agree 100%
I just didn't felt need to write second part of sentence , staring with ", but"
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror." - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Haha.
I am sort of living in the EU as well.
Sorry for turning this into some sort of audio-philosophical direction. I gave up on dynamic multiway speakers a long time ago. I am living quite happily with my Quad ESL-63s these days. Tannoys. No thanks. But, I have heard many good good multiway dynamic speakers. I could, if I were forced, live happily with those. Made from a shoebox, a cardboard plate, the top of an egg(*), and one capacitor and one inductor. Yeah. That is the concept. Basically.
Still, these speakers have come quite a long way, with dead cabinets, sophisticated crossovers, nano fiber drivers and all kind of hi-tech materials.... Still, I think you pay way to much for all this compared to what you get in return.
So, i admire everyone who searches for things like e.g. full range dynamic drivers, or full range drivers dynamic, electrostatic, ionizing or whatever. But, when the cabinet is made dead enough, why make it anymore dead, maybe another driver concept altogether is a better place to look? This is what I am missing in today's audio.
When this is says, the one person I really admire is of course here with us. The person who tries out all kinds of less is more concepts, getting the most out of ancient field effect transistors, parallels thousands of small signal JFETs and so on. Something might be lost on the way. Thousands of Watts and complicated circuitry may conceal something worth looking for.
(*) the dome tweeter
PS I was thinking of Papa.
/RK
Haha.
I am sort of living in the EU as well.
Sorry for turning this into some sort of audio-philosophical direction. I gave up on dynamic multiway speakers a long time ago. I am living quite happily with my Quad ESL-63s these days. Tannoys. No thanks. But, I have heard many good good multiway dynamic speakers. I could, if I were forced, live happily with those. Made from a shoebox, a cardboard plate, the top of an egg(*), and one capacitor and one inductor. Yeah. That is the concept. Basically.
Still, these speakers have come quite a long way, with dead cabinets, sophisticated crossovers, nano fiber drivers and all kind of hi-tech materials.... Still, I think you pay way to much for all this compared to what you get in return.
So, i admire everyone who searches for things like e.g. full range dynamic drivers, or full range drivers dynamic, electrostatic, ionizing or whatever. But, when the cabinet is made dead enough, why make it anymore dead, maybe another driver concept altogether is a better place to look? This is what I am missing in today's audio.
When this is says, the one person I really admire is of course here with us. The person who tries out all kinds of less is more concepts, getting the most out of ancient field effect transistors, parallels thousands of small signal JFETs and so on. Something might be lost on the way. Thousands of Watts and complicated circuitry may conceal something worth looking for.
(*) the dome tweeter
PS I was thinking of Papa.
/RK
I looked at the F4 a few days ago and it is intriguing. I don't fully understand how it works, but it does sound like it has potential. I understand it's like a cathode follower as a buffer, but a power amp buffer? I can feed it the output from a power amp? And if so, what DOES the F4 do exactly, and how is that related to power and current? It won't increase voltage swing, but will it change the power output? So much I don't understand.
This was my assessment, as well. I tried multiple versions, with several amps. The best was the MMG with a replacement frame and Unison DM monoblocks.
They were tonally good, and produced real bass but they're insensitive.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
read here :
FIRST WATT F4
and , on bottom of the page , linked : http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/prod_f4_man.pdf
so easy written , that even we Piglets can understand
Attachments
well , I think I'm going to miss opportunity to contemplate further ...... trying to avoid making another off topic thread
Back on topic then.
Steve Gutenberg on 1.7: http://www.tonepublications.com/MAGPDF/TA_030.pdf
He loved them with the Pass Labs XA100.5.
But he also used the First Watt J2, and he liked that combo also.
2.83V over the 1.7 terminals will give you 86dB SPL, being 4 Ohms this is 2W (the second Watt...). So a 50W/4Ohm amplifier should give you 100dB SPL (F6 territory). I believe the Magnepans are still a resistive load.
So there you have it, is 100 dB SPL enough for you?
She also:
Magnepan
But I feel the direction to go is F5 Turbo v.3. This will certainly give you "swing" and everything, see http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_f5_turbo.pdf.
/RK
OK, status report time. I now have a pair of 3.3R Maggies with crossovers which I found and bought on the cheap to improve the sound quality in my barn (to fill the 20x24 foot space). They have handled that job far better than I could have imagined. There's a lot of great sound and I can hear the potential for a lot more. For now I'm driving them with a LM3886 amp I built and has about 65-70wpc at 4ohm (not measured). I wouldn't say it's fabulous, but it's remarkably good, and drives the speakers to much higher SPLs than I would ever need. Clearly power isn't the final word.
I'm still unsure what I'll build in the end, but Aleph J, F4 and F5 Turbo are on my short list. I'm still interested in input, and I'm still curious about that A75...
I'm still unsure what I'll build in the end, but Aleph J, F4 and F5 Turbo are on my short list. I'm still interested in input, and I'm still curious about that A75...
I personally think the Aleph makes a better combination with the maggies than the F5 because of the warmer character of the Aleph. If you build a J you will need triple outputs rather than double due to 4 ohm Maggies and adequate heatsinking.
A non-J Aleph (5, 2) would work very well too.
The sound of the F4 will depend of the pre-amp. F4 monoblocks may be a good option if you have a great high-gain preamp with balanced out.
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