Flatbacks on Loan

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Quarknosis
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Flatbacks on Loan

Unread post by Quarknosis »

After a brief visit from Steve the Shadow I now have the Flatbacks on loan.

It was good to meet Steve and his wife (sorry Steve I didn't catch her name :oops: ) for an hour or so and I hope they didn't feel pushed out but I was working this afternoon and had to get ready. Hopefully the weather stayed ok for them as they went on to Whitby for the afternoon.

After placing the Flatbacks on the end of an AV system of BLU Ray player, Beresford DAC and Trends T-amp, they were sounding very good with some tracks from a CD called Sampled while I was sitting to one side of the system. However, once I got to sit in front of the system after Steve had gone they sounded even better with Antonio Carlos Jobim followed by some Dub Reggae. They couldn't handle the bass depth of the heaviest of Dub tracks but I wouldn't expect them to as they a fraction of the size of my current IMF speakers. I won't go into too much detail about the sound just now but I'm looking forward to getting them on the end of an NVA amp when I can and reporting again after further listening.
Main System. Amp - Luxman LV-120, CD - Pioneer PDX505 & Hitachi DA 401. Turntable - Trio KD-2055/Denon DL-110 & Ortofon VMS20E. Cassette Deck - JVC KD A55. Speakers - Arcam Alpha connected with NVA LS3.

Headphone System - Little Dot Mkiii headphone amp, various vintage CD players into NVA P50 with Sennheiser HD600 and Beyer DT 880

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wiicrackpot
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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

Unread post by wiicrackpot »

Are these the same one's i commented on in another thread?,
keep us updated how they fit in after you have more time with them,
pics would be nice. :guiness;
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SteveTheShadow
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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Nice to meet you today Paul.
Sorry I didn't properly introduce you to my wife Melanie. My bad, not yours :oops:

Those IMF speakers are rather nice and surprisingly visually unintrusive for something that big.
Nice also to meet somebody who shares my musical tastes. ;)
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SteveTheShadow
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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

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How are things going with the speakers?
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Quarknosis
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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

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SteveTheShadow wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2017 8:08 pm How are things going with the speakers?
After a few days with the Trends T amp I moved them into the main system and have been listening to them daily and thoroughly enjoying them. They are not the perfect speaker but then again what is. In many ways they are better than the IMFs though. They are especially good at tonal variation and colour in my opinion, saxes rasping away satisfyingly and cymbals sounding authentically metallic. You said that someone mentioned flabby bass, well not a bit of it on the end of the AP70, I was listening to some King Tubby Dub and the stop/start qualities were excellent. Bass might not be very deep but theses speakers play bass tunes very well. The difference between soft and loud instruments is also much clearer. They also have a sense of scale that was lacking in the Cubettes but then again they are physically larger then the Cubettes (I've heard some Cube 1s at Savvy Pauls and while memory is not reliable I don't think the Flatbacks are that far away from the Cube 1s in this respect). They seem to fill both rooms with music really well but I felt that they were more suited to the smaller room where we first listened to them. I also feel that they are possibly a better match for the Trends amp, I thought that they seem to communicate the music extremely well together.

I do have a couple of issues, although these are to be expected when comparing with the IMFs. Firstly, some of the deeper bass notes seem to be missing almost completely, this is obvious against the IMFs but is only an issue on only a couple of recordings. The second problem is the sensitivity of the Flatbacks means that there isn't much difference with the position of the VC between quiet and loud and the IMFs are more enjoyable at lower levels.

Overall I think the Flatbacks are excellent and as I say I have been thoroughly enjoying them. However as much as I like them I do have a real soft spot for my IMFs. I suppose the real test is to put the IMFs back in and see if I miss the Flatbacks.
Main System. Amp - Luxman LV-120, CD - Pioneer PDX505 & Hitachi DA 401. Turntable - Trio KD-2055/Denon DL-110 & Ortofon VMS20E. Cassette Deck - JVC KD A55. Speakers - Arcam Alpha connected with NVA LS3.

Headphone System - Little Dot Mkiii headphone amp, various vintage CD players into NVA P50 with Sennheiser HD600 and Beyer DT 880

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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Now I've managed to get reactivated after sorting my email address,
thanks for the review Paul.
If you want 32ft organ pipes, the Flatbacks aren't going to get anywhere near the IMFs, but I'm glad you liked the other aspects of them.
The bigger speakers in the other thread are intended to address the very low bass issue.
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Re: Flatbacks on Loan

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Just to clarify a point about bass.
Essentially you have two opposing requirements if you want efficiency, ie you can either have extended bass, or you can have efficiency, you can't have both - not with a domestic sized cabinet at any rate. The Omnimets and the flatbacks at around 96dB/Watt illustrate that problem perfectly. To get the same extension as a low efficiency, big domestic transmission line if you wanted high efficiency, you'd need a pair of 15 inch bass drivers per side. Not domestically acceptable. :shock:

Superb over most of the frequency range the OmniMets/Flatties are, without a doubt, but half of the bottom octave is missing in action, but then I already knew that and was happy to make that engineering compromise.

An active sub could be used to make up that deficiency, but IME it simply does not work, as the sub is invariably slow as molasses, when put up against the speed of the efficient main drivers, so you get a discontinuity in the presentation at the bottom end, which is nigh on impossible to overcome.
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

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