field trip to hear some big cool speakers - check this out

danger boy

My trip to Epiphany audio with Brent (BottomFeeder) by AL (Danger Boy)
(Pssst, it’s late and this may not read well, I’ll fix in the morning if need be)

A local high-end speaker company here in town began about 3 yrs ago. They mostly sell their high end line array speakers to wealthy Asian consumers, and others.

This review won’t really be a review at all… for the simple fact I’m not in the least bit qualified to give an accurate one of this level of speaker. What I can do is pass along my own findings after listening to four different Epiphany Audio line array speakers.
That I can handle.

Brent (BottomFeeder) was kind enough to join me in our nearly two-hour demo at their offices.

First off thanks to the guys at Epiphany Audio for their time, expertise and knowledge… Ken, Johnny and Abraham. Superb group of guys.

The speakers are impressive looking. Very commanding, tall, and almost breath taking in their beauty. Stately is a word that is befitting of their sheer size. This is my first experience seeing, let alone hearing a line array set of speakers.

Brent and I first listened to their smaller speakers. Which is a misnomer, as really none of Epiphany audio’s speakers could be considered small. No, these are “towers” in the truest sense of the word. No matter if they are the smaller 6-6 or the huge 20-21’s, you are faced with a beautiful tall speaker.

The speakers are very efficient. I don’t know all the techy numbers… so you’ll have to take my word for it. The 6-6 were hooked up to a Music Hall a25.2 integrated amp and it’s mate the CD 25.2 player. The amp is rated 50wpc according to the MH web site.

We first listened to one of my favorite songs by Queen Latifah off here Dana Owens CD, her rendition of California Dreamin’. I like this song because it’s well recorded, and I find that I can better tell small nuances in female vocals with a smooth tone than I can with nearly any other kind of music. The sound in these line array towers is quite impressive. Their height raises the height of the music as well, no matter if you are sitting or standing.

One thing I noticed with all of the Epiphany Audio speakers is that sibilance is GONE. I mean they have done away with any sibilance completely. That was one thing I was not used to hear missing from music I listen to. Even well recorded music on a good system with traditional speakers there may be some small amount of sibilance. With these towers there was none I could detect. They took extra steps and paid close attention to eliminate all sibilance. Nice.

We moved along to the larger towers in rosewood, but their 4ohm load appeared to be too much for the integrated amp. Next up were the mid sized speakers the Prophet 8’s. All of Epiphany Audio speakers use small 4” drivers and ribbon tweeters. The small drivers put out a lot of sound for their size. I was told that this many small drivers have more surface space then a larger driver. Making it able to react faster than a larger one. Makes sense and sounds vaguely familiar. J

The Prophet 8’s as I understand it do not have any woofers in them. They rely only on the many small 4” drivers to provide the mid’s and bass. Tweeters as mentioned are ribbon ones… and each cabinet has several of those as well. Bass was tricky in this speaker. It was light to both Brent and me. I guess everyone has a different level of where they consider the bass and lows to be pleasing. As I grow up, hee hee hee, I’m finding I like less and less bass. Not to the point of it being void of all bass of course, but certainly not bloated or over exaggerated. These 8’s would please me if I had to live with them. LOL Plus Epiphany also makes subs. I’ll save that for part two. J

Seamless. This is a word that often isn’t used correctly IMHO when describing how a speaker sounds. I haven’t heard a speaker that was so seamless between the highs, mid’s and lows that the music sounded so alive, breathy but not too much. Certainly it felt like the singer was in the room with us on some music. Not seamless in how the left and right speaker mate to each other, but how it’s seamless from the top to the bottom and everything in between. Height seamless if you will. This may be due to the fact that some of these speakers are 5. 6,. 7 feet tall or more.

Like I said before, this isn’t meant to be a review.. just a couple of West Coast Polkies getting together to hear something new and different. What a fun day.

Brent if you want to add anything, by all means do. Your concerns were a little more demanding than mine.

Part 2 tomorrow... i promise it'll be much shorter.

check out the pictures. one is me and the other guy is Brent (BottomFeeder)

F1nut

Al, your non-review is nicely done.

BottomFeeder

Great review, Al. I, too, really enjoyed just listening to such high end - read REALLY expensive - speakers. Their entry level speakers begin at about $10,000 & move past $30,000, so we were in rarified air to say the least.

The guys were really knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. Couldn't have been more impressed w/them. The listening room really wasn't set up for critical listening. Wood floors and walls made for perhaps challenging sound reproduction.

