The AlegriaAudio Ling
| Posted by Jan Vigne on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 04:32 pm: |
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My Ding a Ling
Have you been considering buying new speakers? Have you been looking at the monthly audio magazines to find a few prospects? Studying spec sheets and gathering information on the new materials being used in today’s speakers? In most popular price ranges there is a bewildering array of choices from literally hundreds of manufacturers. Click on one manufacturer’s web site and you can find 36 models of speakers that are sure to please you in one form or another. You have to wonder whether a speaker that has a frequency response from 36 - 20kHz actually sounds that much better, or even different, from a speaker that only covers 40 - 20kHz. Now that you’re on the internet, the choices have expanded exponentially. Suddenly there are hundreds more speaker manufacturing companies you have never seen advertised in the glossy magazines. Big ones, small ones, skinny ones and those with really odd shaped boxes. Or, no boxes at all. The more you look, the more confused the process becomes. So how do you begin to decide what speakers you want to listen to?
Pssssst, hey, buddy, ova’here
While you’re paging through on the web, I would suggest you click on http://www.alegriaaudio.com. Alegria Audio is a small company out of the Washington State area that has some interesting designs based on single driver, full range designs. If you’ve never heard of a single driver, full range loudspeaker, you haven’t wandered far enough over to the left side of speaker design on the web. For every 1,000 conventional, play it safe, the marketing department likes these, 6.5” two way bookshelf speakers for sale today, there may be one designer making a single driver design. For every 10,000 speakers for sale today, there may be one designer who considers frequency response of the speaker to be secondary to the emotional impact of the music. Of those designers who consider the music to be most important there will be a handful committed enough to be building a single driver, full range design. And, surprisingly, these designers are not living in their parents basement and do not have adhesive tape holding their eyeglasses together. A few might have a pocket protector shoved in a drawer somewhere. But, hey, pocket protectors got us to the moon. These are real speaker companies marketing a product you are unlikely to find in a hifi shop. And, it’s too bad they don‘t get more exposure.
What’s it all mean?
While you were looking through the magazines, you might have seen an advertisement that showed a picture of the crossover network of a high priced, highly regarded (in the same magazines) speaker. Inductors, capacitors and resistors are lined up in order to provide the division of electrical energy between multiple woofers, midranges and tweeters. It is all very official looking and certainly seems like it should belong in an expensive speaker. Kind of the Ferrari V-12 of the speaker world. In this case, the speaker industry hopes what might hurt you, you don’t know about. All those parts, cables and circuit boards represent potentially lost signal energy. Energy converted to heat and literally gone up into the air before it ever reaches the speaker‘s terminals. In a single driver, full range design there will be minimal, if any, parts to interfere with the energy of the music reaching the speaker itself. The driver is typically attached directly to the amplifier’s output terminals with nothing to distort or take away the music before it gets to your ears. Single driver designs apply the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) method of straight forward design principles. When the capacitors, inductors and resistors are taken out of the signal path, more of the music’s energy that would otherwise be lost in the form of heat in the crossover can now get out into your room. This is the first benefit of a single driver, full range design. The music doesn’t sound like it is struggling to get out of the speaker box. Instead, the music is just in your listening room. There is an immediacy to the music and a feeling of the performer’s presence that is immediately evident; and even more so when you return to the typical commercial product. Nuances of performance and thought are portrayed easily and clearly with the best single driver designs. The music has a natural rhythm and flow that moves the music along and draws your attention to the musical performance and not to the speaker‘s performance.
Without the extra parts which add electrical phase shifts and impedance swings to strangle the music, the single driver has a coherent, natural sound. It gives many of the benefits in sound quality of large, expensive, difficult to drive planar speakers with far fewer compromises in performance and domestic bliss. This certainly adds to the benefits of including a compact S.D.F.R. design in your home set up.
