Where does the magic live? Full Range? Tubes?

[mwhsmith]

Hi Boys and Girls, thank you for this fabulous forum! I'm (obviously) new here, and hoping to learn how to squeeze musical magic out of a limited budget.

Building speakers, modifying amps, and looking for a way around the typical price tag of deliciousness in sound are ongoing itches. So I'm curious if the august members of this forum have a sense where that magic, the artfulness -- is typically hiding? Good (balanced, detailed, neutral) speakers seem as likely to fall on the their face as a telephone in terms of life and emotionally engaging space... Likewise, I've been disappointed in my current tube amp (AAPJ, 3 1/2 watts per channel), which in many ways is amazing: dead silent noise floor, silky smooth, detail, air and extension in spades; but the emotion, the life, and the imaging of it are... flat. Could phase issues with my speakers do that? Are single-driver speakers that much more likely to bring that magic?

Thanks in advance for your opinions!

Matthew

[mr sneff]

Hi Matthew, welcome to AoS. What speakers and other equipment are you using at the moment? I have a very small listening room and I use a pair of single driver speakers, which I'm very happy with. Your best bet is to start a thread in one of the forum sub-sections, Blank Canvas maybe, we're a friendly lot and somebody will probably have some helpful suggestions, many of us have limited budgets and have taken the 'pre-loved' route :)

[Werner Berghofer]

Matthew,

So I'm curious if the august members of this forum have a sense where that magic, the artfulness -- is typically hiding?
in the music, and in the mind of the listener.

Werner.

[StanleyB]

Hi Matthew, welcome to AoS. Always good to see another member joining from outside Europe.



Likewise, I've been disappointed in my current tube amp (AAPJ, 3 1/2 watts per channel), which in many ways is amazing: dead silent noise floor, silky smooth, detail, air and extension in spades; but the emotion, the life, and the imaging of it are... flat.
You'll have to move up the power output scale for that extra bit that you are currently missing. I find that 10W for a valve amp is just about the minimum to get really excited about as far as overall presentation goes. 20W is preferred. Or 100W if you got a pair of Tannoy Westministers, understanding partner, solid house construction, and deaf neighbours.

[walpurgis]

Hello Matthew, welcome to AOS.

Seems you are looking for exactly the things we all are. Nobody has quite got there yet, but some get close. There are AOS members with some very fine sounding systems.

As for single, full range speakers, they can sound very special indeed and are not necessarily hugely expensive (but can be). The problem is that although most may not enormous power, they tend to demand very high quality sources and amplification. That can be costly.

Anyway, tell us what music you listen to.


Enjoy the forum,
Geoff.

[mwhsmith]

Hello and thank you for your replies and your warm welcomes!

David, I will peruse Blank Canvas this evening, thank you for the pointer.

Werner, I see your point clearly. I think that my system sounds great but there's something missing and I'm realizing that there's a lot more I don't know than I thought... my primary system makes me smile but when I want to fall into a piece of music, in spite of all the parts being there including presence and atmosphere, there isn't emotional impact. It sounds great, but not alive. I was blown away recently by a friend's temporary system (he's in the process of building a beautiful house, so while it's mostly an empty space, it didn't seem harshly reflective... straw bale walls I suppose tame that surprisingly well). His temporary system is a pair of powered computer speakers and an iPod! They weren't large sounding but the conveyance of depth and life was annoyingly delicious, and soundstage was coherent and large. Presumably A) a good little system and B) benefiting tremendously from single drivers?

Stanley, agreed on the flea-power limitations, but it's a surprisingly large amount of sound with smooth, extended treble and perfectly balanced, deep bass. The speakers are bass-reflex, made by me, with Usher 8" carbon-paper woofers and Morel MDT 30 silk tweeters, passive crossovers made with quality parts and fiddled with over the past few years to optimize. They sound better than they should! They do prefer a bit more power, which they get when I switch to a digital amp I've also been fiddling with, a Tripath 2020-based Lepai with an upgraded power supply and optimized capacitors throughout. Detail is astonishing, with zero transistor-based granularity, but that bass extension goes from inexplicably good to just good.

