Legacy AERIS Review - page 4
Now you’re probably thinking, what? All those drivers have GOT to have all kinds of phase
problems, crossover grunge and everything else
associated with anything that’s not a single
driver. Guess what. Me too. It does defy a lot of
audiophile no no’s. Looking at these and
especially the Whispers, any sane experienced
audiophiles would turn their collective noses up
and spew chunks at the sight. So did I initially.
The only reason we did the world’s first XD
review is because a lot of readers wrote and said
“Hey guys, you gotta review these speakers! You
gotta HEAR them to believe them!” So we did. As
usual, our readers were right on the money.
Let’s talk some about the Air Motion
Transformers that Bill uses for the high
frequencies. The concept is not new. I was selling
high-end audio part-time in high school when the
original ESS AMT (pictured left) came out with
the revolutionary Heil Air Motion Transformers.
From the mid highs on up nothing could touch
them in terms of detail, speed and transparency
Including the other
brands we sold
such as
Magneplanar,
Bozak, JBL,
Dalquist and Advents. Lots and lots of Large Advents. The problem
was, every pair of AMTs we sold came right back in a few days
completely blown to smithereens. The Heils were hell. They
wouldn’t play loud for any length of time.
They have come a long way in forty years and are now used in
several speakers. Bill said he owns literally every model ever made
and has studied them at great length. The ones in the Aeris are not
off-the-rack models, but ones he has designed and fabricated
himself. He’s taken a good mousetrap and turned it into a rodent
death ray. In short, the material than forms the sound waves is
folded like a multi-layer dust filter so there is much more area (but
very little mass) to move air. Superior dispersion and detail with less
distortion and coloration plus incredible speed as opposed to your
normal domed tweeter.
Says Bill, “For me as a designer, Aeris is about tracing speed and
dynamic contrast. In the driver selection for Aeris I used wooden
blocks, cymbals, toms to study transient response. The acid test
was playing these sound samples backwards at high levels. Any
overhang from plosives was exposed immediately due to the
instantaneous stop of the signal; they were no longer masked by
reverberant decay. Some of the samples that Mr. Darby used in the
tracks on the latest demo CD have a similar punchy quality.