The Talon & The Roc

Specifications

Talon Khorus:
Bandwidth (-3dB): 17Hz —35kHz
Impedance: 6.5 Ohms 8 Ohms nominal
Continuous power handling: 1000 watts
Transient Power: 3000 watts RMS
Sensitivity (1 watt, 1 meter) 90.5 dB
Input 100 watts @ 110 dB continuous output (1 meter)
Reactance: Linear, non-reactive impedance
Price: $14,000

Talon Roc:
Height: 22.5″
Width: 15.0″
Depth: 18.75″ (19.75″ w/ binding post)
Shape: Rectangle
Weight: 93 lbs.
Price: $4,000

Features:
Powered by 350-watt amplifier
Volume control
Frequency cutoff control
Phase inversion

Talon Audio Technologies, Inc.
13688 S. Vestry Road
Draper, UT 84020
Tel: 801-619-9000
Fax: 801-619-9001
Direct sales or pricing:
email:sales@talonaudio.com
Web:www.talonaudio.com

If you’ve been following these pages, you’ve seen some enthusiastic reviews of reference-quality loudspeakers, e.g., the excellent Wilson Audio WATT / Puppy Sixes (Mike Silverton), the excellent Piega P-12’s (Lou Lanese), and the excellent Super Eclipse (yours truly). Each of these loudspeaker systems represents its designers’ ultimate statement. Mike Silverton and Lou Lanese purchased their review pair. I, however, did not. As good as the Super Eclipse is, and it is indeed very musical, it did not surpass the VR6s in terms of overall musicality, visceral impact, and dynamics. I ultimately returned the review pair and wondered whether anything would ever unseat the VR6s as my reference. Patience is a virtue! That day has arrived! Enter the Talon Audio Khorus.

Built in Utah, the Talon Audio Khorus’s design philosophy (I’m informed) is that of the infinite slope. The Khorus is shaped like an obelisk, which, according to the manufacturer, naturally time-aligns the enclosure, placing the tweeter slightly behind the midrange. The speaker’s height is 46″ with a width of 8″ at its flat top. The base widens to 18 inches. Removing its grill permits a view of the cloth-treated baffle and driver configuration. All three of the Khorus drivers stand about 24″ from the floor, closely aligned near the top of the enclosure. We begin with a highly modified pair of 10″ midrange/woofer drivers working in unison to cancel out exaggerated cone movement. These dual drivers are said to accurately reproduce all frequencies from 17Hz to 2200Hz without strain. The method of this — let’s call it madness — designer Tierry Budge explains: “Midrange-based suspensions and cone-geometries can be mated to subwoofer-like motor structures and moving masses, if the resultant dynamic response displays proper execution of progressive damping principles. We designed the 10″ driver we use in the Khorus with these midrange/woofer traits, along with the widest range of musically-conducive capabilities.”

Six inches above the mid/woofer, looking more like a midrange driver, sits a 1½” cloth-dome tweeter handling all frequencies from 2200Hz before rolling off at 13kHz. Picking up on this high-frequency frolic, its duties extending to 35kHz, is a 1″ titanium super tweeter said to free up the compound tweeter, permitting it a more effortless extension. Dual tweeters working in such close unison yield their 2.5 designation

A first-order, 6 dB slope is the outcome, as the goal has always been transient purity. Normally, first-order designs are power-hungry, but the Talon’s inversion circuit enables excellent power handling, as the first-order slopes preserve transient purity. The rear sports what looks like a port but is actually what Tierry calls a “laminar flow valve,” not so much an exhaust pipe as a pressure release valve. (I go deeper into this in the interview portion following this review.)

Before getting ahead of myself, let me first explain how I came across the Khorus. The story begins with an excited email from Delve Audio’s Oliver Solomon: “Yo, P, you better get set to sell your speakers and buy these new speakers I just heard about by a new company called Talon. Man, it’s the finest speaker I’ve ever heard.” Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m the coolest of dudes. Stuff like this rarely rattles me. I hear wild claims all the time, especially from dealers. Yet I felt I’d been dissed because Oliver had listened to my system for a couple of hours only days before. Dissed, yes, but my curiosity was nevertheless aroused. I visited the website. Much to my amazement, I saw specifications that read like the back pages of Mad Magazine: “100 times quieter and 20 times faster than any loudspeaker!” Oliver, I now believe, is definitely off his meds. But, as I say, my attention was engaged. There I was again doing the Absorbine Jr. thing, taking it all in. I soon got in touch with National Sales Manager Mike Farnsworth and requested a review pair.

