| Enlightening experience! [message #1430] |
Fri, 01 April 2005 19:14  |
hurdy_gurdyman
Messages: 416
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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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
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| Re: Try this experiment [message #1442 is a reply to message #1438] |
Sat, 02 April 2005 08:38  |
hurdy_gurdyman
Messages: 416
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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I'll have to pick up some resistors from Rat Shack someday and try that. In the meantime, I'm soaking up the sound I'm getting from the EV's now.
Next serious project is to build a sub box to better match my sub driver to the EV's. The way it is, it's having trouble keeping up. Not clean at lower frequencies. That what I get for building a bandpass box for a driver made for BR. I calculated the box size to maxumize bass extension and lost some sensitivity. Big mistake. We learn from our mistakes.Dave
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| Re: Enlightening experience! [message #1446 is a reply to message #1430] |
Sat, 02 April 2005 15:08 |
Martin
Messages: 220
Registered: May 2009
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Master |
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HG man, Kind of what I have been saying for years. People who use SS amps tend to get very good results by adding a BSC filter, they can tone down the excessive mids and highs (rising resposne) to get a very good balanced performance. Lots of flexibility in tuning/tweaking the speaker/amp system. People using tubes have not had as good a success rate with the BSC. This is probably a combination of the speakers sounding better with the amp's higher output impedance with no BSC and/or the tube amp running out of gas trying to drive the BSC in series with the speaker to the SPL levels desired. Nothing like extra power from a SS amp, it allows you to add BSC to bring down the rising high end and still have plenty of power to drive the speakers. With the low power tube amp, it can't drive the BSC and speaker load resulting in soft clipping and the life being sucked out of the performance. The problem is the low power output from the amp and not the BSC or the speaker. I like the recommendation to add a little series resistance to the Klipsch speakers. That should really help the harsh/shrill SPL performance become much better balanced. Martin
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| Re: Enlightening experience! [message #1450 is a reply to message #1430] |
Sun, 03 April 2005 14:16 |
hurdy_gurdyman
Messages: 416
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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For those interested I thought I'd post links to both the amp (harman-kardon citation 16) and speaker (EV Sx100) that I'm now using. I'm sure many have never seen or heard of them, as the amp is old and the speaker is for pro use. http://www.cardinalproaudio.com/whatsnew/archive/ev_sx100.htm http://f2.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/QEtQQu4jx1wMXUXtblNKBicuKEJ5GBbQS5smJSmB3AjKcbavY9IkgQCLsOpC0lJajZANt9CXt6tq_oTvA5aJF3FYcacgHfox-rnoC0YyDSs/CitationSixteenOM.pdf If the address for the amp doesn't work, try here. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vintageHarmanKardon/files/ Scroll down to CitationSixteenOM.pdf 617 KB
Later,
Dave 
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