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They and I arrived home Saturday nite, I got them running Sunday, and got them positioned Monday.My 5As are about 3 years old and were the 1st pair painted a color–Porsche Arctic Silver--different than black, my dealer tells me.
I put them in about the same positions previously occupied by the Avantis, installed carriage screws (instead of spikes) so the heavy boxes would be easier to move, and leveled them. They’re toed in somewhat...10 degrees?...but intersect WAY behind me.
I again used a pinknoise generator and third-octave RTA to adjust the bass-system equalization; that went fairly quickly. Still evident are the combined-bass-nodes peak at 28Hz and the broad notch centered around 80Hz, but they’re certainly lower in level. Speakercable is 4 feet of inexpensive AQ Rocket88, one of their two-bundles ‘flatrock’-type cable. I unzipped the 2 halves for most of the length and counter-spiraled some Neotec OCC-in-Teflon conductors around the 2--18g. Copper for the LF cable and 23g. Silver for the HF.
The systems have about 40 hours on them, and these are my first impressions.
Overall, these are the best-sounding speakersystems I’ve ever heard. The sound is relaxed, natural, coherent top to bottom, etc. In the MOST-important midrange (MR), they are highly transparent, more so than my highly improved Avanti IIIs--and MR was the Avantis’ best area. The treble is smooth--that is, NOT course or rough sounding--clean and extended. I can now listen to my brighter-balanced recordings at higher-overall levels because the treble is no longer slightly unattractive. The transition from treble to MR...or MR to upperbass or upperbass to lowerbass, for that matter...is seamless as far as I can tell. Instruments with fundamentals in the lower-MR to upperbass such as cellos and bassfiddles sound like one instrument instead of two. Acoustic bass that’s well recorded, with some air around the instrument, etc., sounds excellent; one can hear the harmonics from the strings and the warm sound of a hollow wooden chamber resonating. (1)
The transition from upperbass to lowerbass is also not apparent to me. The bass from the powered woofer is tight, authoritative, and goes down about forever. The sounds of particularly-low-tuned orchestral bassdrums are reproduced with so much information that one can hear the initial impact and immediate fundamental and then the wave as it resonates thru the hall. (2)
Imaging and soundstaging are both as good as I’ve ever heard, even with my barely tweaked positioning. The speakers are as dynamic as I’ll ever need, and my 160-into-8 Monarchy SE-160s drive them effortlessly.
I agree with others that the closeness of amplifier-heatsink fins prevents the use of typical audiofool powercords, but Pangea 14s fit finely and fairly tightly on the inlet prongs, so I’ve ordered a long-enough pair.
WOW what magnificent sound. More later.
BTW, anyone who wants more pics of the rather-busy crossovers...
...should e-mail me at jeffreybehr(at)cox(dot)net.
(1) For excellent-sounding acoustic bass, try Opus 3's ‘Knud Jorgensen Jazz Trio’, CD #CD 8401, recorded very naturally with, I believe, a single figure-8 stereo mic. GREAT music too.
(2) My favorite recording of Holst’s ‘The Planets’ is Adrian Boult’s latest, LP #ASD 3649 and CD 0777 7 64748 2 3. ‘Uranus’ contains that bassdrum strike at 2+ minutes in.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Edits: 04/26/11 04/26/11 04/29/11 05/04/11Follow Ups:
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Beautiful system. And thanks for the info on the Opus disc. My reference disc is Jamie Cullum 'Twentysomething' CD or SACD.
Jeffrey,
What RTA rig are you using to tune the Vandy's?
Regards,
Mitch
...Audio Assistant 2 to read levels. The generator has selectable filtered-pinknoise bandwidths (from 1 octave to 1/20 octave) that are tunable like a sinewave generator. I believe I used half-octave noise.
I first get an overall level with the full-band PN for reference. Then I set the frequency of the generator to the labeled frequency of the adjustment pot and read overall level with the PAA2, tweak the pot, and go to the next. Vandersteen is correct in that the adjustments affect other frequencices, so I repeated the process untill I couldn't make the bass levels more or less peaky; some of the pots are full down and some full up.
