| Pi Studio 2, piezo shout, WAF and a first impression [message #45872] |
Wed, 24 November 2004 13:08  |
wlutke
Messages: 10
Registered: May 2009
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Chancellor |
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I've got my Pi twos up and running after a week of building/finishing/painting and another ten days waiting for the paint to fully cure. My first ever woodworking project - screwed, glued, sealed, sanded, primed and about four coats of paint. A can of primer and a can of topcoat for each. More on that later. At the primer stage I hooked one up to check out the sound. You see, I had searched here (literally) and there on the web and had come across the great shouting piezo debate. Hmmm. "Well", I think, "It sounds good at really low volume but anything more and it sounds unbearably hard". Like bad acoustics can do. My wife agreed. Oh well. Kept on and finished the project, with dark blue Hammerite brand rust preventative paint with powdered glass in it. That turned out really well. The Hammerite has a textured glossy finish that works well with the porous MDF, and the glass gives it a kind of inner glow. In the mean while I ordered some caps and resistors from Welborne to tame the shout. OK, the paint cures and in go the drivers, sans caps and resistors because they haven't arrived yet and I can't wait. What the heck, fire em up! What's this? The left speaker is weak sounding and lacks bass? I swap speakers etc. and the bottom line is... bad input connection at the amp! Maybe you all guessed by now that the left channel is what I had hooked up for the trial run earlier. So they are sounding just great now, no shout. In fact they are looking and sounding so good that my wife asked if we could keep them inside (I built them for some Bottlehead Paramours on order for the garage). They have speed, air, detail and plenty of surprisingly tight bass. The center image is well focused, somewhat laid back, and side to side there is an actual soundstage. Depth? Sort of. You can't have everything at about $200 complete. Sweetness? Yes indeed. Treble? Not the smoothest on top where the cymbals live, and slightly forward, but certainly not annoying or intrusive. Pace and rhythym - you bet! Overall these speakers make the music fun and interesting. Now for the Paramours...
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| Re: Pi Studio 2, piezo shout, WAF and a first impression [message #45874 is a reply to message #45872] |
Wed, 24 November 2004 13:43  |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18792
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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Thanks for the feedback on the two π's. If you want to swap out those piezo's sometime, you can go for a pair of Vifa DX25's. I'm partial to the KSN1038's because I've used them for nearly 30 years. The one π's and two π's have been just like yours for almost thirty years, and they're like an old friend to me. But the dome tweeter sounds very nice too. When you get those Paramours running, spring ninety bucks on a pair of Electro-Harmonix 2A3 tubes. Don't consider this as an upgrade, consider it a mandatory component. Keep the Valve-Arts in the box as backups. It's not that the Valve-Arts sound bad, but about half of them pop like a Geiger-counter. The Electro-Harmonix don't, and they're just a better constructed tube. The Valve Art's will glow blue almost from the start, whereas the Electro-Harmonix tubes will take about 100 hours before they develop the blue haze. Not that it matters to the sound, but it is beautiful to see.  The glow is modulated by the music, and it dances like a flame. I like that part very much; It adds to the romance and mystique. All-in-all, I think you'll find your two π and Paramour combination to be very pleasant and it wil bring you alot of enjoyment for years to come.
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