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I've just had a strange experience which has me a bit baffled as to how to proceed. I'll try to keep it short, though it is quite long.Background on me: About 20 years in the hobby. Long-time Martin Logan/Jeff Rowland/Sota owner. Had a big, dedicated custom designed listening room where I was very very happy. Four moves over the past three years have turned my system inside out several times. Put together a small and movable system to suit my need for constant moves .... thus ....
My current system: Highly modified Sony 9000ES SACD player; VPI Super Scout Master turntable; Thor Audio TA-1000 preamp; Art Audio Diavalo amplifier; Audio Note AN-E speakers
The Situation: We moved again, this time to a house which my wife says is "our home." She kindly gave me a largish (23' x 15' x 10') room and said it was mine. Hoorah. I decided to take a serial approach to rebuilding my system, starting with the speakers. Put the Audio Notes up on Audiogon and they disappeared pretty fast (great speakers, by the way, but too small (I thought) for my room). That's when the fun began ....
A dealer friend of mine knew I was on the make and kindly offered to let me demo a $12,000 (please forgive me for not mentioning the brand) well regarded speaker. I told him I was probably going to end up going back to a Jeff Rowland based system with some kind of stat, but he wanted me to hear a good full range high efficiency speaker that might compete with stats on dynamics and resolution. They were nice, but, for $12K, they didn't move me the way my Martin Logan based system had. So, after a few weeks of listening, I decided to pass. He came to pick them up, leaving me with about $25K of front-end gear and no transducers. So I did the logical thing and poached the $250 Blueroom mini-pods that are usually hooked up to our television (high WAF factor). Here's the crazy thing - they didn't sound that bad. I was so encouraged that I also poached the subwoofer(Piega)and found the combination to be quite musical and fun. Oddly, this mini-pod based system allows me to enjoy more music, especially rock & pop CDs, than the big $ speakers. I've been going back to CDs and LPs I've not been able to listen to for years because all of their recording warts and defects were so ruthlessly revealed by my other speakers. Of course, the really good stuff doesn't sound nearly as good as I know it can, but on the whole, taking in to consideration all the music I like to listen to, in a stupid crazy way, my mini-pod system is better. All of those CDs that I think of as "car music" (you know, the stuff you like that sounds crappy at home) are now back in the listening room. What's up with that?
Such a dilemna. A friend of mine is now joking that I should just get a Tivoli and sell everything. I know I won't, but it makes you wonder, doesn't it.
Follow Ups:
For fun, I swapped a pair of Thiel speakers with my cheapo best buy Klipsh's and was quite horrified with the results. The cheap speakers made my poor recordings listenenable and in many ways they were more enjoyable then the Thiels. I was very surprised.The Klipsh speakers did not sound GREAT, but they sounded good with just about everything. The Thiels sounded GREAT with the right recordings, but terrible with poor recordings.
This was a very hard pill to swallow as an audiophile. You really can't have your cake and eat it too.
Hold onto it if you can! It can be so easy to loose by all you see and read. I wish you well.
1. Physically, upper limit of hearing.
I once hooked up a pair of those Radio Shack LX's with the Linaeum tweeter to a pretty nice system. I almost pooped my pants laughing at how good the sound was considering I had just unhooked about 10K worth of speakers (Sonus Faber Guarneri) to listen to the Shacks. I'm not saying the RS speakers were better (although they threw a HUGE stage and disappeared), just that for 1/100th the price, I could have listened happily for quite some time.
When I sold high end speakers and gear, I fell in love with the Sonus Faber Guarnari Homage speakers. At 10,000 a pair, I did not want to dive in while having two kids in college.So I built my own speakers using PartsExpress Beech cabinets (100.00 ea) Scan Speak 5.75 inch Revelators (175.00 ea) an MB Quartz 3" titanium mid tweeter (135.00 ea but no longer available; a Foster ribbon (75.00 each but no longer available; and about 125 dollars in sound deadener, crossover parts, and dual 5 way binding posts.
The results are staggering. I have the upper midrange and highs of the Martin Logan speakers. With the vocals of the Sonus Faber. It is also much more 3 dimensional with a beautiful soundstage.
For sub reinforcement I built REL wanna be speakers from 3.75 ft cabinets with a Peerless XLS 12 inch driver, dual order crossover set at 125 hz, and powered by a Nikko Alpha 440 amp.
So whatever I throw at it, it sounds like the musicians are right there in my room. No Sizzle. No Boom. No Irritation. Just honest emotional music reproduction.
So why not DIY or just buy a Guarnari and a couple of RELS and call it good!
