Needing some respite from all the BS in the world and the recent rush on tubes -- I needed to and did in fact get into a creative zone and just let the universe channel some spontaneity my way to make something productive happen.

This lead to cleaning parts of my shop which lead to finding the Silver 8 driver by Lii and pondering the ideal cabinet. I have avoided using these drivers because of the published response which has an aggressive presence peak and the T&S parameters short out my box program and suggest there will be no low bass despite the 35Hz resonance of the driver in any size box no matter how it's tuned!

Then on a complete fluke I decided since it has such a low QTS I should see what happens in the HDT cabinet and this lead to naturally having to cut the hole larger but I was getting that vibe from Gods that kept me from hesitating despite knowing it was irreversible. I think that's faith. Plus I was right in the middle of cleaning. This is how I multitask.

Fast forward a couple hours and the result was mind numbing and now the mess was overwhelming. But when I hooked up the speakers and got them re-tuned, I drug them into the listening room and made some YouTube videos of it with no burn-in. I'm at about 10 hours now, and having a profound experience.  It's the juiciest single-driver speaker I have ever heard. This one toped all the charts as well as put the house speakers back in their place which is hard to do. But that's nothing compared to what happened tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4nuQIi-pi0&list=PLO14X7TvgezgIzyqCbTEgKTNUAmEp2...

Tonight I'm listening to them in the listening chair for the first time and just letting Roon pick stuff from my library. I am using the Holo Audio May Dac, the CSP325 and the SE84UFO25 with all Decware cables. The gravity of that black hole became so strong that had I not escaped when I did, you would have never seen me again, and I wouldn't have been able to write this report...

So some bizarre things happened to me while I listened. I almost felt like I've never heard a hi-fi before. The sound was so amazing it felt like the first time. And as it would happen the first several tracks that were selected were 10 minutes long each, and for me to stick with it for 10 minutes, it's got to be really good.  To do that two or three times back to back has never happened. After all I'm pretty spoiled. Every track that came on, many that I thought I didn't particularly dig, had me dumbstruck in my listening chair.  I simply couldn't believe how deep I got into the recording. The level of detail was like 10 times what I thought was there.  I actually tripped on the spit in an amazing recording of a French horn where time slowed down to probably 15/20 seconds and the spit became this textured sound of something else when in fact it was probably less than a second long. The Anniversary amp and preamp just showed me what they can actually do for the very first time. Took it up another notch so high I have to get on my tip toes to reach it.  This was on steroids compared to my first ravings about the Anniversary amps on the DNA2 speakers, my goto at that time.

This is ear candy. I won't compare it to what I imagine it must be like to be female and have multi-orgasm in your ears, but there you go. I could only take so much and I had to escape. Everything was so right it went beyond right and got completely crazy. Then I came back to earth and realized there is no fricking way this driver has a nearly 10dB presence peak because it's just glass smooth, and the low bass completely blew my mind.  It has the same low bass as the giant 10 inch Lii Reference cabinet in half the space.

None of this was making any sense which is how I know the Audio Gods were here. So I looked again at the frequency response graph for the Silver 8 drivers as three of the Gods just stood there and shook their heads... then one said go measure it. So I did.


click to enlarge

As you can see it doesn't even measure like the same driver. The light blue is the HDT with the Silver 8 driver after I re-tuned it. The original plot underneath is the anechoic response of the driver by itself in a large measuring baffle.

I was then shown that the passive radiators on the side of the main driver that are cross-coupled on the same plane are doing exactly what I originally designed them to do, but are having an effect I didn't anticipate. They and the other independently tuned chambers in the cabinet are pushing and pulling the response into a flatter line.

While I puzzle at how the response got flat I am shown it happening in my minds eye.  A combination of little vacuums, eddy currents of pressure variants and phase overlaps that cancel and rebuild things... it was amazing to watch.  Sadly that's as best as I can explain it, but when I see it happening in slow motion like that, I just understand it.  Can't explain it, but I understand it completely so far as I know.

This means it is possible to correct a horrible frequency response with an esoteric cabinet design instead of a crossover. It's been 30 years since I designed this speaker cabinet and tonight I was finally shown that A) I didn't design it, I channeled it, and B) I was finally shown how it actually works.

It also means that this was part two of my lesson about the 3 way crossover / house speakers I made to try to disprove my own hype about single driver speakers in an effort to keep myself honest. They're the ones (Audio Gods) who challenged me to make those in the first place so you can see how they operate.

So right now the sound is so good in here that I can safely say I've never heard anything better, not even in this room which is a good thing considering the company tonight who btw say hello.  



Happy listening!

Steve

Steve -

I hope this driver will make it's way into the HDT at some point. It certainly adds another option for me to consider when it comes time for new speaks.

Do you imagine the new driver will make the speakers more/less sensitive re: room placement?  In the owners manual for the current edition it does indicate it is possible to think you have your speakers placed correctly, you'll likely want to experiment because you may not have it right.

" I won't compare it to what I imagine it must be like to be female and have multi-orgasm in your ears..."  

Thinking ahead, here is what I was listening to:



The first, second and seventh tracks are what I used.

