GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Jessie Dazzle Project

Post Subject: Balancing act; Act IIPosted by jessie.dazzle on: 1/10/2010

First: Anyone with a pair of 8 Ohm Fane Studio 8Ms for sale may contact me (contact info available by clicking on my user name in the blue column on the left of the page).

In answer to Romy's comments:
I agree that there is a deterioration in sound quality which seems proportional to the amount of attenuation used; I was not using a lot.

I say was because last night I bypassed all attenuators and sat down to compare. I hadn't heard the system without attenuators for about a month. Yes it is more alive with no attenuation, and good recordings sound wonderful. Dynamically compressed recordings sound horrible.

Some time this summer, in the name of education, I started an experiment on myself; for 3 months straight, I listened to nothing but classical recordings. Then, for the past two months, everything other than classical. The fact that non-classical recordings are often more dynamically compressed, may explain my liking the effect of the attenuators; I was, for the first time, able to listen to, and appreciate the material on dynamically compressed recordings.

The root of what prompted me to experiment with attenuation, is in fact the system's absence of real mid-bass; it currently produces only "fake" mid-bass. "Faking" is achieved by running the extreme lower-bass units up into mid-bass territory, while running the upper-bass horns as low as they'll go. There solution does not completely fill the "hole". The addition of the 40Hz bass horns will solve this issue.

As for balancing the amplitude between channels by driving them from different taps: I drive the upper bass horns form the 16 Ohm taps, and everything else from the 8 Ohm taps. An 8 Ohm versoin of the upper-bass drivers would allow driving everything from one pair of taps, which would be ideal. I did try using the 4 Ohm taps to drive the S2s; they did not respond well.

In response to Paul's comment regarding the possibility the upper-bass drivers might benefit from more power: I could easily try this (using the amps that currently drive the extreme lower-bass units), but given the sensitivity of the drivers, they shouldn't need it... They are simply a bit less sensitive than the super sensitive S2s. What might be interesting would be to drive them via their own amps putting an attenuator inline ahead of the amps that drive the mid an upper range horns. I could imagine running the 40Hz horns from this same additional pair of amps. If results were good, it would mean finding a way to drive 3 pairs of amps from a single preamp; I see no easy way to do this with my current preamp.

Conclusion: I need to get busy and finish the 40Hz horns.

jd*

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site