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TDL T-Line 3 Measurements

davidsrsb

pfm Member
I have improved my impedance measurement jig accuracy and tested my 20 year old T-Line 3 speakers.
There has been argument about whether the later John Wright era TDLs were transmission lines.
The T-Line 3 was a typical 1m high MTM floorstander, like a deeper version of the RTL3.

This graph certainly does not look like a typical reflex. There is a second peak at about 22 HZ, but almost damped out of existence. The phase behaviour is very easy too, 30 degrees maximum.

tdl.png
 
The SPL measurements, just REW with an electret microphone in room, so disregard the very top end.
1/6 octave smoothing
Not bad for no equalisation. The tweeter is a bit too hot, partly the original design and partly due to removing the ferrofluid gunge.
The bass is extremely good, transmission lines don't seem to excite room modes so much as reflexes.

TDLspl.png
 
The room is basically 19' x 16' x 9' and solid floor. I did drop the ceiling from the original, which was 19' high with a lightweight ceiling to the massive roof void above, I live in a duplex penthouse. That used to just suck out the bass. It is the old story that you have to get the room and speaker positioning right before you start throwing money at the equipment.
The ELAC tweeter is a hard dome and I have seen old reviews of the TDLs that they were voiced a little too high - the mid 90s were the start of the rising treble trend to stand out in the show room.
 
Thanks for sharing.

I'm a big fan of TL speakers and until recently I had IMF RSPM IV and AOS Studio 100. The IMF's you'll know and the AOS Studio 100 is a very similar format to the TDL Studio Monitor but with ScanSpeak and ATC drivers.

I was always struck by how 'even handed' they were across the full frequency range. They could produce a lot of bass but it was never bloated or over exaggerated. You got the impression that the frequency response just stayed flat below 40Hz and all the way down to 20Hz whereas in lesser speakers the response drops like a stone in this area.

I'm now using big Tannoys (Ardens) which are lovely but the quality of the low frequency response is far inferior to the big TL's I had. They're big barely braced reflex ported boxes and that's how they come across sometimes. Lovely midrange and imaging though!
 


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