Buccaneer’s cove
Unless you know the geography of John
Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” country like the back of your hand –
Monterey county and the Salinas valley -- you could accuse Vince
Christian Ltd. of Moss Landing to be barely on the map yet. And if
he were to play his cards right, he’d never turn into a big
household name speaker design house. Yet, look closer and you’ll realize
that Vince has been at it for quite a few years. In one incarnation or
another, his unusually widely-spaced d’Appolito monitors and small-cube
subwoofer have played the central California scene for two past Stereophile
summer shows – San Francisco and Los Angeles, receiving a “Best of
Show” nomination for his Axis model by Peter Moncrieff – and since
gained reference status with Steve McCormack and Jim Merod for their live BluePort
recording projects, and with Robert Lee and Dan Griffith at Acoustic Zen
and neighboring Gilles Gameiro of Birdland Audio for research and
development on their in-house products.
When fellow manufacturers quietly displace
much costlier loudspeaker systems for that of a newcomer to monitor the
comings and goings of their own creations with newfound accuracy, chances
are excellent this occurred purely because the underdog performed. It
certainly didn’t happen because he bestowed prestige with a recognizably
meaty growl, curried political favors with shoulders muscled from years of
survival or engendered cash-happy business alliances by throwing his
menacing weight around.
And indeed, Christian’s penetration of the
critical hearing threshold with certain experienced listeners has occurred
quietly, without fanfare, salubrious marketing campaigns, mainstream reviews
or even a concerted effort at playing all the usual odds. He’s
concentrated instead on refining his core product, the E-6 monitors,
maintaining sane inventory levels and supporting a handful of dealers that
have come aboard. For the past six years, Vince Christian has been his own
boss. He’s supported himself entirely with his love of audio, kept his
overhead low and reminded himself on occasion that living in Monterey Bay
with a family-based business is far more rewarding than moving north to
Silicon Valley and hitting the big time with all its headaches.
The open seas are a’ calling
Of course there comes a point in every
enterprise when growing bigger does rear its chimerical head with the
specter of absolute necessity. Christian, who in his own words “never got
the designing out of the way to get to the business part” feels he’s
laid the proper groundwork to finally hoist his very own skull & bones
flag: his investment of sweat equity and greenbacks now has to make a real
profit and turn into a proper business. As El Grande Kahuna and Head
Enchilada of his outfit, he must become an even bigger cheese than
“merely” playing designer, inventor, fabricator, shipper and bookkeeper.
He must spill his beans as entrepreneurial marketeer and sauce up his self
worth and that of his speakers with plenty of spicy mole. At 52,
Christian’s no longer a wide-eyed spring chicken. Unlike most freshly
hatched purveyors of fine audio gear, he no longer believes entirely
that the world at large needs saving from bad sound badly enough to
guarantee success with superior product alone. But make no mistake - the
proverbial field of dreams archetype “build it and they’ll come” still
yanks with a highly charged magnetic pull on a truly passionate guy like
Vince – that’s the breaks of being an enthusiast rather than a cold
cucumber in a fancy suit. Still, raw life experience in other strata of
employment has tempered his unmitigated enthusiasm just enough to have his
eyes wide open. He realizes that plenty of less-than-stellar products exist
that enjoy enviable economic responses like rabid Las Vegas slot machines,
while truly groundbreaking products have come and gone the dead-end way of
the dodo, to be remembered by only a few ancient fossils.
But first, a
series treasure map
Recalling his own beginnings, Vince lights up
today in wonder at first encountering a friend’s father’s Heath Kit,
Allied tri-axial speakers and AR turntable. He’s been hooked on audio ever
since even though his own parents kept encouraging him repeatedly to look
toward real jobs instead. Incidentally, this well-meaning parental
de-meriting of turning one’s passion into a business is a very common
denominator among creative folks. It’s something you’ll come across in
High-End audio a lot. At times it’s not even anecdotal evidence buried in
the remote past but present-day doubts and misgivings by the very ones who
followed their bliss only to have arrived in questionable financial
circumstances today. Ah, the webs we all weave for ourselves!
In Christian’s case, while harsh reason
held out as long as it could -- from selling produce to working in public
relations firms to playing guitar in a band that nearly signed with Apple
Records -- building speakers continued as a juicy romance in the background
all along. This brought with it the study of most everything that’s been
written about speaker design by the authorities. He quips that little of
this body of work relates to how a speaker actually sounds. He points to
similarly populist measures of Megahertz computer speeds that disguise how
fast a PC can really run restrained by its operating system and other
less advertised liabilities.
A visit to the San Francisco Audio Excellence
dealership exposed our up-and-coming speaker designer to the Rogers LS35A
monitors teamed up with a Dahlquist subwoofer. This became a pivotal
experience. It steered the next part of his evolution by creating an aural
expectation that caused him to eventually come up with something to
outperform and finally erase this obnoxious imprint. It also tuned out to be
terribly inefficient and hard to drive, forcing him back to the drawing
board. Incidentally, his website features a gallery page that documents
select one-up projects that preceded the products marketed today.
