I think two of the guys look mighty familiar to Ron and Stevie
Yo Steve, looks like I'll be hitting the Bay Area this November after all.
I think two of the guys look mighty familiar to Ron and Stevie
Yo Steve, looks like I'll be hitting the Bay Area this November after all.
when exactly Jack as I will be out of the country from Nov3-16
Steve Williams
aka oneobgyn
There's ALWAYS another Steve Williams BUT there's only "oneobgyn"
Industry Affiliation........Lamm Dealer
He may be the size of a postage stamp, and his speakers may be small by big passive monolith standards, but it's my kind of passive design; a "augmented full-range" with the crossovers well out of the way of the critical midrange. I can't help but believe that it would be better still, though, if it were active, and the bottoms were true subs - active, moveable, with separate volume, phase and crossover controls. Control and flexibility is good where listening rooms are concerned. And passive, even with the crossovers pushed high enough a low enough to cause little trouble, still cause enough to necessitate over-engineering of amplification.
They are beautiful things, though, and for passive, the right idea in my view. Vienna Acoustics' top tier uses a similar approach of a full range driver augmented by a passive sub and a super tweeter. I've heard the TOTL, "The Music." Great clarity and coherency in the mids. Among the best passives I've every heard, at any price, but the same issue; a need - or at least the perception of a need - for unecessarily massive, expensive amplification.
Tim
In high-end audio, you can't even fight an opinion with the facts.
Great shot and those VR11s looming in the background like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey....woah!Originally Posted by nephilim
How about this one Gavin.
He's definitely your kind of guy Tim. His personal loudspeakers are 6 way fully active VR-9s. One can actually order them this way but the cost of quality amplification is still prohibitive not just in money terms but floor space as well. His buddy Nelson Pass has done the same for himself but I don't know if there are any takers. I wish you could come over and hear my system now. At this point Frank might get a seizure. The room/system is only 2dB off DIN concert hall standards and that's in the low bass where my acoustician intentionally gave me some bass lift by virtue of an extra .3ms of RT. Otherwise it's practically flat (as conforming to the said weighting) in an area 9 feet wide and 10 deep. It's crazy. You can walk in between the loudspeakers, almost behind them, turn around and get the soundstage in reverse. If you look at the pictures, you'll see that the speakers are pointed almost straight ahead, a good 10.5 feet apart. That's some seriously nutty off axis response across the full spectrum. On axis measures flat unweighted past 20kHz. The mids are crossed over so high all the tweeter gives off is some shimmer and the super tweets some air, this was not the case when these speakers were in their original form.
I have yet to hear any active system play this cleanly at high volumes. Then again I'm tri-amped so in that sense I might be cheating.
Sounds fabulous. Wish I could swing by for a listen. I took a peek at your system in your profile, by the way. I love "Apple Airport Express" in the middle of that list!
Active can get pretty space and cost prohibitive when you're talking about non-integrated systems, particularly 3-way and up. That's a lot of amplification. But when they're built to be active and the amps are built for the drivers, cost doesn't have to be outrageous at all. Because each amp only has to drive one driver, and is matched to the load of that one driver, there is rarely the need for the heavy iron that is common in high-end amps that are necessarily over-built to be ready for anything you throw at them.
Tim
In high-end audio, you can't even fight an opinion with the facts.
Now you're talking, Jack. This is what it's all about and I'm very pleased for you that it's all come together. When you get a system working at this level it almost seems miraculous, but really the answer is that you've got psychoacoustics working for, rather than against you. Going back a little in time, this is exactly what Vince has been going on about, when most here were giving him a hard time ...
Frank
I'm going to be there when you aren't. Darn it. I'm supposed to be there Nov 4 to 8 then Vegas for the fight.
It really boils down to implementation again Tim. As we know, every solution creates it's own problems. In the case of a self powered loudspeaker with that many plate amps, granted the plate amps are all very low in distortion and are neutral (that alone is a big one there) we have to look at the configuration required to give flat response from 20Hz to 20kHz let alone 100kHz to 16Hz. One plate amp for the 15 inch sub alone is a 1kW one. The midbass amps would need to be 300 to 500 watts, the mids which are 100dB efficient you could do with very little, same for the tweeters. Still, how are you going to distribute power among them to make sure each are getting the amperage they require from the wall exactly when they need them? Each AC to DC power transformer begins to resemble the inefficiency of inductors if they are sharing the same line even if it is a 20A one. The transformers are converting electrical power to heat, same banana. On a heavy bass transient, the sub plate amp would rob the tweeter amp of power. Sounds familiar. To fix this you'd have to multiply the power inlets and have multiple power cords running into more lines. Suddenly external active makes a lot more sense and actually so does a well implemented passive crossover. Not all "overbuilt" amps are expensive. We're not so sensitive in the deep bass region so a monster QSC, Crown or Crest would do a great job for relatively little money for that.
There are differences between proper XOs and what you will normally find. Most glaring is the use of thin trace PCBs to cut costs. The use of point to point wiring or heavy trace PCBs alone cuts down on a lot of non-linearities and electrical inneficiency. Also, we have to remember that caps don't just block DC, they are energy storage devices that if looked at closely bear more of a resemblance to batteries than anything else. Just like the caps in an amp or an overspec'd Toroid on an amp, they release needed energy and allow for headroom. A proper passive XO will have paralleled or bypassed caps of different values, like what Gary does on his amps, for both large and fast discharge ability. The downside is, again like a battery, caps need time to get charged up. It's the same thing for amps where charging up goes hand in hand with thermal stability, aka "warmed up". I'm getting dangerously close to divulging some proprietary knowledge here so I'll shut my trap. Whew.
I do not disagree with you on small and medium actives but big actives are a different story. We've had this discussion before I think
Remember that I'm a certified acoustician Frank and a behavioral science grad (applications for business). I haven't separated psychology, psychoacoustics and physics since I got a rudimentary handle on all three. This makes me more skeptical than most but I never gave Vince a hard time. I was always happy for him. If Vince was given a hard time, it was more I believe because of his penchant for being, shall I say, absolutely certain all the time.
I may have hit a new high and am currently floating on cloud nine but I can't in good conscience say I've got perfection even if many people have heard my system and expressed their desire to move into my basement permanently
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