It really helps to have someone else tweak the pots; else you spend a LOT of time walking, squatting, squinting, and fumbling with a small screwdriver. I found that removing the trim plate (held with 4 screws) helped a lot.
After switching to fullband PN, the 1/3-octave RTA will display the results of your handiwork and the overall system response.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
It really helps to have someone else tweak the pots; else you spend a LOT of time walking, squatting, squinting, and fumbling with a small screwdriver. I found that removing the trim plate (held with 4 screws) helped a lot.
So I repeated the process untill I couldn't make the bass levels more or less peaky; some of the pots are full down and some full up.
You mean you repeated the process until you couldn't take the leg cramps!
Ya know, I didn't wanna comment on that, appearing like an old fart. BUT, you nailed this process right where it resides, PITF ASS !I see they're up to a PAA3. Is worth the $ and is it a one time use?
Do you use the Tone CD from Vandy and then proceed with the Phonic and
helper?
Is it an SPL meter as well; no more RAT meter?Thanks,
Mitch
Edits: 06/12/11
The PAA3 has some features the '2 doesn't, and I can't imagine you wouldn't use it again; I find it very handy for lots of things.
Did not use a test-tone CD; in fact don't have one.
Yes the PAA2 is an SPL meter; that's what I meant by 'read overall level'.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Did not use a test-tone CD; in fact don't have one.
What do you use for 1KHz.?
I've gotta read up on this thing to see what else it can do.
...just like a sinewave generator. Here it is, hard at work helping to break-in the new caps in my crossovers and amps.
I bought this in the 1970s, so it has almost 40 years of finger grime accumulated on it. :-)
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
I tried the Asylum Power Cord, while it did some things well, it really rolled off the bass. OTOH, this cord did wonders for both LCD displays and the Oppo BD-83
I've got the Volex 17504 cordage set to arrive Tuesday.
I have several lengths of the US-made Volex PCs, and they grip the amp's powerinlet very loosely.
I'm still happy with the Pangea 14s.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Yup, the Bob Crump Asylum cable.
I'll cut off the ends and re-terminate them.
I "think" your sub amp has a switching PS, while the Quatro has a linear PS. If so, could explain the shielded cable results.
...all those black-potted devices, I decided initially that I wouldn't do anything with the crossovers, at least for a few months. But my heart overcame my brain the other evening, and I replaced the 3 DynamiCap bypasses (1 for the MR-series cap and 2 for the 2 treble-series* caps). I used 0.1uF SoniCap Platinums; 4 had some hours on them and 2 were new.After a few hours, I THINK the transparency is improved, but from my perspective that's equivalent to trying to distinguishing 9.7 from 9.6 on the 10-scale. We'll see what I think after a few-hundred hours of music on them.** The second evening, after only a few hours of run-in, the system sounded breathtakingly transparent on SACDs.
Have also ordered speakercable. I again chose the recipe of Sonic Craft's Jeffrey Glowacki, that being double-per-pole 18g. Neotec OCC-copper (= 15g.) for the MR, braided tightly. The treble cable uses one strand of that plus a strand of Neotec 23g. OCC-silver per pole (= 17-1/2g.?); the silvers are twisted into a core with the copper counterspiraled around the silver, with all this wound or braided tightly. Since my mildly-arthritic hands were sore for two weeks after last time I braided this kind of cable, I'm having SC braid it this time. (SC is now winding this stuff to order, at least for their existing customers.) I'll use AQ direct-silver-over-copper spades on both ends, and I may add a simpler (than last time's) dielectric-bias system to them.
* The tweeter has caps, 9.4uF of WIMA 100VDC 'propylenes, in series on each of the positive and neutral legs.
** I'll be driving the systems with broadband pinknoise 24 hours per day for a couple weeks, without the bassamps plugged in.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Edits: 05/13/11 05/16/11 05/16/11 05/19/11
...increasing them slightly.
Tonally I'm a guy who loves his reproduced music a bit warm rather than with 'flat' frequency response. The 5A drivers/x-overs are split just about right, between upper and lower half at 600Hz, at the beginning of the lower MR.
