Home
AudioAsylum Trader
SET Asylum: REVIEW: Loth-X Ion 4 Speakers by Johann E

Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream.

For Sale Ads

FAQ / News / Events

 

REVIEW: Loth-X Ion 4 Speakers Review by Johann E at Audio Asylum

165.21.83.151


[ Follow Ups ] Thread:  [ Display   All   Email ] [ SET Asylum ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

Short Introduction:
After many months of deliberating whether I should do a personal review of LothX Ion 4s, it became apparent to me that I actually had every right to do one. Although I do not own a pair (thank God!), I had heard these floorstanding 96dB single driver loudspeakers many, many times over months and months of serious and casual listening in the local LothX salon where the man himself, Mr. Lothx, parks himself daily, always had a few exchanges with him, trying to get him or his salesman to address the flaws in the designs of the Ion 3 and 4, and always walked away wondering...."What's wrong with these speakers (and these guys)?"

You see, I had been pre-disposed, even before listening to a single note of music uttered from these cannily clothes cupboard like speakers, to like them alot. Why?

Cos I bought into the entire Single Ended Triode and High Effiecency Horn Loaded Speaker paradigm from the time I had heard Cary 300SE amps drive Korean made Kochel K300 horns, fell in love, and was seriously seeking more inexpensive and smaller horns for myself. Now, in Singapore, that's no easy feat. Even til a month ago you had only 3 real choices: Order Klipsh Heritage series horns (sight unseen, sound unheard), make speakers yourself, or buy LothX.

I didn't want to risk option 1, I can't make speakers (for shame!), so I kept going back to the LothX shop again and again.

Based on the Lowther paper full range styled horn loaded designs, but using their own paper driver, this local Singapore shop seemed very eager to cultivate as much of a customer base, postive feedback, and even "friendship" from anyone and everyone. I supposed they needed to. They are a very new company, one that is Singaporean, not exactly a country anyone involved with high end audio would suspect made any decent audio components. And I ll tell you now. They would be (for the most part) correct.

What do the Ion 4s sound like? Well, given the ultra high end nature of the CD sources which were C.E.C. TL 0 transport into a dsS Elgar DAC, their own battery powered pre and 300B mono amps, these speakers sounded
extremely dynamic with little sense of headroom compression. For starters.

Those with or without Lowther driven speaks will understand...you don't get the ultra-high highs or the deep lows of good 2 or 3 way speaks. But with the Ion 4s what you do get a somewhat muffled overall sense of what is happening in the music. There was a sense that a great deal of music was missing, not "details", but the sense of real musicians playing somewhere out there that you do really get with good SET/horn systems.

You get to listen into a big, deep, wide soundstage, yes. But you also get
th hear the cabinet. Very distinctly. Honks. Blats. Farts.You're listening to big cupboards with funny things in the middle, and you know it. Every time. They scream, literally.

Some one mentioned in one of the Asylums that the Ion 4s have a serious bass overhang problem. Yes, boy, do they ever! It's most noticeable when there are sustained bass notes. I saw the salesman hastily turn the volume down a few times and pretend nothing happened. Notes that ought to end sharply just hung around like some amorous teenaged girls at a teenie boy band autograph session long after they got their CDs signed. Tell them about it, and they go, we'll look into it. Days later they tell you nothing's wrong, am I sure it wasn't my CD that was..., or was it my perception that was...blah blah blah. Yeah, right.

In fact I'd say the biggest problems with the ion 4 are not all that they now cannot do right, and that is quite a lot. I'd say that the real problem is in the sales staff and the designer for not taking any constructive criticism that a potential customer offered to them on the faith that they appeared open to feedback, were sincere in their friendliness, and offered good value, but instead pooh-poohed the well-intended criticisms away.

I offer that the Ion 4, like the Ion 3 has several sonic and musical flaws that made me in the absolute final decision not buy them. I was "rescued" from having to be forced to buy any LothX product by the timely arrival of a pair of gorgeous sounding Kochel K200, closest in size and price to the Ion 4, at a nearby SET shop.

Now I know the Ion 4 go for only US$2K in the States, but they are over S$4,000 here in Singapore, which is direct competition to the Singapore price for the Kochel K200s. For the same price, there was no real contest. The Kochels win in all areas of musical importance to me.

In conclusion I'd say that the entire LothX line need several more years of serious R and D. They have a good (not great, just good) pair of speakers in their higher priced Polaris speaker, retailing at S$12,000, which gives the performance of the Ion 4 sans the cabinet colorations and the bass overhang, BUT the Polaris is what the Ion 4 should have already been, and I'd pay S$4000 for the Polaris, not a penny more.

Those of us relatively new to the SET-horn scene and are serious should listen to the Ion 4 and Ion 3. Just to have a reference for what horns shouldn't do. They have a few good points. They have good drivers, no doubt about that. They do soundstage. After that...

They do have a long way to go before they should even consider selling these in the international high end market. And by the looks of things, that is something that LothX the company is not going to be considering doing anytime in the near future.


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Sonic Craft  



Topic - REVIEW: Loth-X Ion 4 Speakers Review by Johann E at Audio Asylum - Johann E 09:31:34 06/23/00 ( 16)