We’re talking so far about what Oliver says he heard and what the website claims. I envision a dream loudspeaker encompassing the clear, see-through quality of the finest electrostatics, as in the Crosby-modified Quad I heard at HiFi ’97 in San Francisco. For the very best top-end extension, the finest and most delicate treble, let’s have the five-foot ribbon tweeter in the large Magnepan speakers I once owned. This dream transducer should also be capable of the midrange body and ultra-quick bass response of my beloved VR6s, along with the enormous stage width, depth, and spaciousness I’ve always come to admire in the Avalon and Audio Physics. And finally, the dream transducer should disappear against a velvety black backdrop and be absolutely free of compression like the Near Field Pipe Dreams. Yes, all of this. No compromise!

I’ve spent three months with the Talon Khorus. Let’s not mince words. I truly believe Tierry Budge has produced a near-perfect loudspeaker, and I’m saying “near” mostly to cover my butt. After long and interesting chats with Tierry and my sidekick, Stu McCreary, I’ve come to two conclusions: one, how very serious and experienced a speaker designer has to be in order to succeed, and two, how difficult a struggle it must have been to come up with the likes of the Talon Khorus. I’m convinced it’s the best speaker I’ve ever heard.

Let’s backtrack. The Khorus arrived in impossibly large shipping crates weighing 150 lbs. each, necessitating the help of my buddy Terry Smoak to get them up to my third-floor inner sanctum. Unpacking was relatively easy. Let’s get appearances out of the way before we get down to the serious stuff: my review pair came in an appealing, high-gloss dark Rosewood finish. We set them up in about the same spot — about four feet out and three feet from the sidewalls — where my long-time reference, the Von Schweikert VR-6, stood. Apart from bi-wiring capabilities, the Khorus employs a unique locking screw-on speaker terminal located underneath its belly.

The Khoruses connect to my usual array: Sony’s SCD-1 DSD player feeding the Tact 2.2 Digital Room Corrector/preamplifier. The newest addition to the system is the Ortho Spectrum AR2000which a number of us here reviewed with enthusiasm. Amplifiers, the stunningly good Bel Canto Evos (I’m running a pair in mono configuration for the added support we all need and love). Cabling is Walter Fields’ NBS Monitor One and Robert Lee’s new and remarkable Acoustic Zen cables. Power cords are the highly addictive Power Chords by Audience, Inc. The Sony and Bel Canto rest on the Sistrum Isolation platforms; both the Tact and AR-2000 occupy Rosinante’s Dark Matter Isolation devices. Seven Richard Gray 400-S line conditioners monitor the power going to the amplifiers, while the front end benefits from the PS Audio P-300 Power Plant and Quantum Symphonies.

Setup

The Khoruses are highly critical of location. I have them tilted at about 30 degrees, where you can barely see their sides. My listening position is relatively close, about 7 feet from the speakers, which are about 9 feet apart, a distance that some listeners find too great for their tastes. I disagree. The VR6s have such wide dispersion that they perform well even when positioned this far apart. It was immediately apparent that the Khoruses could do this too, though, I must admit, not to the degree that the VR6’s succeed off-axis, with the listener in a standing or sitting position. After many hours of extensive evaluation and nitpicking, this is the only distraction I found.

Oh, yes, there’s one more tiny little thing — break-in! It’s insane! These speakers won’t sound anything like what they’re capable of until you’ve put in at least 400 hard-hitting hours. No, I’m not joking. Never mind the Olympics — this, for me, is Guinness World Records stuff!

Stu McCreary has the Khorus, and he comments as well. We both agree that the burn-in should be done patiently; otherwise, you will suffer from what I like to call “decompression.” I find that attempting to adjust to the Khorus too quickly is akin to what deep-sea divers describe as the bends —a painful and dangerous condition. Equally, long term exposure to sizzle, hash, pop and boom can prove inadequate—when done away with.

Just as my view of audio has been irrevocably altered by the experience of the Bel Canto Evo amplifiers, which emulate a fine single-ended, class-A triode amp with bass handling capabilities rivaling the finest solid-state, so have my views been changed by the Talon Khorus. More often than not, analytical listening sessions turned into pure listening pleasure. The Khorus provided utter clarity and sense of ease and resolution, regardless of volume. It’s a dynamic loudspeaker that, by purposeful design or some form of voodoo, does not sound like a dynamic loudspeaker. It comes a lot closer to mimicking the speed, transparency, and linear smoothness of a highly efficient electrostatic drive, powered by 1000-watt single-ended triodes.

