The Ferrari thing is interesting. The Mazda MX5 had a very good stab at it. The RX7 could almost be one ( it looks hand made ). There is a photo of my friend Bob plus me and his RX7 with a Garrard 301 as a poster. When a passing German guy said " what is the point of this photo" ? the young German lady who took it said " Joy ".
The only difference between a Ferrari and mass produced is passion. The metal costs much the same. Lancia Integrali got close.I only say this as cars and hi fi is only engineering. One assumes passion. One seldom gets it. I was slagging off my VW Golf. My friend said " it's an appliance like a washing machine!. Mostly that's right.
KEF LS50 seems OK. The German lady has a Jag 3.2 that she changes pistons in. Not bad.
The only difference between a Ferrari and mass produced is passion. The metal costs much the same. Lancia Integrali got close.I only say this as cars and hi fi is only engineering. One assumes passion. One seldom gets it. I was slagging off my VW Golf. My friend said " it's an appliance like a washing machine!. Mostly that's right.
KEF LS50 seems OK. The German lady has a Jag 3.2 that she changes pistons in. Not bad.
Thanks Frank - good to get a simple explanation and your Profile make sense
Groundloops - your criticism of the Ultradrive Berhinger is duly noted and I'll read up on the Nadja project - the benefits of this system over the Ultradrive aren't immediately obvious to me but I understand this is about sound quality rather than the different operating system/dac chips, etc and it would make my Ayre Acoustic usb dac redundant just when I've matched up the system to it's performance!
I initially just wanted a speaker/crossover design tool and maybe later extend this to an electronic low pass filter with all/any compensation contained in the digital domain while using an analogue high pass filter for the mids/tops with the Xover freq about 125Hz (FAST system) similar to the one that Frank mentioned above in post #74
There is another system developed out here in Melb called the Bodzio Software system ( I think this is similar to the one used in the Overkill Audio speakers) but isn't at all simple to use by the novice, like me, and in an AES presentation, he emphasized the flexibility/ability to control the phases of the total and filtered responses and am unsure if this facility is available in either the Berhinger or the Nadja - more reading required ....
Season's Greetings to all, and I hope the next year will bring better 'things'
Groundloops - your criticism of the Ultradrive Berhinger is duly noted and I'll read up on the Nadja project - the benefits of this system over the Ultradrive aren't immediately obvious to me but I understand this is about sound quality rather than the different operating system/dac chips, etc and it would make my Ayre Acoustic usb dac redundant just when I've matched up the system to it's performance!
I initially just wanted a speaker/crossover design tool and maybe later extend this to an electronic low pass filter with all/any compensation contained in the digital domain while using an analogue high pass filter for the mids/tops with the Xover freq about 125Hz (FAST system) similar to the one that Frank mentioned above in post #74
There is another system developed out here in Melb called the Bodzio Software system ( I think this is similar to the one used in the Overkill Audio speakers) but isn't at all simple to use by the novice, like me, and in an AES presentation, he emphasized the flexibility/ability to control the phases of the total and filtered responses and am unsure if this facility is available in either the Berhinger or the Nadja - more reading required ....
Season's Greetings to all, and I hope the next year will bring better 'things'
Hi and thanks for the kind explanation
Personally i have tried to modify (and irreparably damaged
) only cheap units For instance i do not know how many people would modify a Mark Levinson
for various reason, not last for the resale value that would drop a lot. I am convinced that some robust and cheap designs can be improved by people who know what to do.
Talking of speakers lately i have become very intrigued by cabinets
A well designed cabinet can make even cheap drivers to shine.
Still i would like to hear these Behringers with proper drivers.
