Ron’s New System

[PeterA]

I disagree strongly with this statement. Numerous components in audio sold today to my ears are edgy or bright or analytical.


I do not know what is your quantification of "change the game." I know that the 6dB slope crossovers were causing most, if not all, of the edginess.

Everyone knows that speaker position can change the sound.

Ron, I am glad to read that you are once again satisfied with the sound of your new system. Did you ever try Ralph's suggestion of adding a small capacitor to the input of your amps to limit the bass going into them? I might have missed your report on that experiment. Thank you.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, I am glad to read that you are once again satisfied with the sound of your new system.

Thank you!

Did you ever try Ralph's suggestion of adding a small capacitor to the input of your amps to limit the bass going into them? I might have missed your report on that experiment. Thank you.

Yes, I did. In concept I think Ralph's suggestion was a great one, and I agree with the technical point behind it.

At a point in time I was suspecting that the Italians were clipping or distorting, and that that was the reason for the edginess. I used a very cheap high pass filter from Amazon.

Initially I thought this cheap high pass filter was helping with the edginess by relieving the SET amplifier of having to reproduce frequencies below 250Hz. But this might have been expectation bias, because upon longer-term listening and switching back-and-forth I decided the sound was actually less edgy without this cheap capacitor in series with the signal.

Thinking that relieving the SET amplifier of having to produce frequencies below 250 Hz still made sense I commissioned Phil Marchand to prepare short interconnect jumpers containing an expensive capacitor that I sourced.

Presently, with the Italians driving the midrange/tweeter ribbons I am not hearing any clipping, and I don't think Marty heard any clipping at typical listening SPL.

So I have not actually tried the expensive high pass filters. If I am not hearing an actual problem, nothing good is going to come from inserting an unnecessary capacitor in the signal path.

 

[Holmz]

I disagree strongly with this statement. Numerous components in audio sold today to my ears are edgy or bright or analytical.


I do not know what is your quantification of "change the game." I know that the 6dB slope crossovers were causing most, if not all, of the edginess.

Everyone knows that speaker position can change the sound.

Usually when 6dB slopes are used it requires much better drivers.
So one reason for higher slopes is to save money for the speaker manufacturer.

 

[bonzo75]

Usually when 6dB slopes are used it requires much better drivers.
So one reason for higher slopes is to save money for the speaker manufacturer.

If Ron wants to use SETs and 6db slopes, he should get a dual woofer front loaded Altec

 

[bonzo75]

I don't think it took anything like a miracle to remove the edginess of the tweeter that Ron was experiencing. Uros got it right,. For reasons I don't quite understand, somebody thought it was a good idea to uses a 6 db/octave crossover into the tweeters rather than the 12 db/octave crossover that came with the original speaker. I almost passed out when I saw the tweeter excursion when using the 6 db/octave crossover. I thought the tweeters were going to launch out of the cabinet as their excursion was easily +/- 1 inch. Distortion had to be in the 5-10% range! Once the correct 12 dB/octave crossover was re-installed, the tweeter performance, drive by that Italian parallel SET amps was just superb. Violins in particular were sweet and wonderful with the "breath of life" of the real thing. That ribbon tweeter with those amps were deeply satisfying, at least to my ears. Bottom line- Frankenstein lives! And it sounds pretty darned good as well.

What I don't understand is if this was so obvious how was he listening to it all this time (never mind I do).

 

[bonzo75]

Everyone knows that speaker position can change the sound.

In which case why were those couple of inches not tried before in such an active audio room (active in terms of the owner and visitors are all active in this hobby, no one lazy not caring or not knowing the theory).

Or was it tried, but ithe listening of what sounds right and what does not wasn't carried out correctly before?

 

[DasguteOhr]

Usually when 6dB slopes are used it requires much better drivers.
So one reason for higher slopes is to save money for the speaker manufacturer.

A 6dB in front of the tweeter is a no go. Under certain circumstances the tweeter has to produce full volume at its resonance frequency (risk of destruction) if the phase is right, 12dB is always the better choice. A 6db filter only makes sense if the separation point is significantly higher.
an example if you want to have down to 2 khz output with 6db filter should separate at min. 4.5khz