We are all familiar with the effects of turning up the volume. Some loudspeakers rely on high levels to achieve claimed performance. I believe that the Khorus also enjoys being played at loud levels, but that doesn’t mean it won’t outperform the field when played at a low volume. Unlike many a speaker system I’ve heard at low levels, the Khorus doesn’t lose its signature. When played loud, things get only clearer, more dynamic, and musically expressive. I have never before witnessed such an analytical transducer sounding this musical.

The benefits of an absence of noise are enormous, especially when it comes to instrumental truth and tonality. Bass is quicker and ever so delicate, contributing to a much greater perception of individual instruments and their relative locations to the microphones and each other. Amazingly, the Khorus brings a new definition to tympani, drum, and kick-bass transients. Attack, presence, and sense of location never sounded this good. I gain a better awareness of a recording’s venue. Images stand out in stark relief against a deep black space. I’ve never experienced this level of silence, even when playing in the middle of a hot and sunny afternoon, which we all know is hazardous to good sound regardless of A/C conditioners.

By comparison to the Khorus, every speaker I’ve reviewed compresses dynamic range. None, not even the VR6s, come within a country mile of reaching down into the quietest of musical passages of many CDs. I entered Miles Davis’s incredibly musical phrasings, squeaking chair and all, on “Old Folks” from Someday My Prince Will Come (Columbia CK40947) as never before. Here, on this somber and slowly rhythmic recording, I can, for the very first time, feel Miles’ loneliness. I can actually see him sitting, alone, desolate, blowing into his muted horn. These images, prior to the Khorus, escaped me. And to think I thought I knew that disc! My notes after this experience read only: Amen

On the very same disc is one of my favorite minor modals, “Teo.” Miles, once again, making use of choked notes, sets the stage for John Coltrane, who proceeds to blow an emotion-packed solo that to this day is still argued among jazz aficionados as being his finest. What makes this sound so different through the Khorus is Wynton Kelly’s performance on piano. It is alleviated of what I can only describe as haze. I listened in disbelief. I’m accustomed to his piano, as well as most other pianists, being usually diminished in both presence, truth of harmonic overtones, and timbre, making Wynton’s performance seem apart from the main events. No longer.

Let’s call this the domino effect. Consider: once Wynton’s freed up, he sets up greater soundstage linearity for ‘Trane, who sounds now as if he’s coming from behind the left speaker, deeper in the corner instead of between the speakers. This positions Miles dead center, tight and neatly focused, against that deep-space blackness. The Khorus is not doctoring any of these recordings, making them sound better by emphasizing or de-emphasizing frequency regions. The speaker’s accuracy in retrieving details is unparalleled. What I hear is a superior recreation of what is on the disc, not crossover and phase anomalies occurring at the speakers.

Excellent DSD recordings, driven through the Sony SCD-1, proved a perfect match. The Khorus responds like a high-resolution microscope, clean through the electrons, right to the original venue, once again demonstrating to this audiophile that the Khorus stands above the competition and beyond criticism.

Enter the Roc…

More Will Be Revealed

So colossal that its wings could eclipse the sun, so strong that it could carry off elephants, the Roc was the mythical Arabian bird in whose talons Sinbad of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ was carried off to a mountaintop. What an appropriate name for this super-duper subwoofer! The Talon Roc has not only lived up to its handle, it meshes with the Talon Khorus so musically, so seamlessly, that its very qualities are bound to become legendary.

The Talon website states that “the Roc uses a 12-inch woofer to deliver deep, tight, accurate bass without ever bottoming out. The Roc will only deliver the fundamentals and not the second harmonics (boomy bass).” Let it be known that the Roc uses dual 12-inch woofers in the same fashion as the Khorus. Employed solely in conjunction with the Khorus, the Roc takes this already incredible loudspeaker to yet another level! I first placed this quite large box between the loudspeakers directly in front of me. That worked well enough, but my hunch was that this wasn’t the ideal position. It took up too much floor space where it was, and more importantly, the Roc needs to breathe. This meant finding a place off to the side where it could dispense its low-end frequencies more evenly into the room. Placing it about six feet to the side of the left Khorus provided a better result.

In this position, with the phase in the normal position, the total performance became the most natural-sounding I’ve heard. In addition, when you stuff the laminar valve on the Khorus, you increase its impedance, which naturally begins to roll off its low-end delivery, starting at about 80Hz. I repeat, merely stuffing the laminar “port” does this naturally. Setting the Roc’s crossover to 60Hz results in a perfectly matched low-end.

