Audiophilepure

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/magnepan-lrs-loudspeaker/

“At $650 the LRS is an easy top recommendation. It will need considerable power and careful placement to perform at its best—and frankly it will also need a decent subwoofer if you want full-spectrum fidelity. But if you’re listening in a smallish room and are a fan of folk-rock or acoustic music, it will outdo anything else at or near its price. No matter how much you spend on your stereo, getting it to sound like the real thing isn’t a given, folks. In the midrange, the LRS sounds like the real thing.”

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“Best of all, Elipson hasn’t thrown everything at the bass and midrange and forgotten about the treble. The top end is deliciously sweet and insightful, but without any sense of hardness that could ruin the whole delicate balance. Admittedly, it can’t quite match the ultimate purity of Bowers & Wilkin’s similarly priced 703 S2 floorstander (HFC 433), for example, but there is never a sense that I am missing anything. The guitar string plucks from Nickel Creek’s Reasons Why are beautifully defined and the subtle percussion effects backing Aaron Neville on Everybody Plays The Fool are present, correct and easy to distinguish.”

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“As I’ve just implied, some speakers can simulate soundstage depth by recessing the midrange. The YBs were above such trickery. If I had to venture a guess as to how these speakers mastered space so well, I’d say it’s everything about them — their rounded, organically shaped, exceptionally dead cabinets, high-quality drive units, and good engineering. None of these characteristics are unique to Estelon, but the combination of them in so elegant a package verges on the stunning.

The owner’s manual hints that it’s best not to overdrive these speakers and thus risk driver failure. Well, far be it from me to second-guess the manufacturer, but I pushed these babies pretty damn hard at times, and never once heard from them the slightest whimper of distress: no compression, no hardening, no distortion of any kind — instead, for the most part, only a direct relationship between the position of the volume knob and the volume of sound coming from the speakers. Turn it up, it got louder. Not sure what the fuss is about here.”

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“The two high-excursion 8″ woofers are loaded in an unusual quasi-transmission-line arrangement. In a full transmission line, the woofer’s rear wave is directed down a labyrinth filled with mineral wool (or other damping material) inside the cabinet. The woofer’s rear wave is dissipated as it travels down the labyrinth, and in theory is completely dissipated at the end of the transmission line (the opening in the speaker enclosure that looks like a port). A transmission line avoids the problem of sealed loading in which the trapped air inside the enclosure acts as a spring against the woofer as the woofer moves in. It also avoids the problem of reflex (ported) loading in which transient behavior is compromised and port artifacts (resonances, the sound of air moving through the port, etc.) can become audible. Although a transmission line has none of these problems, a true transmission line requires an enormous cabinet enclosing a very long labyrinth to fully dissipate the woofer’s rear wave. In a quasi-transmission line such as in the Image1, some woofer energy emerges from the end of the line, but it is greatly attenuated. The Image1’s transmission line gets progressively narrower, forcing the energy into a smaller and smaller area that has progressively greater damping. Sanders says that this unusual approach delivers tighter bass than traditional sealed or reflex loading.”

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“Timbral accuracy was gratifying. With a 2019 release of the Canadian woodwind quintet Pentaèdre performing arrangements of Mozart string quartets, the distinctive color of each member of the ensemble—flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn—were faithfully represented, as was the characteristic blend of these five voices combined. The rich, mellow sonority of divisi violas and cellos at the outset of the Ruhevoll movement from Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, as heard on a 1967 Philips LP with Bernard Haitink leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra, achieved the calming (but not soporific) effect that the composer was surely going for.

The Figaro L’s were revealing, both in terms of uncovering meaningful musical detail and demonstrating differences in recording technique. It was easy to hear that guitar doubles the pianist’s right hand melody on “LTMBBQ” from Wayne Horvitz’s Sweeter Than the Day album, as well as the contrast between the very “wet “ acoustic chosen for Artur Pizaro’s performances of Ravel’s keyboard music for Linn Records and the much drier one heard on Matti Raekallio’s Prokofiev piano sonata CDs for Ondine. Todd Rundgren recorded every instrumental and vocal part on the first three sides of his classic gatefold LP Something/Anything, this at a time when overdubbing wasn’t nearly as easy to do as it is now. The Figaros let one know when Todd actually brought this off (usually) and when his efforts to function as a one-man band were less than fully convincing.”

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“Elsewhere in the spectrum EPDR is very well controlled, with a narrow dip to 2.0ohm/35Hz and to 2.6ohm/826Hz. So the Nova V isn’t as hard to drive as it may first appear. Forward frequency responses measured on the tweeter axis [Graph 1] show a rising output above 4kHz, which strongly suggests the speaker should be auditioned a little off-axis for the most neutral tonal balance. Response errors reflect this up-tilted treble at ±4.8dB and ±4.4dB, respectively, but with careful alignment it should be possible to reduce this to ±3dB or so. Pair matching error over the same 300Hz-20kHz range is disappointing at ±1.7dB but this is largely due to a minor narrowband disparity at 2.1kHz. Without this the figure would have been a respectable ±1.0dB. Diffraction-corrected nearfield measurement showed the bass extension to be 43Hz (–6dB re. 200Hz). The cumulative spectral decay waterfall [Graph 2] is free of resonances in the upper treble but shows three modes associated with the response peaks at 1.2kHz, 2.3kHz and 3.8kHz”