And it Sounds Like…
My listening tastes run toward smooth jazz, solo instrumental, synthesized new age (western) and instrumental rock. I will share with you some of the listening experiences I have enjoyed with the Helix. When reviewing, I listen for critical aspects of speaker performance, which I find in certain recordings.
the Helix speakers, their eyes widen and they emit indistinct sounds.
I spent some time listening to the 1970’s sensation, the O’ Jays. They have a soul vibe with large groupings of strings in the background. I find this to be a very enjoyable mix. The Helix brought to life a wealth of information which was buried in the older tracks such as “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train”. It was delightful to hear a backing with body, strings that sounded like live people rather than flimsy keyboard filler so often heard today. While these older recordings were compromised by today’s standards, the Helix was grand enough to enrich them so that the orchestration could be appreciated.
Instantly they know they are in the presence of something quite
Another unusual offering from my earlier listening days was Tomita’s Snowflakes Are Dancing. In my youth, I was introduced to Tomita by a well-off young man who had a B&O (Bang and Olufsen) system. Back then, B&O gear was a very high class novelty. Let’s say that Tomita’s music is “novel” as well. As a teen I got my own copy of the album and played it tirelessly, fascinated by the intricate synthesized sound.
extraordinary.
I decided to put Tomita’s version of the Firebird Suite up against the Encore’s Greatest Hits version of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird”. Tomita didn’t fare too well. It wasn’t the character of the sound – the Helix raced along with every tweak and torque of the synthesizer. It was the lack of significance that got to me. Putting on the orchestral version, it was full of sweeping grace and elegance; the piece became a living thing through the Helix. The illusion that I was actually in the audience at the symphony was easily conveyed. With about one minute left in the piece, the largest of drums break forth, a marvelous test of a speaker’s lower limits. The Helix did not even break a sweat. Forceful finales are what the Helix is all about, as it can put an exclamation mark on the most demanding of classical pieces.
Is it possible to have too much driver size, too many total inches in
I shifted gears to hear how the Helix would handle Hugh Masekela’s “Stimela” as recorded on Live at the Market Theater. I must say I had not listened too closely to the lyrics in the past. This is a serious piece of music, dramatizing the plight of the poor and dispossessed. However, I had to catch myself as Hugh dedicated the song to, “…those who lose their lives working in cheap labor,” then added, “If there’s any here tonight, we are with you!” (The audience nervously laughs.) Hugh continues, explaining that some of the poor dig, “…vegetables with their bare hands and picking fruits in the most incontinent of weather…” (he meant inclement; I suppose if the sky lost its “bladder function”…). I really don’t want to snicker at such serious thoughts.
cone surface working for you? Maybe, but when I hear how thorough
Once Hugh began blowing his horn, all frivolity vanished; it was raw with the mood of unrequited personhood. The Helix perfectly placed the bell being struck at the back of the stage, then tracked it as it was moved toward the microphone. Hugh’s howling, an imitation of a train whistle, was impossible to ignore. Similarly, the power in the drums demanded attention.
One of the most beautiful qualities of the Helix was revealed in the rhythmic pounding of the drums and cowbell, symbolizing the train’s movement. Puny speakers cannot scale up to “train size” but the Helix can! I viscerally connected with the lower rumble of the train as the drums beat out the engine’s strokes. At times like that, when a forceful piece of music is playing at near live levels, the Helix makes the music live in a way that few speakers can.
these speakers are, I think the majority of speakers are operating with
These instances bring to mind a conversation that Bill and I had in which we strongly agreed that abundant driver surface area is indispensable to creating the impression of live sound. Just as there is a big difference between heat and temperature, so also there is a big difference between the level at which a driver is played and its acoustic output. Having used many speakers with moderately sized drivers, it is refreshing to hear the expansiveness and ease of the generously proportioned drivers of the Helix.
far too few inches of cone surface.
This translates into the heft necessary to capture the breadth of a piano case. It yields overpowering, staggering, voluminous, intense, seismic bass. How about virtually unlimited, uncompressed dynamics? The Helix is privy to that virtue as well.
