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In Reply to: RE: Agree posted by tedtag on February 04, 2016 at 04:40:38
Where are the 3.7i's?
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Right here in my main system with Carver Black Beauty 305's; another amazing 300 w tube amp that works great with the 3.7i's. However I just tried the 3.7i's with a pair of Nuforce R20's (400 watt class D mono blocks) and that set up sounded incredible until one of the amps poofed out. So I sent it back for some repairs with high hopes that once its fixed and the Nuforce are working right, it could be the proverbial match made in heaven. I had the Nuforce working perfectly and fully warmed up for about a half hour before the right channel hissed and thumped into oblivion. The sound was absolutely mesmerizing. It was the kind of experience where time slowed down and every single note became profoundly meaningful. Can't wait to get those back and really run them through the paces. Thanks Satie.
Lovely setup
Great equipment.
I did think the Ric Schultz modified Nuforce 8.5 had the cleanest midrange I ever had and were very dynamic and peppy, they required serious damping efforts, I mean I clamped them with 3 tennis balls below and 3 above and tiles with bungee cord to press it all together. Hope the 20s are better in that regard. I still like the tubes better.
Do you high pass the 3.7i when you use the subs? that should help the tube amps sound their best.
Thanks Satie and appreciate your comments about the set up. With the REL G2's and the 3.7i's I have the crossover set at 39hz with the volume on the subs set at 9 (which is pretty low) using the neutrik speaker connector. It took a lot of patience and I've tried all kinds of crossover frequencies and at those settings the sound really locked in. Even 1 click either way on the crossover and the magic is diminished.
With the Maggies and REL's dialed in and in my room, the bass is seamless and natural and really creates some rich transients further up in the frequency spectrum. Plus I've sort of become a subsonic sound junkie and really enjoy the feel of deep bass as well as the power and textures of tympanis, organ, and double bass. At this point I'd have a hard time living without those subs!
Once I get the R20's back I'll play around with clamping them on my amp stands. I had them sitting on giant brass footers up on 4" maple plinths with brass weights on top and that seemed to work pretty good. They are quite different looking than 50lb or 100b tube mono blocks, being sort of small and light. Gotta admit I love the look of big meaty high power tube mono blocks all lit up while making beautiful music and the R20's are pretty spartan in appearance. Maybe I could glue some old tubes and Christmas lights to the top of the amp boxes so at least in my shallow mind, they could still look cool!
I had the TDSS upgrade done by Bob Smith before I had to send one of them back for repairs and during my much too brief 1/2 hour audition before one amp crapped out, the sound was really special. When I think back to those 30 minutes when everything was working, this is how I described it to Bob; "all I wanted to do was listen and let myself be absorbed by the music. Every note was suspended in the air, time slowed down, the extensions when Sinatra grabbed a high note were almost frightening in their dynamics, the textures of strings, drum skins, brass horns, you name it were all vividly real." Can't wait to get them back......
I am with you on the subsonic info. It gives you a sense of scale to the recording space. I kick myself for having put in a subsonic filter on the bass filter to save the amps some work. They clipped anyway so I had to go for bigger power but didn't think about the subsonic filter till a couple of years later. A whole lot of life going on down there.I am not sure if you answered about high passing the 3.7i, or is it running full range? I am asking since the KT120 tube can be quite clear and detailed while the Carver or CJ amps have power for a 3.7i high passed around 40 hz. They would fade in the bass and get muddy on top driving the low freq. The R20 should do 20ms peak power of > 600W and has a 2 ohm rating with double that for 20ms peak. Which would make for much of what you describe even if the basic bones of the R20 were not quite at the level of the two big tube amps. With a few mods perhaps I would expect the R20 to have a cleaner midrange than a tube amp other than a non feedback SET, or a Spectron Musician,, but I would be a bit surprised if they managed to get the top octave really clean and entirely free of that chalky texture compared to KT120s. No problem vs. a KT90 and most new prod. KT88 not that high a hurdle..
Hope you get the R20 back to full function.
Edits: 02/14/16
Thanks for your reply Satie. I'm not using a high pass filter and honestly I don't even know where to get one or how to install them. I really don't have any knowledge about audio engineering and what I've learned has been from reading, listening, talking to some pretty smart people, and from trial and error. But it makes sense and I'm certainly willing to try it. Any advise on the details would be very much appreciated.
Edits: 02/10/16
Sorry I missed this reply.
The high pass filter for the maggies would be just a capacitor put in front of the power amp driving the 3.7i (assuming you are not taking the subwoofer signal off the power amp output but taking it from the preamp). If you are not skilled with a soldering iron any number of us can make a little inline filter taking your preamp signal and outputing a high passed signal to go to the power amp.
We just need to get the input impedance of the power amp and the type of interconnect plugs you are using (RA or XLR). The filters would be made from a RCA or XLR female connector, soldered to a wire and a capacitor(s) (or capacitor and resistor) and the output to a male RCA or male XLR. Cost would vary according to the quality of parts you use, from $20 to hundreds for boutique parts like WBT Cardas and Vcap or Duelund. I like to use Dayton foil caps and Vampire RCA females and WBT knockoff male RCAs, or neutric XLRs
Thanks again Satie and I appreciate the information and your very generous offer to help me with this. Right now I'm running the subs off the Carver 305 amp output terminals using the Neutrik connection supplied by REL. I've got spades on the amp end of my speaker cables and bare wire on the amp end of the sub cables both attached to the same 4 ohm amp terminals on the Carvers. My preamp (CJ Gat) and the Carvers are both single ended with RCA's.
But I'm waiting for the Nuforce R20's to come back maybe next week, and from my 1st impressions, these might just handily beat the Carvers and ultimately replace them in the system. I'm also in line to send the GAT back to CJ for 4 weeks at the end of February for the series 2 upgrade that was just announced. So I'm thinking I may just wait on the high pass filter until I get these components back and dialed in, try everything in comparison to how the system sounds now, and then get into working on the filter.
I've also got a ticket to Axpona in April and will have a chance to discuss the high pass filter with some pretty smart folks in person, including the REL rep. So it might be May before I can get into this but I'll bring it up again with you as soon as I have the final components in place. In the mean time I'll report back on the R20's as soon as I can with some comments on how they sound with the 3.7i's. Again I really appreciate your comments and your help and have learned a great deal from this forum I've been following for about the past year. Thanks and take care.
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