Actually something of this kind do exist already ... old series from another brand
Thanks again. kindest regards, gino
See, gino, you're still falling into the trap,
!! The drivers are fine, it's the electronics driving them that need attention! The sound is coloured, so, you change the drivers, the sound is still coloured! The colour may sound "better", because the the replacement drivers are "better" - but you haven't solved the underlying problems; you're just using a different brand of Band-aid!!Still... improving the internal damping of the speakers reduces colouration big time..See, gino, you're still falling into the trap,
The big deal is the effort is the machine tools and capital to make things, that is the mountain to climb. There is no reason why a cheap thing should be a poor or even only a good thing. My theory is people of vision seldom know how to make things or have the guts to go through the process of bringing it to market. They prefer high end with silly prices. Often they get in an industrial designer to give it a look. Enough must fall for this as the only thing hi fi mags have in them now is this bling stuff. I can not beleive these companies have long lives. It must be that a pot of gold is invested on one spin of the wheel to sucess.
An example of the opposite was the NAD 3020 . Many will never have heard one outside of it's cost group. Try it with first class speakers and front end to be very surprised. Often the reviewers had this oppertunity. In it's price group it was polite and a bit dull. It's designer had vision. The components seem bad choices when going inside. Proton who made it when they lost the contract made thier own. It had better bits and was bland and harsh! For all the years they built it they never understood it. Worse is I am sure with a bit of tuning it would have exceeded the 3020. The parts were too good not to.
A Ferrari and a Lada have similar amounts of metal. They even share origins. In some ways the Lada better than the Fiat 124. But Fiat 124 is one of the better cars I ever knew and is exactly what these speakers can be. The Lada was not even the Proton version of the 124. The " better " was beefed up to suit Soviet roads. The most surprising thing was the Lada factory was totally modern with first class tooling. Certainly much better than VW 1945 to 1960 at a guess.
I was asked to find a Marantz Model 9 and pre amp recently. The friend thought himself very lucky to get it for $15000 ( me $0 ). In some ways it is more NAD than bling. He is delighted and uses it for monitoring via ESL57's. I am not valve mad and yet the Marantz is a Ferrari. EL 34 was the designers prefered device. I heard one with 4 x300B made out of friendship by Sid Smith. It didn't float my boat ( tubby ).
An example of the opposite was the NAD 3020 . Many will never have heard one outside of it's cost group. Try it with first class speakers and front end to be very surprised. Often the reviewers had this oppertunity. In it's price group it was polite and a bit dull. It's designer had vision. The components seem bad choices when going inside. Proton who made it when they lost the contract made thier own. It had better bits and was bland and harsh! For all the years they built it they never understood it. Worse is I am sure with a bit of tuning it would have exceeded the 3020. The parts were too good not to.
A Ferrari and a Lada have similar amounts of metal. They even share origins. In some ways the Lada better than the Fiat 124. But Fiat 124 is one of the better cars I ever knew and is exactly what these speakers can be. The Lada was not even the Proton version of the 124. The " better " was beefed up to suit Soviet roads. The most surprising thing was the Lada factory was totally modern with first class tooling. Certainly much better than VW 1945 to 1960 at a guess.
I was asked to find a Marantz Model 9 and pre amp recently. The friend thought himself very lucky to get it for $15000 ( me $0 ). In some ways it is more NAD than bling. He is delighted and uses it for monitoring via ESL57's. I am not valve mad and yet the Marantz is a Ferrari. EL 34 was the designers prefered device. I heard one with 4 x300B made out of friendship by Sid Smith. It didn't float my boat ( tubby ).
See, gino, you're still falling into the trap,
The drivers are fine, it's the electronics driving them that need attention!
The sound is coloured, so, you change the drivers, the sound is still coloured! The colour may sound "better", because the the replacement drivers are "better" - but you haven't solved the underlying problems; you're just using a different brand of Band-aid!!
Hi and sorry but i do not agree
There is no chance that so cheap drivers are ok ... not the last chance
And while good and cheap tweeters can be found this is not possible for woofers
A good woofer cost almost like a complete pair of these Behringers.
For good woofer i mean something like Scanspeak or good Vifa or Seas
Those are really good woofers
Instead cheap and decent amps are all around
What are they in the end ? a decent size transformer some ps caps and some chip amps like the Behringers use ... i think they are lm3886t
If i am not wrong even Genelec used monolithic amps ... so when correctly implemented they must be really good ... Genelecs do not come cheap at all.
i am not saying that the internal amps are perfect ... maybe some caps swap or part replacement can be beneficial ... but it will be cheap.