Taking advantage of computer programs to
create sophisticated and complex crossovers, Vince soon concluded that flat
frequency response and unified power response alone predicted with precious little
accuracy how a speaker would really perform in a standard living room
environment. He eventually also realized that conventional parallel
crossovers caused more problems than they solved. He implemented 1st-order
Butterworth filters as the least harmful alternative before terminal
frustration led him to cross paths with series-type networks. This turned
affable Vince Christian into mutinous Fletcher Christian, defying popular
parallelist wisdom and joining ranks with such constant-voltage underground
heretics as Bud Fried and Robert Gross who chase after minimizing group
delay and phase rotation in their own work of integrating speaker drivers
into a seamless whole.
A proper
pirate map lacks pieces to maintain that aura of secrecy and mystery
It’s well known that, except for 1st
order types, all conventional parallel Butterworth filter types suffer from
phase anomalies while offering maximally flat on-axis behavior. Implementing
designers of course claim that their compromised time domain behavior
remains inaudible and is of interest only to theoretical purists. Popular
forth-order Linkwitz-Riley topologies feature sharp roll-offs and optimized
off-axis response but suffer from the most severe phase rotation. Those like
Dunlavy, Green Mountain, Meadowlark, Sonus Faber, Thiel and Vandersteen who
believe that such time domain errors are very much audible and thus
highly critical claim that these trade-offs result in inferior transient
response, confused imaging and a narrow sweet spot.
In a series network, all crossover components
are inserted between hot and ground. They’re shunted across the
transducer terminals to create a single closed loop circuit that delivers
identical current and voltage to all drivers. This effectively causes every
single network element to affect or load every other one. These volatile
variables seem to have caused all known speaker designers to shun
higher-order series filters like the plague, Bob Gross of Speaker Art
excepted. Over many years of trial and error, he has perfected 4th
and 8th order cascaded quasi-second order series networks as
first suggested by the mathematician Kaminsky.
The least complex iteration of a series
filter is an electrical 1st order capacitor/coil design.
When added to the purely mechanical roll-off any driver exhibits even in
free air, it combines to an effective second-order or 12dB response,
or what Bob Gross would call a quasi-second order filter. Citing from his
website [www.speakerart.com] “...such a
[] crossover maintains full
amplitude linearity through the crossover region, and exhibits a rising rate
of attenuation beyond the crossover point reaching a maximum of 12dB per
octave. Moreover, phase linearity is better than for any other crossover
type excepting the first order Butterworth...”
The Vince Christian Ltd. E-6 uses a 1st-order
series network. This naturally necessitated wide bandwidth drivers to
augment the shallow filter slope. He’s found them in the Audax 5-inch
woven carbon fiber units that he fancies over the firm’s Aerogel or
Bextrine versions housed in the same basket. He crosses them over at a very
high 8.2kHz and calls them essentially flat from 100Hz to 8000Hz. Using two of
them increases the amount of air he can move so that piano and even male
vocals are reproduced with correct timbre and weight. The crossover
frequency just about runs these midranges wide open and approaches single
driver mode that employs the tweeter purely for upper harmonics. According
to Christian, the series-filter solution also achieves higher-than-usual
loudness capabilities, giving his narrow-profile monitors dynamics he claims
are beyond his personal comfort zone to fully explore.
The wide, 11-inch center-to-center driver
spacing was a result of experiments intended to overcome what he describes
as a certain wooliness he hears in conventional MTM arrays. He remembers
playing with different grade drivers and comparing two inferior drivers with
wider spacing to higher-grade versions in closer proximity. Even though his
measurement confirmed the former to be of lesser quality, they performed
markedly better in this installation. Swapping them for the more expensive
units resulted in the precursor of today’s E-6 and established his
trademark long baffle. It’s covered in felt to avoid spurious reflections
and has the woofers protrude on square sub-baffles to maintain physical time
alignment.
All inside surfaces of the E-6 monitors are
covered in Deflex polymer pads sourced from a British vendor. They
create an uneven diffractive layer atop the MDF panels to avoid parallel
surfaces and absorb the drivers’ rear-firing acoustical energy. He
described these pads as miniature flapping shark needles arrayed in
concentric circles. They apparently feel greasy and flubbery to the touch
like Silicon and are mightily expensive.
Despite these very thorough attempts at
enhancing acoustical transfer precision by counteracting MDF’s penchant
for leaking sound pressure, Vince confided that his new E-9 concept model
– using identical drivers and spacing but housing them in individual PVC
pipes – is truly forward-radiating while the E-6, when listened to
from behind and compared to the E-9, still exhibits minor
omnidirectional tendencies as all MDF carcass speakers do. Compared
side-by-side, the PVC model with its completely non-lossy chassis thus
sounds louder for identical input voltages. Having heard nØrh’s phenomenal
new synthetic marble speaker dubbed SM 6.9, I can not only appreciate this
efficiency in loudness behavior from truly inert, super-dense cabinets, but
also the added vividness or absence of residual fuzziness that circular
cabinets achieve over their more traditionally square – well, rectangular
-- brethren.