Moreover, I didn’t need the Roc for greater low-end authority. The Khorus provides this better than any speaker I’ve had in my listening room. What proved a revelation was that by adding the Roc I immediately alleviated two sources of distortion: intermodulation, caused by the drivers’ rapid movement, and harmonic, caused by overtaxing the power requirements placed on the amplifiers. The Roc, therefore, contributes to better sensitivity, dynamic range, stereo focus, transient attack, decay, dynamics, and definition throughout the frequency range. I take it that you think I’m hugely impressed by the Roc. You got that right!

Conclusion

The Khorus plays louder, goes deeper, is significantly quieter, and produces greater yet subtler dynamics. It provides a greater sense of ease than my reference VR6s. The sense of soundstage scale, height, and depth is state-of-the-art. The Khorus/Roc combination creates the highest degree of musicality I’ve yet heard from a speaker system. In other words, and to repeat myself, state-of-the-art! I guess I don’t need to add that I purchased them as my new reference standard.

At a combined price of $18,000, the Khorus/Roc is a steal for the audiophile considering the purchase of a world-class speaker at any price. For me, their arrival couldn’t have come at a better time. My wisest purchase, absolutely!

Clement Perry Interviews Tierry Budge

CP: Tierry, you seem like quite the experienced type. How long have you been an audiophile, and what made you want to become a speaker designer?

TB: I was introduced to High End in 1973 when I heard a Kenwood marble-bass turntable, and Crown separates driving AR3 speakers. I was struck by two things (that sent me on my “quest”): 1) I was pleased to hear that I could get more than I thought possible out of a stereo (I had been devouring everything that I could—reading—about stereo since 1967), and 2) I was even more disappointed that it was still that far away from the absolute.

From 1973 to 1986, I encountered several systems that seemed to excel in various areas. I won’t list them all, but suffice it to say that they all did things that led me to believe that if a system excelled in one area, it often performed poorly in another—it was all trade-offs, with no clear-cut “winners.” The one system that seemed to come the closest was one that I heard in 1984, I think. ARC SP10 and a D250 Mk II (I believe), driving some heavily modified Quads. The system also used a pair of Entec subwoofers, which must have been judiciously and carefully integrated because I’ve never heard them (since) sound anywhere near as good. It was tonally balanced quite well, evenly dynamic (if a bit foreshortened), detailed, and seemed comfortable with most any kind of music. (I’ve heard the WAMM’s sound better on a number of different pieces and styles, but never so evenly footed as this system was.) This was also, perhaps, the most transparent system I had ever heard, but even the images had the see-through quality that the soundstage did. It was a fun experience, but also a bit disconcerting. I’ve heard Meridians (late 70s), Celestions, Linns, Wilsons, and even some Yamaha NS1000s do a few things musically right, but always at the expense of other musical virtues. As each “reference” system excelled in certain areas, I began to create a mental checklist of just what those strengths were. I found various musical strengths in specific products; However, I realized that there were a few “virtues” that I had never heard out of any speakers: 1) real-world dynamics (large AND small scale), 2) the sense of energy or “vibrance” of the real thing, and 3) timbres that bring true instrumental character and dimensionality. This, of course, was above and beyond the fact that no speaker had managed to assemble ALL virtues into one package. (Perhaps I should add that I feel that from about 1982 on, speakers, in general—not specific—have been getting brighter and boomier.

It’s almost as if we’re saying that we can’t get the excitement that we want out of our systems, so we try and liven it up a bit.) I began to feel that vibrance, dynamics, and timbral control had to be the pursuit. Not because they seemed the most important, but because they seemed the most difficult to attain. So, I made it my goal, hoping that if I attained these attributes, the others would follow suit, as it were. Each of these elements seemed to depend, intuitively, on pistonic movement. Since it didn’t seem possible to make a panel speaker perform like a perfect piston, I chose to pursue dynamic-driver-based speakers. (Yes, some panel-types have come close to pistonic movement, but they still sound a bit thin, timbrally, and dynamically compressed.) However, dynamic drivers seemed to possess a few dichotomies of their own: soundstage width and depth, solid fundamentals, timbres, and “pace and rhythm” all seem to require a large moving mass. However, to achieve detail, good transient definition, and transparency, you need a low moving mass. Broadband agility and low bass seem to require a loose suspension, whereas power handling and absolute output require a stiff suspension. Loose suspensions seemed agile, but not “detailed”; responsive, but not vibrant. These kinds of questions and dichotomies represent some of the more challenging “troubles” and “difficulties” in getting a dynamic speaker to “get close to the music.” I figured that if they seemed mutually exclusive, it was only because I hadn’t found the answers yet.

