I'll let someone else give you the subjective speal. I don;t generally get into the subjecyive stuff. PM me if you want specific customers comments if noone chimes in here. There are twice as many Abbeys as there are Nathans so there are a lot more reviews and those are here Recommendations
If you build them yourself you can build them any way you like, but if you buy them assembled the crossovers are mounted inside. (or I could do it for you, but then your comment "for almost no money" would no longer be true.) The crossover in the Nathan is about 1 kHz.
The Nathan is down about 6 dB at about 80 Hz. It needs some subs. All speakers need some subs.
Clustering the subs would make them boomy. They need to be spead out.
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The driver is 8PS21 but in looking at it again I can get a reasonable response. It tends to roll off a little more than I'd like, but I'm probably being picky. I was using a box that was too big which resulted in a dip then a peak at tuning.
I'd love to see you prove that to me someday - you know, a linear system so that your not hearing the different odd order nonlinearities when you switch, and, of course, blind.
I could reliably detect it blind when I had an Adcom CD player that could reverse polarity by remote control.
That player is no longer working, but it is easy enough to hear it on test CDs that specifically have tracks with alternating polarity as a demonstration of the effect.
But my speakers have always had drivers in phase.
There is one mega review of the Nathan and it is mine from Audiocircle, linked here. The woofers used on the Summa, Abbey and Nathan are completely different, the tweeters are the same.
Building the outboard crossover is fine, but it cannot be done for 'almost no money.' As you said, there is some argument as there will be less component interaction, etc...lots of effort and I think the subjective improvement is left to the end user. I haven't seen one study yet to prove it to be noteworthy, but if the diyer is willing to shell out the effort and as long as one realizes the caveat that it is more complicated and you do need to be more careful about the wiring to avoid mishaps, hey, its your money. For him to build an extra back panel without a crossover mounted shouldn't be a problem so you can build the outboard crossover, just don't call him if it all goes to H_LL in a hand basket. There will be an extra cost from his side for the extra back panels. It is necessary to do it this way as Earl tests every single speaker that leaves his facility with the original crossover installed to make sure it is perfect. Once it gets to your place, you can do as you see fit. I realize I sound a bit stern but the caveats need to be fully explored as Earl's time is limited for any modifications to the original design.
Subs should distributed around the room, forget about clustering them then the advantages will be completely negated.
Best,
Anand.
It just amazes me that you could cite such "support" for your "truth" that absolute polarity is inaudible.
"Doc" Greiners paper is the classic because he showed, statistically, in blind tests, that absolute phase was audible. But his test was flawed. He did not control for nonlinearity in the system. Signal sources are not generally symmetric about the mean. This then will excite a non-symmetric nonlinearity differently depending on the phase. Thus it is the nonlinearity that is audible in this test and NOT the phase.
Short of that paper there are NO statistically significant results showing that absolute phase is audible. Its unproven. There are psychoacoustic reasons to believe that such a thing could be audible - the ear is not symmetric either.
But the VAST bulk of the reports on its audibility are so uncontrolled as to be meaningless.
Thanks Anand
Yes, people need to realize that "custom" gets expensive and any change falls into the "custom" category and gets billed at my hourly rate. It doesn't take long before the price increase is getting pretty big, so it better be a significantly audible change!
This statement is vague.
It is unclear if you are speaking of electronics or the sound source itself. Sound sources (transients) are not symmetric; thus, the reason for keeping absolute polarity.
Also, you often state that electronics don't matter, yet now it seems you are saying the opposite.
If I put together the Nathans myself I'd leave the xover board (blank) inside the speaker where it's supposed to go (CLD). Mount the xover on some plywood I've got laying around, following the plans and using the parts supplied. At almost no extra cost. And I get to live my subjective fantasy! BWAHAHAHAHAAA!!
And no, I haven't done double blind testing of statistically relevant quantities of people and published the results in a peer reviewed journal. Like The Outboard Crossovers Review Journal. Maybe with the money I save building the Nathans!
Since space and money are constraints, would buying 2-3 cheap self powered subwoofers from Parts Express, or other places, work? Placed around the room. Not as good as Geddes subs, but as place holders.
Nice review of the Nathans.
Have you received your Abbeys yet?
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