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In Reply to: Re: ELectro-Voice Empire sound better then Altec Valencia posted by Duboiz on March 4, 2007 at 10:38:03:
I thought I'd toss in my .02 cents because I've had both EV and Altec. My EV Regencys had 15W's, T25'As with the early 8HD horns made from fiberglass, T-350 tweeters. The xovers were new DIY but followed the design of the originals. They sounded very good for sure. My Flamencos had a one note bass and no highs to speak of over around 9KHZ without HF EQ. They were not listenable to me without adding the T-350 tweeters but eventually I tired of the thumpy unnatural bass. Now with Altec Model 19's I have far better bass than with the Flamencos, the mids are controlled and smoothed because of the internal EQ in the xovers but the highs still lack. Adding the T-350's helps a great deal and they sound much better to me than the Altec drivers trying to reproduce both mids and highs. According to tests, the T-350's only go out to 14KHZ without falling off but the Altec 802's don't do that well and as I said before, I don't care for the sound of 802's reproducing both mids and highs. Adding tweeters to the 19's is less straight forward because of the 19's EQ'ed xovers so there's a choice of methods if your willing to experiment. If I had a bigger listening room I'd have the Regencys, Model 19's and AR LST's all set up ready to go depending on which I felt like listening to at the time. Three great speakers but all different.
Follow Ups:
would be an interesting session. Your Regency have the better, beefier component, but as I said I heard some saying the 15WB is more musical and more efficient, but I never heard the Regency so I can't comment on their sound.By the way Is anyone compared the two?
I had never heard the Altec 19 but I heard and didn't liked the 15, very similar characteristics to the Valenica, however the Valenica's were better. Another thing is that some are swore by the Altec duplexes so I will try to find a seller just to be able to hear them and put judgment.
So far the only thing that will replace my EV is another EV. The regency is on my wish list and I'm looking all the time on Craigslist for a local seller. Have you sold your Regency's?
The Regency was designed for corner placement and the Empire wasn't.
With the same woofers in each maybe the Regency would have a little bit more lower extension but the Empire may have a "nice" hump in the response that sounds good too. I moved to a smaller house and I had to get rid of a lot of speakers. I broke up the Regency cabinets but saved the components. I have a room where I can wall mount the drivers and the woofers would have 200 sq ft of volume behind them. In the meantime the Model 19 bass is the best I've had yet with no bass boost (I refuse to use subs) so I decided to concentrate on them. They are musical in a more dynamic way than the EV's, be that good or bad. The 19's are in a small room and I still don't know why people think they need huge rooms to sound good.
In my room they tonally balance beautifully at low levels with no drop in the bass. The near field listening is very enjoyable, the imaging on mono is dead center forward and 25 watts/channel from my Mac 225 tube amp is enough. The wall of sound is very big but not overwhelming at all with NO room treatment. There are a lot of Altec and other 2 way fans to be found but so far I'm not one of them. To me a 3 way is still the best regardless of xover distortion theories,and element insertion loss, etc. All the talk about "full range" and people end up with subs and tweeters so they end up with 3 ways in the long run.
You are right Dave I started out with Full range drivers and ended up with a 4 way: Television Telefunken speakers on open bafle (cheers Tom) on top of my Altec Valencia woofers, with a super tweeter and eventually even a subwoofer, 3 amps per side Gainclones on the Altec woofers, Leak TL12.1 on the full rangers and Quad II on the tweeters, plus the active sub, a complete monster!!! I later changed the Telfunken for Lowther after seeing the Bazzilla thing! I think in an open baffle application the oval telefunken are best....but Horns are way better!!!. I now have only 2 amps and better integration. No sub needed with the bigger cabs.
ive got some regency cabs with the sp15b's that will be refinished soon.
What tweeter would do best here?
Fostex ft17h?
Eminence APT 50?
or ev 35 horns?
I would think the tweeters that can go the lowest, the FT17h only go down to 5k, the Eminence to 3.5k (with low watts) but I would probably stick to the EV T35.
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