Hi
I'm planning to build the Ariel ME2.But I haven't heard them anywhere.So any opinion is acceptable.
My listening room is about 10m^2.And I'm listening with push pull tube amps.
I'm planning to build the Ariel ME2.But I haven't heard them anywhere.So any opinion is acceptable.
My listening room is about 10m^2.And I'm listening with push pull tube amps.
My daughter has my two old Ariel's for right / left front and ME-2's for the "others" on her 5.1 system. In retrospect, a lot of work and expense for what we got. Built with numerous Northcreek kits. It was an interesting adventure in woodworking.
Tonal balance was not quite to my liking (partly due to the room)and dynamics were limited. However this should not have been a surprise, Lynn documented them quite well. Max output is about 103 dB / meter. Sonically they are very "polite", slightly recessed midrange with a rolled off top end.
Pay attention to the comment that they are particular about amplification..... this is "no joke".
There have been several crossover value changes on Lynn Olson's web pages over the years.... not all of which seem to have remained in print on those pages.
Building as sealed cabinets and augmented with twin woofers is Mr Olson suggests is well worth the effort.
Cyclotronguy
Tonal balance was not quite to my liking (partly due to the room)and dynamics were limited. However this should not have been a surprise, Lynn documented them quite well. Max output is about 103 dB / meter. Sonically they are very "polite", slightly recessed midrange with a rolled off top end.
Pay attention to the comment that they are particular about amplification..... this is "no joke".
There have been several crossover value changes on Lynn Olson's web pages over the years.... not all of which seem to have remained in print on those pages.
Building as sealed cabinets and augmented with twin woofers is Mr Olson suggests is well worth the effort.
Cyclotronguy
GAK said:
I have a set of Ariels (mark II). I've never heard the Me2.
The Ariels took some tweaking, but now they sound phenominal. I've got them in my office at work. It's a fair size room for the Land O' Cubicles. Two co-workers are audiophiles. They are very impressed. (One of them is kind of p.o.'ed that they sound so good, because he thought all transistor amps sucked. More on that below.)
I made some missteps stuffing the speakers with damping material, but that won't be a concern for you with the Me2's.
The speakers were designed to work with low powered tube amps. I'm driving the speakers with a Rotel RA-02, which is an exellent 40 watt solid state amp (and a huge bargain at $500 US). The combination is superb.
I found the high midrange to be lacking at first. Perhaps because of how the speakers are arranged in the room, I'm probably not getting all the baffle step and floor bounce that would normally be expected. In any case, adding an extra .22 uF cap on each tweater brought the high midrange out nicely. It could probably use another .1 uF or so, but at the moment I don't have any good caps of that value.
By the way, I tried a couple of Radio Shack capacitors. It sounded fine most of the time, but every now and then, usually during a female vocal, there was a brief raspy sound - very noticable.
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