Ground Sound

For the second time Ground Sound exhibited at the High End Show in Munich
and this year we had joined forces with Lindell Audio.

In contrast to the DIY workshop theme of the Ground Sound 2010 stand - we presented some of the finished High End Products which has recently been released. We show the digital preamplifier / digital crossover DCN28 controlling two H-Amp-XX quad power amplifier blocks. We also had the bigger (50kg) H-Amp-XXXV on display. The H-Amp-XX quad delivers about 4 x 300W at 4 ohms.
Lindell Audio presented their "Reference Modular II". This is very big “only” active 3-way loudspeaker with the latest high quality Morel drivers in 3 sections – one center section with one dome tweeter + two 5” mid-range and two upper and lower sections of bass drivers – a total of 4 pcs 8” high precision / power drivers.

From The Messe Katalog:

Ground Sound

PASSION FOR MUSIC
Ground Sound & Lindell Audio will join forces at this
year's HIGH END show. The team will present a full ac-
tive loudspeaker system with exquisite sound and dyna-
mic character.
The system has the capabilities of adaption to room
acoustics and the ability to have customized sound ba-
lance. Nevertheless, it will always have a very controlled
sound which is in the nature of true active amplified lou-
dspeakers. Visitors will have the oppertunity to listen to
this active loudspeaker system in a comfortable arm-
chair in the sweet spot.

Overview of the stand

On the left you can see how the stand was planned to be in advance of the show.
Although it isn't ideal we wanted to play mucis to convince the spectators of the benefits of the active combination Ground Sound electronics and Lindell Audio loudspeakers.
To avoid too much noise from the big room (halle) we made a 120cm high wall which shielded behind the armchair / sweet spot to optimize the experience. We also used a thick carpet to reduce floor reflections and on the wall on the left we placed both corner bass trap and 8 pcs absorber sheets.

Well - the result was quite good at even low levels and near perfect at high (very) power levels - disturbance from the "room"... not exsisting !

Now that the audio system is fully active with DSP processing we had the opportunity to trim the sound and tonal balance. In the process we used the XOverWizard II Advanced software to check / tune various parameters – above you can see the final result in the sweet spot / armchair for left and right speaker.

"Now that the audio system is fully active…"
We heard quite a lot of passive systems that didn’t performed at all – and the “passive” exhibitors simply lack the chance to adapt their loudspeakers to the surrounding acoustical environment and if the passive loudspeaker system even has weaknesses in itself then the result… is far from perfect !

The Ground Sound & Lindell Audio stand ready to be explored by the visitors

Visitors often stood at "The Wall"

... from another angle

"Riding with the King" (B.B.King & Eric Clapton) on the CD player
and riding first class with lots of head room on the active +2kW peak power system !

George Duke - Dukey Treats were another popular CD besides Diana Krall, Notting Hillbillies and an Usher test CD.

We were not too popular with our neighbours all of the time, but the visitors liked
when we exceeded the 75dBA limit by some 20-30dB...
and the sound quality didn't suffered the usual degeneration at such SPL!

One comment to the setup:

BEF fant igjen en av sine favoritter fra Arken messen i Gøteborg i fjor. Disse høyttalerene fra Lindell Audio ligger på ca 380.000 SEK med det aktive filtret og software. Imponerende dynamikk i hele frekvensområdet. Her har mange High End produsenter noe å lære...

In English:
BEF (in the red hot armchair) found one of his favorits from Arken messe i Gothenburg:
"Impressive dynamics i the whole frequency range".
"Many High End manufacturers could learn from this..."

Thank you for your attention to this short report from the event

- And thank you Tobias for some fun days in Munich

active@groundsound.com