Lowther opinions(be nice now :-)

In Japan I managed to hear a short (3 foot high) boxy shaped horn loudspeaker with a Lowther unit. It was one of the best horn-loaded loudspeakers I've heared. Very fast sounding, able to rock and sound delicate at the same time.

Those full-range white Lowther units are very special.

P.S. Looking on the Internet, it seems that the loudspeaker design in Tokyo was the "Bicor Classic 200".

Andrew

Andrew Randle
2B || !2B;
4 ^ = ?;

[This message was edited by Andrew Randle on WEDNESDAY 06 June 2001 at 21:38.]

[This message was edited by Andrew Randle on WEDNESDAY 06 June 2001 at 21:39.]

I had the idea they're....

1) Incredibly musical, although a bit colored. Kind of like an LP-12 circa 1979. And

2) They don't play very loud.

Andrew, is there a chance I could be happily wrong on either or both counts?

Art Dudley, the editor of Listener, is a big fan of Lowthers and uses a home-built cabinet (built to someone else's specs) to house his top of the line drivers. He is a huge fan of them. He also uses a valve amp to drive them (it might be a Fi amp, I do know that he uses a Fi valve-driven pre).

FWIW, he's also states that he is a big naim fan (as far back as when he wrote for Hi-Fi Heretic some 15 years ago) and appears to take PRaT into strong consideration in every equipment review.

This is what I understand about them from various reviews I've read:

In a nutshell, they're meant to be installed in single driver speakers, as one of their advantages is that no crossover is required (those that have heard active systems know what a passive crossover can do to a music signal).

They play fairly loud (most Lowther implementations sport 103dB/watt efficiency) but they cannot match briks.

They also have very little bass below about 80 Hz unless you house them in a box bigger, and stranger looking, than Zontar The Creature From The Deep. They have zero bass slam.

They also roll off fairly early on the highs. There's a two-way speaker called the Horning Alkiabades that's a big favorite at the Abso!ute Sound; they appear to be a Lowther driver directly connected without a crossover, with a tweeter to top out the high end.

The reviews like to spread the idea that tubes are much more linear at low wattages (I have no experience or technical knowledge to that regard), and that therefore the Lowthers work much better with tubes, as one watt of power through them will drive you out of the room. Again, that's the scuttlebutt and I will not say whether it has any basis in fact.

Hmm - don't play loud, not much bass, reputation for awesome musicality. Sounds like Kans

I'd love to hear a well-installed pair of their drivers.

Cheers

Keith.

RandallE, Do you read Listener? It sounds like you don't. If you did, you'd know Art Dudley is a very big fan of Lowthers, with SETs. Since he's an (ex-?) Naim user, this is a powerful argument for Lowthers and SETs.

Art has written about colorations in the Lowthers, however. Check www.enjoythemusic.com for a pointer to Listener and request the right back issues. Toll-free information may also get you to Listener.

Personally, I'd love to hear the Lowthers, though I doubt I'm evolved enough to like them.

Regards.

Phil

[This message was edited by Phil Barry on THURSDAY 07 June 2001 at 14:55.]

damned infopoop

[This message was edited by Keith Mattox on THURSDAY 07 June 2001 at 01:56.]

Lowthers are 'full range' drivers down to around 80hz and up to around 17/18khz. Interestingly the 4inch driver in the Acoustic Precision FR1 has similar specs. Again, the good and bad bits seem similar - great coherence and timing, poor extension etc. This is probably partly due to the lack of the crossover.

The Lowthers win over the FR1's since the FR1 is essentially a boxless speaker. Lowther-based speakers are usually based on large cabinets with horn or transmission line loading. I've heard good and bad ones.

Typically, Lowther-based speakers are in the 98 - 104db/w/m efficiency range. This makes them very very efficient indeed. A 100db/w/m speaker is around 4 times louder than an average (87db) speaker for a given volume from the amplifier. Therefore, if you normally play your Naim amp at 9 o'clock on the volume dial, you'd have to lower it to 8 o'clock for a 98db speaker to achieve the same volume.

If you do this, it will mean that you won't be stressing the amp (good thing) but it will also mean that you're quite close to the beginning of the volume pot and can run into end-of-pot channel imbalances (bad thing). Also, if you raise the volume pot to 8.30, you get a very dynamic response from the speaker (good thing) but you also get a dramatic increase in volume (bad thing).

The drivers are fairly robust so they can go quite loud (110db in most speakers) but not as loud as crazy wild thing speakers (Cerwin Vega!), but typically they're airy detailed and light, yet maintaining coherence (good thing). At the same time, they tend to hiss more than average speakers since they'll pick up every little bit of noise you can imagine coming from the amp (bad thing). I used to drive my 94.5db AN-Es with an 82/hicap/250 so I understand a bit about the combination of powerful amp with efficient speaker, and it's a hoot, but the hiss made sure that I always left the amp on 'mute' as otherwise the hiss would drive me nuts if I was in the room without music on. The hiss wasn't as bad via my (relatively) veiled 62/90.

One last thing about this kind of combination - when I switch the lights off in the kitchen, I get a bang through the system even though they're on quite different circuits. The speakers pick it up and just report it faithfully.

Regards,
Frank.

[This message was edited by Frank Abela on THURSDAY 07 June 2001 at 14:28.]

What's up with the server today? It didn't refresh to show my add-on even though it took it and even though I refreshed the page? Weird...

[This message was edited by Frank Abela on THURSDAY 07 June 2001 at 14:25.]

One other discussion wrt the advantages of Lowthers (and other single-driver speakers) comes to mind, and that's the Doppler effect.

The argument put forth is that we hear sound with the highs riding on top of lows; microphones work the same way.

Multi-driver speakers supposedly screw this up by having high frequencies played on different drivers than low frequencies, and that they therefore are not payed back exactly as how the microphone picked them up - as the mike is a single-transducer unit for receiving.

A single-driver speaker does not have this issue, as the high frequencies are played from the same driver as the lows, just like how the mike picked them up.

Full-range electrostats, obviously, would also have this advantage (perhaps that's part of the mysterious quality of Quad 'stats).

I've described this poorly; Art D did a much better job in an issue of Listener about 8 months ago.

There was talk of a miracle crossover from Kimber Cable that was to add back some of the Doppler effect to the drivers, and that the resulting sound was quite remarkable. Funny thing, I haven't heard much about this crossover in the last year or so.

Cheers

Keith.

PS - yeah Frank, same thing - the refresh for thread and text updates was really munged up yesterday. And apparently it still is!

[This message was edited by Keith Mattox on THURSDAY 07 June 2001 at 19:42.]

As a (fairly)regular reader of this website I have not felt necessary to write in until now..Lowthers obviously arouse my emotions..my system is; rega 25,cd3.5,90/92, 2 flat caps, m&k sub (essential!) and a pair of Lowther bicor 2000. The(four) drive units, uprated to 'ex3' are rated at 98db and "whistle" constantly, even on mute.They even pop when the washing machine goes on!The speakers, having 2 drive units each (in parallel, of course) are pretty well multi directional in sound, much like the shahinians, but with infinitely more slam! Musicality is breathtaking, as is treble and clarity- really amazing! Bass is conspicuously absent and a good quality sub, frankly essential. They are a great speaker manufacturer with a lot of history (jimi hendrix didn't use anything else.. apparently) and i'd highly recommend them.. try lowtherloudspeaker.com for more info

t