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RE: Apogees and ethics - comments

Posted by Satie on February 11, 2012 at 14:07:04:
I am not sure that I like the Apogees in the mids and highs more than I like the combination of Neo8s and Maggie ribbon any more. I don't feel that I am losing much by crossing at 250hz, and I very much like not having the torsion screech distraction, even if it is only occasional.

I recently changed the midrange XO to allow a narrower range of HP adjustment, and a more appropriate level adjustment range, and bypassed the HP's Sonicap 1 cap with a foil cap, which changed the perceived FR and smoothed out a bit of grain that makes things that much better. So I am now reworking the tweeter/mid XO to make use of the neo8s further up with less lobing. In the process, I am listening to the mids alone, the bass + mids, Bass + tweeter. Taking your comment in mind about shelving down the treble output rather than tilting up I am experimenting with lower tweeter levels, which effectively raise the XO. There is an interesting level match I reached last night which gives a really interesting improvement in image saturation and air on Billie Holiday's last Columbia recordings, which were two mike stereo from 1958. I need to try this with more recordings and see over what range of adjustments this effect can be maintained.
side note - In order to make the adjustments easier, I am going directly off the DAC so that I don't have to adjust for the tube preamps sensitivity to load impedance - which changes with XO adjustment.

There is one point on BGs + mag ribbon vs. apogees, in that I did most of my Apogee listening at a dealer's where driving electronics were routinely an order of magnitude more costly. Levinson amps and Symphonic line Pre are hard to beat not to speak of the heavy turntables and CD players that each cost more than my entire investment in audio. My home setup has never been that strong on source components, no matter how tweaked, and my amplification, though good or very good, is not "as goo as it gets" as was that at the dealer's. The only thing where I may have the upper hand in my systemm is that the DAC is newer - though the output stage is not discrete but Michaelson's best trickery with 4 dual opamps of the cheap veriety 2 duals per channel - gain and buffer - same as in his better DACs and preamps, but not his top of the line discrete products. Though he does use the same buffer design and op amps for even his terrific sounding trivista DAC (his mini tube nuvistors and trivistors were buffered with op amps).
So bottom line, I don't know anymore whether the Apogees would win out on a level playing field vs bgs+mag ribbon.

Re WTW ot MTM idea, where I was thinking the T would be in a physically separate frame, are you sure there would not be a null? do you really need that much of a gap? I get noticeable dipole cancelation with the space between the bass panels and mid/tweeter frame opened to as little as 1/4", and much more at 1/2" - perceived as a drop in the low end extension of the array. I use a strip of tape to keep the gap closed (touching only the mid/tweet panel).

Re bipole tweeters - I know Nudell did it bipole - I guess for the same reason you quoted.

The Apogee tweeters did have a torsion problem. In my listening it was the only flaw in them that was not addressable by a change in ancilliaries or a trivial mod of the XO or drivers. The way to address it was to raise the XO by an octave or more - leaving the mids to cover another octave - which they did not do that well due to their weight and width, or to sharpen the XO to 3rd or 4th order - which you can do today digitally without phase issues, but not back then.

I see your point on the design considerations forcing the gap to be small enough so there is no null.