The Helix is expansive in how it propagates waves and expands sources. When I hear Lee Ritenour’s Countdown N.Y/L.A through the Helix, it is painted on an aural canvas no less than 6’h x 12’w. This is the sonic equivalent of watching a cinema screen, and not many speakers in the world can generate that size of performance. Who among us doesn’t like a giant picture? Who would complain of the images being too large? Some of us may complain if the speakers are too large. I don’t know that I would agree that it’s an advantage to be hearing an orchestra or band through a single 8” driver at three feet elevation. The Helix sounds big and realistic to me.
(Fantasy letter) “Dear Mr. Dudleston, the speakers you gave me on
High Sensitivity, High Surface Area, High Power
One of the keys to the excellence of the Helix is the trio of extremely high sensitivity (102 dB!), high driver surface area, and high power (recall that I am using 5,000 total Watts). These three give the Helix a storm surge of power which carries a sonic force akin to a hurricane.
loan are wonderful! I regret to tell you that my stairs which we used to
At this past Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (2008), I spent time listening to Lesiem’s Auracle via the Focal Grande Utopia EM, a prodigious speaker. I love the beginning of this disc, as it has one of the most cavernous, enveloping beginnings of any disc in recent memory. Only a world class speaker of immense size can do justice to that disc. When the track was over three people called out for the title, and I noted that the representative for Focal had written down the information, presumably for future demo use. Rightly so, because it made the speaker sound formidable.
carry them in have developed a strange ‘weakness’, and I’m sure that
I returned home with a sense of anticipation. Usually when I had spent time in the past with ultra-speaker systems, I would return home a bit deflated, as I knew that the grandeur of the experience would not be fulfilled by my own more modest rig. Not this time. I knew the Helix was in the same league. Within hours of returning, I was in the listening room firing up (you guessed it) Lesiem. I perfectly understand the need not to draw absolute conclusions about different systems at different locations, much less declare one set of speakers superior.
However, I will state without reservation that I heard the same sense of omnipotence, the same grandeur, the same sweeping command of the music. I was ebullient, thinking, “There are only a handful of speakers that can handle music in this fashion, and here before me is one of them!” I would find it most interesting to hear the Helix at a high-end show. I have been urging Bill to get them “out there” for people to hear – maybe this year.
they won’t support the weight of the speakers. I’m afraid they’ll have
Issues and Weaknesses
There are exceptionally few weaknesses in the Helix design. Just as I found the Focus HD to be a well thought out and executed speaker, so the Helix is a top down design effort with not many caveats. The largest criticism I can level at it is not entirely its own fault. With a 102 dB sensitivity and massive power, the speaker emits a low-level hiss across its driver complement. This hiss was audible at the listening position. I am a stickler for perfection, and at first this was an irritant, as ideally a speaker will be nearly silent when there is no signal. However, as in use of other high-efficiency speakers, the reason for the slight noise is understandable.
to stay…”
I was not able to conduct a test of a lower-powered six-channel amp to assess whether the hiss would disappear with, say, 200 Wpc. I assume so, as I have seen similar effects in the past. When I used the Tannoy Glenair with the Jeff Rowland 501 Monos, it also hissed. But when the amps were switched out with the Pathos Classic One MkIII integrateds, or the Monarchy SM-70 Pro amps, both well under the 1,000-watt threshold of the Rowlands, the hiss subsided. Thus I conclude that this is not a damning feature of the Helix speaker and processor, but rather a consequence of pairing it with supercharged amplification. When I have used extreme power on speakers there has typically been a higher noise floor. When the power has been lowered the noise has dissipated. I would expect the same with the Helix.
A speaker that can load a room? How about eight 15” and eight 6”
During my exploration of the speaker, I discovered that the 15” open baffle bass driver is wired via clip connections with a smaller gauge wire. I inquired and received Bill’s response: “I am a big believer in solid, mechanical connections. The tension clips will not vibrate loose, nor do they require floating the input wires in molten solder, which typically has 1/7th the conductivity of a tensioned contact. The only thing as good is a silver solder connection which we use on the binding posts.”
drivers! As the level rises it feels like diving deeper in water.
