with cast frames. Each of the woofers has its own 500 watt ICE amp built in. Let’s see, 500 + 500
equals 1,000 watts in each speaker. That’s one feature that allows the speakers to score a good,
amp-friendly 95.4 dB sensitivity. Those 1,000 watts per side do most of the heavy lifting.
Speaking of heavy lifting, when the pair arrived in their custom built wooden crates, the truck
driver panted, “Man, these things weigh 700 pounds!” True, though the actual speakers only weigh
200 pounds each (cough…hernia…cough). When the 700-pound freight arrived, I had just
undergone emergency shoulder surgery – torn right rotator cuff. Unbelievable pain. There was no
way I could even lift a drill to open the wooden crates much less move them. Bill graciously flew
down to set them up for me.
ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Bill Duddleston is a rather soft-spoken guy, one not given to brash talk, braggadocio or hyperbole.
It was with some surprise he murmured to me that he thought his new Aeris might sound a little
better than the Whispers. But wait. The Whisper is much bigger and more expensive than the Aeris.
Why would he say the cheaper speaker is better than the more expensive one?
I’ve known Bill for several years now and he’s one of the most brilliant individuals I’ve ever met.
When he first walked into the listening room, he spotted a big subwoofer from another speaker
system in for review. He grinned and said, “Well, it’s got a good built-in amplifier …I designed it”.
He then went on to tell me that the woofer was originally designed for Allen organs and continued
disgorging various technical facts about its origin and sonic characteristics. He wasn’t bragging or
showing off, it was just Bill making friendly small talk. That’s his world and he is a master of it.
He’s a real engineer, eloquent in physics, chemical engineering, mathematics and electronic
engineering. He’s the guy you wish you sat next to in algebra class. I believe he is one of the
brightest lights in the speaker designing field today.
The pair I got was one of the first pair ever completed and its only playing time was three days at
an audio show, so they didn’t have many hours on them. After an additional 24 hours we settled in
for a first listen. While they showed flashes of brilliance, they needed more time. The AMT’s take
some time to lose some harshness and sibilance. We let them run for a week with a variation of
burn in cuts (specially shaped sounds and noises), white noise, pink noise, sweeps and very wide
spectrum orchestral music and vocals. Easy to do with my music server set on continuous. We ran it
at about 80dB while we were at work and as loud as possible at night with the sleeping quarters at
the other end of the house. At 200 hours (including the audio show hours) things had smoothed out
considerably, but there was still some sibilance with male and female vocals. It wasn’t the nasty
kind that smears the “s” sounds and hurts your ears. It actually sounded very natural. Then it
dawned on me that what we were hearing on vocals without heavy processing (including “de-
essers”) was the perfectly normal but extremely clean and clear sound of human sibilance. Anyone
who’s spent any time in a recording studio knows that microphones and other things in the
recording chain can emphasize “s” sounds or color them so they sound rather electronic. On well-
recorded vocals, including ones I had recorded myself over the years with no processing, were
extraordinarily organic, adding to rather than diminishing the musicality of the performances.
In addition to the two self-powered 12” woofers, there is one 10” accordion edge midwoofer and
an 8” accordion, titanium encrusted midrange along with two very special tweeters. Both are Air
Motion Transformers – one 4” and another 1” super tweeter.
To Next Page
Loading...
Need help?
General
