hify.ca: 2013

Roger Sanders Compares his Sanders Sound System to Focal's Grande Utopia III

Turning to your questions regarding whether the Focal GU is sonically 10x better than the 10c, worth 10x the money -- and if the 10c is reference class, the answers are simple: The 10c is the best performing speaker on the planet. The GU cannot match it. So not only is the 10c "reference quality", but it is the only SOTA speaker available. So the GU is certainly NOT worth 10x the price.

Now I realize that you are skeptical (or should be) about what I just said. After all, as the designer and manufacturer of the 10c, you can expect me to be biased as would any manufacturer. Furthermore, the Focal GU is a truly excellent speaker. It is the best magnetic speaker I have ever heard.

But my comments are true and I will prove it to you as soon as you hear the 10c. But even before that, you can figure that the 10c has the best sound by just considering how they are designed. Let's look critically at what is required to make the best possible speaker, regardless of price and see how the two speakers compare.

First, it is the midrange performance that is by far the most critical part of a speaker. The midrange is where the vast majority of the music resides. While good bass and treble are important, if you don't have a clean, clear, detailed midrange, then the rest is just a waste of time.

The laws of physics cannot be circumvented. Midrange frequencies are high enough that no massive midrange driver can follow the midrange signal exactly. The midrange in the GU is very good, but it still uses relatively massive, magnetic drivers that simply cannot reproduce the critical midrange frequencies with virtually zero distortion, zero phase errors, zero resonances, flawless frequency response, or even follow the wave form exactly. Only a massless driver can do so.

Electrostatics are the only type of midrange driver than is essentially massless. True ribbon drivers are also massless, but they are too small to reproduce midrange frequencies.

Not only are ESLs massless, but they are the only type of driver that is driven uniformly over their entire surface. So there is no distortion of the surface of their diaphragms to cause audible distortion like there is in magnetic drivers.

By comparison, the cone midrange drivers in the Focal speakers bend and flex. They are not infinitely rigid. They are only driven at one point (the apex of their cone). Therefore, the cone bends and flexes when driven hard, thereby producing distortion instead of acting like a rigid piston. An electrostatic diaphragm produces pure pistonic motion even at extremely high frequencies and when driven hard

Additionally, because ESLs are massless, they cannot, and do not overshoot and ring like massive, magnetic drivers. So they have no midrange resonances to mess up the frequency response. By comparison, a midrange cone driver may appear to have generally linear frequency response, but it will have a multitude of small resonances due to its bending, flexing, and excessive mass. This causes small frequency response errors throughout the midrange. Look at any frequency response graph of a magnetic driver and you will see this.

The midrange performance of ESLs is legendary. Even the old, original Quad 57 ESL from 1957 is still considered by most serious listeners to have midrange that is superior to all of today's magnetic speakers.

Modern electrostatics like the 10c have even better midrange performance than the Quads. This is because they have even lower mass (no dust covers needed and the coatings are lighter), they use a single panel, instead of 5 panels with passive crossovers, and they have more linear electronic drive.

In short, if you want a SOTA speaker, it must, at a minimum, use electrostatic midrange. The Focal GU does not. So it cannot match the midrange quality of an electrostatic speaker.

Of course, while ESLs produce the finest midrange, they traditionally have had limitations in other areas of performance that have prevented them from being SOTA speakers. These limitations include inadequate output, no deep bass, poor (thin) midrange frequency response, and poor. Conventional enclosures produce compressed air springs that tend to push the woofer beyond its stop point, thereby causing it to overshoot and ring. This ruins the integration with an ESL and is simply unacceptable.

Gaining full control of the woofer also requires electronic crossovers. This makes it possible for the bass amplifier to be connected directly to the woofer without any intervening inductors and resistors that are found in passive crossovers that ruin the damping factor of the amplifier. When a powerful amplifier is connected directly to the woofer in this manner, it can fully control the voice coil motion at low frequencies. This is not possible when passive crossovers are used.

I also use custom-designed, low mass, low Q bass drivers. These are built for me by SEAS of Norway and are specifically engineered to work ideally in transmission lines and integrate perfectly with an ESL.

Even with all these techniques, I found that the woofer could not be used higher than about 200 Hz as its relatively great mass simply could not be stopped fast enough at the higher bass frequencies. So it was essential to use digital electronic crossovers as their steep slopes were required to eliminate the woofer from operating up into the midrange.

Understand that conventional, passive, analog crossovers can only be made to operate at a maximum of 24 dB slopes. This is due to the practical limitations involved in component tolerances. Most passive crossovers only operate at 12 dB/octave slopes.

But the woofer doesn't stop at the crossover point. The crossover point is where it just starts to roll off. Until the woofer's output has dropped by at least 48 dB, it will still be heard.