| Author | Comments | ||
     Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 5262 Registered: May-04 |
Every speaker is a series of tradeoffs and compromises These tradeoffs and compromises have much to do with the selling price of the speaker, and a single driver design is no different than the more typical speakers in that regard. The most critical tradeoff made in a conventional two way speaker will be at what frequency the designer crosses over from the larger woofer to the very small tweeter. (Smaller and lighter is better in tweeters; that is, unless you want the tweeter to handle more power over a broader frequency range. Interestingly, those are both qualities most speaker designers do want. So, here we have another tradeoff found in most conventional designs. And another question to answer.) A single driver design does away with the question by not presenting the problem in the first place. With most conventional two way speakers handing off from the woofer to the tweeter in the sensitive midrange frequencies (2kHz to 3.5kHz), how well this transition is handled determines the voicing, and to a large extent the perceived quality, of the speaker. If the woofer goes too high it will beam its sound like a cheap flashlight; and the overall energy in the room will suffer. The sweet spot for listening will narrow and the speaker will probably lack the effortless sound of real music from top to bottom. If the tweeter is driven too low, its distortion product will increase dramatically. Far from the relaxed sound of real music, this design flaw will lead to listening fatigue. These compromises, and numerous others, face the speaker designer who follows the time honored tradition of building a speaker that looks and sounds just like every other speaker advertised in the glossy magazines. This is where Alegria Audio’s compact, two way Ling neatly side steps many of the traditional design compromises and succeeds in reproducing music in as vital a fashion as any design has found when making two drivers speak with one voice. And if the ideas are as fresh as a CNN crawl, they are also as old as the audio industry itself. While not a true single driver, full range design by the classic definition, the Ling makes a simple concession to the concept which reinvents two way speaker design. Where most two way designs cross over with the larger, slower, made of one material woofer handling the lower mids and the smaller, lighter, made from a different material tweeter getting the upper mids, the Ling allows a single 4.5” driver to operate over the bottom nine (of ten) octaves the speaker will have to reproduce. The outrageously expensive Fostex sourced tweeter in the Ling handles only slightly more than the single top octave of music. This gives the Alegria Audio Ling a voice as different from most of the competition as Nine Inch Nails is from Caruso. With that in mind, I have to suggest you do not purchase the Alegria Audio Ling For all the virtues of the Ling, your money will be better spent on a more conventional speaker design if ; 1) you are in the habit of only listening to the recordings that make your system sound really good, 2) you wake up in the night drenched in a cold sweat awaiting an audio magazine’s “Recommended Components” list, or 3) your friends have nicknamed you “Soundstage” and they call you up at 2 AM to ask if they can borrow an interconnect cable that “does depth“. If that describes you and the crowd you run with, then you probably will not be happy with the Ling. I can think of a few other instances where you probably should not buy the Ling, but they will be somewhat self evident when you look at the specs for the Ling. If you have to toss the speakers into a predetermined position on a shelf, the Ling might not give it’s best. On the whole, though, I’ve found predetermined spots to be the absolute worst place to put any speaker. Also, the Alegria Audio speaker is not the most sensitive speaker you can find. If you listen at very loud levels, you will not be happy owning the Ling. This, of course, is true of most other small two way designs. Nor will you find Audio Nirvana with the Ling if you are surprised to learn music contains frequencies above 30 Hz. This, too, is a disadvantage of small two way designs in general. In most other cases, I would suggest you give the Ling a serious listen before spending your money elsewhere. So, just what is a Ling? A well put together package that doesn’t completely eradicate its hand made origins, the Ling is an attractive speaker finished in a real wood exterior that should please you with its overall appearance and weight and have you taking notice of the expensive, and well performing, five way binding posts on the rear of the speaker. For my audition I played the Ling with the grill covers off and experimented with stands to get the best performance from the speaker. My experience with the Ling suggests this is a speaker that does not like to be tied down to a stand with BluTak. The Lings sounded best in both of my systems using a heavy, well damped stand. But, in another swipe to conventional wisdom, instead of attaching the speaker to the top plate of the stand with mounting cement, I placed the substantial weight of the Lings on three short Tiptoes (cones) on top of a piece of oak plywood cut to fit under the Lings. The