Both Al & I went expecting to be majorly wowed - the price range alone suggested that we would be. And while the speakers were beautiful, for me, the wow factor just wasn't there. Not at all. In two of their speaker models, they include woofers, but don't have them hooked up, depending upon the midrange drivers to get the bass job done. They say they'll set you up w/a "plate amplifier" to drive the woofers if you want. I'd definitely want. But I'd sure struggle mightily w/having to spend more money to power the woofers. If I'm going to pay $10,000 or more, I want woofers!

I found the bass - in all three of their main models - to be quite lacking. There just wasn't enough punch and power there to suit me. I was also disappointed w/the lack of open, "airyness" or life like sound. I brought along James Taylor Live, a well recorded cd, and was disappointed - surprised actually - at how poorly, IMHO, the Epiphany's sounded. They didn't "take me there," not at all.

The staff also talked quite a bit about the imaging ability of their line, but I wasn't impressed at all. Again, both Al & I felt that the room hindered here, but I still expected more.

All in all, I came away disappointed - surprisingly so. Perhaps in other surroundings the Epiphany's would have been better, but I'm not convinced. Though I felt like a nut for thinking it simply because of the price of their speakers, I like my system much better. I'm still shocked to be saying that, but it's how I truly feel. My system's pretty modest - an NAD C320bee IA, NAD C521bee cdp and Polk Audio RTA12C's - but I still preferred it, a lot.

Thanks again, Al, for including me! Though I wasn't impressed w/the speaks, I had a great time w/you and really enjoyed demoing such pricey speakers. Let's do it again!

wingnut4772

Nice review....

Wouldn't sibilance be more the electronics than the speakers or no?

halo

Great review(s).

Goes to show that expensive does not always = better (at least not to everyone).

Early B.

wingnut4772 wrote: »

Wouldn't sibilance be more the electronics than the speakers or no?

The problem could be electronics, cables, or speakers. Problems arise when there's too much silibance because that can certainly be annoying. There should always be some kind of silibance because it's natural. If there's none at all, then something is wrong with the system somewhere.

The other red flag was the associated gear being used. I wouldn't use a Music Hall int. amp & CDP on $10K-plus speakers. It always amazes me that "high end" stores often don't mate their gear according to price or quality.

Very good write-up, BTW.

RuSsMaN

The 20-21's are phenomenal, they only one I've heard. I'd love to hear some smaller models.

danger boy

Seriously, there was no sibilance at all. All i was hearing were vocals pure and clean. Much that I would expect if you were hearing it directly from the tape or hard drive it was just recorded on.

I would think sibilance could come from nearly any place in a person's system, esp a tweeter.. but these speakers were built to do away with all sibilance. truly it was great not hearing any at all.

rskarvan

I have no idea why they need so many drivers to make a nice sound. Good quality sound can come from a single mid-range. Why on earth you'd need a dozen is beyond me.

madmax

Its my understanding a line array like those keep sounds from being dispersed upward or downward which would keep floor and ceiling reflections at a minimum.

danger boy

small drivers like that produce very high quality and amounts of mids and bass.. plus they are faster.. when a driver moves air.. out.. the larger the driver.. the slower it is to respond. hence an 18" driver would be slow.. mulitpul 4" drivers have the same or more surface area as that 18" driver can recover that air faster than one large driver.

I know i'm not doing a good job of explaining it.. but maybe someone in here can explain it better. I think Mazeroth on here has built his own line array speakers before. he may know more about that.

Yashu

I think that they also add an element of analog chaos to a recording. Here is an example:

With so many tweeters, A - no single tweeter needs to be pushed too hard for the speaker to create good volume, and B - a dozen tweeters firing together are going to work in harmony together, while it is impossible for them to fire exactly the same time (we don't have Bose-Einstein Condensation speaker technology... yet), or for the sound from each one to reach yours ears at the same time, the slight chaos probably leads to a sweet sound.

danger boy

Part 2

Epiphany home theater set up...

as i mentioned above. this will be short.

the tallest speakers Epiphany Audio makes were set up for their home theater system. In the picture you can see at the left and right corners of the picture huge 7'+ tall line array spakers.

Below the flat panel TV is a huge center channel speaker. Check out how big it is? I'm not sure if it's the same size as the mains or not. it sure looks like it might be.

under the mammoth center channel speaker are two huge subwoofers. Each subwoofer cabinet houses two 18" woofers in a sealed box. there were two such subwoofer boxes... that's 4 - 18" subwoofers. They demoed it for us.. with only the left and right channel mains and the one of the two subwoofer's playing.

