First time build PAWO FE127E

[iihay]

Hi Iain,

Have you tested your Pawo? How It sound?.

I tested it without the baffle, using solid state JLH-Class A. The vocal is excellence. Mid bass is very good too. But the lower bass is not strong enough.

I have just tested my Fonken Mk-II. If compare to Pawo design, MKII have more bass and more dinamik. The vocal sound good too but not live-ly as pawo.

what you think?

Finally got one working! Sounds very nice but only had it running literally for a few minutes and I have some amp hum to resolve before I can really listen. Quite a bright detailed sound so far though. How much running in do the fostex FE127's need?

Iain

 

[Scottmoose]

100 hours or more to get the best out of them. The LF will come in pretty quickly, the HF (last few percent) is typically what takes longer. Something to be aware of, as Bob pointed out elsewhere, is that afterward, if you leave them standing a few days, a proportion of that HF break-in will need to be started again, though as the driver ages this tends to become less of an issue.

 

[iihay]

Thanks, had this one running for an hour or so connected to some old kit and initial impressions are still good but it does have a relucantance to go low and female vocals are lacking at the moment. Very false impression connected to old gear and not positioned right I know but you've got to start somewhere. I'll report back on my impressions when both have been running for a good while then.

Cheers

Iain

 

[iihay]

Got some serious time in on these now and the break in pattern is pretty much as indicated. These are sounding very nice now and look good (will grab some pics later). Positioning does seem to be very key with these as I had an imbalance between channels which was bugging me until I pulled the left speaker in closer to the sideboard they sit either side of.

I am amazed by these speakers, this is my first experience of full range drivers and I really like it . The quality of vocals and togetherness of the sound is something I have not experienced before. Certain tracks sound very different to what I am used to. If I were to find fault it would be a certain lack of bass on hard rock and a certain "muddiness" low down on grunge tracks. Is this a design issue or a placement issue. These are not spiked down yet but sat on a stack of baltic ply boards on a carpet so I do expect a tightening when I sort that out.

All in all though a very nice first speaker to build and whilst I am already tempted to start building something else for fun these speakers will have pride of place for the foreseeable future.

Iain

 

[Scottmoose]

I suspect primarily a case of a 4 1/2in FR driver not being an ideal rock / grunge speaker. There's a limit to how much air a little cone of limited excursion can shift. Spiking should clean things up a little though.

 

[iihay]

I suspect primarily a case of a 4 1/2in FR driver not being an ideal rock / grunge speaker. There's a limit to how much air a little cone of limited excursion can shift. Spiking should clean things up a little though.

True, I suspected as much and I listen to less of that stuff these days anyway. It does do a suprisingly good job on it, certainly not a major issue as I've generally had a few when I listen to that anyway so not exactly critical listening

Iain

 

[chrisb]

I suspect primarily a case of a 4 1/2in FR driver not being an ideal rock / grunge speaker. There's a limit to how much air a little cone of limited excursion can shift. Spiking should clean things up a little though.

As much as it may seem anathematic to some "Full Rangers", as Scott has said before, at some point the room will dominate.

Depending on the size of your space and listening requirements, active XO and powered woofers (circa 100-120Hz) will relieve much of the heavy lifting from drivers like the FE127 or FE126, with a huge attendant improvement in midrange clarity, dynamics and soundstage.

With the prevelance of relatively inexpensive DSP accessories (or software for PC/file server based sources) the audio-junky has probably never had a wider array of options for accomplishing this.


The PAWO (and other shallow/wide baffle enclosures such as the Mileva, Jordan VTL, et al) can certainly be a bit wobbly on soft surfaces. Even with spikes (which can wreak havoc on a carpet- my wife still hasn't forgiven me for damage to the wool broadloom in "her" living room), they can still be less than stable unless an extended base plate , and/or void cavity with sand/shot fill can be incorporated.

 

[iihay]

Thanks Chris, our carpet is due for replacement so any damage is probably be done now. Instead of directly spiking these I was planning on bolting them onto a large footprint plinth which will then be spiked.

I'm interested in the idea you're suggesting for the experience of conparing with and without at the very least. I certainly don't want to lose the wonderful sound of these but something like this sounds like it might be worth playing with as a next project.

Unless I make my own set in bamoo ply of course, they were so good looking

Iain

 

[iihay]

Depending on the size of your space and listening requirements, active XO and powered woofers (circa 100-120Hz) will relieve much of the heavy lifting from drivers like the FE127 or FE126, with a huge attendant improvement in midrange clarity, dynamics and soundstage.

Chris after a few weeks listening to these I am in love with them for classical, piano, violin and vocal stuff. Rock is definately still a little wooly. I'm interested in the woofer idea but no very little about this. Any suggestions for a suitable project or some pointers woudl be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Iain