I'm trying my very best Wayne; but I do have to admit that some of you guys here are way more advanced than I in some audio departments.
* I think that active powered speakers are a great way to go. ...Matching amps with their proper dedicated drivers and speaker's enclosures.
...Separate active crossovers?
And I totally agree with you. I have yet to hear another approach that will beat some, admittedly stuio orientated, active speakers. Worked with a pair of Klein & HUmmel 3 way active monitors - a peach.
This is why I opted to have three pairs of binding posts on my speakers, so I can bi- and triamp them using their built in passive XOs, or, in the final stage, add an electronix XO and go fully active. The price I pay is that the amps will have to completely external, but who cares?
Patience Scooby doo , we got this .......
My computers playing up so using a quote as easy access . Mr Wayne and DVV selected recipients .
I have always thought soft clipping is the wrong reason for saying SE tube amps sound louder than the watts suggest . More likely all the wattage can be used with no harm to speaker or amp . The PSU is large which will probably will have good secondary effects . Here Audio Note try to suggest other reasons . Quite interesting .
Audio Note
Yes, and we should be more talking about them active powered speakers instead of separate amplifiers having gain and output impedance and voltage factor all over the map and difficult to match with the right preamp and the right pair of loudspeakers.
I think.
...Then we can seriously start listening to some serious music of serious high sound quality, and measuring all serious interactions between them amps, drivers, and crossovers, and even loudspeaker's enclosures (internal acoustics and tuning - vented or not).
Last edited:
Amplifiers designed this way for Soft clipping always sound dead to me, no life, no energy , no jump .....
That's what many also found out for themselves.
Yes, and we should be more talking about them active powered speakers instead of separate amplifiers having gain and output impedance and voltage factor all over the map and difficult to match with the right preamp and the right pair of loudspeakers.
I think.
I do like and agree with multi-amp drive, but i do favor passive xover for mid/high transition, in such a case, passive bi-amping works best to me and of course full active for the bass.
Amplifiers designed this way for Soft clipping always sound dead to me, no life, no energy , no jump .....
I second this motion, that's also my experience.
I second this motion also, from personal experience. Currently, I sometimes biamp my speakers, using the Marantz to drive the bass and the Citation to drive the mid and tweeter.
I'm still playing with it, so I have no comments yet, but it sounds promising.
I tried bi-amping before, and I am now bi-wiring, and I could not tell any difference in sound (quality) between bi-amping, uno-amping, bi-wiring, and uno-wiring.
- I only stick with bi-wiring just for the heck of it. And I might get rid of it sometimes later on this year, perhaps, if I only feel like it.
This is just me and my own gear from my own rig. ... Tres tres modeste.
- I only stick with bi-wiring just for the heck of it. And I might get rid of it sometimes later on this year, perhaps, if I only feel like it.
This is just me and my own gear from my own rig. ... Tres tres modeste.
Last edited:
There is a big difference when bi-amping speakers, but like anything else, you can get it wrong too. Personally i like using equal amps, secondly pre-amp used is very important , there is always a change in tonal balance when driving the parallel load of two amp sand it's worst with some vs others , if you are going full active for xover, then there is the added electronics to deal with.
1. If passive bi-amping , best to listen to one amp playing the full speaker while the second amp is plugged into the pre, listen to it in and out , see if the tonal change is drastic , minimal or none. If acceptable or none then go ahead and bi-amp...
2. Another really good way is when doing self powered bass/sub , feeding a signal from the speaker out to speaker in on the amp will not affect the main amp and create any tonal changes. I have found this way acceptable to do also.
3. Not all speakers will respond to multi-amps, xover design and layout will determine if you will actually hear a difference. Magico for eg has poor(IMO) layout (s5) and I'm not surprised there is only one set of binding post.
1. If passive bi-amping , best to listen to one amp playing the full speaker while the second amp is plugged into the pre, listen to it in and out , see if the tonal change is drastic , minimal or none. If acceptable or none then go ahead and bi-amp...
2. Another really good way is when doing self powered bass/sub , feeding a signal from the speaker out to speaker in on the amp will not affect the main amp and create any tonal changes. I have found this way acceptable to do also.
3. Not all speakers will respond to multi-amps, xover design and layout will determine if you will actually hear a difference. Magico for eg has poor(IMO) layout (s5) and I'm not surprised there is only one set of binding post.
All these multi-amping, obviously audible variations point out that these supposedly "technically correct" amplifiers are nowhere near such - the load presented to the amplifier changes its behaviour, very dramatically sometimes.
A 'perfect' amplifier would sound the same if used singularly, or bi- or tri-, etc, on a particular speaker ...
A 'perfect' amplifier would sound the same if used singularly, or bi- or tri-, etc, on a particular speaker ...
And that's even worse ... the sound should not change under those circumstances, that's bad engineering right away. Some people get all excited when a system is "so good" that micron changes alter sound - this is rubbish, a system should be so good that no matter what you do, the presentation, subjectively, doesn't vary even when very substantial, external factors are varied dramatically ... the word is "robust", the SQ should be robustly invariant under strong provocation ...
Frank, if you parallel inputs, you are changing the load, this RLC change will have some tonal balance change, it could be better , worse, or not noticeable. Plugging the pre into a electronic xover changes the sound too, as you are adding another stage , everything affects the sound..
It's like making a recording, its not about the sound of the individual instruments , it's about the mix ...
It's like making a recording, its not about the sound of the individual instruments , it's about the mix ...
Wrong approach - the recording is the master, for me. If I add "tonal colour" I'm just becoming an alternative sound engineer for that recording ... which may be fine as an exercise in itself, but first I want to exorcise the sound daemons that befuddle what I hear, from my own system unintentionally, unwantedly contributing to the "mix".
If the pre-amp changes its sound depending on what it's driving then it's got a problem ...
If the pre-amp changes its sound depending on what it's driving then it's got a problem ...
Yep - but does the pre-amp designer design for all possible poweramp input impedances? Its not a problem if they recommend (say) 100k as a minimum load impedance. Also a poweramp is going to be a source of CM noise back to the pre - I agree a pre should cope with this but from what jn has been saying over on the JC thread I'll bet the vast majority do have a problem with this.
The reality is - commercially available kit does indeed have problems.
The reality is - commercially available kit does indeed have problems.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.