Anyone that have the Troels Gravesen The Loudspeaker 1 or 2 that have compared them to cornwall?
Or have a video of them playing? there is only one on youtube with poor recording.
i would like to hear the sound character of them. I dont want to put that time and money into them if they arent better then speaker that i can buy for the same amount of money.
Or have a video of them playing? there is only one on youtube with poor recording.
i would like to hear the sound character of them. I dont want to put that time and money into them if they arent better then speaker that i can buy for the same amount of money.
I never understood videos of speakers. You're mostly hearing the microphone and the room in my estimation.
sure you hear mic and room, but the speakers too
DIY 90cm Ribbon Meets DIY planar magnetic woofer - Male vocals only - YouTube
DIY 90cm Ribbon Meets DIY planar magnetic woofer - Male vocals only - YouTube
if you make an effort, you can end up with good sounding videos
Kenrick Sound -- ケンリックサウンド - YouTube
Kenrick Sound -- ケンリックサウンド - YouTube
Those videos are pretty cool with a set of headphones. They convey stereo/room information as they move around. The fidelity is good, but unless I heard the same song played in the same room from various speakers, it's hard to say which part of the sound is coming from the speakers vs the room and my headphones.
The sound is of course coming from your headphones. What you hear is the music with room and mic artifacts on your source, the speaker in the vid is neglectable almost transparent in this arrangement. If you like the sound it’s probably because of good micing and your own speakers, not the speakers on the vid. Not sure why my previous comments was deleted maybe I was too harsh trying to explain this but looking at videos says nothing about speaker performance as everything else have more impact to what you hear. Edit: in my humble opinion that is.
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Well it really depends on what you want. I like the Cornwall, especially version IV is quite a bit better regarding the mids and highs tham MKIII. They are still 3 ways with material costs around $800, maybe $1000 of parts. There is no comparison of the bass, midbass of the Cornwall and the 10" plus 18 inch. TL really have an extraordinary bass.
Overall Troels sound is more what is considered high end but dynamic. Meaning long term listening and instruments sound the way they are supposed to e.g. a stratocaster sounds like a stratocaster instead of a telecaster or an oboe sounds the way an oboe really sounds. The TL1-3 are like a classic JBL monitor, meaning reproduce accurately, updated and with better crossover and dsp bass. Everything is quite a bit better but then again this will also depend on your whole system. I've heard the TL1 with Gryphon, EAR, Nelson Pass (Not DIY), Nelson Pass DIY, Audio Note and McKintosh, Rotel, Yamaha and Marantz and other gear. They hold up well even if start going to the €30.000 acoustic audio chain before them, but then again you have to know what you want. If you want big sound and decent sensitivity to run tubes and a fun speaker the Cornwallis are pretty damn good. Biamping the Cornwalls is not that eay or good with a plate amp and dsp. So it'S mostly good tube amp or plenty of power for the bass.
If you want something resembling a JBL 4345 and do not want to spend 30-50,000€ on Kendrick Sound speakers the Troels are an option, although the Kendricks I listen to had a Kondo feel to them and a bit of a Japanese sound while we went to Japan to buy one of them for a client. They are works of art and can be placed in incredibly small Japanese rooms and still sound very nice. TL1 will be better than a JBL 4345 or equivalent used, especially in normal rooms with dsp. It's really hard to find a decent condition big JBL Monitor and then you are speanding more than TL.
It all depends on what you want. TL was made to have the last speaker and avoid the constraints of size, WAV, cost of drivers, cabinets and crossover that most commercial speakers are subject to.
The bass of the Cornwalls is a bit anemic and does not go very low and has to carry lower mids and bass and will not be that much better if you give it 500W instead of 50W. The 18" with 500W moves your insides in microseconds and then stops on a dime, really hair raising. If you like good audiophile bass nothing compares except some huge bass horns, e.g Western Electric or Avantgarde Acoustics Basshorn XD. The coherency is close to some quads but obviously a horn speaker.
The Cornwall benefit from nicer and sweater amps, tubes and are very good for rock, blues, jazz etc. Piano, big band or orchestras and modern music, films not that good, also some vocals are just ok. They are very fun and designed to be a man lair speaker and most people don't want more than that. For the money the amount of musical enjoyment they can give is great, and one of the few decent high efficiency speakers that does not have a horrid response curve but especially the IV is not really not bad with apropriate tubeamps and not expecting a high end speaker.
