tweeters

Robot takes your protest tweet to the street

While protesters have long taken to the streets to broadcast their messages, their words are now hitting the pavement, literally, thanks to a mobile robot that paints their tweets right on the road.

Meet the ultimate early 21st century protester, ONE Street Tweeter, a hydraulic robot that uses nontoxic, water-soluble paint to print nearly real-time tweets onto street surfaces.

One, a grassroots advocacy group that fights poverty and preventable disease, created the robot as a way to "maximize the impact of member voices to push for the positive changes we are all seeking to achieve." The Street Tweeter made itself known to the world at the G8 Summit in Camp David, Md., last week. … Read more

GoldenEar Technology reinvents the bookshelf speaker

First a confession: a lot of audiophile speakers can't rock out. They're "voiced" to sound best with acoustic jazz or classical music. Nothing wrong with that, but when you want to party some of them can't cut loose. The new GoldenEar Technology Aon 3 is very much an audiophile-oriented design, so sure, it sounded clear and clean playing Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue."

But what really made me sit up and take notice was the way the Aon 3 knocked out the Drive-By Truckers "Go-Go Boots" album. This CD sounds like … Read more

Affordable American hi-fi, does it exist?

While I regularly write about ultra-high-end gear that's made in the U.S., I also cover as much affordable stuff as I can find. Grado Labs in Brooklyn manufactures some of my favorite headphones priced from $79 and phono cartridges from $60. My friends at Schiit Audio in Newhall, Calif., make headphone amplifiers and digital-to-analog converters with prices starting at $249. As for speakers, Zu Audio makes gorgeous-sounding models priced from $1,200 per pair. These companies aren't just based in the U.S., they also manufacture their products here.

If $1,200 doesn't qualify as affordable, … Read more

Radically innovative speakers from Minnesota?

Most speakers--from the affordable models to state-of-the-art contenders--are box designs. Some are tall, slender boxes, some are tiny cubes or spheres, but they all have some type of cabinet. Unless you're an audiophile, just about every speaker you've ever heard has dome tweeters and cone drivers, so you might conclude that all speakers are made that way. Standing apart from the crowd, Magnepan speakers are slender, flat-panel designs, less than a couple of inches thick. The speakers don't rely on conventional tweeters and woofers; Magnepan speakers' sound-producing elements are proprietary thin-film drivers.

Magnepan's Jim Winey started … Read more

A speaker so good it doesn't sound like a speaker

I've probably listened to and reviewed a thousand speakers, and truth be told, the majority of them never sound like live music. They sound like speakers.

The "problem" with box speakers is that you're always aware the sound is coming out of a box, but Magnepan speakers don't have a box. And they don't have dome tweeters or cone midrange or woofer drivers, either. Magnepan technology is radically different than what you find on box speakers, so the 1.7's sound "floats" free of the speakers themselves.

The new Magnepan 1.7 ($1,995 per pair) looks a lot like the model it replaces, the 1.6, which was regarded by many of the world's high-end audio critics, including me, as one of the greatest less-than-$2,000 speakers on the market. The 1.6 stayed in the line for more than 10 years, and I have every reason to believe the 1.7 will be a standard bearer for just as long. And speaking of value, Magnepan also offers a factory-direct $599 (per pair) panel speaker, the MMG. The technology isn't as advanced as the 1.7's, but it's miles ahead of any other $599 speaker I can think of.

The 1.7 panel is 64.5 inches high, 19.25 wide, and just 2 inches thick. Magnepan builds all of its speakers in White Bear Lake, Minn., and almost all the 1.7's parts that aren't fabricated in-house are sourced from U.S. suppliers. I reviewed the 1.7 for Tone Audio magazine, where you can read the complete review.

The 1.7's technology is unprecedented for Magnepan; the speaker is the company's first "full-range ribbon" design. It's also worth noting that what makes a well setup pair of 1.7s so special isn't just something that only dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles would notice; pretty much anyone with ears will immediately grasp what's going on. Their box-free sound is astonishing.… Read more

Want more followers? Twitter may help you buy some

Want more people reading your tweets? Twitter may offer you a hand--for a price.

People familiar with the company's plans say it has been discussing yet another revenue generator: think of it as a "Promoted Tweeter" product, which highlights specific user accounts, designed to bump up follower counts.

My sources weren't sure about the business model behind the product, which may be because Twitter itself doesn't know yet. Some obvious possibilities: Twitter could charge users based on the number of followers they acquired, or simply based on the exposure their Twitter accounts received.

Twitter wouldn'… Read more

Listening to B&W's $15,000 diamond speaker

I first wrote about Bowers & Wilkins updated diamond speakers in January, but I finally got to hear them a few weeks ago at Innovative Audio & Video, one of B&W's New York City dealers.

Specifically, I listened to the 802 Diamond speaker that sells for $15,000 a pair. The speaker has a big and beautiful, carefully honed design.  The 159-pound speaker stands 44-inches high by 14.5-inches wide by 22-inches deep. It has a 1-inch synthetic diamond dome tweeter, 6-inch woven Kevlar midrange driver, and two 8-inch Rohacell woofers. Rohacell is a super lightweight, yet highly rigid material that is ideal for woofers that need to move a lot of air without flexing.

The 6-inch midrange driver is housed in a teardrop shaped "head" that is crafted from inert Marlan composite material, a synthetic, mineral-filled resin. This granite-hard enclosure is sprayed with seven coats of hand-polished black lacquer. The head's internal cavity--a sphere closely coupled to a short tube--absorbs most of the sound from the back of the driver. On the outside, the teardrop shape smoothly disperses the sound around the speaker, creating a solid, three-dimensional stereo image.

The diamond tweeter is fitted to a tapering tube that is filled with absorbent wadding to control the energy that radiates off the tweeter's backside. The diamond tweeter doesn't look like a diamond at all, it's a dull gray dome, so it wasn't just used for show. B&W favored aluminum tweeters for its top models for years, but now uses  diamond domes because of their higher stiffness-to-density ratio. According to B&W, diamond gets closest to the sound of a hypothetically perfect tweeter.

I've heard my share of high-end speakers, but the thing that struck me first about the 802 Diamond's sound was its purity. It's the second-generation diamond model, the original version was the 802 D--the company changes it models every five to seven years. B&W offers a complete range of 800 Diamond Series speakers for hi-fi and home theater systems. … Read more

Twitter tweaks home page for newbies

Twitter is hoping to lure in more newbies by making its home page more dynamic and user friendly.

Following some tweaks last year, the popular social network has revamped its home page once again. The new home page design, which rolled out Tuesday, now features a slowly scrolling list of randomly selected top tweets that change every few seconds. A rolling marquee near the top of the page displays a feed of hot trending topics. Hovering over any one topic reveals the latest tweet on that subject.

A "See who's here" window also displays thumbnail photos that … Read more

Getting started selecting a car-audio system

In case you didn't know, my articles this week are all about car audio. Today, we start at square one with picking out your most basic components for your car stereo: the head unit and speakers.

Rich Richards of Utah-based Innovative Home and Car Audio explains some basic things to look for and consider when designing your car audio system. Rich discusses the importance of getting a deck with high-voltage output through the preamp for better sound, the benefit of component speakers (midrange and tweeter) being as close together as possible, coaxial rear speakers, amplifiers, wiring, fuses, and everything … Read more