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Been looking for some speakers for my single ended triode setup, and need someone to tell me why this idea is bad. After searching for suitable speakers here comes the yorkvilles
yX12c
The specs are as good as any klipsch heritage product, and its brand new and has a reasonable price. The sensitivity is outstanding and the horn looks to be a modern design. What's the down side? (Note; I haven't heard these just saw an ad and read the spec sheet)
Follow Ups:
Oops, I thought they were the Yorkville Unity horns. No such luck.
I would pass on these, but I would research the Yorkville Unity horns. Probably the cheapest way to try a Danley style horn.
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
Prosound thing of any kind that satisfies anything but loud, durable and decent. I'm not an audiophile for decent and even consider many midfi pieces exceed decent.
E
T
Modern pro audio is designed for different end goals than home hifi. Still lots of great vintage pro audio that works well in homes and with SET. Also if one has the stones for it vintage cinema horns were designed for low power tube amplifiers and have a wonderful sound quality so relaxed not forced, Most benefit from crossover redesign and added tweeters but end results stunning. I run my RCA horns with 8 watt SET even jaded industry types have been seduced and keep returning with LPs to spin.
and a Taylor horn from a Magnavox etc. efficiency is a great thing with being able to use low power SET and other tube gear the benefit. But they all need modding to make them usable to my ear. Even high dollar Avant Gardes get on my nerves after a while and they are among the least offensive horns I've hear. It's just not a good match for my ear.
E
T
You sir, have shown a photo of a 1956 gullwing Mercedes to someone with the budget for a Mazda Miata... of course, a lot of fun can be had with a Miata too, so all is not lost. That RCA setup looks spectacular, I would like to hear one before my time is up.
I have some Traynor PA columns which are very very loud, but not much else. And you're right... I have certainly never been blown away by the sound of the 12 - 15" woofer plus a horn type systems when I have heard them out in the wild - in fact they are one of the reasons it took me a long time to even consider horns as a viable hi-fi technology.
I guess I should have really known the answer to this question before I asked it, but wishful thinking does have a tendency to interfere with my judgement sometimes.
wishful thinking is fine as long as you are willing to prove it out one way or the other and it seems you are. I love bargains. You're fine. It was a good topic and I learned from it.
E
T
Consider a used set of Klipsch Cornwall II (mid 80's and newer), replace the caps in the networks, and solder the connections at the drivers (only if you're good with an iron).
This really is a commonly recommended speaker... I could easily accommodate a pair in my listening room, and unlike many other options they don't appear to be bass deficient. I think resale wouldn't be difficult either, especially compared to some of the more obscure options. Definitely have my eyes open for them.
I tried a pair of YX10s in my video system (not crital listening and not with SET). They were okay for the cheap $340/pair but I ended up taking them back to Long & McQuade and getting some JBLs off Kijiji, which sounded better at a much higher price. You can't expect too much at those low prices for YX models. Most PA speakers don't go as low in the bass or look as pretty as their audiophile cousins. I would look at stuff like used Klipsch Forte/Chorus/Cornwall/Lascala if you want something to play loud.
Thank you! I won't waste my time - the specs seemed too good to be true, but I am trying to look at ALL my options. Basically I love the sound of my recently completed 2A3 amplifier, but it really runs out of gas a bit too early on my Tannoy Saturn S6 speakers (pre-Chinese ones), so I am on the hunt for something more efficient, and am open minded towards all of the options.
Page Bill Woods and ask which products would be best for hi-fi.
A pair of RCA SL-12's just went on eBay for some serious $$ for 60 year old speakers I have never heard. I was hoping that I could get some SL-12 or SL-8 for a half decent price but not happening on eBay (and let's not even talk about the price of an LC1A); maybe if some ugly ones come along or something with the wrong title, or perhaps buying two different ones. YES I am an RCA fan, and having an all RCA speaker system has long been a dream, but that's one of those things which has to find me, rather than me looking for it. Kind of like my Toyota diesel pickup.. I could look until my eyes bleed and not find a nice one for a nice price, but mine found me.
RCA Fan (Bill Woods) is a poster here that has extensive knowledge of some yorkville horns.
"RCA Fan (Bill Woods) is a poster here that has extensive knowledge of some yorkville horns."
The YV Unity uses a round conical horn, which is Bill's speciality. Did Bill do consulting work for them, or just has knowledge of YV?
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
Ahh looks like I misinterpreted what was meant by RCA fan
Max,The xover pts on the Unity are 300 and 1,200 hz, per their site. I want to write more, but my shunt regulated Paramounts were waiting for me when I got home, so I have work to do. Don't do anything hasty. What is the price of the used ones?
Later,
Jamie
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
Edits: 12/02/14 12/02/14
Most prosound speakers today are designed for very high power use. This means that the horn tweeter has to be crossed very high, around 2200hz for example. Consequently, the woofer (often 12") is used well outside of its optimal range. The speaker might sound good anyway, but these are things to keep in mind when looking at prosound speakers.
The most promising item in the Yorkville catalog for me is the Unity series, the U15 or U215. Besides using the Unity horn, the three-way design crosses around 1200 and 300hz. The woofer is used well inside its comfortable range. The Unity speakers are even designed to biamp, so you can use your 8W SET on the horn and a big solid-state amp on the woofer. A passive upstream crossover on the SET amp would lessen the load still further, and perhaps make a nice result.
Why do you think this is high crossover point for a tweeter?
Cut-Throat
It's a no midrange crossover point for a 12.