Geoff: music tastes are borderline indiscriminate, with the primary criteria being "not stupid" (subjective, I know). I love good production value when it doesn't smother the human element, I love music that paints huge with small brushes, I love straight up jazz and bebop, many flavors of classical, Latin music from folk to big band,lots of Brazilian music Andean music; for more contemporary music I love Wilco , Radiohead, Tom Waits, Thomas Dybdahl, Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Jolie Holland, Lucinda Williams, Taj Mahal, Josh Rouse; one of my favorite albums for putting a stereo through its paces is Thunderbird by Casandra Wilson. I'm chewing at the bit & budget to build a Transmission-Line or Quarter-Wave, full-range pair of speakers, based on Planet-10 modified Fostex or Mark Audio drivers. I do need to explore better sources, I foolishly gave my Denon/Ortofon, cherry-wood turntable away a couple or years ago, and have been relying on high bit-rate digital through an older Macintosh computer that, at the time at least, was known for audio quality. Other amps to play with include a 60's Dynaco 35w/channel, integrated tube amp (waiting for time & money to extensively upgrade), and an Elite 4-channel monster that served me well for a long time but now sits on a shelf. I've also accumulated a collection of drivers, from Seas and Scan Speak to Pearless and Dayton. Still wanting to crack through the cone breakup of the magnesium SEAS-Excel drivers and unlock the absence of distortion promised...

cheers all, and thanks again!

[mwhsmith]

PS.: I'm a furniture maker, so building speakers is not a stretch to available tools & skills

[Yomanze]

Hi Matthew, welcome to AoS. Always good to see another member joining from outside Europe.


You'll have to move up the power output scale for that extra bit that you are currently missing. I find that 10W for a valve amp is just about the minimum to get really excited about as far as overall presentation goes. 20W is preferred. Or 100W if you got a pair of Tannoy Westministers, understanding partner, solid house construction, and deaf neighbours.

Couldn't have said it better myself especially with the OP's speakers.

[Yomanze]

Hello and thank you for your replies and your warm welcomes!

David, I will peruse Blank Canvas this evening, thank you for the pointer.

Werner, I see your point clearly. I think that my system sounds great but there's something missing and I'm realizing that there's a lot more I don't know than I thought... my primary system makes me smile but when I want to fall into a piece of music, in spite of all the parts being there including presence and atmosphere, there isn't emotional impact. It sounds great, but not alive. I was blown away recently by a friend's temporary system (he's in the process of building a beautiful house, so while it's mostly an empty space, it didn't seem harshly reflective... straw bale walls I suppose tame that surprisingly well). His temporary system is a pair of powered computer speakers and an iPod! They weren't large sounding but the conveyance of depth and life was annoyingly delicious, and soundstage was coherent and large. Presumably A) a good little system and B) benefiting tremendously from single drivers?

Stanley, agreed on the flea-power limitations, but it's a surprisingly large amount of sound with smooth, extended treble and perfectly balanced, deep bass. The speakers are bass-reflex, made by me, with Usher 8" carbon-paper woofers and Morel MDT 30 silk tweeters, passive crossovers made with quality parts and fiddled with over the past few years to optimize. They sound better than they should! They do prefer a bit more power, which they get when I switch to a digital amp I've also been fiddling with, a Tripath 2020-based Lepai with an upgraded power supply and optimized capacitors throughout. Detail is astonishing, with zero transistor-based granularity, but that bass extension goes from inexplicably good to just good.

Geoff: music tastes are borderline indiscriminate, with the primary criteria being "not stupid" (subjective, I know). I love good production value when it doesn't smother the human element, I love music that paints huge with small brushes, I love straight up jazz and bebop, many flavors of classical, Latin music from folk to big band,lots of Brazilian music Andean music; for more contemporary music I love Wilco , Radiohead, Tom Waits, Thomas Dybdahl, Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Jolie Holland, Lucinda Williams, Taj Mahal, Josh Rouse; one of my favorite albums for putting a stereo through its paces is Thunderbird by Casandra Wilson. I'm chewing at the bit & budget to build a Transmission-Line or Quarter-Wave, full-range pair of speakers, based on Planet-10 modified Fostex or Mark Audio drivers. I do need to explore better sources, I foolishly gave my Denon/Ortofon, cherry-wood turntable away a couple or years ago, and have been relying on high bit-rate digital through an older Macintosh computer that, at the time at least, was known for audio quality. Other amps to play with include a 60's Dynaco 35w/channel, integrated tube amp (waiting for time & money to extensively upgrade), and an Elite 4-channel monster that served me well for a long time but now sits on a shelf. I've also accumulated a collection of drivers, from Seas and Scan Speak to Pearless and Dayton. Still wanting to crack through the cone breakup of the magnesium SEAS-Excel drivers and unlock the absence of distortion promised...

cheers all, and thanks again!

