off the assembly line. Ford could have (and finally did) built it right from the very start as all of the parts were readily available in the Ford Motorsport catalog. We audiophiles have fallen for the hype and the shiny new body work. But dive a little deeper like Danny does, and you see the cheapness inside, the "built to a price point" mentality even the most revered speaker companies seem to have. I can enjoy music on an old transistor radio and did for years. But I know what a world class orchestra sounds like in a state of the art symphony hall, and replicating that sound in a home environment is all but impossible. So, we spend our money trying to get as close as we can while expecting all of the manufacturers of the various parts and pieces we need to get to that point to give us their best stuff. Ford used cheesy parts on my Mustang so they could make an extra buck or two. I can understand them doing that on the base four cylinder model, but not on the GT or LX V-8s. The same holds true for stereo speakers. I expect compromises of budget speakers. But when I shell out ten grand for a pair of speakers, I expect the good stuff inside and out. And I expect them to reproduce sound in an exceptional way. I expect Danny to open them up and say, "Well, there's nothing I can do here, they are as good as they can be." Unfortunately, that's almost never the case. And that's a problem.
Hi Danny, was wondering why there isnt any software out there thats able to design a crossover that gives a flat response (or anything you want) ? surely its a matter of testing the drivers output in the cabinet and the laptop just says yep you need this circuit and these parts?
Hey, Danny. I have a question for you, have you ever heard a QLN speaker? I'm thinking about it but not sure if I sould go for it, everyone i've asked about them says that they are awesome.
My god we listen to music not specs, Of course specs matter but at what level does it not even matter anymore?.... does it sound good to your ears? Then its good... You guys crack me up with your cable risers and bar graphs, 5k$ speaker cables and power conditioners meanwhile the wire in the gear and your walls is tiny.. I swear you guys just bench mark specs constantly. Seems like you dont buy gear to listen to music you play music to listen to your gear. Im still happy with my ADS 910's and cant find much reason to upgrade.
@@st170ishNot a good analogy and im a car guy who drives a tuned BMW with a B58 so a car is more than just an appliance for me as well... Im not saying why buy a soundbar what im saying is the law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point.. I run ADS L910s from Apt Holman preamp stage 3 by Audioproz feeding two hafler amps in mono. So its not like I dont like good sound, but there comes a point where it starts to get a little ridiculous even for people who love audio.
@@quiksr20 You are making a silly assumption that people who like to try to get the best sound out of their HiFi don't do it for the music. People who care this much about 2 channel music are probably people who are emotionally moved by music more than the average person, and great HiFi sound takes that experience to the next level. It's like saying people who tune their BMWs only like trying to show off from a stoplight and don't enjoy driving on a nice twisty back road...of course that would be a silly assumption.
@@adamfrost9048First of all I like your profile pic I drive a tuned BMW with a B58 and also own an E30 & E36.. Im not saying my soundbar sounds fine what im saying is the law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point.. I run ADS L910s from Apt Holman preamp stage 3 by Audioproz feeding two hafler amps in mono. So its not like I dont like good sound, but there comes a point where it starts to get a little ridiculous even for people who love audio.
@@quiksr20 yes you are correct there is a point of diminishing returns, being a hobbyist speaker builder its pretty easy to recognise that point 😅 That point a lot audiophile's miss is the crossover, Danny gets these upgrades to that point and any more get ridiculous... hence his analogy to flat earthers.
Danny, can you discuss a bit about the process you used with the Merlins? Mainly I am curious to know that after measurements and (the basic) crossover design was done when you start optimizing things, what/how was any listening done? I understand you just had one speaker there, so were some mono or summed to mono stereo tracks played (in your workshop)? Do you have some test amp and source there (in your workshop were I saw a pic of you alligator clip prototyping things together) to play some test tones, music, or pink noise? Then what happens after when the optimizations are done and parts (final design) are hardwired together?
The first step was optimizing the response of each of the drivers. Both had rough responses. The woofer needed a significant notch filter to get rid of the peak. The tweeter needed a tricky circuit to get rid of a dip and knee at the bottom of its response curve. I think look at impedance, spectral decays, and vertical off axis response to check time alignment. The parts planed have a well known and proven effect, and they take clarity, and detail levels well beyond the twenty year old parts used back in the day. So I know there will be big improvements in imaging, sound stage layering, depth, etc. from the preservation of the input signal. We then did a little mono listening with the crossover clipped together to get a feel for balance and off axis listening. As per what I said in the video, a little tweaking was done in that regard. It is also a given that it will sound even better when everything in hard wired. The results on this one will be very impressive.
Yo Danny, Hey I've been a diy'er of audio for 30 years and I've got a cab that I've been working on for quite some time. But I just can't seem to get the x-over where I really like it and It would be awesome to have GR build it. Can you give me the information so I can get in touch with you?
I own this Merlin VSM and dug into this exact thing with The Speaker Exchange in Tampa. Their opinion was that if the tweeter was not exposed to harsh elements and it if did not have a large amount of power put them thru over an extended period of time, there were nothing to worry about. I also brought this us with Danny and Hobbs and neither of them had concerns. I think fluid in poor condition would affect the extended output of the tweeter. The tweeter tested doesn't appear to have any issues.
You know what they say about big magnets! 🙂 Seriously, I have owned Merlin TSMs since 2004 and have never been disappointed with them. As Danny is reviewing the floor-standing VSMs, it may be comparing oranges and apples, but I haven't heard the "ringing" he makes reference to.
@@JonEckleben Look for Danny's video about the Eggleston Works Fontaine speaker. I believe it uses the same driver. I own that speaker and have owned 2 pairs of Merlin TSMs. If Danny is sent a pair of TSM, I suspect he is going to find a ringing issue. I was disappointed with the Morel and it was touch to correct. We'll see...
I look for the bargains myself. But most speakers if not all have design compromises. I don't care who makes them,or how much. This person on this video shows opportunities to make them perform better. Most out there are not engineers. I know some, but hardly an engineer. I enjoy many speakers, but none are hyper expensive. I am not in the high budget world. Nor do I want too. I can do as much as I can with room treatment, and placement, and room correction. If I need more I might refer to a person like in this video here. You pays your money, and get what you want. I am too busy worrying about my system for its best than worrying who is spending what with their money. Your mileage may vary.