Steve Guttenberg’s Duet15 Horn1 Review Part 1/2

          [Music] You know, I think you guys know that I love horn speakers, but I also love open baffle speakers. And the subject of today’s review, the Pure Audio Project Duet15 Horn1 is exactly that. It is a combination of the two. It is a horn speaker, but it is also an open baffle speaker with a 15-inch woofer. Yep, I love my job. So, anyway, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. And uh before we get too far into that, in case you missed it, when my neighbor Isabelle heard, well, saw first saw the

          horn one being delivered to my building, she absolutely freaked. So, I shot a video with her that I posted a couple weeks ago, which has so far received 48,000 views. So, some of you have probably already seen it. If you missed it, please watch it. I’ll link below because she’s 22 years old. She never saw or heard a speaker like this. And it just put her wow, she was just knocked out. and she was really articulate in putting into words what she heard and how she felt about what she heard. So yeah, watch that interview. But as for

          my impressions of this speaker, well, well, first of all, it is a very high sensitivity speaker. It’s rated at 96 dB and it’s also an 8 ohm load, so it’s easy to drive, so you can drive it with just about anything. and I did, including my two watt Deckware Zen Trion amplifier. Now, later on in this episode today, I’m going to run my interview with Zev Schlick. He is the designer and owner of PureAudioProject about this speaker, about the Duet15 Horn1. As for the sound of the Horn One, well, the

          first word that comes to mind is immediate. I love the way the War One communicates rhythm, the pulse of music is just well, you just feel it more with this speaker than you do with most. And that was a big surprise. Now over the course of the review I do compare it to my main reference or one of my main references the PureAudioProject do at 15 the standard version and I also compare it with another reference of mine the Klitchch Ojas K1 another horn speaker. So give you some flavors there and ways of

          describing what this speaker can do what the horn one can really do. Anyway, I think the main point of this review is to talk about this combination of horn and open baffle that it gives you stuff that other horn speakers don’t do. And that is just have this spacious quality, really fast, clean bass, really, really tight. And remember, this is open baffle, meaning there’s just as much sound coming out of the back of the speaker as the front. So, it fills the room in a very different way than a normal box speaker could or would or

          ever will for that matter because you’re hearing both sides of the driver. Anyway, I’m going to uh cut this short right now. We’re going to go to the interview with Zev and I hope you come back tomorrow for the complete well my further thoughts and I have many of them about the sound of this speaker. But Zev’s going to fill us in about the details, the background of the design. So, let’s get to it. Zev from Pure Audio Project. What have you done? What is that? What do you mean? What have I done? You

          changed it. Uh, no. We It’s not a change. It’s an addition of a type of driver of a of a genre audio genre into the do 15. Mhm. Yeah. But this you’ve used this horn in many of your other speakers. That’s true. We used it in the trio and in the quintet. We didn’t have the du it at the time. Do it 15 is relatively new. I think two years or maybe two and a half and it was always a matter of time when we will implement or try to implement the horn and you never know what the result will be. You have

          to do it and then to see if it works. Tweak it. Yeah. So you So in other words, how you’re using like the crossover is different than it would be in the trio. The crossover is not different from the trio in the design, in the topology, but the components are definitely different. Oh yes. Because there you have two woofers. Here you have one woofer. The size of the buff is different. A lot of things are different and they have their influence. So you have to to put the right components and if the topology works, you’re fine. And

          the topology works. Yes. The horn has a compression driver, 1.4 in throat with a strong magnet behind it and a polymer dome dome. And And where is the horn made? Well, the compression driver is made in Spain. The wave guide is made for us in the EU. Wow. And the 15 in is the same one you’ve used all along. Exactly the same. Yes. It’s an amazing driver. A 15 in is really I’m happy to hear once you hear once you live with a 15inch speaker 15inch driver speaker it’s hard to go back to a 10. That’s true. They sound so

          small. I agree with you. There was some work done on bringing it to sound exactly like we wanted in this configuration because you know the same driver can sound differently if it’s in a box, if it’s in a large box, smaller box, open buff. So you have to match them. And it’s made in the US. In the US by Eminence. And the panel the panel depends what finishing you are taking. The one that you the finishing you have on the one with the Voxativ is bamboo. Made in the US. I guess they’re importing the