I've experimented with driving the upper half of frequencies thru small-value resistors (Mills MRA-12s). I've only measured and not listened. I was surprised how much resistance was required to make a small...say 3dB...difference. The lower outputs from using 1- or 2-Ohm resistors were barely measurable, as in less than a dB, acoustically. It required 10 or 15 Ohms to get to around 3dB.
If I find a recording that's REALLY thin sounding, maybe I'll jumper in a 15-Ohm resistor. :-)
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
But...the systems sound SO good! I believe the excellence of performance comes not from the quality of x-over parts but in spite of that--that the excellence is from the synergy that RV has achieved with the design and implementation. Therefore I'm not doing anything to them for a while.
Maybe after determining the nature of the x-over's secret rectangles, I'll build outboard x-overs from scratch using 5-star parts, but maybe not, too. I can see me spending $3K on parts--priced any 5-star-quality 9- or 25uF caps lately?--where RV spent about $50. :-)
New spikes and outrigger-spikebars are on the way.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
I'm a big 1st order/time phase coherent fan and appreciate the photos. Those parts they are using must have retailed for about $10 tops per board--including the batteries! So I see where you might think the need to improve upon that would be. But you are correct on the "synergy" analysis. Nobody can make up for x-tended listening sessions by the maker to determine how the sum of parts sounds.
I have heard the 5a at shows and it sounded great to me. IMHO---Just imagine if they would use even the CHEAPEST of semi-decent aftermarket xo parts. I personally think it would sound light-years better. Makes the mind boggle....
Regards,
Joel
I've tweaked, this time ignoring my third-octave analyzer's bands, the bass equalization, and the bass seems to sound a bit better.
To restate the obvious, WOW I'm thrilled!
Have ordered a pair of spike-bars plus a set of front spikes from Sound City. The bars, custom spec'd with 3/8" spikestuds, will go at the rear of the boxes instead of V'steen's single spike, while the new front spikes will match the 'black-chrome' spikes on the rears. I decided that I walk about behind all my gear often enough that I wanted the speakers anchored to the concrete floor a bit more stablely.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
I do not own 5As, and I may never own 5As. But I have great respect for Vandersteen speakers and I'm enjoying reading the reactions and comments here. So Jeff -
Please continue your updates.
It's all solid state, except for the tubes.
.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
It's complicated enough with all the compensation networks, but then we have the multiple-caps-in-parallel-and-series complexities of the battery-bias system.
Chjeez!
And the systems sure do sound excellent!
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
All the successful "true" first-order designs I'm aware of (which maintain 6dB/octave acoustic rolloffs at least two octaves either side of corner frequency)employ complex response and impedance compensating filters in parallel with wide-bandwidth drivers. This includes Dynaudio and Thiel, as well as Vandersteen. The battery biasing I've not seen before. There's a lot more to this first order thing than just a cap and a coil!
If you're looking to upgrade to all boutique parts, Vandersteen might provide you with the schematic if you ask nice. It's not like you're gonna go out and try to clone speakers with complex enclosures and proprietary drivers.
For a while I fantasized about building my own systems using excellent (Accuton) drivers, 1st-order filters, etc., but the more I learned, the more I understood that I knew almost nothing about designing speakersystems. I concluded that probably I'd end up spending thou$and$ and hundreds of hours trying but not ending up with great-sounding systems, so I researched, searched, and found the 5As.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
. . . is that there are resources now available to the hobbyist, at reasonable cost, rivaling or exceeding what the biggest corporate manufacturers paid thousands of dollars for less than 20 years ago. From Parts Express you can get BOTH Woofer Tester 3, a hardware/software package for deriving impedance, phase, and TS parameters, and the Omnimic acoustic testing package including tone generators, a calibrated mic, and RT/FFT analysis, for well under $500. (You have to provide the computer to run them). Soundeasy, a truly comprehensive design software package, is around $300 (?), while Jeff Bagby's Passive Crossover Designer and a number of compatible programs from FRD consortium, are FREE to download. Ray Alden's "Speaker Building 201" is simply the BEST book out there for explaining all aspects of the design process to the non-engineer, and the PE Tech Talk forum is a great place to get friendly feedback from advanced, knowledgeable builders.