There are some things which seem counter-intuitive in high-end audio, one of which is a tensioned contact. I’m so used to seeing soldered joints that it’s hard to file it under “acceptable technique”. The aforementioned Emerald Physics CS2 speaker, which is a true overachiever, also uses tensioned connections. Can a solder joint versus a tensioned contact have such an influence on the sound that it can be heard? Possibly. Can it be isolated and shown to pass my Law of Efficacy? In other words, could it be demonstrated that the difference between the tensioned contact and a soldered contact would have easily audible effects? I wasn’t going to take a solder gun to the Helix to find out, but I have doubts about it.
Clint Eastwood has a cameo appearance whistling on his son, Kyle’s
If the Helix were not a stellar performer with a solid spec sheet, I would question Bill’s techniques. Alas, he has put together a speaker with world-class specs, and what I consider a to-die-for sound. So, I’m not about to give him grief over it. I have said before when encountering inexplicable design features that, if it sounds fantastic, I don’t care if chicken wire was used in the construction. Now I can add truck bed liner-like glop! On the one hand this issue bothers me, I wonder what the wiring scheme is inside the speaker. On the other hand, I know that at whatever price point, a manufacturer must determine if and how much he will cut corners. Is the smaller gauge wire and tensioned connectors cutting corners? From what I can tell, yes.
disc Paris Blue. In his retirement years the man can’t whistle to save
However, one must weigh the costs with the benefits. If Bill uses modest wiring internally, recalling that the review pair has all Wireworld Mini Eclipse wiring and I know David Salz’s wires and have no reservations about their performance, he surely is not hogging all the savings and returning little of value to the buyer.
In fact, if I’m not blind, I see the Helix as providing to the buyer as much dollar-to-performance value as any proclaimed “Giant Killer” speaker. There are far less prospective buyers at this price point, but the ones insisting on superior value will be well rewarded with a close look, and a listen to the Helix. A trip to Legacy Audio or one of its approved demonstration sites could save tens of thousands spent on other speakers which may not have superior performance. Bill has not offered the public an egregiously priced flagship speaker, and I have the same reaction to the Helix as with the Focus HD – Wow! You get a lot of speaker for your money! The price point is high, but the performance level is much higher.
his life; I know, I’m hearing it too well! I’m trying to picture him
This speaker sounds like no corners were cut in its design. In fact, it sounds like the Legacy crew walked several more miles and took in several more corners to encompass the Helix. A designer is going to have his “warts” shown in the product he makes. Some products are a bit like frog’s skin – a fair number of warts. The Helix? Its perceived flaws are more akin to a mole or beauty mark on the face of Marilyn Monroe or Cindy Crawford. You’ll not be disappointed due to the overwhelming beauty, a beauty which goes way, way beyond skin deep.
squinting, trying to purse his lips. I’m thinking, “You gonna pull those
Conclusion
I would venture that most of us hard-boiled audiophiles have heard a piece of equipment that was so good, so profoundly superb that you didn’t want to live without it. Many of us have been there, at the point of strain, knowing our budgetary limitations, yet yearning for the ultimate, the sound which would make us feel alive while listening. The Helix has been that product, vivifying my music every time I sit down in front of them. Ever since they were first entwined into my rig, they have been the major influence in my music having the characteristic of being alive.
pistols or whistle Dixie?”
I have struggled with personal economic tension for months as I was reviewing the Helix. I can’t begin to afford the Legacy’s, even though I don’t want to live without them. I will survive either way, but one thing is for sure: their eventual departure will mean having the system’s beating heart ripped from its chest. The departure of what Bill called, “that which is fundamental to life,” will cause death, and it will be awfully difficult to resurrect.
◄Bill Dudleston and one channel of the $16,500 pair of Whisper
- ← Previous page
- (Page 5 of 5)