When 12 dB/octave slopes are used, the woofer's output will extend 4 octaves above the crossover point. When 24 dB/octave slopes are used, the woofer will still be operating 2 octaves above the crossover point. Now when you consider that the midrange encompasses the frequencies from about 500 Hz to 2 KHz, you can see that a typical woofer crossover point of 500 Hz @ 12 dB/octave results in the woofer operating all the way through the midrange. Even in the best speakers that use lower crossover points around 250 Hz and with better crossover that operate at 24 dB/octave, the woofer is still contributing a lot of energy to the midrange.

Therefore, passive analog crossovers result in the woofer contaminating the critical midrange as it will still be producing output in the midrange along with the midrange drivers. No woofer can reproduce midrange well. And no woofer will behave like a good midrange driver at midrange frequencies. When these two types of drivers are mixed, they simply don't blend and sound the same. This is true whether the drivers are magnetic or a hybrid. In either case, these different drivers reproducing the same midrange frequencies degrades performance and simply is not acceptable for a SOTA speaker.

Also, passive crossovers have many other serious problems that preclude their use in a SOTA speaker. These include phase errors, hysteresis losses, distortion, poor frequency response precision, and group delay. All audio engineers and most audiophiles recognize that electronic crossovers (especially digital ones) are far superior to passive crossovers. All speakers will perform better with electronic crossovers and multi-amplifiers than they will with passive crossovers and a single amp. So no speaker can be considered SOTA if it uses passive crossovers.

My woofer's crossover point is only 172 Hz. The digital crossover rolls off the woofer at 48 dB/octave. This means that the woofer is gone from the sound by 350 Hz. As a result, the midrange (and upper bass) is produce solely by the ultra-pure electrostatic panel -- its sound is not contaminated by a slow, heavy woofer.

The Focal GU simply can't match the performance of the 10c because it uses passive crossovers. Frankly, I find it absolutely astonishing and unforgivable that a speaker as expensive as the Focal GU still uses cheap, poorly-performing, passive crossovers. There is no excuse for incorporating poor crossovers in an expensive speaker.

I invented the curved ESL that ML uses. But after working with it for several years, I came to understand that it was inferior to planar ESLs. So I abandoned it. Controlled, narrow dispersion is required to prevent the speaker from exciting the room acoustics, which severely degrades the sound.

Curved ESLs produce wide dispersion (as do magnetic speakers like the GU). Once again, the laws of physics cannot be circumvented. It is impossible for wide dispersion speakers to produce good transient response, linear frequency response, or precise, 3-dimensional imaging. This is a complex topic that I do not have time to discuss in detail here. If you have not already read it, let me refer you to the "Dispersion White Paper" on my website where you can gain a full understanding of the issue. Here is the direct link:

http://www.sanderssoundsystems.com/technical-white-papers

Getting an electrostatic speaker to play loudly is extremely difficult. It took me 32 years to solve that problem. The key is getting perfect insulation on the stators and a reliable coating on the diaphragm. My ESLs are the only ones that have perfect stator insulation to over 20,000 volts. As a result, they can be driven to ear-bleeding levels using multi-thousand watt amplifiers. They do not arc so they do not need or use protective circuitry. They are immune to dust, insects, and humidity. They are more reliable than magnetic drivers, which can be destroyed by the heat caused by high power operation. I am therefore able to sell my ESLs with a lifetime warranty.

The ability to reproduce extremely loud sound makes it possible, for the first time, for an ESL to reproduce difficult, percussive instruments like a grand piano or drum set at live levels in your listening room. They can also transport you to Row A in a concert hall.

The GU can play loudly and dynamically too -- but it can't produce the detailed, clear, and delicate midrange of an ESL while doing so. Furthermore, the GU cannot match my 10c with regard to transient response, imaging, or frequency response because of its wide dispersion characteristics.

Yet another issue is the speakers' time-alignment. The GU uses mechanical positioning of the drivers, which causes it to look really weird. It reminds me of a caterpillar leaning forward while sitting up on its butt. I don't think many wives will like having these large, strange creatures in their homes.

I achieve time-alignment electronically. One of the great features of digital crossovers is that they easily can produce digital time delay. This can be used to delay the sound from the early-arrival driver (the ESL) so that it arrives at the same time as the sound from the woofer. I use this feature to produce perfect phase behavior between the drivers for the very finest imaging.

I could go on, but this opus is already far too long. Suffice it to say that I do not compromise. I have solved every problem of ESLs. I have taken no short cuts. I have spared no expense. The Model 10c produces the finest performance possible. It will out-perform the Focal GU -- and it does so at a tenth the price. You will not be disappointed!

By Roger Sanders
www.sanderssoundsystems.com

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