This amp will also do 20Hz-20Khz full power.
SET amp owners thread
- Thread starter bonzo75
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This amp will also do 20Hz-20Khz full power.
My SET is 18 W driving 105 dB 16 ohm corner horn speakers in a small room. I think I use two or 3 W maximum when I really crank it. Frequency response is about 35 Hz to 15,000 Hz.
As someone who apparently is insensitive to the various potential sonic and timing issues arising from bi-amping with different amplifiers I have cottoned (stubbornly) to this approach. (It is a work in progress.)
I think Ralph isn't too keen on SET doing much below 100Hz.
Separately, why would you be content with getting only 35Hz in room?
Because for realism 35 Hz is sufficient. It is more important to have sufficient, balanced bass, than deeper, boomy bass, depending on room, with as less a treatment as possible.
Agree. 35Hz of 'proper' bass is really good. ~35Hz is the lowest C# on a piano with only 4 notes below that. An organ, piano, harp (barely) and contrabass sarrusophone (barely) can get that low but no other acoustic instruments go that far. A double bass and a bass tuba can get to around 41Hz.
A contrabass sarrusophone. Pretty rare ... but there's one in Scheherazade!
Each of us has his priorities. You like maximum woofage but love your girl and guitar. I want my cello to sound natural within the constraints of my room and decor. I am perfectly content to not have a four tower maxi system in my room.
He is very predictable, he will ask why do you think it is not more natural to have a system same size and depth as an orchestra?
Though he never answers why people who believe that line of thinking don’t simply build an array of speaker drivers with digital crossovers and room corrections and simply stream into it. With Atmos you can also get ceiling speakers to show depth of soundstage in a concert hall.
You could have stopped at "I think Ralph isn't too keen on SET." Don't think for a second though that his intentions are altruistic and that he just wants to save us from ourselves.
Most natural instruments don't go lower than around 40Hz. Only a couple of keys on a piano and pipe organ really. Still it also depends on how many dB down they are at 35Hz.
It’s better to have just 30hz - 35 Hz of the kind of more believable and authentic sounding bass that a really well implemented SET can do than 20 hz of a one note doof roof artificial kind of sounding bass that lesser amplification tends to deliver.
I find that a good SET within the context of acoustic instrument performance can display overall a more lifelike quality of bass over the more synthetic hifi’ish hyper-real bass that some amplification types typically render… everyone’s mileage on bass varies… I go cohesive lifelike quality over just an overt soul less disconnected quantity of bass when it comes to great music anytime.
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Shhh...you will start him off again and ruin a SET thread.
Yes reproduced music works on extrapolation. That's why disconnectedness that usually accompanies size and multidrivers (depending on driver mismatch and crossover) affects the extrapolation.
The reason dynamic range is important is that cohesive growth of the orchestral sound from small to large to small is what drives the realism, and why if you play orchestra in flat and compressed recordings in a 30ft by 20ft rectangle, you won't get the same realism. Both these reasons are also why smaller speakers like O96 do much better than compressed multicrossover larger cones like XVX in showing size of orchestra, provided you are playing good recordings. Not flat compressed ones, in which case the size on the XVX will be greater than the size of the stage on O96.
I suspect that the respondent will not be hearing much below 40Hz that is not Diffuse , 2 Dimensional and not accurate to a recording with a signal dipping below 40Hz , if that … the Vitavox CN-191’s are simply not designed that way .
Addendum : Cello range. Frequency Range. 65 Hz – 1.0 kHz. Strings. C G D A.
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Don't we want our systems to be able to reproduce faithfully the lowest register of piano?
I actually did not have in mind the low end of the frequency range of instruments, for the reason you write. I had in mind the reproduction of ambient cues (soundstage foundation cues), which is why some people use subwoofers like the Gobel Sovereign and the Wilson Benesch Torus/IGx.
Elaborate systems like Mike Lavigne's MM7s and all three AG Trio G3 with IGx systems I have heard which have a lot of low frequency woofage can reproduce that ambient information, and it contributes to realism. It is this information that Lloyd is always aiming for with his subwoofer thinking.
I appreciate that modest systems have to forgo the reproduction of this kind of low frequency audible and infrasonic information.
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And having heard them and liked them, there is also the Yamamura, Pnoe (single driver systems), altec 817, which are equally good and on some fronts better, and Leif's horn which is with woofers. There is no reason to have pursue subs - if the midbass horn rolls off at 75 - 80 hz, sure, if it goes to 35 or 40, not required.
Ron, it would be nice to have further extension that sounds natural and is possible within the confines of room size and aesthetics and budget, but that’s not what you asked me originally. Given the responses to your original w weuestion, you seem now to have suddenly changed the standard. This is what you wrote that started this current discussion.:
I answered this question about why I am content getting only 35 Hz in my room. Others have answered it too.
In a different room under different circumstances, I might like a pair of well, integrated and natural sounding subwoofers with my corner horns for the reasons you state, but in the meantime, I am perfectly content with my current configuration.
As this is a thread about SET, I did buy a second pair of ML2 amplifiers in the event that I someday move to a bigger room and want to experiment with appropriate subwoofers for greater extension and some missing information. I do not think I will ever pursue a four tower maxi system requiring solid state amplification to give me maximum woofage. I would pursue a very different approach.
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You asked @tima, but I couldn’t resist jumping in.
We all want our systems to reproduce the lowest register of a piano faithfully. However, just because a speaker is rated down to 35Hz doesn’t mean it outputs nothing below that point. All speakers will still produce lower frequencies, just with reduced output.
What really matters is the quality of the bass—its speed, articulation, and detail. If those qualities aren’t there, how deep it goes is irrelevant. Another crucial factor is how your room behaves. How deep can your room actually go, and how large would it need to be to support 20Hz without excessive treatment? Before demanding a speaker to reproduce 20Hz (or the lowest piano notes) faithfully, an audiophile should first ask: Is my room even capable of handling that? The answer for almost all of us is: probably not.
Given those realities, the most sensible approach is to choose a speaker that suits your room. For most spaces, that’s typically in the 30–40Hz range.
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