ply was placed on top of the stands with a single sheet of paper towel between the two surfaces. (This arrangement was made first with cement blocks to find the correct height for the speakers prior to substituting the actual lead shot and sand damped speaker stands.) This let the Lings sing clearly and sweetly instead of shutting down their frequency range and, most importantly, their dynamics as happened when the speakers were cemented directly to the damped stands. With a single 4.5” driver operating up to the edge of the highest octave, the speakers were toed in toward my listening position until I could see only the front baffle of the Lings. Depending on your listening distance (mine was in the near field of the speakers; about 7 feet) and the associated equipment you put with the Lings ( I would not suggest pairing the Ling with a $129 home theater receiver) you might want to adjust the angle, but I found the sound was most tightly focused when I couldn’t see either side of the speaker’s cabinet from my seat. And focus is what struck me first about the performance of the Ling. The Ling does home theater . (Very nicely, in fact!) The Lings first went into my HT system replacing the most frequently used speakers for that purpose, the Polk RT-25’s. If you don’t remember, the Polk RT-25’s were a Stereophile “Budget Component of the Year” not that long ago. To begin with, I should say I’m a fan of simple, two way designs, and often the smaller the woofer and the fewer the crossover parts, the better I like the speaker. Particularly in a subwoofered HT system, the many disadvantages of large speakers far outweigh the advantages of large speakers where I end up listening primarily to a small midrange driver and a tweeter. The amplifier in this system is a Harman Kardon AVR-80 II that is about ten years old. It puts out an honest 120 watts into the simple 8 Ohm average load the Ling represents. Last year the HK ran out of inputs for Dolby Digital sources and was replaced by a NAD T752 to use as a pre amp/processor. Though of basically equal output power, the HK amp sounds much more “natural” to my ears when I judge intergalactic explosions and train wrecks played through my HT system. The source is a Sony DVD/SACD player of recent vintage and a Dish Network HDTV receiver. The speaker wires are Home Depot extension cords and the interconnects are a combination of what reaches and sounds decent. As you might have guessed, I am not a videophile. With the system set up to accommodate the two Lings, I listened with no center channel and with and without the subwoofer. Stereo and surround material was put through the system. The first piece of music to get its chance through the Lings was “Dark Side of the Moon” in SACD. The 4.1 sound through the Lings was surprising in the ability of the system to place the sounds and the distractions of this recording with remarkable precision. As clocks clanged in various locations and a runner made like Sisyphus around the perimeter of my listening room, the Lings got my attention with the precision they imparted on the effects of this recording. That they also made the recording come across in an entirely fresh manner didn’t hurt the illusion. The heartbeat in this recording, as heard through the Lings, was made up of the three components of the sound; the pumping heart, the opening of the valve and the subsequent closing of the valve. That so many speakers can’t get this simple sound right put the Ling well ahead in my first response to the music and sounds playing through the Lings. The precise location of sounds in space caused my Cocker Spaniel to get up repeatedly to look behind the speakers and around the room in a search for the missing bodies that must be making those sounds. Good ol' Buck’s total frustration with not finding those nonexistent bodies only heightened my interest in the Lings. When video was added to the sources, the Lings were able to place voices and effects on screen with the actors and actions that naturally should be their source. This can be a little bothersome at first as the Lings display the ability to present the sound of overdubs and Foley effects which do not sound like the space represented on screen. Voices that were obviously recorded in a studio were placed with actors walking through the streets of New York. A door closing on screen sounded like close mic’d door closing in a semi-large sound stage, not in a small, shabby, cramped apartment. None the less, the ability of the Lings to direct sounds according to the manipulations of the sound engineers suggests to me the Lings would be ideal for a small HT system that doesn’t require a center speaker to be effective. As a start up system the Ling can deliver enough quantity of bass, and certainly enough quality of bass, to satisfy without a subwoofer in most modest systems. When combined with a small subwoofer, the Ling gets it right. When used for music or music videos, the Lings let no perspiration show while portraying small micro dynamic shifts in the way Eric Clapton bends a string or how the group of musicians hand phrases and expressions back and forth amongst themselves. The musical line was much easier to follow on the Lings than on the Polks and the music was what I listened to time and time again. I didn’t have to strain to hear anything that was important