All that is for those who enjoy learning, tinkering, and building stuff. If you just want to enjoy wonderful sound, without all the years of study and shop time, your new Vandies may well be your ticket to "happily ever after."
I wonder how much the original owner payed for that finish.
.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
nt
4 x 12" woofers on each side! How low do they go, what amps are you driving them with, what xo frequency to the new Vandies, etc?
Nice to see a "real man's" listening room. No concessions to WAF there!
...with 2 mounted in sealed 6CF spaces...times 2...times 2 for stereo. The four 8-Ohm drivers per channel are wired in parallel for a 2-Ohm load and are connected directly to each channel of the Crown CDi2000 poweramp (just right of the CC speaker). (It's rated at a kiloWatt per channel into 2 Ohms.) When the SWs were supporting the front-L/Rs and the '.1' channel, the filter was 4th-order BW at around 40Hz. Just yesterday I disconnected the L/R feed and they're just '.1' subwoofers now.
I used a software program/soundcard/calibrated-mic system to eq it and measured substantial output at 14Hz where I started the frequency sweep.
They really do sound as authoritative as they look. :-) And TY about my mancave; I love it, and my wonderful wife doesn't even want to know what I pay for stuff.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Hey Jeff,
Is that a video screen up against your ceiling? I've wondered about mounting a screen on a couple of hinges to it could be swung up out of the way when not watching movies. I would think that would minimize the impact on the sonics in the room with music.
Thanks
PS - Glad the 5As are such a success. They are certainly one of the best speakers in my experience.
It's all solid state, except for the tubes.
Mine hangs on chains. Those are grade-8 stanless-steel screws.
It's almost always down (ie in the viewing position). I can hear no difference with the screen up or down.
Here 'tis down...
...with the long-gone VonSchweikert Visiun centerchannel. Was THAT a waste of money!
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Didn't JBL get the patent on that in 97 or thereabouts? 20 years protection?
Hells if I know, it's a good technique.
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
shares the patents used by the dielectric biasing utilized by Audio Quest.
Stu
The JBL K3 circa 1993 was battery biased.Patents prior to 2000 were 17 years, plus, they never received a patent on the circuit either.
Results of Search in US Patent Collection db for:
AN/"harman international": 378 patents.
Hits 351 through 378 out of 378This would include Infinity in there too, as I believe they had a battery biased speaker in production before JBL did.
Edits: 04/27/11
I've withheld discussion on charge-coupling in my writing out of concern for patent/copyright issues, sooo
FREE TIME! I'm using charge-coupled crossovers and have been for some time. When you use all polys, a 40uF gets pretty freggin' big when it's charge-coupled- 16 10uF caps in series-parallel!
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
Maybe you could 'splain the technique to this nontechnician.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
the concept is that you use 4x the capacitance, and use 2x in series with 2x to get back to 1x. The trick is that in the middle of this, you hook up a battery through a high valued resistor (1-2MegaOhms) tied to either end of either 2x cap.
So, you have a DC bias, which will not drain quickly because it's only drawing trickle current through the high resistance. The resistors are there because it maintains battery life, though they're not strictly necessary if you wanted to make a high quality low-ripple DC supply.
Once the batteries charge up the capacitors to 9V (or more if you use batteries in series), there are 2 significant advantages expected. First, the role of the dielectric (the film in my case, but this trick is also done with electrolytic caps) is reduced. This is because of dielectric absorbtion- stored energy in the dielectric is typically released around the 0V crossing, or when the voltage across a capacitor transitions from positive to negative, or vice versa. By biasing the dielectric away from the 0V point, it would take an 18V peak-peak signal (read: LOUD!) to have the signal hit the zero crossing.
The second desired effect is the voltage acting to compress or expand the plates in the capacitor. It's like pre-tensioning something mechanically, they're said to be less prone to resonance issues when charge-coupled.
There's a third effect in that it generally means a lot more capacitor involved, which can mean less energy through a given cap, and more area for heat dissipation (though if you have that issue in caps, you're doing something wrong). This also can be related to parasitics- the number of the caps and how they're arranged can influence their ESR and ESL.
The net effect? Up to you to decide, but it certainly seems to make a more transparent crossover to my ears.