If you are an audiophile, musician, like a variety of genres, want better imaging, coherence, soundstage and dynamics, less distortion, have bigger rooms and want better ability to analyze music and at the same time have the speakers disappear, then there are not that many options (without spending really big $$$), one of them is the TL1.
Beware they (TL) are big and really heavy, probably about twice as heavy and big than a Cornwall. There is no way getting around size to arrive at some acoustic capabillity though. Two 12" do not make a 18".
The one TL speaker that really intriques me though is the TL3 which the people who heard rave about, but unfortunately I have not had achance to hear it. Some extremely unusual high efficiency speaker with the coherence and imaging of a Quad but the liveliness, emotional intensity of high efficiency, time aligned and real audiophile bass. but with only 92 db/1W. The Cornwall I would say is about 95-96db/W instead of 102db/W oh and there is minor distortion in the 700-900hz range I remember now, not terrible, and better than CIII but still there.
Hope this helps. If you just want a fun speaker and plan to use midfi or lower cost diy then there is a good chance the Cornwall will be enough. Just try them out and if you want more of that return them and build a TL😀
The cornwall is a bit in the direction of Zu Audio and the TL is going more towards TAD, JBL, etc.
The issue about the listening on videos is not really helpful unless you keep all other factors thesame. Also headphones are pretty awful of giving you a feel for soundstage and are useless when you want to emulate a 15" or 18" woofer impact in you guts
Hope that helps. Now that Covid is over you have the chance to visist someone who has the speaker and bring your preamp and amp to see if that could be a sound for you.
Troel gets a lot of bad press here going for extras that if applied correctly not only give you good performance but something special, but I don't want to get into a capacitor discussion. If you can hear it good, if not better for you pesonally, I don't want this discussion and between logic, measurements and my ears Iwill choose my ears and how it moves me every time. This is IMO also the area where most DIY designs simply lack at times.
TakeCare
W
Overall Troels sound is more what is considered high end but dynamic. Meaning long term listening and instruments sound the way they are supposed to e.g. a stratocaster sounds like a stratocaster instead of a telecaster or an oboe sounds the way an oboe really sounds. The TL1-3 are like a classic JBL monitor, meaning reproduce accurately, updated and with better crossover and dsp bass. Everything is quite a bit better but then again this will also depend on your whole system. I've heard the TL1 with Gryphon, EAR, Nelson Pass (Not DIY), Nelson Pass DIY, Audio Note and McKintosh, Rotel, Yamaha and Marantz and other gear. They hold up well even if start going to the €30.000 acoustic audio chain before them, but then again you have to know what you want. If you want big sound and decent sensitivity to run tubes and a fun speaker the Cornwallis are pretty damn good. Biamping the Cornwalls is not that eay or good with a plate amp and dsp. So it'S mostly good tube amp or plenty of power for the bass.
If you want something resembling a JBL 4345 and do not want to spend 30-50,000€ on Kendrick Sound speakers the Troels are an option, although the Kendricks I listen to had a Kondo feel to them and a bit of a Japanese sound while we went to Japan to buy one of them for a client. They are works of art and can be placed in incredibly small Japanese rooms and still sound very nice. TL1 will be better than a JBL 4345 or equivalent used, especially in normal rooms with dsp. It's really hard to find a decent condition big JBL Monitor and then you are speanding more than TL.
It all depends on what you want. TL was made to have the last speaker and avoid the constraints of size, WAV, cost of drivers, cabinets and crossover that most commercial speakers are subject to.
The bass of the Cornwalls is a bit anemic and does not go very low and has to carry lower mids and bass and will not be that much better if you give it 500W instead of 50W. The 18" with 500W moves your insides in microseconds and then stops on a dime, really hair raising. If you like good audiophile bass nothing compares except some huge bass horns, e.g Western Electric or Avantgarde Acoustics Basshorn XD. The coherency is close to some quads but obviously a horn speaker.
The Cornwall benefit from nicer and sweater amps, tubes and are very good for rock, blues, jazz etc. Piano, big band or orchestras and modern music, films not that good, also some vocals are just ok. They are very fun and designed to be a man lair speaker and most people don't want more than that. For the money the amount of musical enjoyment they can give is great, and one of the few decent high efficiency speakers that does not have a horrid response curve but especially the IV is not really not bad with apropriate tubeamps and not expecting a high end speaker.