What order slopes did you do and did you attenuate the top end of the MB tweeter or just let it fly. Just curious.I am wondering if you went 1st order on this. The last couple of sets I built were higher order but I'm working on a 1st order series crossover for a very small mini-monitor and am finding something special there. I guess your comment on the Sonus Faber made me wonder.
Bill
Look I am going to get hit on all directions from this. So I am going to stand on three legs for this battle.First I am an amateur musician, meaning I know how music sounds in a small venue, a medium venue, and a large venue.
Second I am an audiophile. So I guess that means I love to get my sound system to try its hardest to recreate that emotion and passion of the music as best I can.
Third, I have been tweaking and building speakers since I was say 12 years old. I am 48 now, so that has been a lot of speakers. Some good, some bad, and some very ugly sounding.
These Sonus Faber wanna be speakers are delicious in every way. I adore them.
To answer the crossover question let me say this. Modern speaker designers and engineers are working hard to get the very best reviews. So making the graphs work measured 1 meter from the speaker is paramount. To do this, all you need is LEAP and some time sorting the best crossover components and circuit board layout. Nearly every modern speaker manufacturer has moved to LEAP created high order crossovers.
IMHO they measure great. Gotta love those graphs....and they sound sterile, uninteresting, and constipated. They just lose all their emotion and passion. But they do measure like a champion!
For my speakers I generally end up with dual order crossovers mainly to protect my beloved midtweeters and ribbons which are no longer manufactured. They do not like low frequencies so why risk blowing them?
I like to use ribbon chokes because their DCR is very low. That means less of the amp's power is wasted in the crossover. It is the first watt of power your amp makes that determines its sound quality IMHO. For this reason I like to keep the crossover simple. One choke and one cap. I use solen caps because I love how "fast they sound" which is a must for the ribbons.
I run a very high quality wire wound resistor I sourced from NTE that come packaged in a gold aluminum housing. These are not cheap. I think they run about 6 to 8 dollars each. They have the least grunge effect on the sound of any resistor I have heard so the price is not a factor for me.
I am running 100 ohm resistors in both the 3" mid tweets and the ribbons. I am running 50 ohm resistors in my Vifa dual concentric tweeters I use for the rear channel. I always try to run the mid tweets and tweets full out. Then I measure from my listening seat, and then I run resistors until I find the ones that give me the most linear frequency response at the listening seat.
I like to measure my speakers at the listening seat not at 1 meter. I understand why we measure speakers at 1 meter but rooms do a great deal of massaging during those additional meters.
That is why my REL wanna be woofers are dual order slopes at 175 hz. These are not sub woofers. These are sub reinforcers. So I want them to fill in the missing curve of the DIY satellites that are measured where I listen. I have 150 hz and 125 hz crossovers from different builds, so I can swap them in and out to evaluate.
So in my apartment the 175 works best. In my last basement with concrete walls on three of 4 walls 125 hz sounded best.
Now for my opinion on the sound quality of a simple crossover versus a higher order crossover.
You simply have to use the best, most linear and musical speakers you can find. This is where many of my earlier speakers failed. They had great text book measurements but sounded lousy.
Now I go out and listen to as many great speakers as I can find. Find one that is emotional and passionate and then use that specific driver.
The single order or dual order crossovers I build are point to point soldered. I use Audioquest Type 4 speaker wire for my internal wiring. I separate out just the heavy conductor for the woofer or midrange, and use just the light conductor for the mid tweeter and tweeters. This is awesome sounding wire IMHO.
I do use dual binding posts so the crossovers are fed directly from the amps output terminals I feel this is a critical element to making the transient information as clear and unsmudged as possible. Again this is simply my choice. There is a lot of confused controversy about biwiring. I like it. It works for me. It is my choice and I am taking it.
If I did not tweak and evaluate so much gear I would hard solder my speaker wire directly to the speaker's crossovers. This would make my audiophile life way too complicated. But eliminating all these breaks also provide a clear and clean sound IMHO.
So with my speakers they have just superlative emotion and passion. The music is vital, alive, and just blooms into the room. I am sitting way too close so in a better room I expect these speakers to sound considerably better. But these are without exception, in every sound area the best speakers I have ever listened to, owned, or set up.
A high order crossover would just destroy this magic IMHO. If you want to hear these first hand, just schedule a trip to Reno Nevada and I will be happy to host a listening session.
In my book first order or second order crossovers are the way to go. I understand the new Gallo reference monitors use no crossovers. I would love to see how he pulled that one off!
Cheers.
I agree with almost everything you said. My set that measures the best is a 3rd order and is extremely clean and smooth and images very well but some other ones which do not measure as well and have lower order crossovers have something special that I cannot describe. I'm surprised at the 100Ohm resistors though. I think my largest in line with the tweeter is 4.7ohms.