What really colours the sound are the drivers.
And the woofer is really a very cheap plastic thing
It cannot be differently thinking to the overall cost.
Brand like Proac or PMC have become market leaders based on the selection of the drivers. They used the best available (read very expensive) ... and it showed.
Now i heard they have changed a little ... and it showed all the same
Kindest regards, gino
And Genelecs do not sound that impressive, I heard a unit while checking out what was available - and it had the same problem as other, quite expensive models: the sound started to fall apart when the pressure was on. The Behringers I have also do this to some extent, but still did better than the others.
My interest is in having units that can produce realistic levels of sound without audibly degrading - I was surprised at the time at how poor the famous name units were at doing this, their sound became a mess at decent SPLs.
If you're only interested in listening at very polite volume levels then getting very high quality drivers does make some sense - but don't expect the substitution to solve more ambitious listening behaviour ...
My interest is in having units that can produce realistic levels of sound without audibly degrading - I was surprised at the time at how poor the famous name units were at doing this, their sound became a mess at decent SPLs.
If you're only interested in listening at very polite volume levels then getting very high quality drivers does make some sense - but don't expect the substitution to solve more ambitious listening behaviour ...
Yes, in this setup low frequencies are amplified by a lm3886 and the high by a LM1875, if I'm correct. So the power stages are rather decent
I never investigated the circuitry of the pre-amp, equalizer and filter. In my opinion they did not screw-up that part either.
Only the PSU capacity is a bit limited, but that might be an explanation for degradation at high level play-back and a safe-guard for not blowing up the chip-amps..
What LS units concerned: You can try to find a better unit, but that one is likely to require an other internal volume for optimal performance.
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I would not know anything about the sound of LM3886.
I did have a chance to own and listen for awhile to an
integrated amp based on the stereo STK chip. The speakers
were back then and today the very same, high quality I would
say, and the sound of chip amp was absolutely OK while
playing at very low volume levels, like less than 1W/8 ohm.
The situation changed drastically for the worse the second I
tried to give it a go at higher output power. There was something
very disturbing to my ears/brain combo. It felt like somebody
was sawing timber or it was distortion of some kind.
I concluded that it must have been the chip itself because
the power supply had enough of the potential for a 10W
power output or so. I will stick to discretely built DIY
electronics for now, especially because it's not expensive
after all and the performance is exemplary.
I did have a chance to own and listen for awhile to an
integrated amp based on the stereo STK chip. The speakers
were back then and today the very same, high quality I would
say, and the sound of chip amp was absolutely OK while
playing at very low volume levels, like less than 1W/8 ohm.
The situation changed drastically for the worse the second I
tried to give it a go at higher output power. There was something
very disturbing to my ears/brain combo. It felt like somebody
was sawing timber or it was distortion of some kind.
I concluded that it must have been the chip itself because
the power supply had enough of the potential for a 10W
power output or so. I will stick to discretely built DIY
electronics for now, especially because it's not expensive
after all and the performance is exemplary.
Hi and thanks for the very helpful reply.
My feeling is that, at the end of the day, drivers "colour" the sound more than electronics, but i could be very well wrong.
Main issues i had with amps were when the amp was not able to drive properly the speakers. I had a very difficult Dynaudio pair.
Only high current amps were able to drive them decently and still the bass was questionable. Then i realized the woofers were the sound murderers.
Problem is that good drivers hardly come cheap.
I love Scanspeak drivers for instance. And they are high quality but also expensive but they can make the difference.
Just to avoid confusion i am looking for let's say max 100 dB at 2 meters (i listen always very close to the speakers)
I tell you what i would do.
I would try to find a pair of 7" Scanspeak, the good ones.
Then i would build a wood ring quite thick ... like 1" to use it as an adapter to mount the smaller woofer in place of the originals 8".
