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Re: Summa vs. Avantgarde

Posted by Duke (D) on September 6, 2006 at 20:40:17

In Reply to: Re: Summa vs. Avantgarde posted by jdubs on September 6, 2006 at 19:28:50:

Hi Jdubs,

The ported Summa's bass extension is adequate in some applications and not in others. It's well damped and doesn't tend to be boomy. In my opinion it needs some boundary reinforcement to stand alone - if the speakers are positioned out in the room away from walls, then subwoofers are definitely needed.

I think the Summas are tuned to somewhere in the 30 Hz ballpark, which is rather low given the other system parameters. This results in a fairly gentle roll-off below 40 with no peaking. With the Summas up against the side walls, and not too far from the corners, they get enough boundary reinforcement to work well in many rooms and systems. The well controlled directivity means that they don't suffer from midrange colorations if they are placed near a corner, as long as they're well toed in as recommended.

I think that the sealed Summas are primarily intended to be used with one or more subwoofers, and might be better suited for a home theater system. With a vented box, the woofer might be overdriven by powerful low frequency effects signals well below the tuning frequency. A sealed box doesn't have this potential vulnerability. In practice, I'm not sure of how valid this concern really is. I get the impression that Earl prefers sealed boxes in applications where lower -3 dB point (with faster rolloff below tuning) of a vented box isn't necessary.

Not that either one has killer WAF, but the sealed Summa looks better in my opinion.

I heard the big sub, the ULF, in Earl's two-channel music system. Its presence was sonically unobtrusive - I never heard it as a distinct source. It just sounded like the Summas went way down deep on their own. I didn't hear any discontinuity, which is often present when a low-efficiency high-powered sub tries to keep up with a high efficiency speaker.

I don't remember whether or not Earl had subwoofers of his own design in his home theater system.

Earl recently made a change or two to the crossover of the Summa, and in my opinion improved the balance of the high frequency setion. It's a little smoother in the mid-treble region (which I thought was already very good), and a little more extended on the very top.

I hope this helps. If not, let me know and I'll try again.

Duke

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