          bamboo sheets. That’s obvious. This one we make these panels. The black one that you see behind me is made in Spain. Actually the wood is made in Portugal. company that made Velcroat material. It’s a new material. There’s a lot of material about it on the internet. The color is embedded in the HDF. It’s HDF with a color embedded in it. So, you don’t need to paint it just to send it and to Oh, wow. I Yeah, you explained that before, but And now I get it. Yeah, that’s pretty interesting. And And the crossover itself is uh you

          can use it, you explaining you can use it as as a series crossover or parallel. We are using in general almost in all our models we are using first order crossover and we have an option for you to have it either in series topology or parallel topology. Parallel is the standard one like two channels. The series is a bit more tricky because everything kind of blend together and it’s almost impossible to simulate it on a computer and to know what to expect. So it’s basically if it works it’s magical. It

          has some kind of a flavor or touch that everything sounds more organic. But uh it’s a it’s a we leave it for our luck whether it works or not. Parallel is more kind of a safe way to go with Sirius. If it works you’re lucky and the customer has the option with just a jumper. Just a jumper. super easy to change any can. I would like to add maybe a word about it. The typical response to this change is that if you do an AB test most of the people will prefer the parallel but if they play it for a longer time most of the

          same people will prefer it in series. And the interesting thing is that customers always post on Facebook on on social network their their positive experience. They will not say they will not let you know I made a mistake I actually preferred the other one and we are always stuck with this question coming but I read somewhere that parallel is better yeah but if you check with the same customer who wrote it what is he using now it will be the serious yeah that’s I mean that’s fascinating in that it’s like basically a a a

          crowdsourced uh way of evaluating the sound of the speaker right because it’s in their hands it’s easy anybody can do it and that’s fantastic so so your company is 12 years old We started at 2013. Yes. Yeah. Wow. We are an online company and our products come as kits. So you assemble them yourself. All parts are finished. You don’t need to solder anything. Super easy. And we try to manufacture as much as we possible locally. So we have uh most of the parts everything that we can manufacture in the US we manufacture in the US. Uh if

          we can manufacture in Europe we also manufacture in Europe. Some parts you cannot uh get them unless you’re buying from the source like Voxitative drivers for example the they are made in Germany you cannot make them so the speakers are made in the US mainly and some parts come from Germany like Voxitative and the crossover parts by Mundov but the crossover comes fully assembled no the crossover comes as a board and components depending yes and depending on the speaker on the model you have you

          you have the right components. All components reside on screw terminals. So you just need to soldering no soldering. Not at all. No. And you’re available for handholding by telephone or text. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it happens. I mean people customers who never experienced components. Mhm. They might be a little bit panicked, you know, like did I do it right? And and what they do normally is send me photos just to confirm it, which is fine. That’s Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. So all that anxiety, did I mess

          this up? You can look at the picture, say yes, that’s that’s awesome. That’s really good. And it also means that over time they can upgrade. Indeed. I wouldn’t call it upgrade. I would call it testing. Okay. Because you know, one of the components that is most dominant or very dominant on to the sonic signature is the capacitor. Mhm. And every brand uses its own technology and it has its own sonic signature. What we normally recommend is not to do upgrades when you buy the speakers because we will not know, not you and not us will

          know exactly the baseline you’re on. Yeah, of course. So you get it with the standard components which are audio file grade, Mundorf Map grade and uh once you got used to the speaker broke them in used to them it will be easier for you to define what you are looking for either a softer sound or a bit more resolution and then you can read on the internet or consult with us which capacitors might be the better change and it’s very easy to swap just two bolts and that’s it. So what about tariffs? What about tariffs? The tax

          that that Oh, well, first of all, you know, I I guess that with time this will not be an issue half a year, a year, two years from now, but we are at this time. Yes. Well, we do ship a lot and I must admit that all forwarders are in kind of a chaos. DHLs, UPS, FedEx, they they changed their procedures and even though some of the tariffs were frozen, the whole procedure is different now. Declarations and information from customers, we are affected by it. And the first thing I’ll do when I’m back home is deal with it.

