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I was a little disapointed, It seems the amp ran out of steam on the bass. Low level listening was great but once I turned it up I herd the bottom end colapse. Needless to say I was suprised. These speakers are supposed to be 104db spl...Was I expecting to much, is it due to the load (Crossover and 3 drivers)? I also only have the hammond OPT on this amp, would the Magnequest bring up that bass? I'm going to recap the x-over in the speakers this weekend, maybee that will help.
I hooked up a fisher x-100 (14watts) drives the piss out of them, better than my st70...
Any thoughts...
Follow Ups:
"fisher x-100 (14watts)" I would usually already know this, but, is this a PP EL84 driven amplifier? My Lascala's, not to mention many many other speakers of yesterday and today absolutely thrive when driven by one (or a pair, like my two Eico HF86's run mono) of the respected and even often unknown EL84 PPamplifiers. I currently use a Yamamoto 45 based 2 watt set amplifier driving various Lowther back horns, front horns, and (my favorite) Open Baffles. BUT, I am sickened with regret for stupidly deciding to sell all of my wonderful EL84 amplifiers once I discovered the "Magic" of flea powered set amps with very high efficiency speakers. In my experienced opinion, driving speakers like; 15" dual concentric Tannoy's, Altec 604's, and Lascallas, etc. are served in often stunning fashion with good EL84 PP or Triode configured amps.
I like 6BQ5 amps too and am going to get a Brenneman Stereo 30. Cy builds some fine amps.
I spent the 70's collecting things like Leak TL25PLus's, Marants 8B's, Model 9's, Various Mac 6L6 and KT88 amps, and lots of well thought of EL34 amplifiers (Like the 8B's). The first little EL84 amp that I stumbled across handily outperformed all the others in my opinion. It was a simple Eico HF86. IT is just such a good sounding little output tube.
The EL84 is a good sounding tube. I still like SET but am going to get a Stereo 30. I have plenty of NOS and it should be a fun 'keeper'
amp and it is dead quiet.
My Moth 2A3 [first version] has no real issues with these speakers. It is running magnaquest transformers FYI. Had some bass issues with a Korneff 45 but that is flea powered and sounded fabulous none-the-less. SET does not like 3 way speakers IMHO.
I had La Scalas for 22 years and the bass is awful with low power SET. The little amps cannot control the woofer and the impedence of the La Scala is not linear.Have a look at the link.
disconnect the feedback connection. That might be the hot ticket
driving the Lascalas.
The Lascallas I owned didnt do so well off my FI X or any of my other small SET amps.For me PP, Class A SS or go active and triamp this worked best.Not as easy to drive Lascallas as rating would suggest dont think the load they present is kind to most SETs.As always YMMV
....that you are having a problem with the amp, I had the Super X (with the MQ,s), and ran my Avantgardes (100db) with no issues whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I often used 45's in the amp with similar results. Are your output tubes getting old?
LaScalla's have passive bass, w/ all drivers driven by the FiX?
Avantgardes have active bass, w/ only the signal (not the drive, per se) required for the bass?So, if Ihave this vaguely understood, very little demand placed on the main amp in the case of Avantgardes relative to LaScalla...
I think Larry has mostly nailed it below; Kloss has added a little above. Somehow, SETs just do not seem like speakers with complex-ish crossovers in passive systems, especially in the bass – mid-bass. Further, perhaps these types of systems obscure those aspects of music reproduction that SETs do best (and make music special, for some).
Regards
Raymond
Ultra-consumers: Spending money they do not have to buy things they do not need to impress people they do not like.
I'm begining to think i'm clipping the amp as these speakers play very loud, very clear and I might not relize that I'm clipping the amp...
it manifests as a hardening of the sound and "confusion" of the music. Clipping doesn't usually sound like limited frequency extension. I have a buddy that runs La Scalas with a 2A3 Cary amp with great success. Unless you are attempting to fill a football stadium, I don't know why you are having difficulty. I never owned the Fi stuff with the Hammonds, so I'm not sure if it is the trannies. but the heart of any good SET starts with quality transformers. Everything matters, but it's difficult to work around mediocre transformers.
If I remember correctly, the Fi X is a two stage direct coupled design, the stages sharing a single power supply. Thus, the two stages act, in effect, kind of like a "meta" stage. In my experience, this kind of arrangement tends to come unravelled a bit when pushed, as you seem to be doing/asking. Further, and althought the OPTS will help some, the bass problem most likely lies in the power supply. So, two things, direct coupling in the manner done here and the power supply.You might be able to help a bit in the crossover, a little less insertion loss, but, unless you really do something significant, such as going to first order crossover, eliminating some padding....I doubt that will result in the change your looking for.
LF transients feeding back thru the PS rail. I harp about this
often, but few seem to listen. Voltage regulation for the 1st
stage works wonders generally.
Thanks, verry infomative,,,This amp is perfect with my Fostex 166BLH and think I will keep it with those...They make beutifull music together...
The Magnequest (I think it's the DS-025?) will for sure have much better bass than the small Hammond (is it the E125SE?) - if I have the model numbers right, there will be more than twice the inductance.But still, that's only going to get you another 6dB or so in the deepest bass. Might be enough, but it won't be huge.
