Posted by hurdy_gurdyman [ 4.229.195.172 ] on April 01, 2005 at 20:14:14:
I had an eye opening experience over the last couple of days. I’ve been using a 1964 H.H.Scott integrated tube amp driving a pair of Klipsch Heresies for some time now (with separate subwoofer.) I decided to dig out my old harman-kardon citation 16 ss amp and see what it would do with the Herseys. I used an old Marantz ss receiver for a preamp. I was shocked at the difference. The Heresys with the old Scott amp sounded very well balanced, especially after lowering the mid-horns output by about 3 dB. With the citation 16 driving them they became unlistenable! The bass was much leaner and the highs and upper mids more pronounced. The sound became vary grating and sibilant. I tried lowering the tweeter output and played around with the crossover and got it better, but not good enough. Next I decided to dig out my PA monitors, a pair of EV sx100’s. These have a12” Electro-Voice EVM-12 woofer with a horn tweeter crossed at 1800 Hz (I think.) The sound was superb! I’d tried the EV’s with the Scott a year or so back and thought they sounded a bit muddy in the mids. Not with the harman-kardon! This sounds really great (and this coming from a tubaholic!) I’ve always known that some speakers like tubes better and some like ss better, but I never dreamed that it could make such a difference in how the frequency balance sounded.
Now I have some serious thinking on which one to keep listening to. It is kinda nice to have 200 watts a channel driving 99.5 dB sensitivity speakers, even if they do only go down to 80 Hz (that’s what subs are for.)
Dave
[ General Forum ] [ Help ]