Regarding cracking through SEAS Excel cone break up you could do what Amphion do, and drop the crossover to 1.6kHz or below with a tweeter waveguide to increase its efficiency and thus power handling down low.

[mwhsmith]

Thank you for the link, Neil, Amphion makes some beautiful speakers! I didn't see any models that used the magnesium Excel drivers, though - Aluminium cones tend, as far as I understand, to be a good bit more forgiving than magnesium... I've fussed with notch filters and gotten close, but they are so far above my head. I'm intrigued by the waveguides, do you know if the tweeters are selected for lower efficiency at the outset, or are they padded down to match them to the main driver after the waveguide boost? I'll have to review the specs on my various tweeters to see if they begin lower than my Excel woofers (I have two W14's and two W17's; in tweeters, a pair of Sonotex Excel tweeters and various Morels that have the clarity I'm looking for). But I think most of them are more efficient out of the box.

Thanks again!

Matthew

[mwhsmith]

Wow, Neil, I just found Ole Lund Christensen's explanation of the tweeter waveguide. Brilliant! Thank you for the pointer, I'm definitely going to do something along those lines with the Excels. Maybe even prior to a T-L fullrange...

thanks!

Matthew

[Yomanze]

Thank you for the link, Neil, Amphion makes some beautiful speakers! I didn't see any models that used the magnesium Excel drivers, though - Aluminium cones tend, as far as I understand, to be a good bit more forgiving than magnesium... I've fussed with notch filters and gotten close, but they are so far above my head. I'm intrigued by the waveguides, do you know if the tweeters are selected for lower efficiency at the outset, or are they padded down to match them to the main driver after the waveguide boost? I'll have to review the specs on my various tweeters to see if they begin lower than my Excel woofers (I have two W14's and two W17's; in tweeters, a pair of Sonotex Excel tweeters and various Morels that have the clarity I'm looking for). But I think most of them are more efficient out of the box.

Thanks again!

Matthew

I really don't agree with notch filters as they are a band aid where there are more elegant alternatives, like dropping the crossover frequency or just using a different driver. Amphion use 2nd order crossovers max, no additional filters.

Magnesium drivers aren't going to break up at 1.6kHz, it's around 2kHz that you will run into issues, there are many kit based waveguides out there that you can use. Will try to dig some out for you that I liked the look of.

EDIT: as far as I know Amphion drivers are produced to their spec, no L-Pads to attenuate their response.

[Ali Tait]

SET's and Open Baffles can sound very nice indeed..

[Haselsh1]

As Werner quite rightly says, the magic lies within.

[mimoser]

just added an APPJ N3 to my main system as well and was a bit underwhelmed by it myself.
1) lowly Yamaha solidstate receiver gives faster transients on Monitor Audio 7s
2) Monitor Audio 7s (second pair, side by side) kind of "strangle" sound of APPJ
3) LEAK Sandwich 150 sound good, but wooly/boxy on APPJ
4) Wharfedale 504s sound kind of right: detailed, woodwinds "breathe" more than on Yamaha/MA combo, not as much as through LEAKs
5) Transients on APPJ are not quite as "fast" as on Yammie (tubes?)
… as you might ask: The TT input goes through a BTE passive into the Yamaha and the APPJ, so can switch in realtime and A/B compare.
MAs and Wharfedales have "same" efficiency, but Wharfedales have lower min. amplifier requirements (96/98 db, 20/25W), so numbers are just numbers nothing else, how a speaker sounds obviously depends on other things …
my present succus is tubes do sound magic, but a little bit "slower" than solid state circuits. It’s a different sound perhaps for different kinds of music …
… personally I get the impression that adding fullrange speakers might emphasize the magic, but add more "slow".
btw should you build some 3" cabinets on a dime budget, I might be interested, I miss the skills and the tools to build some myself, but am curious as to the above theory!
;-)
Michael

PS: driver is a Genalex GoldLion, power Shuguang (red logo) and they took some hours to "open up"

[Andrei]

Hi Matthew
I see we share the same swimming pool.
I say the magic is in you and in Beethoven. The performers or Hi-Fi gear we love so much is a means to an end.