How to increase the efficiency of a Acoustat

[pforeman]

I have Acoustat 2+2's (Medallion and C updates - also did the Izzy Wizzy mod last year) hooked up to a Moscode 600 amp with a Vandersteen sub handling freq below 100 Hz.
I recently made a Tubelab Simple SE with a high efficiency Full Range Speakers
I would like to find out if there is a way to increase the efficiency of the Acoustats so that the simple se could drive them (better). These changes (to the power supply) would hopefully increase the efficiency by 2 or more dB.
As far as I can tell, the only way would be to increase the voltage to the membrane. I would imagine, with the bass these things put out that they have a fairly large d/s gap. Does this mean that I could incrase the polarization voltage? significantly?


Thanks for your help
Paul

 

[Few]

Maximizing sensitivity (efficiency) of an ESL while satisfying all the other constraints--bandwidth, reliability, etc.--is always a tricky game. Without making pretty significant changes to the structure of your panels I'd be surprised if you could find a way to squeeze significantly more dB/volt out of them. You could decrease the d/s spacing. which would do it, but you'd have to give up something else (such as bass extension) in the process. If they could handle more bias voltage without becoming unstable the designer would likely have done it to begin with. Perhaps someone with more hands-on Acoustat experience is aware of some untapped potential (bad pun).

Few

 

[planet10]

You'd likely need to build new panels to do that. Moray James claims he can get 6 dB more, but they would still be too innefficient for use with Acoustats.

I sold mine off when i decided to go with small tube amps.

dave