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
I am very interested in DC bias-ing the capacitor used in the treble crossover on my Sound Lab spkrs. I have done lots of searching on the internet and today came across this thread, which seems to be the most recent mention of this topic.
My first question is why do we need 4 capacitors to replace one? Why not use just two caps in series to replace one, where the DC bias voltage is applied at the junction of the two caps? Obviously in that case the absolute value of each of the two capacitors has to be double the desired value (in my case, two 68uF caps to replace one 34uF cap). But otherwise, I see no need to use 4 caps. Am I missing something?
My second question is what are the audible advantages of this technique in tweeter x-overs, where electrolytic caps are used, bipolar electrolytics, or film caps, respectively? My reading has led me to believe that the DC bias voltage, first of all permits the use of polar electrolytics (in back to back topology), and has the biggest sonic benefit when used in conjunction with either polar or bipolar electrolytics. Some have commented that there is little advantage to this technique when used in conjunction with film caps. I would love to hear from anyone who has done this with decent quality film caps and whether there was any benefit.
Thanks.
...of 2 identical caps in series is one-half the value of ONE of those caps. So two 5uF caps in series become a 2.5uF cap. When placing caps in series, many of us think about using caps of the value we want to end up with, so we think about doubling the count on EACH end of the series connection. Therefor FOUR 5uF caps (in parallel/series) become one 5uF cap.DC-biasing of capacitors is indeed useful for improving the sonic quality of those caps, but, as explained above, one now needs FOUR times the capacitance. Now one has to ask if four-times 5uF of polyester caps, DC-biased, will sound better than 5uF of, say, polypropylene capacitance. Richard Vandersteen answered that 'yes' for the crossovers of his 5s, 5As, and Quattros, but I beieve I'd never be tempted to start with such sonically-suspect, low-priced caps.
If you need lots of capacitance in a crossover, I suggest you start with the 47uF AC-series BlackGates that Michael Percy still has. BGs' sonic quality is truly 5-star (= excellent).
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Edits: 07/07/11
Yes, two identical capacitors in series halves the capacitance and doubles the voltage rating.
I am even slower-witted than the other guy. I don't quite visualize where you attach the battery, perhaps also because I never have heard of this technique before today.
Do you find that you can make do with less expensive caps in the x-over by employing battery bias? I hope so, if one is going to purchase 4X the needed capacitance in order to do it.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
DO NOT 'believe' the nature of the lettered devices other than A-B-V, C-D-T, and S-R-U; those are definitely caps. My friend who traced it believed the black-plastic-boxed devices were caps; I have yet to remove any to measure them.
A, B, C, and D are 4.7/100 WIMA 'propylenes; S and R are 5-times-8.2/63 WIMA polyesters; and V, T, and U are DynamiCap 1uF caps, the bright-red ones 'below' the cylindrical inductor in the pic above.The switches and gobs of resistors and caps on the 'vertical' board far-right are for the rear-firing tweeter.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Edits: 07/05/11
Someone wrote on the schematic drawing "probably inductor for bandpass filter" yet the schematic symbol shows a capacitor? Someone doesn't know the symbol for an inductor!
...part of my message?
My friend traced and wrote the schematic; I wrote the 'probably...' note.
Yes, we both know the symbol for an inductor.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
...works on cable, and I know filter manufacturers DC-bias caps, but I didn't understand why a series/parallel-cap combo is necessary.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
The idea was to raise the signal current above the zero point so that it never crossed zero. Supposedly, this way the signal showed greater resistance to external influences. Was a popular idea about 15 years ago, but I do not believe Vandersteen uses this.
Stu
The signal current is not affected. There's no significant current based effect, this is all about voltage.
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
is that by biasing the dielectric between conductors that way, you essentially make a long stringy microphone. Now, microphonics aren't as bad a thing as some would make them out to be, but they're not desirable from a "pure neutrality" standpoint.
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
It uses 2 or more small conductors added to the bundle.
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Tin-eared audiofool, former fotografer, and terrible competitive-pistol shootist.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein.
Hi,
Right on! these are superb speakers - easily the most balanced and coherent of all the
Vandies.
Good Listening
Des
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