A 10.5" piston has roughly 90° conical dispersion around 1050hz, about 43° at 2.2Khz.
Still seems very Low to me, considering my 3-ways are crossed
over at 7500 hz.
Cut-Throat
"Most prosound speakers today are designed for very high power use. This means that the horn tweeter has to be crossed very high, around 2200hz for example. Consequently, the woofer (often 12") is used well outside of its optimal range"This kind of kills the idea, it's a very good point which I didn't consider. The U15 is getting well into Klipsch price point, and so much as I wouldn't mind my listening room looking like a live music venue if cost saving is involved, it looks to me like there's no free lunch to be had here.
It also explains why this type of speaker always seems to add an undesirable colouration to live music events - I was kind of blaming the amplifiers and EQ used but your explanation makes a whole lot of sense.
Thanks for this.
Edits: 12/02/14
Have you given consideration to Pi Speakers?
They seem to be about that you're looking for and can be DIY'd cheaply(relatively).
No I have not - looks like they have a lot of options, the DIY ones are quite cost effective too!
That 8pi looks like a formidable beast
And careful what you actually get in a 'kit'.
Pi three and four are somewhat 'Klipschish', if you will.
Would likely go this way before a pro-sound speaker.
Or better yet, a pair of used Cornwalls.
The Cornwall on paper looks like an excellent choice, my only reservation is that when I auditioned a pair of heresy III's quite recently (admittedly not a Cornwall) I found them to have a certain boxiness to the sound which was somewhat unbefitting of their price. It could be a resonance I was hearing or maybe just an unfamiliar room and system but to me the system lacked the sort of open window transparency which a high quality stereo system is capable of producing. Now I know this is a very subjective subject and i don't intend to rule out klipsch, in fact I really want to hear them, but I will proceed with caution.
In my humble opinion, and to a much lesser extent in my experience, boxiness is an intrinsic problem with high efficiency woofers in reasonable boxes - the box is so big that the large surface areas of the box radiate significantly. It is not really practical to make 2" thick cabinet walls in a 6 cubic foot cabinet, let alone 6" walls.
I once helped a friend approach the problem with an 18-inch ID sewer pipe section 3ft long - the walls were 2" thick concrete IIRC. It succeeded acoustically, but then he got married ... :^)
Roger Bacon got thrown out of an ecclesiastical council for suggesting an Ass be found and the teeth counted; not Aristotelian, dontcha know.
"Boxiness", "honking", "ringing (as ascribed to Altec horns)", "directional"; all these terms are used indiscriminately on the 'Net because someone, somewhere once heard an A7 or Patrician or Klipschhorn with that horrible 'squawker', that evinced that impression.
Until one has listened to a seriously over-damped alignment (that's a smallish box) with a true catenary horn, or Altec 604s with an improved crossover in a TL box or JBL 2446s with the outrageous 470 horn, other opinions informed only by what's read on the Internet is simply paying homage to "the posts of Christmas past".
At the request of the Moderators,
This space has been deleted
If it was not clear, when I referred to "boxiness" I just meant the vibration of the box walls, and the sound generated by that vibration.
Nothing to do with midrange horns, which have their own issues ... :^)
"Until one has listened to a seriously over-damped alignment (that's a smallish box) with a true catenary horn, or Altec 604s with an improved crossover in a TL box or JBL 2446s with the outrageous 470 horn, other opinions informed only by what's read on the Internet is simply paying homage to "the posts of Christmas past"."
+1
And there are others worth trying that are much different than horns from the past.
The Klipsch 400 horn, which many people still listen to, and which Klipsch still uses, is 100 year old technology. We have come a long way since then.
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
actually listening to (or for that matter, building) speakers, right?
Right?
I have to start attending weddings as well as funerals?
Can do. ;-)
Hi Paul,
Thank you for reminding me that your company's website has an excellent section on efficient speakers. I read it years ago before I actually had a triode amp and was ready to buy something, I think I will re-read it now for some more ideas. I used to have a pair of Goodmans Triaxiom speakers in monkey coffins and between box resonance and the horn tweeter's honk it was something of a disaster. I also have some sweet sixteen speakers I built purely becasuse I always wanted to, and although they could blow you out of the room with a transistor radio's power, they are a fundamentally flawed design and sound a mess. On the other hand I have heard some high dollar Tannoys with. Low powered tube amp and they sounded amazing, much much better than the heresys mentioned above in every way.
The downside is that you have not heard them yet. If they sound good with your SET amp, then all is fine.
Do they have a 'Return' policy that offers money back? - If so, you could order them and report back to us your findings.
Cut-Throat
The ones I see are used, it's just a classified ad. I am just fishing for some opinions on weather or not this is a direction which may be worth pursuing. (99dB/W and smooth response 60 Hz - 20KHz is HUGE efficiency for this kind of money!)
I guess I just wonder more generally speaking if any modern PA speakers are suitable as a low cost SET solution. After all, a lot of what people seem to be using is of similar concept (compression driver with a big horn/waveguide, and a large direct radiator woofer), but older manufacturer. An example would be some of the Altec home speakers, on paper they look a lot like this Yorkville, or similar JBL offerings, but in a wooden veneer cabinet and with more "domestic" looks. Or say the Klipsch Heresey, again, it's conceptually similar. OR maybe I am just wasting my time.
Again, on paper they look like a possibility. But if you got them and they sounded terrible it would not matter. So with speakers, it all comes down to listening to them. You just never know.
Cut-Throat
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