Ironically this album cover is not that far off. In fact it's pretty damn accurate. See the violet colored almost feather looking shape on the left? That was rendered so vividly in the recording that I can actually recognize it in the picture. : )

To look at this album art after listening in my room I can tell the incredibly talented artist was listening to it while he/she was painting it.

Steve

From what I understand of Steve description, I shouldn't very far from it with my set up, but I am waiting for my UFO to see ....
Steve I would appreciate you could listen to groups like Alpamayo, Sacambaya, Jach'A Mallku, Altiplano Fusion Band and tell if you confirm your impression with such music.
Thanks
Michel

I know, my cats are great.  I love watching how they listen to music, and they do.  They come in when the music goes on, and they listen.  It's fascinating to watch them year in and year out.

The Gods live in the cats.

Having fun with me -- is now becoming a little tedious. This amp is sounding wonderful until it gets hot and then I can't tell because I am so distracted by the heat. The placebo effect of something running too hot is 100 times stronger than objectivity -- but the reality is that I don't care if the sound changes or not, why does it get so damn hot? It's had three or four checkups already and nothing is ever wrong with it.

So this head game is on one end of the room and on the other is the new HDT SILVER 8's and they are still being driven by the Zen Triode Anniversary Amplifier and matching preamp. Also the HOLO Audio DAC and ZBIT are the source.

The sound on this end of the room is creating a planetarium sized sound stage as I've mentioned before but since mentioning it and drawing this image, I have been keeping it in my mind as I continue to listen to make sure it's really accurate on more than just one series of recordings. After all I'd hate to have to walk it back... Well it turns out that holy crap it's really accurate on a wide variety! These speakers and amp are imaging like there is no tomorrow!

If you look at the image and picture yourself setting between the two circles on the floor and centered between the speakers in an equidistant triangle, that would be the listening chair. And the giant bowl is how I am hearing everything... everything except my room which seems to be completely uninvolved with the sound but actually is.



(click to enlarge)


Also, something else has been happening with this combination that really hasn't happened all that often before and I find it really interesting!

The blackness of the background and the dynamics and presence and speed are combining to create scenarios where any time there is a momentary pause in the music and then a note or sound announces itself from the inky black background I find myself jumping. It's happened several times so far, I would say 10 times. The music is actually startling me. It's the contrast. Big time contrast. Not only in dynamics,  but from inky black nothingness to POW right there in front you... contrast in imaging and vividness that cross that line between recorded and real. The best sensation I can equate this experience to would be stepping out in front of an oncoming car and nearly getting hit and then doing it several more times over the next 10 minutes...  no there's no alcohol. It's like the cars are now actually going 200 mph instead of 45 mph and your mind hasn't adjusted to it yet.

These speakers have more refinement than the 15 inch open baffles I love so much. They also have more refinement than the 10 inch Lii drivers in cabinets or in baffles. So when I originally designed and voiced the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode Amplifier and then proceeded to trip on how it sounded for 6 months... I was listening to the DM947's and occasionally the original HDT's with the DFR8 drivers. The DM947's had that seductive musical black hole effect, and the HDT/DFR8 had that extreme presence, but there was separation between the two.. Big difference in sound. Now we have the same sound as the DM947 (later to become the DNA2) with it's seductive musicality but the resolution is simply gone from HD to 4K.

This is a combination I didn't expect to ever find, so now I am hearing my 25th Anniversary amp and preamp combo really for the first time. I am having flashbacks from the first go around but now it is to a level that is actually at edge of my ability to handle it without jumping out of the chair and going for a walk around the yard to process it which has btw happened more than once already.

Hearing this amp again for the first time while at the same time dragging my dick through the meat grinder with the other amp's heat problem is how the Audio Gods keep it balanced -- but always there has to be lessons. The ones I remember first are the ones that hurt the most. That is the methodology of Gods.

Nevertheless, the reason I wanted to repost this picture is because it has turned out to be so accurate. Just imagine yourself setting between the two circles on the floor and between the speakers. This is the space I hear when I press play and things are drawn through it and on the bowl shape dome with laser precision.  

It makes me realize that if HIFI sounded like THIS for the masses, surround sound would have never been invented because there is no reason to invent what already is.

It also makes me realize that my instincts about Lii Audio / Lii Song's drivers were well founded. Our DFR (Decware Full-Range 8 inch Driver) was a Fostex driver that was nearly unlistenable in it's stock form. We had to change the suspension and absorb the the model resonance peak at 1K in the cone before it could be considered as a serious audiophile driver IMHO.  These Silver 8 drivers that have a similar low Q and high efficiency sound like they were made for the HDT cabinet and need no fancy elaborate modifications whatsoever, which is how it should be, so I have happily discontinued the DFR8 drivers and we will use the Silver 8 in all future HDT loudspeakers.


Steve

Quote:


Seriously, if you never have done it, check the ear for blockage due to wax build up.  You'd be surprised what builds up over time!  

I've been running the EML 5u4g tubes in my Torii MKIV. The amp runs so cool now. I can rest my hand on the 5u4g all day and it's only warm.

https://vimeo.com/695687246

The rest of the amp is much cooler too.

The modifications to the original HDT to become an HDT Silver 8 are pretty simple.

A) Cut the opening for the driver larger so the Silver 8 will fit.

B) Plug the lower rear port.

That's it.

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