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REVIEW: Sound Projects Windimere Speakers

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Model: Windimere
Category: Speakers
Suggested Retail Price: $TBD
Description: SET Freindly MTM Bookshelf speaker system
Manufacturer URL: Sound Projects
Model Picture: View

Review by slownlo on November 24, 2009 at 07:59:10
IP Address: 146.145.36.41
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for the Windimere


It was (and continues to be as of this reveiw) an audacious demonstration. For the launch of Sound Projects’ Windimere loudspeaker on 11-23-09, Sound Projects’ head honcho and designer, Joseph Berky, had arranged to hand deliver the lil' darlings to me for an afternoon (which turned into a week or more,...hehehehe) of listening….The setting being the modest family room of yours truly…

I’ve known Joe for almost 5 years (I think) being first introduced to him by Googling local speaker repair businesses' for a set of Dahlquist DQ-10’s that I have long since relinquished to the next guy in favor of more efficient units to support my SET lust…

Joe Berky has a background in aerospace engineering and has spent his years thereafter indulging in his love of live sound reinforcement, supporting local musical groups in thier endeavor to acheive balance of sound. Joe not only engineers and builds sounds systems in support of live venues, but he also engineers more wife freindly speaker designs as well! He has built many designs (as can be seen from his web site), but Joe seemed really excited about the Windimeres' in particular, and knowing that I am an SET lover, it was his chance to hear how the Windimeres' translate to the ears of one that indulges in the flea power fetish...

The Windimere is a good sized bookshelf speaker (20" x 10" x 7.5") even by todays standards, but because it is about as deep as it is wide it hides its bulk well. On the front baffle are mounted two 7" Focal 7V013 woofers, and one 1" Focal TC120TDX2 titanium dome tweeter with a tioxid coating. According to Joe the combination of drivers give the windimere an overall sensitivity of about 92db, well within scope of the DIY 300B amps I've built and love... The windimeres use a 2nd order modified Butterworth crossover with Clarity SA caps and foil inductors in the signal path, with Mundorf metal film resistors. These are good quality parts. No skimping on the XO. Frequency response is said to be 65Hz-to beyond 20Khz at roughly +/- 2db across the spectrum and as stated by Joe "no nasty peaks. The tweet is very smooth"..and I agree!

What sets the Windimere apart is its open backed cabinet design... with 1.5" thick front baffle and .75" thick sides. The primary purpose of the open back is to "reduce pressure on the backs of the cones". The set I have are finished in figured cherry with brushed on lacquer. Needless to say the fit and finish is professional, and on the WAS (Wife Approval Scale)They rate easily in at a 10. Keeping in mind that the pair I have are proto-types, the backs are open (per design) and unfinished and the XO's are kinda resting in the cab at a slant on their on board, but none of this effected the sound. Joe said that a finished pair would have some sort of furniture grade, acoutsically trasnparent mesh on the rear to hide the inards from view, and obviouly the XO would be properly mounted...no bigee.

Some speakers readily achieve an effective lock with a given room's acoustics; others are more fussy about setup and positioning. The former proved to be the case with the Windimere's. Despite the wifes decor, it really didn't take much to get them imaging...I am a near field listener so I ended up with them being roughly six ft apart on 30" sand filled stands from my seated postion roughly 6 feet away from center.

Let me be frank: The glory of the Windimeres' is their stereo imaging. The phantom image of a singer or instrument in the center of the soundstage is created in the listener's brain when exactly the same signal is being reproduced by the two speakers. With a pair of perfect speakers and a recording made without reverberation, this phantom image should occupy an infinitely narrow space midway between the speakers. In practice, the width of the image varies with frequency, depending both on such speaker problems as cabinet and drive-unit resonances and on room problems, such as strong reflections from sidewalls or from coffee tables, as well as on how the recording was made. In addition, the presence of reverberation in a stereo recording will give the impression of depth and modeling to that central image. I testing many types of recordings old and new, the Windimeres proved adept at providing this illusion depite what I threw at them...these things image like a mo-fo!

Listening to Carmen McCrae's "Poor Butterfly" on the opening breath you could "feel" the space/depth formed. Carmens' voice was spatially defined right where it was supposed to be. The piano accompaniment was also spot on...you know that tingle you get when your senses vs brain logic are trying to figure out how this is being done, because you know you are in your living room and not in a small club?....yup. In spades.

I could go on. Imaging and spatial detail is where these babies shine.

Now of course all designs have their drawbacks, and just because I know Joe personally doesn't mean I am going to give him a free pass! The Windimeres' open back design leaves things to be desired in the bass region...so you'll need a sub if you like bass. I really don't care about bass per se' , but for those that do this could be a short coming. The midrange and high-end were sweet as home made butter...thats where it matters for me. The open back design may also have some impact of the designs over all efficiency, but using my DIY 300B SET's for the demo, I didn't have any hint that the windemeres needed more power to get them at the levels I find comfortable. Flea powered amps of all ilks should do well with these...

The bottom line is that when a designs strengths outweight its weaknesses, you've acheived engineered "Zen". Compromise is something even "no compromise" designs have to overcome (so why are they called that?) I think without a doubt that Mr Berky has achieved this with his latest design. The Windimere's are some of the most convincing, tonally neutral speakers I've heard in a looooong time, revealing hidden musical and spatial details in almost every recording I played through them.
I'll be holding on to these for as long as Joe lets me, and when he does come for them I'll probably whine and cry like a spoiled brat for "one more week"... or a more mature scenario would be simply asking him to allow me to keep them in my system until after he's built me a pair!

Highly recommended.


Product Weakness: Bass response
Product Strengths: Imaging/Spatial detail, efficiency


Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: DIY 300B SET's
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): DIY Grounded Grid
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Opera Linear 2.2
Speakers: Windimere
Cables/Interconnects: Signal Cable
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Jazz, Blues
Room Size (LxWxH): 20 x 25 x 8
Room Comments/Treatments: Typical family room
Time Period/Length of Audition: still auditioning!
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): Monster Power
Type of Audition/Review: Home Audition




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Topic - REVIEW: Sound Projects Windimere Speakers - slownlo 07:59:10 11/24/09 ( 1)