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PERSONAL NOTE FROM DECWARE
OWNER STEVE DECKERT
 Ever wonder what Decware gear
really sounds like? Well, I've
put together a simple system and made a series of high quality 24
bit recordings of it! You'll
be listening to recordings of a loudspeaker.
The idea came from the recent trend to add recordings to show reports
where instead of just pictures and a paragraph about each exhibitor's
gear, there are now recordings of what each room sounded like.
Surprisingly you can tell a tremendous amount about the sound quality
of one system vs. another through those recordings...
The transparency and speed of this gear should become undeniably
obvious if you listen through high quality headphones... but equally
impressive on a high-end stereo, so have some fun!
-Steve
Deckert
VIDEO
OF
RECORDING
PROCESS
We have made some
24 bit
recordings of the FRX drivers mounted in a pair of Zen Open
Baffle
Loudspeakers. Above is a video of an actual recording
underway. It is not 24 bit quality like the audio samples below,
but it sounds pretty good with the main purpose to show the
microphone placement
and give you a visual of the recordings on this page.
RECORDING PROCESS:
To give a real world example of what these will
sound like, the source for these recordings was a mac mini with our USB
DAC, and the recordings that were played are all 16/44 digital.
To record the speakers, a microphone was placed in front
of each FRX driver at a distance of 12 inches. The mics were feed
into
an Alesis firewire recorder set to a 24 bit resolution. The
recordings
are AIFF native format and untouched. The playback level
set for the speakers was near live levels
- using pretty much everything a single EL34 output tube had to offer
to each speaker. If you're new to the Zen Open Baffle speaker
design, it achieves tangible bass without supplemental drivers or subs
so you will hear plenty of bass in the recordings. In a regular
open
baffle design this bass performance would not be likely.
ZOB SPEAKERS shown during the recording process.
R E C O R D I N G S
(More being added soon)
Below are recordings of the Decware System using FRX drivers on a
variety of music:
While all these were 16/44 CD format
recordings, some are better than others. Al Di Meola is an
excellent recording with no compression. Chris Isak on the other
hand is pushing the loudness wars as far as it can be pushed.
Listening to all these samples should give you a real good sense of
what these various recordings sound like on a Decware system.
NOTE: The speakers were close miked to remove much of the effects
of the listening room. Even so, listening to these recordings in
your room on your speakers will add the sound of your room (and
speakers) to the playback and it will not be accurate. To hear
exactly what you would hear if you were here during the recordings, get
yourself a top quality headphone setup and listen to these samples on
that if you can.
NOTE: These clips average 1 to 3 minutes each.
FRX
Loudspeakers
playing
Al
Di
Meola - 22.5MB /AIFF / 24
BIT
-
Spacious guitar work
FRX
Loudspeakers
playing
Albert
Cummings - 24.27MB /AIFF / 24
BIT
-
A slightly compressed live blues recording
FRX
Loudspeakers
playing
Cranberries
- 31.4MB /AIFF / 24BIT - Large ambiance female vocal
FRX
Loudspeakers
playing
Chris
Isak - 59.15MB /AIFF /24BIT - The highly compressed song used in
video
FRX
Loudspeakers
playing
Livingston
Taylor
- 63.37MB /AIFF /24BIT - Excellent male vocal
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