Yes those are the Hammonds I have,,,,6db gain on the bass sounds pretty good to me...That sounds like it's worth the cost.
*
Threshold of pain -134
hearing damage during short-term effect - 120
jet, 100 m distant 110 - 140
jack hammer, 1 m distant / discotheque 100
hearing damage during long-term effect 90
major road, 10 m distant 80 - 90
passenger car, 10 m 60 - 80
TV set at home level, 1 m distant 60
normal talking, 1 m distant 60
very calm room - 30
leaves noise, calm breathing 10
auditory threshold at 2 kHz 0.00002 0
Converstaion level 60- 70 is great , its when I turn it up louder than shouting (maybe 100db) maybe more. This amp on my Fostex 166BLH is the sweetest amp I ever herd. Bass hangs in the air and its as deep as the speakers go. (They are 94db/spl/watt) and I dont loose the bass as I turn it up
.
Having been in studios for 8 years, working with bands on the road and riding open pipe Harleys...its not that loud
Loudness, its complicated. I used to be a DJ and my other ahlf of our set got tinitus permanently in his left ear, which was the headphone ear. The right was listening to the club speakers.I have read quite a bit about this, and I believe damage is done by:
1. Volume
2. Period of time listening and the amount of times listening
(it can take over a week to recover from one night out in a normal club).
3. The frequency of the loudest sounds
(high frequency potentially does the most damage)
4. The quality
(by this I am referring especially to badly designed high frequncy horns)In a standard home set-up it will have to be at silly levels to do anything like the damage you would get from a live concert (Jazz and electronic music is worst for piercing sound waves) or a big club system.
Plus I guess the quality of the sound emanating from a decent hi-fi setup will be much better than a club.
At the end of the day, if you want to rock, rock, and unless you live in a detached house well away from neighbours, the police will probably call before your ear pack up.
Sustained listening at 100db will cause permanent hearing damage.
Well then don't worry just use a more powerful amp and rock on! At that loud the quality doesn't really matter all that much, does it? Only rock concerts are that loud in real life and there it is more about the spectacle than the sound quality.
Just having fun.I thought mastering studios use 85dB as a benchmark for listening level. I think that's why 85 to 90 dB seems plenty loud for me at home. Any more than 90 is OK for brief listening, and 80-85 seems good for a long day of listening.
Ever go to a concert and wish they would turn it down just a bit so you could enjoy it for a little longer?
The number that was recently published (AES Journal article...) was 82dB +/-2dB, per channel. This is for professional recording and mastering, and is said to be a measurement of many, i.e. not a prescription or recommendation.This is also "C" weighted, slow response, peak levels IIRC. Instantaneous peaks will be no more than 14dB greater with most analogue sources, maybe 20dB with the most uncompressed CDs or movies. So 102dB capability should be good enough for these pros to avoid clipping.
I have seen a recommendation to have an extra 6dB headroom above this level, for use with solid state electronics, on the grounds that the negative feedback has to work much harder within 6dB of clipping - but that should not be relevant to SET or other zero-feedback, reasonably linear, amps.
However, if you wander over to the high efficiency speakers forum you will find many who do not want a mastering studio in their home, but want a rock concert. That can require 10 or 20dB more power, i.e. 10 to 100 times as many watts. This is very difficult territory for SETs!
Thanks for posting that. I think it's helpfull to know how loud a recording was mastered because that will give you an idea of why they made certain choices for things like compression, eq, etc.It's not like we are trying to build a mastering studio ourselves. It's just one more piece of information to help us understand the big picture. Thanks for the reply!
Depends what you call loud - it is relative.If you think having the potenential to permanently damage our hearing is loud, then that is loud.
If you hear / listen louder than that often, then I guess not.
Personally, that is LOUD for me. I am trying to put together a system that communicates at lowish levels - consideration for my own hearing and the wellbeing of others and such... Too many years of sitting in/on/in front of bass-horns at dance parties has probably already done the damage tho.
Regards
Raymond
Ultra-consumers: Spending money they do not have to buy things they do not need to impress people they do not like.
The single main issue with the flea power amps is enough gain and headroom. A 300b would rock the speakers much better.You could add a powered sub to good effect to kind of take care of the bass region. You set the volume minimally but it has an additive effect.
You can get a good powered sub for about 200 around here.
Those speakers can be very good in close quarters perhaps with the amp.
You might try to upgrade the xover, as the midrange horn is about 6db more efficent than the other two drivers. I have khorns which go far beyond what the Lascala's can do on the bottom end,and when I ran a 2A3 amp I had to upgrade the xovers to get what the tube could not provide. On the other hand if you listen at low volume you'd be ok.
Get a cheap sub over at parts express, Dayton, I believe... than you can forget about bass, I would upgrade to Magnaquest, the trans is ultra important.You might want to trade them for Cornwalls, I use the Cornwall with my 45 set dht amp, sounds great, not LOUD though, like Paul said, 82 db range.
nt
Also tried my Mac MX112....and running a direct source cd player with volume control
to begin with. IIRC they only go down to 53Hz or so. I used to run my Fi 2A3 X with Klipsch Cornwalls - an excellent match.
Do you have the magnequest Iron?
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