these look very interesting

[shep]

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/pearlevo/ballerina.html
I really like 6Moons and their reviewers. Personally I think it is the stellar site. The editor and I had a wee falling out over a cd he reviewed that he though was great and I thought was crap. I was annoyed having spent 20$ for it and was a bit heavy-handed but it was polite enough. We agreed to pistols at dawn...we both missed.
By far the most interesting and eclectic assortment of audio gear to be found IMO.

[rollo]

  Sexy looking indeed. Nice find Shep.


charles

[BobM]

What I like about these is that the bass driver is in an enclosure while the rest is OB. I've never liked the sound of full range OB speakers. The bass just isn't there no matter how many big drivers are implemented. This looks cool too.

[_Scotty_]

Bob if you look closely you will see that the speaker is a conventional closed back design. It's looks are driven by fashion and not function.
Scotty

[Carlman]

You sound pretty sure of yourself, Scotty.. have you seen or heard these? 

Not sure what qualifies as 'open baffle'.. I'd be interested to hear them, though..  Could be that the fashion and the function are well married.. They're definitely unique and interesting, though.

-C

[_Scotty_]

Yep.
An ad hoc definition of open baffle implies that at least one driver has no back on it to obstruct the sound from radiating from the rear of the driver. The loudspeaker in question does not meet this criterion.
Scotty

[shep]

according to the reviewer, who is no fool, appearance and function, innovation and design all come to gether to make a very nice speaker. I bet it sounds great! I love that it can be moved easily, I think it's neat (old fashioned term for desireable). I would buy it tomorrow, unheard, on the strength of this review and my intuition...although I woul request some other colour than the rather forbidding black surrounding the drivers. 

[JLM]

I believe what you've defined Scotty is a dipole speaker, one that radiates both forward and backwards (and out of phase).  Because of dipole phasing I prefer bipole designs, unfortunately it takes twice as many drivers and usually more cabinetry.

As far as this speaker goes, these drivers all appear to be separate sealed enclosures mounted on a baffle.

As far as 6moons goes, I often find way too much fluffy verbage (to the point it gets in the way of effective communication).  They need a class in technical writing (something I do a great deal of at work).  Not that reviews should be completely dry, but I don't need to be impressed by their use of the language.

Points they need to consider:

- start with an executive summary (don't insult the reader making him invest time to read something he may not be interested in)

- start with an executive summary (this shouldn't be a mystery novel, make sure the reader comes to the same conclusion that you would)

- start with an executive summary (in case the reader isn't as advanced as the writing presented)

- keep the reading level as low as possible (this makes for clearer communication, especially with multi-lingual audiences)

- keep the reading level as low as possible (brevity adds impact)

- provide some sort of organization (most reviews do at least a decent job of this)

- use more sidebars (so I can choose to avoid highly technical, historical, or human interest accounts)

[shep]

Serjan is a bit prickly so I wouldn't send him your suggestions! His use of English is a bit strange, to say the least. None the less the choice and range of reviews is very eclectic and wide-ranging and the attempt to describe both the experience and the technical side appeals to me more than any other on-line mag. As I said once before, it reminds me of the early days of Absolute Sound, but with a much slicker presentation. The question at hand is how do these speakers sound? and it's not likely that we will get a response any time soon. More's the pity. (gotta watch my English syntax now that I know you're watching!)

[Deton Nation]

Hes an excellent reviewer. Now I must believe given the chance to review thousands of components that you create a great auditory memory and he seems to have one. Great metaphors and descriptions that give you a better understanding of what you think they may sound like. If it were me I would know bigger differences, but may miss the more subtle ones. Its a skill you develop I suppose and hes perty good at it.
Mike

[richidoo]

Srajan is a cunning linguist.  I like that he shares his aha moments with us and not so full of himself that he can't learn something new during a review. He is not a know it all reviewer who proclaims approval or disapproval of a product. He just describes everything enthusiastically, thoroughly and artfully, as if he's enjoying himself no matter what product under review. Any technology innovations are covered better than most other rags, so I welcome his prose - after all, this is show biz too. If you got it, flaunt it!     

I agree with Scotty, that by appearance anyway, these emphasize fashion over performance. The value drivers and a few cabinet design errors limit its potential, but the fancy cabinet keeps the price up.

It's not an open baffle. The composite enclosures behind the drivers capture the rear wave. An open baffle allows front and rear waves to escape. There are a lot of high end dipole designs, Quad, Maggie, Martin Logan, Inner Sound, Orion, Grenada, but no high end bipole designs that I'm aware of. Deftech is the only serious bipole design that I'm familiar with, and even the deftech dealer told me it's great for movies, makes a larger sweet spot due to more varied reflected energy, but it's not a high end music speaker. Then he showed me the flagship Cantons... 

[JLM]

shep, I'm an engineer, so your syntax is perfectly safe with me. 

I do agree that Srajan is a wonderful reviewer, but his verbosity gets in the way.  Every time I try posting an equipment review it pales in comparison to what my favorite reviewers can do.

richidoo, to me the speaker in question is just a 3-way design with a combination of separately sealed drivers that share a larger baffle than the drivers would normally require.  I've always seen the term dipole used to represent front (in phase) and rear (out of phase) propagation of sound waves.  Just mounting sealed drivers on a large baffle doesn't produce the dipole effect.  Yes, I'm not aware of a full range implementation of bipolar design.  But due to the size of bass sound waves front and rear woofers wouldn't be necessary to achieve the effect, and a few speakers do have secondary rearward directed tweeters to provide "ambience".

[richidoo]

Absolutely 

[shep]

Speaking of his reflections on listening, there's an interesting read in the Industry Features, second box down.

[_Scotty_]

It is the size of the baffle,in particular the one the woofer is mounted on that make this a better than average design in one respect. There is adequate support for the woofers wave launch,the size of the baffle helps the woofer to plug into the air more effectively. This should lead to better mid bass and bass impact from the speaker. In all other respects there is no new ground broken in the design except for it's visual appeal. I would buy no loudspeaker on looks alone. In fact having used DIY speakers for most my thirty some years in this hobby I am more tolerant of speakers with low to no WAF. I've only had a decent looking set for a little over 5years. Fortunately my wife doesn't care much about how a speaker looks either,it has to sound good to justify its' place in the house.She has even less patience for bad sounding crap than I do. She won't rationalize about sonic performance based on how a piece of gear looks. I am a lucky man.
Scotty