Quote:
Originally Posted by Oscar
Nice! So you basically have the Calibre XD Studio Custom! That one sports a different midbass driver up-front as opposed to the more traditional bass driver in the passive Calibre. I had seen pics of it a few months ago and asked Bill about it, which is when he told me that is the Studio version. I suspect that this driver is cleaner in the midbass-midrange since it has less bass duties to worry about. The front driver in the regular Calibre is more of a bass driver as it sees pretty much all bass duties simultaneously as the bass driver on top. I've gotten that thing moving quite a bit listening to metal with the bass boosted. I would love to see them with the grills off though. I can't fathom how two 8" woofers would even fit with the recessed cut-outs, let alone anything larger than an 8" passive radiator up top! They must have redesigned quite a bit--the top grill looks to be the same size as mine. How in the world did they fit a PR larger than 8" up there?!?!
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Not quite,...that is a slightly different speaker in that it's fully active, has 1 internal amp and no binding posts into the tweeter selection.
(Happy to talk audio/speakers via phone; drop me a PM if interested)
In Bill's own words...this concept for mine was only built as a prototype prior to these which were finished for me in November;
- AMT tweeter up front (same), dual binding posts to allow single amp or bi-amp and choice of SS or tube up top...
- Mid-range driver sole purpose up front, improves steering forward
- Dual (dedicated to) mid-bass drivers instead of 1 side-firing to improve steering forward, FOUNDATION cabinets utilized for everything below mid-bass and blended in strategically...
- Dual internal amps instead of 1, midrange and midbass each separately powered
- Redesigned back-plate/other things to get it all to fit including DUAL XLR inputs so that mid-bass and mid-range are controlled separately by Wavelet
- Passive radiator (same as what you reference)
- New steering algorithms that Bill wrote for this on top of regular Wavelet
functionality; not released previously
- Wavelet driving all 8 XLR outputs to bring this stack together and control all driver sections separately for best results...
I tried with a thin store discount card to remove grills; they are so tight I cannot get them off; I am going to find out how to do it so I don't damage
the speaker, Measuring edge to edge feeling the speakers behind the grill, the passive radiator on top measures 8" as do the
2 side-firing bass drivers (used as mid-bass). The midrange up front is 7.5"...
Caliber XD Studio is a great speaker offering in its own rite and I thought about stopping there and possibly just adding subs as an add-on the way most do
however Bill stated and convinced me that this was the ultimate expression of the original idea.
This combination here is something different, purpose-built and IMO a much better overall result in that it's a designed-for-purpose full-range speaker in a multi-cabinet design.
All the tech-stuff aside, it looks and sounds wonderful and I'm amazed at how enjoyable this combination has turned out to be. I have not found limits of bass extension as well and believe me, I have tried! To my ears the Foundations equal or exceed the best and biggest REL G.25 and JL Fathom and Gotham setups I've heard (single sub per side to keep things fair in my reference)
and deserve all the recent press they've been getting...