          We will change the procedure how we ship goods because we did used to ship goods directly to customer and to pay all taxes and import by ourselves. Now it becomes a bit more complicated. So we’ll bring everything to our warehouse. So we have to deal with it. Uh I mean what can we do? It’s not well I’ll just get to the to the point. So how will that impact the the price? Well in our specific case we will not be strongly affected. Why? Because if you look at the total cost of the speaker only few

          components are imported to the US. You ask me about where we manufacture. The fact that we manufacture here makes it easier. So let’s say 30% of the speaker’s cost is made outside of the US. So the impact on us will be this tariff on only 30% of the cost and not on the complete cost. But you know it’s it will at the end be a bit costly for the customer as well for us. But currently the price is 6,950. We are yes we’re around 7,000 for for these models. So, I have been living with your Duet uh 15 for quite

          some time with the Voxitive AC 1.6 driver, and it’s absolutely fantastic. I I am really really enjoying it. And along comes this speaker, which by the way, I don’t know the model name of this speaker. It’s the same name with horn one. This is the horn one. That’s how we call it. We call it duet 15 with horn one. Okay. Det stands for two drivers. Duet like the trio and the queen 15 stands for the size of the woofer because we have another line with 10in woofers and horn one. So do at 15 horn one. Okay. So I live with the do at 15

          with the Voxitive AC 1.6 and now I’m just in the process of starting to do this review and uh they sure look different and even without doing an AB comparison I could tell this is a very different sounding speaker. But my, you know, my current obsession is to say, well, it’s different, but is it better? So, first I’m happy you’re taking this approach because I don’t think that there’s better and worse in audio except of extreme, you know, scenarios that something sounds really not right. Uh, but people are different

          and tastes are different and uh I agree with you that it’s it’s it’s hard for me to say what is better. I I I’m not able to say what is better cuz they’re the same price. It’s not only about the price. It’s um about the how you enjoy them. I mean, you listen to music and I normally tend to listen a lot to music after the design phase and during the design phase. It’s not about putting them, measuring them, seeing that everything sounds right and and releasing. You you listen to all kind of music and

          suddenly in classical music you feel better with this one and in jazz music you feel a bit better here and you maybe catch some design issues later on that you want to touch but at the end of the day it’s like I was trying to find analogy to describe the differences between them because it’s very hard to describe in words audio you know features and I kind of came to two analogies one is Where are you seated in the hole when you listen to music? I think with the voxitative driver you are seated a bit

          backwards, a bit to the back from the horn driver. Like if you are sitting let’s say on row 11 and you move to row five, sound will be different, right? Which one is better? Hard to say you you enjoy both. So this is one comparison that makes sense that people can relate to. You have a bit more feeling of instruments coming from the horn. They’re a bit more forward, closer to you. With the other one, you’re a bit backwards. You have all the details, but you hear a bit more, you know, to the complete. The second analogy is

          automobiles, cars. Like imagine you have a car and you change the engine. So the response of the engine will feel differently. It will drive the same way. You will feel the same way in the chair. You will enjoy both. But when you push the when you push you know forward or brake there will be a bit different response of the engine. And that’s I think where we are if we want to use analogy. The horn is a fast driver. It doesn’t have a membrane that has a bit of decay after it. And um it’s extremely

          realistic and this speed and the fact that the the the sound is acoustically you know amplified call it this way feels different. I we would be happy if uh this horn will reach customers who always felt like I want to try the horn but never did it. Okay. Yes. Because uh I hope you’ll also feel it during your review. There’s no harshness here. All their horns and some horns have kind of feel feeling of harshness. We don’t have it in our speakers and many I meet a lot of customers at shows and on emails that

          they know to appreciate horns because they heard them at friends or at but they never kind of decided to take them. And I think this one is closer to the, you know, to the majority of customers to try the horn. And especially if you already have the voxitative, you have a comparison. You can use the horn and decide which one you keep. Here we are. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Till next time. Bye-bye.