Snell,Jpw, Audio note

[take5]

I really like the Snell speaker sound.

I own two pairs.... K's and C's. In fact, it was probably my K's that were talked about earlier in this thread in relation to Scalford, as they were the only pair there. I have used them there twice now.

They went down very well and received much praise there (and offers to buy).
Deans Snell J's and especially Doms A's also went down very well, with much praise. The latter were for me the best sound of the show this year.

The most common reaction was... " how can they still sound so good, in comparsion with modern speakers." I cant help with the technical stuff, but I think Snell just got it "right" all those years ago.

They prompted so much positive reaction that I hope to do a Snell room next year at Scalford, with K's, J's and C,s all in the same room, possibly on a 1 hour rota system. Who knows.

To my ears/taste, the K's are pretty perfect for smallish rooms. Of course they lack the Bass of the C,s for example, or other equally large speakers, but that isnt an issue for me. I think they produce a very nice sound.

Find me at Scalford next year. It will be nice to chat to fellow Snell enthusiasts.

[Reffc]

I really like the Snell speaker sound.

I own two pairs.... K's and C's. In fact, it was probably my K's that were talked about earlier in this thread in relation to Scalford, as they were the only pair there. I have used them there twice now.

They went down very well and received much praise there (and offers to buy).
Deans Snell J's and especially Doms A's also went down very well, with much praise. The latter were for me the best sound of the show this year.

The most common reaction was... " how can they still sound so good, in comparsion with modern speakers." I cant help with the technical stuff, but I think Snell just got it "right" all those years ago.

They prompted so much positive reaction that I hope to do a Snell room next year at Scalford, with K's, J's and C,s all in the same room, possibly on a 1 hour rota system. Who knows.

To my ears/taste, the K's are pretty perfect for smallish rooms. Of course they lack the Bass of the C,s for example, or other equally large speakers, but that isnt an issue for me. I think they produce a very nice sound.

Find me at Scalford next year. It will be nice to chat to fellow Snell enthusiasts.

The K's were fabulous things Brian and one of my show favourites, plus your LP collection was also fab . RE the techy stuff, I believe they use a 3rd order crossover (18dB/Octave) to help keep off axis response flat across a broad area, the idea being that in smaller rooms, first reflection points wont result in weird frequency anomalies. AFAIK Audionote K's use a 2-way 12dB/Octave design looking at some pictures of them.

[ledzep]

Its funny why some people buy something because of a name,yet the same product doing the same job just as well with a lesser name doesnt sell for as much.

[walpurgis]

Its funny why some people buy something because of a name,yet the same product doing the same job just as well with a lesser name doesnt sell for as much.

There seem to be parallels between the Icon Audio electronics and Ming Da products, but the prices bear no comparison. I rather like the Ming Da (Miexing) gear.

[ledzep]

The power of suggestion, it has "Our" name on it so its going to sound better even though someone else makes the same product for a quarter of the price.

[istari_knight]

Bewitch & Puresound look similar but apparently Puresound uses different transformers & capacitors I owned a Bewitch A10 for all of 3 days... I jolly well hope they're different 'cos that was pants - Couldnt get shot of the thing quick enough !

Anyway, regarding the JPW/Snell/AN debate thanks to Pauls bloodhound like detective skills we now know they have nothing in common apart from the drivers used

[pure sound]

The K's were fabulous things Brian and one of my show favourites, plus your LP collection was also fab . RE the techy stuff, I believe they use a 3rd order crossover (18dB/Octave) to help keep off axis response flat across a broad area, the idea being that in smaller rooms, first reflection points wont result in weird frequency anomalies. AFAIK Audionote K's use a 2-way 12dB/Octave design looking at some pictures of them.

Not so in the case of the type K's, 12 dB/Octave there although with some unexpected component values.

[Yomanze]

Audio Note UK do seem to appropriate other peoples' designs. Save for the DACs and some Andy Grove amps I can't see anything original & some of it appears to be Kondo knock-offs. I can see (suggestions) of downright copying in many cases e.g. 'borrowing' Helius tonearm designs without any license to do so. I think they licensed their Systemdek-derived turntable, and also got the rights to the Snell designs, but a lot of controversy otherwise... interesting how a few components can turn a Snell speaker from costing 100s to costing 10000s. :P

[istari_knight]

This is the xover I have for the K/1... The R is actually a 5R variable resistor but apparently its usually set between 1R8 - 2R2... Dunno if its correct though ?

[pure sound]

Looks about right although the values would vary from speaker to speaker depending on the characteristics of the particular driver set. You'd need a 'reference' FR plot from a working original K to get the matching absolutely right.

I visited the factory once. The adjustment of the A crossover to replicate the factory reference was something to see. A similar but simpler procedure happened for K, J & E models. But for the K for example, Snell also pre selected a fairly small percentage of the Vifa drivers they bought, sending the 'out of their tolerance' units back to Denmark. Which particular attributes they were selecting for remains something of a mystery. If you ever needed spare/replacement drivers they would come with associated components attached and all of it would go into the speaker replacing the old driver and its associated parts. The result was pair matching & pair to pair consistency that was ahead of anything else at the time. It's also why I'm suspicious of Snells with re-foamed drivers. I think it's highly unlikely that the original driver performance will have been preserved.

To be fair to AN, besides box sizes I don't think they ever seriously tried to reproduce J/IIs or E/IIs. They went for higher sensitivity and the undoped cones from the off. I've seen AN-K's that were similar to Snells but even they didn't sound like them because, I guess, they weren't using the same pre-selection & adjustment processes Snell used in their production. I know PQ would quite happily have carried on buying the Peter Snell designed models had Snell been prepared to continue supplying them but they wouldn't.

The 3 way C's & A's would've been much too complicated to try reproducing.


While the JPW P1, AP2 & AP3 used the same (albeit unselected) drivers, the crossover values & components are quite different. The sound is quite different too with a good deal more than 10% needed to make up the gap!