The main
players
The Vince Christian E-6 is available in two
trim levels, the E-6 ($3,000/pr) and E-6c ($2,000/pair). With identical
electrical and physical specs except for weight – the E-6 is five pounds
heavier – the E-6c benefits from less severe and costly internal cabinet
damping by moving the resonance frequency of the chassis upwards. This
allowed the use of convoluted foam to replace the expensive tuned-polymer
damping panels inside the E-6. The E-6c is finished in industrial-grey paint
while the E-6 sports high-gloss black and pearl white lacquer. Both feature
a vertically and horizontally aligned, time-corrected MTM array using two
5-inch, woven carbon fiber midranges with edge-wound voice coils and Kapton
formers, and a one 1-inch high-output soft-dome tweeter. A first-order,
series network crosses over at 8.2kHz, with 92.5dB sensitivity compliments
of the paralleled woofers, and a frequency response of 65Hz to 18kHz (–3dB).
A unique feature is the binding post bypass in which the internal hookup
wire is funneled through a tiny hole in the cabinet and direct-soldered to
the outside of the terminals for better conductivity.
The speakers measure
30” x 7.75” x 8.75” (HxWxD) and sit on supplied
stands.
The 52 lbs bass cube
($1,500 in grey, $2,200 in high-gloss lacquers) is a self-powered low
frequency unit with a 150-watt, Class A/B equalized amplifier with velocity
feedback control coupled to a front-firing acoustic suspension 12-inch
woofer with polymer cone and 90dB sensitivity, all housed in a 14-inch cubed
enclosure lined with the same tuned polymer panels as used in the E-6. A
LAT-sourced power cord is hardwired, while a variable second order low pass
filter and continuously variable attenuator provide user adjustability.
Locking aluminum footers allow leveling and stabilizing. Frequency response
is 24HZ to 80Hz. Christian alluded that without his proprietary
equalization, this particular woofer would need at least a 3 cubic feet
enclosure to produce equivalent extension and dynamics.
A forthcoming review in
Enjoy the Music.com™’s
Review Magazine will investigate how theory and publicity
translate into subjective listening impressions.
Haunting
the seas under raised banner
How will Vince
Christian Ltd. survive the uncertain and tumultuous effects of today’s
economy? What’s it like, even outside of cyclical trade winds, to be in
the business of unessential luxuries quite unlike those purveyors of food,
pharmaceuticals and automobile repair services who find themselves in demand
no matter what?
Only time will tell.
Past case evidence of course points at more eventual failures than long-term
successes of small enthusiasts making it in this industry. But considering
that Christian and comrades have already weathered six years on the
open and shark-infested seas of capitalist commerce while eluding most
people’s notice, it stands to reason that they’ve survived the worst –
invisibility. Staying lean and mean as they have thus far, they should only
go upwards from here.
Having broken-in the
E-6/sub cube system in preparation for this article and the actual reviewer,
I certainly don’t see any reason why, based on the product’s performance
alone, not more folks should come to thoroughly enjoy the fruits of
Vince’s labors. Beyond that, he will strike anyone who talks to him even
for only a few minutes as one of those genuinely likable, down-to-earth,
easy-going and affable types that have a way of attracting good fortune by
sheer in-the-bones conviction that Life is intrinsically benign if you align
yourself with it properly. In an industry populated with full-of-themselves
misfits, that’s definitely good karma. Prospective buyers should never
underestimate or disregard this human element. After all, High-End audio in
many ways is like fine art. Why buy a beautiful painting from a known
sleaze, cold fish or flaming egomaniac if you could purchase an equally
compelling rendition from someone pleasant, civilized and interesting?
Future
raids
Asked what might lie on
the horizon for Vince Christian Ltd, I am told of a new high-quality 2-inch
full-range driver of undisclosed origin. If initial impressions bear out
over the long haul, Vince might be tempted to pull the old HP trick
(that’s Harry Potter to you, not Pearson) of “honey, I
shrunk the speaks” and design a set of miniature monitors that would serve
his sympathies for domestic integration and relative invisibility. A new 6" version of the
5" mid/woofer he’s so fond of has also hit the
market. It potentially could turn into an E-7 or E-8 that would offer more
bass extension than the current monitors to make the addition of the bass
cube redundant in medium-sized rooms.
What Vince is already
committed to, come hell, high water or allied warships, is the circular PVC
version of his bass cube he introduced in pre-production form at CES 2002.
Queried on how he’s planning to finish raw PVC on the outside, he merely
let on that he’s located a specialist in Silicon Valley who’ll transform
this mundane poly vinyl chloride into something worthy of serious cosmetic
appeal. Stay tuned to his site for updates on this concept project.
Up-and-coming
In March, we will chat
with one of the coolest cats in all of audio, Joe Fratus of Art Audio
USA,
to find out about pending amplifier introductions and exciting new tube
discoveries. We will possibly also time things just so to talk about
an as-yet secret future announcement for his firm.
Vince Christian Limited
229 Main Street
Salinas, California 93901
Voice: (831) 455 9308
Fax (831) 455 0650
E-mail: vince@vincechristian.com
Website: www.vincechristian.com
High-Performance Audio Reviews
