Cure for brightness [message #64876] |
Wed, 24 November 2010 13:05 ![Go to next message Go to previous message](/forum/theme/AudioRoundTable/images/down.png) |
notben
Messages: 11 Registered: October 2009
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Chancellor |
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Hello gentlemen.
I have been living with a pair of 2pi monitor speakers that I built with birch ply for about six months now. Overall, they have at least a couple hundred hours or more on them.
I absolutely love their detail and resolution. The response is quick, the bass is clean, the midrange is extremely detailed with excellent definition in what I call the transition zones ( around 250, 2k & 6K hz respectively ). Overall I am very pleased. I especially love tube rolling with these speakers because I can instantly hear the dominant characteristics of different tubes. Very revealing for a monitor speaker.
However I still find them to be a tad bright and even a little fatiguing. Here is how I have tested the speakers to see if it is actually the speaker. I have tested them with two tube amps and two SS amp, two different tube preamps and one SS tuner. I have run them in three different rooms: my music room which is lightly treated with bass traps and some ceiling treatment (this is also my guitar room), my study (which is a very flat and dead room ), and my living room ( which is tolerable at best).
I have also cycled through different speaker cables -- mogami, anti-cable, tributaries; and different RCA's -- anti-cable, monster, radio shack.
The brightness follows the speaker.
So now I want to try a few things to see if I can find the culprit or maybe tame it a little bit.
1. I am thinking about trying a different cap on the tweeter. It currently has the 10uf Solen that shipped with it. I may try an Obbligato Gold Premium, a Mundorf Supreme (if I feel like spending $90), or maybe a motor run if I can mount it in the speaker.
2. Could I have damaged one of the tweeters? I can't hear any difference between the two speakers. One of my preamps, a Bottlehead Foreplay, has separate volume controls and I can't hear any real difference between the two, but I don't want to rule out anything.
So, I could try a new or different set of tweeters.
3. The most drastic and time consuming thing would be to build some MDF cabinets to compare.
Any ideas or opinions of what I could try or test please share them. Thanks.
- Benton
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