Hmmm, $7000 Rainbow Reference (http://www.rainbow-car-audio.com/home/) or the $700 Lotus Reference(http://www.seas.no/Lotus/The%20Reference.htm)....

...look pretty similar to me. You even get the white glove. Rainbow References for the price of your Dyn's?

 

They are not Rainbow Refference. They are not even a base model for them. It has been discussed with one of the ARC Audio representatives before. Sorry.

 

Retro,

That would be greatly appreciated! I'm betting that the manuals are thin platinum with 24k gold trim.

Percy

 

Even with home audio you still have to deal with surface reflections, room volume (size), etc. My preferred choice would be a parametric eq for each setup. That helps with room sizes, etc. You can't just "plop em in" and hope for good sound. Doesn't work that way!

Percy

 

just found this thread right now... im also running the 6.5 focals and i think theyre the best ones out there. Rainbows might be better but i think they sound perfect; alittle pricey? yeah.

 

Rainbow Pro's can be had for close to the same price as Utopia sets (~480), better depending on where you buy from. Haven't had a chance to hear Rainbow yet, but most that have heard both sets feel the Rainbow puts out better midbass and have a much warmer sounding tweeter. Focal should own the Rainbows in power handling/compression.

 

Focal isn't the speakers that will produce some warm sounds like diamonds or rainbow (rainbow, i haven't hear but like you said if it's warm like diamonds' mids)

therefore; Focal speakers are not suppose to produce HIP HOP or some heavy musics. but i will beat on any musicals like classics or jazz and so on. my opinions.

 

Diamond is not really in the same class with Rainbows or Focals. Focals are actually known for being good with Rap and Electronica (not natural DJ composed music). For classical, vocal, instrumental music most find Focal unnatural soundind (tweeter mostly). A few of my frien'd have Utopia and Polykevlar sets and the only one I liked was PK with TLR tweeter.

 

The bass-mid driver of the Rainbow Reference is based on the Seas W17E 002, available in standard 8 ohm version from Madisound for 130 dollars. The 4 ohm version is not readily available to the public.

No doubt each driver contains about 3,000 dollars worth of modifications. Or maybe there's another explanation.


Stevie.

 

Yeah, I wish SEAS would start releasing 4 ohm drivers. And please don't put Diamond and warm in the same sentence...

 

Seas is not base model for Refferences. That has been mentioned on different boards and more importantly by a couple of ARC representatives. Where do you get your info?

 

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I highly doubt a rep of a company that makes a $7000 set of speakers would admit to being able to get similar sound from $130 midbasses...

 

That's where the graphs and, if possible, an a/b/a test in the same acoustical enviroment would come in handy.

Here's a case where two speakers may look similar but perform differently. Morel and Dynaudio. Morel also has Magnesium Silicate Polymer in their cones, plus the 3 inch voice coil and vented magnet structure. Dyn has the same thing. But the real difference here is in the makeup of the cone itself. Dyn obviously has a different MSP makeup than the Morel and this can be proven in the graphs and in listening to the speakers.

Now why does Morel and Dyn have the same technology? Simple. Dyn liscenses certain patents and technologies to Morel. This may not be true for Seas and Rainbow Reference. But for the 7k, there has to be MUCH modification going on, especially in what we don't see in the cone composition.

Still would like to see some hard evidence on the Rainbow Reference.

Percy

 

Looks like I owe Retro an apology. I just called Seas in Norway and they tell me they don't make the Rainbow drivers. Oops.

They sure do look similar, though.

Stevie

 

>Now why does Morel and Dyn have the same technology?


You are probably aware that the guy who founded Morel used to be an engineer at Dynaudio.

Stevie