I went for a better amp for MiniMe because it’s summer, hot and I am listening MiniMe more than Macondo.

But!

As I said before the MiniMe post talks with Macondo (when I turn Macondo on) and it forces me to plug the MiniMe port with a pile of sacks. This is a tedious task… I have to admit that I thought to use the MiniMe with plugged port but it does not breathe right …

So, I wonder: what if I plug the whole foe port with some kind of passive radiator? Then I might still have the LF extension but the open hole will not act as a Helmholtz resonator.

I do not know how to deal with characteristics of passive radiators. If I look at drivers then I would go for something like Morel ECW 536

http://www.morelhifi.com/products/pdf/Woofers/EW/Specs%20sheet%20ECW%20536.pdf

I presume that with no vise coil and gup it would have 3 time mire exertions and even lower resonant frequency.

Hey, look what I found: 3’5” passive radiator with 30Hz own primary resonance! That is what doctor ordered!

http://www.tymphany.com/830878

Not to mention that this beauty costs $12!

Romy the Cat wrote:

Hey, look what I found: 3’5” passive radiator with 30Hz own primary resonance! That is what doctor ordered! http://www.tymphany.com/830878 Not to mention that this beauty costs $12! The Cat

What I mean is not sucks but rather socks, actually it both of them!

I got the passive radiators yesterday. They are very good and perfectly cover my MiniMe ports. The MiniMe with passive radiators is immune to Macondo sound and this is very good news. The said news that MiniMe with those passive radiators has much less bass extension, sure the bass is better quality but better quality bass is not exactly my objectives with MiniMe. So, I concluded that that for now will not be using the passive radiators but keep using the socks with wish I will plug the MiniMe ports when I would like to get the full quietly of the Macondo’s bass.

I might educate myself in future how to calculate and to tune speakers with passive radiators but for now I will leave it as is. I would like to get my new MiniMe amplifier and to see what will happen with bass. I have a feeling that the major problem with all of it that I have a power amp that does not do right bass to begin with… I just wish that I had my Lamm M1.1, that baby would set the things straight….

Romy the Cat wrote:

After some consideration I picked today Yamaha B-2 amp. It is V-FET from 1978, it might be interesting. Post Vince’s site or his shop info I might need to have B-2 serviced or modified. I think the 140W of B-2 might be good for my MiniMe, I just a bit afraid that it might run to hot…

Romy the Cat wrote:

I just wish that I had my Lamm M1.1, that baby would set the things straight…. The Cat

I thought the B1 was Yamaha's V-FET and the B2 was a later "hybrid", but I suppose both are Vintage Sufferer's wet dreams.  I have never heard either amp, anyway.

Yamaha B1 and B2 conceptually the same amp. B1 is made only with one polarity V-FETs and B2 with complementary plus and minus V-FETs. B1 has more power and does not have the sexy meter of B2. I have no idea how different the in sound. My B2 is virtually new but 30 years old. The signal switches practically do not work and need to be replaced. I did not open it, have no manual or circuitry. The guy who sold me the amp forgot to put any papers in the box and he will ship it to me next week. I use it as it is. I do not know if I will keep it.  I like the idea but it shall show some sound that I might find at least promising. The upper rage of the amp is fine but the bottom is desisted.  I do not know if it is how it shall be.

If I keep the amp and find why I skew up the whole bottom then I will start a new thread.

scooter wrote:

That is a nifty looking amp; it will be interesting to see how it works with the MiniMe and how well it heats your room this summer These guys are not Goodwin's but are an old school stereo shop that sells and refurbs 70s/80s solid state gear.  There is no showroom or salesmen, just a few work benches and gear stacked to the ceiling, somewhat like Ken Bernanky's shop, although slightly neater and slightly faster  Vince is an electrical engineer who has done some rather complicated refurb work for me, and did a good job; he worked for APT Holman and Scott in the 70s and I think is still there in some form, which is ideal for this task in my view.  Give the guy a few minutes to explain all your service alternatives as his suggestions are not always intuitive   The website is not pretty... Vince Naeve Audio Pros, Inc. 779 Mt. Auburn St. Watertown, MA 02472 617-926-8020 http://www.audioproz.com/AP.php

Scooter,

I met today Vince Naeve from Audio Pros. To make the long story short I run away from it as I was literally too scared – wish is not so easy to do. The official version was that expressed by Vince: “I am too smart for you”  but the real reason was that this guy is literally dungarees and I was physically afraid to have my equipment in there without adult supervision. Seeing what they do and herring what Vince was saying I literally did not allow him to touch anything! I think he is clearly diagnosable.

scooter wrote:

Sorry about that.  Vince has good days and bad days; sometimes he just does not get it and you did correct by running out.  Given his background in 80s solid state amps and your interesting piece of gear I thought he would have been quite motivated to provide you some creative solutions, rather than to (unsuccessfully) insult your intelligence.  Apologies for any inconvenience once again.

Playing with B-2 power amp I made an experiment and instead of loading to it the MiniMe Bass section I loaded the B-2 with Macondo’s bass arrays. I made add-hog attenuator and coil to EQ MiniMe MF with Macondo’s bass and gave some listening. It was nice but not the niceness of that result was something that very impressed me.