If you are an audiophile, musician, like a variety of genres, want better imaging, coherence, soundstage and dynamics, less distortion, have bigger rooms and want better ability to analyze music and at the same time have the speakers disappear, then there are not that many options (without spending really big $$$), one of them is the TL1.
Beware they (TL) are big and really heavy, probably about twice as heavy and big than a Cornwall. There is no way getting around size to arrive at some acoustic capabillity though. Two 12" do not make a 18".
The one TL speaker that really intriques me though is the TL3 which the people who heard rave about, but unfortunately I have not had achance to hear it. Some extremely unusual high efficiency speaker with the coherence and imaging of a Quad but the liveliness, emotional intensity of high efficiency, time aligned and real audiophile bass. but with only 92 db/1W. The Cornwall I would say is about 95-96db/W instead of 102db/W oh and there is minor distortion in the 700-900hz range I remember now, not terrible, and better than CIII but still there.
Hope this helps. If you just want a fun speaker and plan to use midfi or lower cost diy then there is a good chance the Cornwall will be enough. Just try them out and if you want more of that return them and build a TL😀
The cornwall is a bit in the direction of Zu Audio and the TL is going more towards TAD, JBL, etc.
The issue about the listening on videos is not really helpful unless you keep all other factors thesame. Also headphones are pretty awful of giving you a feel for soundstage and are useless when you want to emulate a 15" or 18" woofer impact in you guts
Hope that helps. Now that Covid is over you have the chance to visist someone who has the speaker and bring your preamp and amp to see if that could be a sound for you.
Troel gets a lot of bad press here going for extras that if applied correctly not only give you good performance but something special, but I don't want to get into a capacitor discussion. If you can hear it good, if not better for you pesonally, I don't want this discussion and between logic, measurements and my ears Iwill choose my ears and how it moves me every time. This is IMO also the area where most DIY designs simply lack at times.
TakeCare
W
Forgot the f3 of TL is about 25hz without pushing with dsp whereas the f3 of Cornwall is about 80hz, it does not go very deep, but still both have an audiophile bass vs. cinema subwoofer.
Forgot to mention this
Forgot to mention this
I recently finished a build of the Troels Gravesen TL-1. Had a hell of a time getting the Hypex bass amplifiers configured, but a more knowledgeable friend stepped in and saved my you-know-what.
My reference speaker is currently the Meyer Sound Labs X-10T with X-400C subwoofers and the Galileo 408 speaker processor.
The TL-1 is of comparable quality, with very impressive bass and mid-range, although instruments with a lot of HF content (cymbals, gongs, bells, etc.) do seem "soft" sounding, though from Mr. Gravesen's comments, this is intentional. It's early days yet, but my current impression is that it would be better not to divide the HF between the 18Sound horn and (in my build) the Viawave supertweeter, but instead just use a single 1-inch compression driver for 1300-1500 Hz and up (as Gravesen does with his TL-3 model).
Having said all that, these speakers and everything in them—drivers, wire, crossover parts, Hypex amps, etc.—are straight out of the shipping cartons, so I have to expect at least a little improvement from "break-in."
My reference speaker is currently the Meyer Sound Labs X-10T with X-400C subwoofers and the Galileo 408 speaker processor.
The TL-1 is of comparable quality, with very impressive bass and mid-range, although instruments with a lot of HF content (cymbals, gongs, bells, etc.) do seem "soft" sounding, though from Mr. Gravesen's comments, this is intentional. It's early days yet, but my current impression is that it would be better not to divide the HF between the 18Sound horn and (in my build) the Viawave supertweeter, but instead just use a single 1-inch compression driver for 1300-1500 Hz and up (as Gravesen does with his TL-3 model).
Having said all that, these speakers and everything in them—drivers, wire, crossover parts, Hypex amps, etc.—are straight out of the shipping cartons, so I have to expect at least a little improvement from "break-in."
Hi @System215 !I really appreciate to hear about your experiences with the TL-1, thank you for sharing! I am just about to start building them my self (or a good carpenter is🙂) Have you noticed any improvement in terms of HF, or in any other aspect from break in?
All the best
Niclas
All the best
Niclas
Have I realized any improvement in the HF? Well, quite a bit, though I don't think it had much to do with break-in.
As it turned out, the fellow who assembled the crossovers for me inadvertently followed Gravesen's instructions for the wrong super-tweeter, so the Viawave ribbon tweeter that came with my kit was getting too much attenuation. Once that was corrected, I noticed an immediate improvement.