CP: How long have you been tinkering with this new midrange/woofer technology?

TB: I began my efforts in 1981, but I wasn’t sure where to start. (I have lived and breathed speaker design ever since.) I suppose that, for me, dynamics came first. Since the overriding dependence on driver function was the interaction between the box and the woofer, I started with loading techniques. I tried everything: Transmission line, closed box, B4, QB3, etc. Nothing seemed to work. However, everything seemed to point, dynamically, to using stiffer suspensions and smaller boxes. While this improved dynamics to measurable degrees, I was losing my low-bass extension. (no surprise) In 1993, I designed a smallish box (1.5 cubic feet) around a high-moving mass, yet relatively stiff 10″ woofer. (The high mass was my attempt at bringing in low bass.) The low-frequency cut-off was around 30Hz. But, I still had a number of problems: 1) High moving mass drivers want to stay in motion, 2) the high mass of the woofer precluded any midrange response—forcing a 3-way approach (which was o.k., but it introduced a whole new set of variables), and 3) there was still entirely too much distance between the “speed” of the tweeter and that of the woofer.

CP: Can you tell me how you got the “20 times faster” and “100 times quieter”?

TB: I have always used tweeters that have “rise-times” (measured with a “step” or impulse response) between 6-12 uS. The 6.5″ midrange that I used for the 3-way that I designed in 1993 had an out-of-box rise-time of about 70 uS. However, when this woofer was dropped into the box, the rise time was close to 1.5 μs—more than 20 times slower. The 10″ woofer that I described had a rise-time of about 150 uS, free-air; but, it was closer to 2500 uS in my “small box,” QB3. This kind of disparity (12->1500->2500 uS) was actually quite good, by market comparisons, and the whole 3-way did quite well in its day. But I couldn’t help but think that since the voice coil of each driver sees signals that travel at—or near—the speed of light, there must be more information “in between” this great disparity in speed. I have since learned that both a) musical “energy” and b) dynamic gradations are lost when the differences in speed are so great.

You asked how I came up with the numbers “20 times faster, and 100 times lower in distortion.” Well, the answers are, perhaps, a bit more practical than technical. The 10″ woofer that I designed for the Khorus has a free-air rise-time of about 130 uS. In a 1 cubic foot box (like the Khorus’), QB3 loading, the 3dB down point would be around 60 Hz (not good), but the woofer/box combo. would have a dynamic rise time of about 1.5 μs. (Progress, compared to my system of 1993.) HOWEVER, in the “Group Phase” loading (explained in the attached technical paper), the rise time is less than 50 uS, and the 3dB down-point is 17 Hz! So, as far as the “gain in speed” goes, you divide 1500 uS (“old” QB3 loading) by 50 uS (Group Phase Coupling), and you find that GPC brings a gain of 30 times, for this particular woofer.

As for the “100 times lower distortion,” we took a low-frequency organ note (around 28 Hz), IN A MUSICAL PIECE, and turned up the volume until we got to the point of hearing a “tremolo” kind of a sound. (the point at which intermodulation begins to dominate) With the QB3 loading, this occurs at a continuous sine-wave output of approximately 105 dB. (1M) Under the same conditions, the Group Phase loading showed no signs of this sound, even at 126dB, where the amplifier failed. Here’s where the numbers get a bit tricky: 126-105= 21. We’re getting at least 21 extra decibels out of this loading. If you add 21 dB to 10 Watts, you end up with close to 1300 Watts. Since every 10 dB increase is a multiplication factor of 10, we figured that there wasn’t much difference between stating that we’re getting 100 times the output wattage or saying 100 times lower distortion, since both are measured logarithmically. I suppose it’s more of a marketing thing, but we couldn’t think of a better way to describe it.

Group Phase became a perfect solution since it overcame a number of different issues: 1) “speed” disparity, 2) the apparent dichotomy of the virtues of low/high moving mass, and 3) suspension control vs. low-frequency extension. One of the unforeseen strengths turned out to be that the overall speed allowed for much better integration with a tweeter than using a low-mass 6.5″ or 5.25″ woofer. (The latter two, at best, are 900 and 1300 uS rise-time performers, whereas the Group Phase 10″ is down below 50 uS…as fast as a dome-mid.)

As the system became faster and faster, we began to notice something: yes, the system had more detail, more transparency, and more “blackness between the notes,” but it was so clean that it almos