to the music as the Lings just simply put the musical expression ahead of the system artifacts. That other speakers which have come through this system sometimes placed performers on a wider stage was a minimal tradeoff for the Ling’s ability to get out of the way of the musicians. The performers’ positions stretched as deeply behind the physical speaker location as any other speaker I’ve had in this system and it was only the Ling’s slight reticence at widening the stage from left to right that diminished their “hifi” score. Still, the exact placement of performers on the stage and the music they played was far more intriguing than any small amount of signal that might exist outside the edges of the speaker cabinets. Music is what the Lings let come through and the music moved and pushed forward the ideas of whatever I listened to. Whether it was the soundtrack to a DVD or a simple recording of a jazz combo, the Lings disappeared. I regret having to take them away only to be replaced once again with the designed by marketing committee Polks. The HT system hasn’t been the same since the departure of the similarly sized Lings. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 5263 Registered: May-04 |
Into the belly of the beast Back in the main listening room the Ling’s met two channels of McIntosh tube amplification, an Audible Illusions tube pre amplifier, a Denon 2900 digital source and a VPI/Rega/Grado turntable combination. The same set up for HT was repeated as far as stands were concerned. Interconnects are a mixture of whatever I like for the specific purpose. The speaker cables are old OCOS cables that I still think do an excellent job. The speakers were up on their Toes and ready to get with the action. The Ling’s basic personality, or predominant lack of personality, didn’t change much with this shift in components and room. Here, the Lings found the McIntosh amplifiers more than ready to show the little guys the ropes, so to speak. Swapping the output tap connection down to 8 Ohm from where it sits when my main two channel speakers (15 Ohm Rogers LS3/5a’s) are connected, the Lings first statement seemed to be, “Show me what you’ve got!” The Macs, with a total of eight new swaggering 6L6 output tubes, did just that. Given the better amplification chain, the Lings were now able to project life sized images of Elvis (in stereo and glorious mono), Blossom Dearie, Pablo Casals, Johnny Cash and any symphony orchestra or jazz quartet that came their way. The front of my room was filled side to side and top to bottom with nearly three dimensional replications of these performers playing in front of me along with the space they performed in. In this respect they gave up little to the classic BBC monitors that usually fill this room with music. If you listen to Cash’s “Coc@ine Blues” and find the darkness and the humor of the performance, the Lings will give you a good laugh as well as send a chill up your spine. The subtle nuances of performance and abundant talent that were overflowing from all the artists was on full display with the Lings in the system. The tonal balance of the single driver operating through and beyond the midrange made voices a small tightly focused spot upon the virtual stage that took shape in my room. It is just what you hear in real life when a vocalist doesn‘t rely on amplification and speakers to reach the corners of the room. When a vocalist was mic’d closely, the Lings gave the voice a tight focus. When the vocalist moved away from the mic, the Lings gave the impression of increased ambience consonant with a voice slightly more distant from the capsule used to recorded it. The space the various voices and instruments occupied changed and shifted with the strength of their projection and placement in relation to the microphones. Yet, the performers physically seemed to stand perfectly still (well, not Elvis) until either they moved or the recording engineer moved them with a pan pot. Mono recordings focused my attention on the music even more intently and the Lings were more than up to the challenge. The tonal balance of the Lings favors male voices and Cash, Elvis, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Doc Watson, John Hartford and many others all appreciated the effect. This isn’t to say the Lings slighted the female performers in any way. The bounce and “cool” of Blossom Dearie came through with plenty of “swinging” 1950’s style. Effortless and relaxed, two qualities of a terrific performance from a musician or an audio system, that rank high on my list of priorities were present and accounted for with the Lings. The music from any recording I placed on the players, digital or analog, was always effortless and relaxed. I tried to listen to a wide variety of music over the course of my time with the speakers; but I found myself listening to the entire album to hear what came next. It’s become a cliché for those professional audio reviewers to say they got lost in the music; but I can only think that’s why I put together a good music system in the first place. Pace, rhythm and timing are above average through the Lings but not to the extent the music looses out in other ways. I’d talk about the other ways but the Lings always drew my attention to the music instead of the hifi. Paired with the tubes, vinyl and that “more analog like” sound