Upgrade or replace NHT Model Ones?

[ashok]

Hi r0cket,
As Sy says , the drivers are designed to work that way. I have a couple of speakers built that way.
However you can still biwire them and later bi-amp them. No crossovers externally. It would make a difference.
A friend had a very good pair of speakers with only two input terminals. The manufacturer in their brochure said that they didn't believe in biwiring as it didn't improve the performance ( of that model ?).
However we did just that . The difference in performance was very noticeable . Much better .

Yes you should have good sand filled stands with solid top and bottom plates. The stand can be easily made with a triangular wooden section for the vertical part . Then fill that up with sand.
Fix the speakers on the stand with 'blue tack' . Use cones or spikes at the bottom ( three point preferably ).

Can your sub play flat ? ( no internal roll off ).
You can easily rig up a crossover to match the main speaker.
Can you get an impedance plot of your speaker ?
Might be easy with a sound card and some free software.
Cheers.

[r0cket-]

ashok- Well, I figure that with a crossover point of around 100Hz, I wouldn't be altering the reproduction in but a small portion of the spectrum. It's something to try, anyway.

As for bi-wiring, I'm debating that. I'm somewhat doubtful of its benefits, and I'm not sure how much cutting/drilling I want to do on these cabinets to fit in that extra set of posts. But I suppose it's fairly minimal, so I may as well give it a shot. Just need to make some bi-wire cables now.

As for the stands, I was thinking of just using an upright made of 4 layers of MDF. But maybe I'll leave a center channel hollow and fill that with sand. Blue tack and spikes will of course be used regardless.

Regarding the sub, no, I don't believe there's a way to disable to internal crossover, short of significanlty rewiring the internals, which I'm pretty reluctant to do. Maybe I'll just see how well the low-end improves when I get these things under proper stands and go from there (I'm going to end up building another sub one of these days anyway, as I need one for my HT and one for my listening setup, it just depends on what goes where and when).

[ashok]

Hi r0cket,
Make the stands first. Make the hollow central post. At least 10 to 12 square inches of open section. maybe about 24 inches tall. The tweeter should be at ear level when you sit down to listen. Measure it out .
Ear level to ground ( inches) when sitting down - the tweeter center to bottom of speaker cabinet - thickness of top plate and bottom plate and spikes on the stand.

The stand should become very heavy with sand in it. Cover the hole on top with sticky tape to prevent it from spilling . The vertical section must be full of sand, no air pockets.

I changed three bookshelf speaker to biwired terminals . All three sound much better than they used to be.
Its not difficult to do but you have to be careful. I removed the woofer and tweeter to prevent any disaster . It was also to prevent wood dust from falling on to the drivers and making them dirty.

Yes the crossover frequency is not an issue in the sense that you can take your time to set it right . Getting started is important. Keeping the crossover frequency as low as practically possible is important. Below 100Hz is good . Up to 120 Hz is possible but 150 Hz is going too high in my opinion. There must be almost no trace of voice in the sub. A 24dB/ octave LR is probably good.
Poorly matched subs can take away the magic from the music.

Have fun.