In this way i could even try to align woofer and tweeter but this is not fundamental.
Maybe i would replace the tweeters as well ... i saw a model from Vifa not very expensive.
I am quite sure that the resulting sound would be even more pleasant.
A friend of mine much more clever with cabinets building made two bass boxes for the Rogers ls3/5a with small Scanspeak drivers.
They were splendid ... with a magnet almost the size of the cone
I love those woofers but not the sliced ones ... to cut and glue the cone for me it is really silly ... simply i do not understand why.
Of course cabinet size is an issue but it could be done. I guess.
Thanks a lot again. Kindest regards, gino
Yes, in this setup low frequencies are amplified by a lm3886 and the high by a LM1875, if I'm correct. So the power stages are rather decent
I never investigated the circuitry of the pre-amp, equalizer and filter. In my opinion they did not screw-up that part either.
Only the PSU capacity is a bit limited, but that might be an explanation for degradation at high level play-back and a safe-guard for not blowing up the chip-amps..
Hi and thanks a lot for the valuable advice
I have just read about the small caps by-passing the bridge diodes not very robust ... someone recommended to replace them of even just take them away to avoid problems.
I have also seen pictures of modified amp boards with better and bigger PS caps, so i guess that also could be beneficial.
I have come to the conclusion that in a 2 ways the woofer is very fundamental especially when used up to 2 kHz
It has to cope with bass and midrange ... in the end it makes most of the speaker sound
Tweeters just have to be decent.
And the woofers in the Behringers ... well i have already stated my doubts.
I do not know of a very cheap woofer that it is also very good ... a good woofer cannot be cheap.
Thanks again. Kind regards, gino
Hi and maybe this is the reason why Jeff Rowland Concentra integrated amp uses many LM3886 paralleled
i think they have a current limiting circuit ...
With efficient and easy to drive speakers they could be just fine.
The bass section of the Behringer monitors should use two of them ... that is a lot for normal use.
Thanks for the information.
Kind regards, gino
I've heard that "myth" on more than one occasion. Can't really
point to where it started, but I guess it had something to do
with manufacturer being overly honest with performance
data of his products. 4 ohm nominal impedance and SPL around
84-87 dB are hardly taken as good values from audiophiles.
A great deal of manufacturers simply don't tell the truth about
their products, so in the end of a day, they are as "bad" as any other
regarding SPL and impedance, yet this is not widely recognized
in audiophile community.
My experience with Dynaudio commercial boxes is very limited,
I owned only one model and what they did with it was proper damping
of standing waves (eats up some SPL), full BSC for placing the speaker
in open space, low crossover point (about 1,8 kHz) thus giving tweeter
a chance to do the job better than bassmid, very openly sounding,
crisp clean highs, never fatiguing. The bass was evidently powerfull enough
and tuned low for good sonics. Implemented PTC for tweeter protection.
With these chip amps, you must, I repeat, must give them a decent power supply - otherwise you will just get rubbish sound, it's guaranteed to be the result. All the bits that go into making a system reproduce audio have to be good enough - compromise somewhere, and you'll achieve compromised sound ... and I don't see the point of doing that ...
Hi and sorry if i am going OT now ... but i studied that speaker a little.
The woofers have very high Qts around 1.
And looking at them i see a very small magnet compared to the cone size.
Maybe an additional magnet could have improved their performance,
The sound was slow and not controlled especially with ritmic music.
I did not like it at all.
Thanks again, gino
Hi and thanks for the valuable advice.
This is the datasheet ...
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm3886.pdf
I read
7A is not little ... as you say the power supply must be up to the task.
But seven ampere can be quite ok in most homes ...
Thanks again, gino
Hi and sorry if i am going OT now ... but i studied that speaker a little.
The woofers have very high Qts around 1.
I believe you when you say Qts around 1,0. That is no surprise with
vintage Dynaudio bassmid drivers.
The high Qts parameter per se is not a bad value, it is meant to be installed
in a sealed box. The XL versions of the drivers had parameters for a vented
design.
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