of SACD, the Lings had no problem totally disappearing from a few feet in front of me. Envisioning what was (not) there was as easy as listening to the music. If you listen to Edith Piaf to cheer up on a rainy, dreary Sunday (you’ve got to feel your life is going better than the sorrow she sings about), the Lings are the speaker to do it with. Just who is boss here, anyway? All this may lead you to believe I really enjoyed my time with the Lings. You would be correct. When Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” on Telarc is played through the diminutive LS3/5a’s, the opening strike on the now famous, enormous Telarc drum knocks my head back a little. It’s rather remarkable that a 4” driver in such a small sealed box can accomplish that feat. Substituting the slightly larger, ported Lings, the same drum whack rolled and reverberated from the furthest reaches back of the recorded stage forward and once again pushed my head back slightly. The cymbal strikes that follow shimmered their way across the room in a rather seductive fashion that suggested Copland had been reading Scheherazade while composing the all American anthem. The bass is strong in the Lings without additional support from a subwoofer, if the signal they are fed is capable of presenting that power. That it descends low enough to accomplish what it did with the Copland piece is enough for me. More than one speaker has embarrassed itself within the short three minutes and fourteen seconds this pieces takes to complete. The sound of bass instruments always had the appropriate amount of woodiness, the divas voices all had the appropriate amount of sexiness and the brass all had the appropriate amount of horniness. (Saw that coming; didn’t you?) The Lings can be asked to do too much however. As with most small drivers, and in this case a small driver covering almost nine octaves range, the sound can get too busy or too big. There are instances where the Lings showed their price, size and S.D.F.R. pedigree. How often this problem will present itself with your music and in your system is not an issue I can address. If your tastes run to busy, multi microphone studio production recordings the Lings might disappoint you more often that the number of times I noticed any deficiency. In this regard the 3/5a’s can hang together longer and better than the Lings. The Lings are about nuance and not all that much about “detail“. At least not detail as most people hear it presented through an average audio system. If your idea of detail is counting the number of ice cubes in the glasses when you listen to a small jazz group’s live recording, the Lings can be surpassed by numerous speakers. If your idea of detail is counting how many pages are turned during a string quartet’s performance, the Lings will probably disappoint on that score also. Fingers sliding over guitar strings? Same story. The Lings have a slightly polite top two octaves which tend to drift downward ever so slowly until they roll off at what is stated by Alegria to be 30kHz.. (http://www.us.alegriaaudio.com/LingFR.htm) This sort of frequency balance doesn’t have the “detail” that many commercial speakers have designed in to attract your attention in the showroom. Despite showing a more or less flat frequency response in a semi-anechoic chamber, many of today’s speakers have a rising high end in a typical room placement. So much so many people assume this is how a speaker is supposed to sound. Comparing the Ling against a speaker with this rising high end, lots of energy into the room speaker sound would probably lead you to pick the other speaker on a quick in/out switch. If your reference for picking a speaker is another speaker, the Ling might, once again, be a speaker you would pass by. If you are familiar with the sound of real musicians playing and performing in a real space, many of these other speakers will sound overly bright and anything but natural. If you choose speakers by using your aural memory of real musicians performing real music, the Ling has more to offer than mere frequency response. Of course I can wrap this all up By now it should be obvious the Ling is a different sound than you are likely to find at or close to this price range in typical commercial designs. While sharing some inevitable trade offs with smaller speakers, the Lings reach for a quality not normally found until the price has risen substantially. That the drivers chosen would typically be found in speakers with a few more zeroes attached the right side of the price tag should suggest how often the Ling succeeds at hitting the design target. Here’s my bottom line estimate of the Alegria Audio Ling when it was placed within my two not so much alike systems. It is not perfect. No speaker, at any price range, is perfect. Or, is any speaker even that close when it is held against the mirror of real music. That I found the Ling to be absolutely a new listening experience should be apparent. That I’m still keeping the LS3/5a’s in the main system should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with that speaker. That the Lings fit so well in their place is a testament to the quality of a speaker selling for far less than the current version of the BBC design. That the Ling will replace the Polks in the HT system is likely. While other speakers could perform tricks that relate to things other than the music, none of that was enough to convince me the Lings don’t have something special to offer if you approach them on their own terms. If you have some mono recordings that you treasure, if you can put on an album and not use it to judge your audio system’s abilities, or if your music collection is based on performance and not audio qualities, you really should let the Lings disappear from your room and the allow the music to come forth. Personally, I don’t think there is anything quite like the Ling for anywhere near the price. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 5264 Registered: May-04 |
