Newform Ribbon X-over update

Planar Speaker Asylum

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I have just recieved the KSU2 kit from Sonicraft, and as promised, I am installing the update components one at a time to see which does the most.

The first thing I have installed is the Black Hole 5. I did the right unit first and then compared it to the stock one with a mono signal. First thing I noticed was that on accustic bass the slight muddiness on the mid bass (around 60 hz or so) was gone. The instrument had much more of a "growl" now that, seems to me, to be much closer to the sound of the actual instrument in a room. The left unit was still muddying it up and there was a loss of info in the starting and stopping on the bass note. Drum beats are more clearly defined on the right unit with a little less weight than stock but with more low-frequency extention and much better decay into the accustic field of the recording.

After initial comparisons I installed the Black Hole on the left unit (actually I installed it "in" the left unit; seems to work better that way). I switched the system back to "stereo" and then listened. Aside from the improved bass what I noticed was a lack of the "dacron" sound that I always attribute to, well, the dacron stuffing used in many speakers. There is now not even the slight "hair" that was on the lower end of voices. The low mids are now much better integrated with the ribbons and there is a sense of a deeper soundstage. Removal of giant bass humps will do that for you. At this point the speakers are already more transparent than any of the Maggies in the stores that I have heard lately (I know that the setups at the stores are not ideal and that maggies are seldom demonstrated properly. This is not a blanket condemnation of the Maggies. But there are inherent advantages to a mono-pole ribbon.) All this is by way of showing that no matter what the prouct is, it will respond to tweaks and updates.

Jeff was right, I did find the box to be overstuffed, with quite a bit of stuffing blocking the ports. Part of the improvement is that now the speakers can work at their proper bass tuning with the air volume and port(s) actually getting to do their thing. The other parts seem to be better absorbtion of the back-wave sound and less box-talk. All good things! And now, for normal listening levels, the Sub is superfulous.

Listening tests were done with both the Spectron and the Atma-Sphere M60 amps(just got them!).

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Schiit Audio

Topic - Newform Ribbon X-over update - rp1@surnetusa.com 22:26:29 06/25/03 (5)

Re: Newform Ribbon X-over update - zipper 22:29:38 06/27/03 (2)

not a Maggie - Mart 01:46:03 06/28/03 (1)

zipper, Newform ribbons available as components - Feanor 08:44:57 07/02/03 (0)

thanks _ must be hard though - Mart 06:12:01 06/26/03 (1)

Re: thanks _ must be hard though - rp1@surfnetusa.com 16:38:50 06/26/03 (0)

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