Bill
How about you sell me yours and build yourself something new!
Here's a picture of my "silly system".
Cute!Saw them on the Friends tv show, but never knew what they were - thx.
Believe what your ears say - not hearsay.
I love it!!Heres a crazy scenario for you. I just bought a used pair of Acoustat 1+1 (the over 7 foot tall electrostats) for $100. That's right a hundred bucks and they even have the medallion transformers and work perfectly.
So now I have a front end similar in expense to yours driving 100 buck speakers that sound spectacularly good (I still have my Apogees though :) ). I have also owned Audiostatics and lived with STAX ELS F81s for about 6 months and I actually prefer the sound of the Acoustats. They do it all well.
Jota monos drove them well, too.
What's now shown in the pix is a sub. ( I cheated ) ;)
A fun *little* system!
I think I enjoyed much classical music more on my Advent Model 400 table-radio speakers, used with a stereo receiver with the loudness switch on, than I do now with my PSB B25/Sub6 setup. Vocals and piano are definitely better on the new setup, though.
Yes this has been an obvious 'problem' for years now.. Hi Res systems make a Lot of recordings unpleasant to listen to... kinda defeating the reason for owning the damned things.
A simple stupid Mid fi lets one enjoy the music .. instead of the 'sounds'.. and guess what? the sounds are still 'pretty good' Reading the Mag (sales brochures more accurately) and frequenting Hi Fi shops and slowly Real life begins to reassert
Audio is an equipment Addiction pure and simple :-)
Primary, meaning the one I listen to the most. I run my ipod through my original, single speaker Tivoli in my shop and on job sites. I am often amazed at how it sounds. My shop is 50'x20' and it gets full of sound with just the Tivoli/ipod. At job sites, people are gobsmacked that "all that sound" is coming out that tiny box. I can see there wheels turning. It is not as loud as all the boom boxes one sees/hears on sites, but its not as nasty and distorted either, and it is shockingly loud with an outboard source, like an ipod or CDP. Its got a tubey sound, quite rich.Anyway, I have actually proposed the same thing to my wife: maybe I should just use this thing at home instead of thousands of dollars of amps, speakers, etc.. I know it does not do what my home system does, but it is fun, and I enjoy music with it, and I find myself not caring about what it does not do. It gives me some trouble as to what I should upgrade, or downgrade in my home system.
By the by, I have moniters, and they sound magic on the right recordings, and I am currently looking to find something (probably moniters) that sounds good enough on ALL recordings.
are pure heaven in my listening room. I've tried many 3 way speakers and they all sound harsh.
What some of you and many more have perhaps found is the joy of listening to small monitors: 2-way bass reflex speakers.
It took me 20 years to realize that if you can't play ALL of your CD's on the system, it's not really making music. I went from high dollar JM Labs to Spendors and am in musical heaven. You can't fault the JMLabs from an audiophile view point, and they sounded absolutly fantastic....on 3 cd's I owned. That was on the speaker side, now I wonder about the electronic side too!
I went from Genesis Vs/Pass Labs to an NHT Xd system. At an msrp of $6000, they're not quite cheap, but a lot smaller and much easier to position, and much kinder to a larger range of my CDs. They sound *great*. Really great. They can be used in a variety of positions, and are easy to move (just in case this house doesn't turn out to be "your home"). They will easily fill your room. The coolest part is, there is no longer a "sweet spot" - walk around the room and the sound remains fantastic.I actually came out ahead in the deal, as the Xds are active and don't need an amp. Check 'em out if you can find a pair to demo.
I can relate. Me and a couple of friends attended an open house at a dealer's showroom last weekend. A distributer brought a bunch of goodies to check out, among them the Von Schweikert VR4 Sr. and DB99. But he also brought a small pair of Usher S520s which were sequestered away in a much smaller room with modest electronics. Funny thing is, we (and I mean just about everyone there) were digging on those little Ushers more than the megabuck gear in the big room. Oh, the DB99s sounded very good. But those little gems were kickin some major ass next door. And for the price of admission, they are a genuine steal. Just makes one wonder about the law of diminishing returns and really how much it takes to enjoy the music.
I, too, have about 20 years of experience in playing around with systems and have discovered that price has no direct relation with fun factor.Downgraded from a pair of Alon floorstanders to bookshelf Vienna Acoustics Haydn Grand. Yes, of course, there were deficiencies all over and the bottom octave was missing but the fun factor was higher to me with the VA.
It's something like you sell your Lexus and drive a Mini Cooper instead. In everyway, the Lexus is a better engineered car but the Mini puts a grin on your face when you arrive at the destination.
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