Thanks, Tim. These were a lot of fun to have for a few weeks. |
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Silver Member Username: T_bomb25Dayton, Ohio United States Post Number: 728 Registered: Jun-05 |
Very,very impressive Jan seems like my kind of speaker.I look foward to my time with them. |
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Silver Member Username: Timn8terSeattle, WA USA Post Number: 471 Registered: Dec-03 |
Thank you Jan. |
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Gold Member Username: Edster922Abubala, Ababala The Occupation Post Number: 1621 Registered: Mar-05 |
Long read, but worth it---you've made a very cohesive and seldom-heard argument here, Jan...kudos! As I said in my own Lings thread, these speakers do some truly amazing things during that perhaps 30% of my personal listening selections. In fact, earlier today I was in a Barnes and Noble's CD section listening to some classical Spanish guitar through headphones, which soon had me thinking about them wistfully. |
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nout Unregistered guest |
For all the virtues of the Ling, your money will be better spent on a more conventional speaker design if ; 1) you are in the habit of only listening to the recordings that make your system sound really good, 2) you wake up in the night drenched in a cold sweat awaiting an audio magazine’s “Recommended Components” list, or 3) your friends have nicknamed you “Soundstage” and they call you up at 2 AM to ask if they can borrow an interconnect cable that “does depth“. If that describes you and the crowd you run with, then you probably will not be happy with the Ling. Hahaha Very good review and definitely the kind of speakers I will look for. |
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New member Username: Jeremy123Nyc, Ny Post Number: 1 Registered: Dec-05 |
Jan, A great review. You have a special way with being able to contextualize the multitude of variables that start from the musicians voice/instrument all the way through to ones speakers and room etc. I understand that in addition to the Lings you very much like your LS3/5a's and I assume (correct me if I'm wrong- other BBC speakers such as Harbeth) My question to you is are there any newer generation speakers you have heard that have impressed you at higher price points? My thought was that with super high quality enclosures, further improvments are possible? Thanks and have a happy new year, JL |
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New member Username: KweinzlerPost Number: 1 Registered: Jan-06 |
Hi Jan, Thanks for both the "Emma" and "Ling" reviews. You offer written aural imagery I have never found in any other review. I have listened to several speakers over the last month or so - some I can afford and some I can't. The speakers that I can't afford and like the best are the Sonus Faber Concertino and the Dynaudio Audience 52SE. I thought the 3D stage and clarity was great. Problem - they are $1500. I am looking for a pair for <$1000. I have listened to a pair of Focal JMLab Chorus 707S and found the clarity equal to the others, but the stage is more 2D than 3D. These are front runners for now. I listen to a lot of classical and jazz and have a need to hear all of the voicings, inner and outer, clearly with no accentuation or embellishment (no booming, unarticulated tympani or seering picollos). Not being able to test-listen the speakers without ordering a pair, how would you say the Emmas or Lings compare with the Sonus or Dynaudio. Happy New Year and thanks in advance for your input. Best regards, Ken |
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Bronze Member Username: Kaos13Phoenix, AZ USA Post Number: 51 Registered: Oct-04 |
excellent |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7427 Registered: May-04 |
If anyone checks back for answers to their questions on this thread, I have to apologize for not answering. First, I seldom come back to this thread to check responses. Secondly, I normally do not make product comparisons nor product recommendations since I haven't heard most of the equipment available to other listeners; and I have come to realize what I prefer in sound reporduction is not always what others might like. Particularly in the area of speakers, I do not feel I can make a statement that would be of value to you, the listener, in any other context than the system I own. You don't own that system and may not listen to the music I prefer. If you go to the "Speakers" portion of the forum under "Home Audio", you will normally find many opinions regarding which speakers various members listen to. |
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