Introducing The new CSS EL70

[CSS/XBL]

Originally posted by noodle
Whats the advantage of having two el70 in an enclosure?
How would you hook them together?
Any box plan for that?

There are several advantages including 8 ohm impedance (series connection), more output, and greater power handling. In some cases there is also a quite different dispersion pattern (bipole, side firong, etc.) which many people like.

There are a number of box plans coming shortly.

[_henry_]

As always, a very good engineered drivers

[planet10]

Yesterday was 1st play of a new EL70 ML-TL. More info in a separate thread (it can accomodate CHR-70 as well) microTower bipolar ML-TL for CHR-70 or EL70



dave

[GM]

Greets!

Auditioned Jim Griffin's dual chambered bipole at the Atlanta DIY MEET and even with the signal chain and room issues still acquitted itself well enough to make me want to win the pair CSS donated (thanks!) to see how they compared to the FR125S (RS 40-1354) MLTLs since I was unable to bring them to the Meet.

GM

[CSS/XBL]

Originally posted by GM
Greets!

Auditioned Jim Griffin's dual chambered bipole at the Atlanta DIY MEET and even with the signal chain and room issues still acquitted itself well enough to make me want to win the pair CSS donated (thanks!) to see how they compared to the FR125S (RS 40-1354) MLTLs since I was unable to bring them to the Meet.

GM

Greg,

I haven't heard who won the ELs or the Alpair 10s. Do you know? Send me a PM via the website.

Bob

[dw1narso]

It would be interresting to hear comments from people that have both Alpair 10 and this new EL70. Both should be very competent drivers with their own benefits over each other.

Regards,
David

[ttan98]

Originally posted by dw1narso
It would be interresting to hear comments from people that have both Alpair 10 and this new EL70. Both should be very competent drivers with their own benefits over each other.

Regards,
David

Except Alpair 10 costs US$130 and EL70 costs $40-45 each. EL70 is comparable to Alpair 5 or 6.

[type]

So, which is the better driver, FR125sr or the EL70? Is there an 8ohm version of either the EL70 or the CHR-70 in the works?

[planet10]

Originally Posted by type

So, which is the better driver, FR125sr or the EL70?

What amp? What cabinet? IMO EL70 is quite a bit more versatile in terms of cabinet solutions... i've come to think FR125SR is best in 4.5-7 litre (sealed or aperiodic) The range of cabinets for EL70 is huge.

Is there an 8ohm version of either the EL70 or the CHR-70 in the works?

Not that i know of...

dave

[GM]

Originally Posted by type

So, which is the better driver, FR125sr or the EL70?

Depends. Got some EL70s the other day and with minimal break-in I installed them in a pair of MLTLs originally optimized for RS 40-1354 that lately have been loaded with the older FR125S, so the cab's net Vb is a bit too large for the latter and technically ~2x too large for EL70s, but what the heck..........

Note that the signal chain currently is an old entry level RS 100 W receiver, ~$65 Best Buy (5) CD changer and ancient '70s era Technics one octave 'slider' EQ, so I imagine most have already quit reading.

So far, only two 'reviewers', age 63 (me), 66 (Buzz) who have come by their reduced hearing honestly, i.e. decades of loud racing, concerts, dance clubs/bars, mass quantities of booze, etc.. The one saving grace is that our tinnitus apparently makes us very sensitive to harmonic distortion centered around 2-4-8 kHz and we've had a lot of exposure to live un-amplified music.

Speakers are ~2 ft from the front wall, ~8 ft away from the listening position and lined up with each end of a ~100" wide sofa backed up against the rear wall and toe'd in so that the left speaker is aimed at the far right seat and vice versa. This results in good good imaging/sound-staging, though neither of us put much stock in these particular performance attributes for music reproduction.

The FR125S does everything better overall for as high as we can hear and well worth the little extra they cost, but has enough harmonic distortion to require keeping the major SQ robbing EQ hooked up full time to notch down the 2, 8 kHz points a few dB whereas the EL70 is much more benign (less 'forward'), so we can live without the EQ except for when rolling off the output below ~40 Hz is required. So I either need to add some big baffle 'wings' to get them to ~30" wide or use a BSC filter as the cabs are tuned to well below their published Fs.

Since both are so inefficient I probably won't mess with electrical BSC, though in the current apartment app the FR125S can handle all of the jazz that Buzz (66) only listens to at the loudest his neighbors will tolerate. The EL70 OTOH goes into a really nasty sounding distortion with some of Diana Krall's, Takashi Ohi's and Art Blakey's music, though there hasn't been time to go through his whole library yet, but at least it doesn't bottom out without any warning like the FR125S will when its limit is reached. Rather mysteriously ATM, the EL70 does Brian Bromberg even louder down low than the Fr125S while it does PF's DSOTM louder as it should. Weird........

Of course, opting for a bipole such as Jim Griffin's MLTL solves the BSC issue, though after auditioning them recently I personally would have both the rear driver and vent down at the bottom with an acoustic filter over both to severely limit their BW above a few hundred Hz in lieu of an electrical filter. Maybe tuned to different frequencies too........

Bottom line, if using a woofer, we both would prefer the EL70 overall, but as a single driver, a tweaked (smoother) FR125S or at least a 'transparent' digital EQ in the signal chain would be the hand's down winner, at least so far..........

Next up is to try and have my 'cake' and 'eat it too' with some form of pipe horn (aka BIB) for the EL70 later in the Fall unless someone beats me to it.

GM