Let me tell you that those two 18" woofers were pushing alot of air. There is no way they were going to turn on the other two 18" woofers. Honest to God, I began to get a headache about 10 minutes after we left the demo room. It was so much bass that it would turn your brains to jelly.

One of the guys there said he can't even be in the room for too long, because he's useless the rest of the day. Meaning, that amount of sound pressure without some kind of ear plugs could easily damage your hearing, permanately.

The bass was shaking the floor. I know some of you all have subwoofers that can do that too. But rarely have I seen 18" drivers used before.

We never go to demo any movies... We were told that in a demo when playing scenes from Top Gun where the fighter planes take off of the carrier.. it actually has the same rumble, and LFE as an actual fighter jet. over 125db is possible. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

engtaz

Dang

Yashu

Wow... that is the most insane setup I have ever seen. It makes the TV look so tiny.

BottomFeeder

A final thought...
Both Al & I believe that the speakers were way underpowered. The amp they were using was an integrated w/about 50wpc, waaaaaaay too underpowered to drive speakers w/so many drivers and tweeters, no matter how efficient they are. They claimed that it didn't matter, but I've got to disagree.

I think - I hope! - the speakers would sound much better w/a much beefier amp driving them. In Epiphany's defense, they're not set up to be an auditioning facility. The amp & cdp were simply there for their own tinkering. They might consider not demoing their gear until or unless they've got better electronics on board. I'd like to hear them again, under those conditions. I bet they'd get a better review from this boy.

hearingimpared

Nice write ups Al and Brent. It's great when Polkies get together and converge!!!

It always blows me away as to why brick & mortar establishments don't absolutely make it their business to make sure that every is as it should be for a sucessful demonstration of products.

polrbehr

hearingimpared wrote: »

It always blows me away as to why brick & mortar establishments don't absolutely make it their business to make sure that every is as it should be for a sucessful demonstration of products.

Could not have said it better, J.



Although that Bose kiosk I heard the other day left me speechless, too :eek: !

halo

Similar speakers were used for the digital amp shoot out, no? LINK

IIRC, the winner was a sonic impact t-amp @ 5-10 WPC. LINK.

RuSsMaN

The speakers used in that shootout were one of Danny's designs, not near as many drivers, but still considered a line source. They also featured a powered woofer section, which wasn't really needed.

Cheers,
Russ

jimmyzen

Back in the days when one could actually find an audio store around here it was often tricky to buy speakers because the demo listening room was always much more acoustically friendly than what said speakers would play in once they were taken home. This was especially true for almost every Bose speaker and one of the things I enjoyed arguing with salesmen about. I honestly never knew a person who bought a set of Bose speakers including the 901s that was still 100% happy with them after getting them home. One friend said that his 901s sounded best when he cranked his amp up and then went outside to listen. A bit extreme perhaps. Point is that a listening area can create an optimal environment for a speaker that can mask it's true real world performance. I think the description of the listening room was more real world than a speaker friendly designed environment would be. The related impressions are what one would have had in a typical living room, methinks. I do agree that a bit more power driving them would have been interesting.

A funny story: A friend took me along with him to help him choose a stereo. Nothing fancy, but one of those complete systems for under $1000. I suggested he take along a CD he was familiar with rather than trusting a store's demo disc. He brought along a Little Feat CD, Waiting for Columbus I think. We get to the store, an appliance store, and are immediately descended on by this sour faced sales woman. Shen shows us the stereo section and my buddy wants to hear this particular system. She starts to walk off to get a CD to play and my friend says, "Here. I have one with me." She begrudgingly takes it and loads it in the CD player. My buddy likes his music loud and cranks up the volume before the CD starts. Lemonlady is not amused at his maxing out the volume knob. Hopefully, everyone reading this is familiar with Country Joe McDonald and the Fish and the notorious Fish Cheer which begins with "Gimmee an F!" and the crowd responds. He goes on to spell out a four letter word ending in K not used in polite company. Well, on the Little Feat CD they do something similar spelling out FEAT. Well, the Oh God I am so fired! look on that lady's face and on the faces of about everybody in the store when "Gimme an F!!" blasted out at a painfully loud volume was absolutely priceless! I wasn't expecting it at all and literally had to bang my head against a freezer to get my lungs working again because I laughed so hard. He bought the system and she didn't get fired. I doubt she thought kindly of us as we left, though.