Having said that, from a graph published on his website, it seems that Gravesen designed the TL-1 to be 4-5 dB down at 20 kHz when listening at a typical 3-4 metre distance. I don't quite understand why one would do that, but it is what it is. So, even now, the TL-1 doesn't have quite the vividness in the upper frequencies (most noticeable with cymbals, gongs, bells, etc.) that I enjoy from my other speakers.
Finally, it's also worth mentioning that Gravesen uses the same 18 Sound horn and 1" compression driver in a smaller 3-way system that's also on his website and, in his description of that design, he mentions that the 18 Sound driver/horn outputs to well above 20 kHz, but loses some linearity above 16 kHz (I can't hear beyond 14 kHz due to age). I even asked Gravesen if I could just remove the 9 kHz low-pass on the horn and disconnect/remove the super-tweeter, but he said that with the TL-1 crossover no such quick-n-easy modification was possible—and, understandably, he was not about to start doing a custom design for me!
Hope this helps! Regards, JT.
As it turned out, the fellow who assembled the crossovers for me inadvertently followed Gravesen's instructions for the wrong super-tweeter, so the Viawave ribbon tweeter that came with my kit was getting too much attenuation. Once that was corrected, I noticed an immediate improvement.
Having said that, from a graph published on his website, it seems that Gravesen designed the TL-1 to be 4-5 dB down at 20 kHz when listening at a typical 3-4 metre distance. I don't quite understand why one would do that, but it is what it is. So, even now, the TL-1 doesn't have quite the vividness in the upper frequencies (most noticeable with cymbals, gongs, bells, etc.) that I enjoy from my other speakers.
Finally, it's also worth mentioning that Gravesen uses the same 18 Sound horn and 1" compression driver in a smaller 3-way system that's also on his website and, in his description of that design, he mentions that the 18 Sound driver/horn outputs to well above 20 kHz, but loses some linearity above 16 kHz (I can't hear beyond 14 kHz due to age). I even asked Gravesen if I could just remove the 9 kHz low-pass on the horn and disconnect/remove the super-tweeter, but he said that with the TL-1 crossover no such quick-n-easy modification was possible—and, understandably, he was not about to start doing a custom design for me!
Hope this helps! Regards, JT.
There is nothing stopping you from trying this. It's expected you'll want to try adjusting the treble afterward, no surprises there.
The only ones I find remotely useful are comparisons with the same setup. How it fills a room/tone, etc. vs a direct comparison. Some of the DIY audio shows on Youtube have just that.
. . .Except the designer specifically stated the crossover would have to be redesigned. If I were capable of that, I would have simply designed my own crossover and saved a bagload of cash!
I have built and set up several active speaker systems and am familiar with using EQ. Part of the attraction of the TL-1s was not having to use EQ, except for a bit dialed in on the Hypex amps that run the BMS bass drivers. However, if I had wanted to go this route with the TL-1s, I could have gone fully active, with eight channels of amplification, my dbx DriveRack 4800, and not used any passive crossover elements at all. But that wasn't the goal. In the end, though, that may be the final solution.
This thread wouldn't be complete without a look at the build thread by @noamgeller as he has build The Loudspeaker II with an awesome sense of style.
I bet Noam can answer some of your questions, several video's are present in his build thread.
skipping to the good stuff: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/building-process-the-loudspeaker-1.379077/
I bet Noam can answer some of your questions, several video's are present in his build thread.
skipping to the good stuff: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/building-process-the-loudspeaker-1.379077/
If anyone has redesigned the TL-1 passive crossover to function as a three-way (without the super-tweeter), I would be grateful to learn about it.
Hopefully someone has.
It sounds as though Troels hasn't decided it is complicated, it may be simple or it may work without modification at all. Since you're prepared to do a full re-measure to design your active crossover, why not instead reverse engineer any EQ to make it standalone passive. Even if it's just one resistor value.
You may not be changing the cross itself, just the tonal shaping of the tweeter, ie the easy part of the circuit.
It sounds as though Troels hasn't decided it is complicated, it may be simple or it may work without modification at all. Since you're prepared to do a full re-measure to design your active crossover, why not instead reverse engineer any EQ to make it standalone passive. Even if it's just one resistor value.
You may not be changing the cross itself, just the tonal shaping of the tweeter, ie the easy part of the circuit.