What very impressed me was the fact that I was such an idiot and absolutely voluntary deceived myself for a year. I am taking about the MiniMe Bass. I admit that I never meant to get MiniMe sound to any level of seriousness but playing the very same MiniMe with full-blow Macondo bass I suddenly realized that it turned out to vey very nice speaker if I do not use my MiniMe bass section. This little ported (and now with passive radiator) array that I built specifically for MiniMe coast me a lot of efforts and blood and the result might be conceded OK but in a wider scale of the suppressed ego the MiniMe bass  sounds like shit. I kind of accepted this shit as “it was just MiniMe” but using Macondo bass clearly showed that it not suppose to be this way.

The MiniMe bass, with it very sexy G10 enclosure is remarkably comfortable in my view. It is a thin column with 4 X 5” drivers.  One might argue that I am largely ignorant about ports and how to make them to sound “better”. I would not deny it, when those I did played with MiniMe’s post. The best I was able to get was still way out where I would consider is acceptable. Perhabs I used bad drivers or perhaps I have an native hypersensitivity to ported sound (particularly badly implemented) but a few bars of MiniMe placing supported by Macondo sealed bass made me to do the final action.

So, I kicked out the MiniMe original bass arrays out of my room. As a replacement I brought from my storage my old little seals enclosure with a single Scan-speak 21W/8555-00 driver. The 21W/8555 is a little brother of my bellowed 25W/8565-00. (I use 12 x 25W/8565-00 in Macondo array). The 21W/8555 is just 8”, has SD1 motor, magnificent paper cone with very particular Scan-speak suspension (that is hard to call rubber, even it is rubber) and has 20Hz resonance frequency.  The 21W/8555 has the same feeling as 10” 25W /8555 and I am known to be big sucker for those drivers. I do not have a big box for 21W/8555, probably it is 2-3 gallons – 4-6 times less then I would like to have, but it is what it is. So, I brought it from storage and connected it to MiniMe’s MF channel.  That was very nice. The MiniMe’s Utopia TN51 tweeter (that has became the hart of MiniMe) was bit more sensitive but I did calmed it down. The MiniMe’s MF driver is around the 21W/8555 sensitive so it is all nicely balanced. The 21W/8555 bass in the very small enclosure sound a bit “confined” and a bit too fast to my tasted but not frustrating sounding.

I made some test with B-2 driving the new MiniMe arrangement. I took under conservation the changed the MiniMe bass impedance and slightly re-biased the B-2 amps. Now I run it at 75mA and believe or not but loaded to the actual MiniMe I got a first clip at 190W! Considering that I run B-2 behind a voltage deviser that killed 12dB of gain you might understand that I have tremendous amount of power reserved.

With the sealed 21W/8555 bass my respect to MiniMe has revised. I also very pleased how the updated Yamaha B-2 behaves driving MiniMe. It truly has no typical SS nastiness and in fact it sounds much moderated and balance d– it turned out to be a very cool configuration.

Looking behind I have to note that whatever was my initial idea of MiniMe was completely failures. The G10 custom enclosure, the RAAL tweeter and JBL MF driver and 4x5” miniature line- array driver by a cool-running chip amp: nothing is used now and everything go to the storage to join the rest of my failed projects. I would not claim that the MiniMe that I ended up to be has too successful sound but I do like and accept what it is and… that already not too little. 

Ok, I have 200 posts in this thread. I was stated over a year back. Thanks for anyone consulted me and observed where my Pilot Acoustic Systems took me.  At this point, when the MiniMe result has settled to my satisfaction and when I am not going to change anything with my Pilot Systems MiniMe (because I like what it does) I would like to take a sober view to Sound that MiniMe offers, not even to the sound itself bun to the lessons the MiniMe teaches. The lessons are enumerated without any particular order, just as they came to my head. Despite that MiniMe is not serious speaker but the MiniMe lessons are no so laughable.

1)      Do you remember that ‘Romy the Cat’ have always insisted that in ANY playback the LF source must be outside the horizontal plane of MF source? Oh, boy - he was very much right! Playing with HF sound fields coming from the low-pass slope of bass channels it is possible to write amassing tricks into the presentation of sound.

2)      Glory to the mighty Utopia TN51 tweeter! It is not perfect tweeter but in dynamics it beats anything out there. The stinky MiniMe with around sub 89dB sensitively holds its own very confidently in perception of dynamic against 109dB sensitive Macondo. Switching between the Macondo and the Macondo’s pilot there is no annoying dynamic drops.

3)      Fuck the ports under 100Hz of they have resonance lover then the driver resonance. Again.

4)      Only infinite/sealed baffle can develop bass at low dynamic levels

5)      If your loudspeaker has no dedicated upperbass cheval then you have crappy upperbass where the noise from the MF and midbass just smog out the “primary frequencies”.

6)      If you do not do anything special with speaker's tone then your speaker has no tone.

7)      Bass time-misalignment might be very effectively used as “pressure front” generator.

8)      The  “single worst” thing in today’s acoustic systems that I described in here:

         http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=12296