East Yorks FostexFest
 
Saturday September 30 2006 A Saturday morning in September and four cars made their way through the early autumn mist, all heading for Kirk Ella, a small village adjacent to the Humber Bridge East Yorkshire. These cars contained a variety of strange looking single driver speakers; all home built and each one far outside the boundaries of mainstream audio. Destination for this strange cargo of speakers, tube amps and a heavyweight idler drive turntable was the home of Steve Shiels, owner of a superb pair of Lowther horns and staunch believer in the less-is-more school of single-ended tube amp building. Steve had very kindly offered the use of his generously sized living room for a comparison of the various speakers which ranged from an open baffle design to a comparatively tiny mass loaded quadratic tapered quarter wave loudspeaker. The protagonists were: Nick Gorham with his open baffle Fostex FE167s with Eminence 15” bass helpers. Scott Lindgren with Dave Dlugos modified FE 126 in Double FrugelHorn cabinets. Simon Chambers with Fostex FE208 Sigmas with supertweeters, in Fostex horn cabinets. Myself with FE108 Sigmas in Metronome enclosure with MJ Pro 50 active subwoofer. References for comparison were Steve’s Lowther horns. Ed Swift provided an impartial pair of ears.  First up were my Little Metronomes powered by my 2A3 monoblocks. The source was my Musical Fidelity X-Ray CD player. Playing a Loreena McKennitt CD recorded live in a church, the Metronomes simply vanished. I could not believe it. You could have reached out and touched the soloist. This was hi-fi on another level. Scott and I were able to actually walk around in the soundstage thrown by these things. On music with more heft there was a touch of shouty coloration as the poor things struggled in Steve’s large room but providing the volume knob was exercised with restraint they were clean, clear and musical. Bass provided by the sub after a bit of fiddling with the phase control was even and extended. An impressive start. Next to be auditioned were Scott’s double horns. These had a slightly larger driver than the Metronomes and it showed. They were more able to provide volume in Steve’s lounge. Bass was well extended for a small driver and Frankie goes to Hollywood sounded superb.  In the picture you can see them being powered by my amps. Steve then decided to try his DT25 amp with them as my amps were a bit laid back. With Steve’s amp the double horns came on song throwing a huge soundstage that it was again possible to walk around. A fine example of synergy at work here. Steve’s amp suited them down to the ground and they sang their hearts out with a fine bass performance for such small drivers. Simon’s Big Fostex horns were next up. These were a different kettle of fish altogether from the smaller drivers we had been using up to then. They revelled in the large acoustic space and kicked serious butt. They were on the end of Simon’s 300B monoblocks which were to used throughout the rest of the day, apart from when we pressed Steve’s one watter into service for a bit of fun. Nick produced the infamous Metallica torture track which was reproduced with awesome drive and power. In a completely different league to the smaller speakers. The sheer stomp Simon’s speakers produced surprised even Simon. Lumpy in the lower registers at first they warmed up a treat and proceeded to give a huge live sound to the big Metallica work. Smooth, detailed, a little slower than the smaller drivers but they made up for it with sheer oomph. They were the first speakers we had tried that were really capable of filling Steve’s room with sound. Simon’s amps were just not the same ones we had heard back in March. The KR300bxls valves he was using sounded beautiful. Punchy, detailed and open with fast clean bass. Nick’s open baffles were next after he had built the crossovers. Now these were a completely different presentation With the Metallica track it was possible to hear the applause of the audience tiered up at the back of the soundstage as if you were on the stage with the band looking out into the auditorium. They imaged like the Metronomes and the double horns which was a bit perplexing for Ed as they had the widest baffles of the whole bunch. the idea that the narrower the baffle the better the imaging was being turned on its head by these speakers. Like electrostatics they were effective over a narrow window but sit in the right place and they were simply breathtaking in their realism. Offering a window into the performance as good as the Metronomes and double horns but with the room filling sound of a good large speaker. Steve did not know what to make of them. They did not have the sheer visceral kick of Simon’s horns but they seriously challenged his Lowthers at the top of the range. Excellent considering the vast difference in price between the Fostex drivers and Steve’s EX4s. An A/B comparison was quickly set up by Steve using identical Simon & Garfunkel tracks. The rest of the afternoon was spent comparing Nick’s speakers with Steve’s horns using his DT25 amp as a control. The upshot of this was that Steve managed to confirm his suspicions of an upper bass coloration from his horns that his next project will ameliorate. He intends to design and build a set of proper corner speakers using his beloved Lowther drivers and rear horn loading of course. Nick’s speakers were the first ones in Steve’s opinion to offer a serious challenge to his Lowthers. Personally I still preferred the Lowthers but it was a close thing and if I had the room I could live with either. Conclusions This was a very interesting day indeed and the speakers shook out on very clearly defined lines. First there was the holographic imaging brigade headed up by the Metronomes and the Double Horns. The cleanliness, musicalty and sheer believability of these two speakers were in a league of their own. Small room speakers par excellence. Second were the big-hitting, room-filling, live-band-in-the-room contenders. Steve’s Lowthers and Simon’s Fostex horns were the chief protagonists here. Their renditions of the Metallica and Prodigy tracks were second to none. Then there were Nick’s open baffles, perhaps the most perplexing of the quintet. They were almost up there with the Metronomes and the dual horns in terms of imaging. Not as dynamic as the big hitters but they had a degree of finesse to their sound that the big boys struggled to match. The sheer size of the soundstage they presented was the best of the bunch and the lack of box coloration was clearly evident to everyone. A bunch of very different speakers with different sounds and presentations but all of them enjoyable and all equally capable of getting the musical message across big style. Fantastic.