sputnik

Dang! Now I'll be humming it all night.

"Drift Away". Dobie Gray sang it.

I have just joined recently but I have been viewing this forum for three years or so. The amount knowledge and experience here is truly impressive. I hate to ask a stupid question of such an elite group but as I was once told there are no stupid questions just stupid people who ask questions. Is it noise or is it music? Maybe I just have the volume too high, but at one or maybe two lower frequencies I hear what sounds like resonance from my Fortes - not bad but the speaker cabinets also vibrate and the grill cloth frame buzzes (my horn diaphrams are fine). The cabinets are solid as are the bass and radiator cones. As best as I can describe it, the sound goes from "bum-boom-bom" to a "bwa" sound that you can feel as well as hear things rattling around the house. It doen't sound like a normal progression - it's sort of like a certain low note gets a little goosing. It's especially noticeable when playing certain Enya music with long sustained deep electronic bass. The effect is not specific to any location relative to the speakers, it's pretty much all over. It's very rare, but I don't know if it should happen at all. I'm wondering if the bass and midrange might be producing the same frequency at the crossover point or is the effect caused by my amps or pre amp (old NAD 2100s and 1600)? I'm curious to learn anything. Thanks.

---------------- On 2/22/2005 12:06:54 PM Colin wrote: Can two low cost tube amplifiers sound as good as one expensive one? I don’t know. It may simply be more of the same................................. ...................... I would think that bridging improves the quality of the sound, especially in the power hungry lower and mid-bass regions. But apparently is not the case. Bridging actually reduces the capacity to drive a low impedance load. ---------------- I just attempted a low cost bridged set up using two old NAD 2100s. Two 2100s are better than one 2100. Going from one amp to a bridged set resulted in a very noticable boost in bass - sounded like an anvil crashing through the floor (in a good way). Also, there was much more music at lower volumes. Why is that? In a bridged set up is it better to turn the amp input down and control the volume in the middle range of the preamp or set the amp input to middle range and not be able to past 9 or 10 o'clock on the preamp volume without your ears bleeding?

Hello Larry, I also have Fortes that I'm very happy with and I'm experimenting with older orphaned and neglected SS amps. I am amazed at the range differences each individual component or combination makes. That masters thesis is a great reference - thanks for the link. Tubewise, have you or anyone here looked at the Antique Sound Labs amplifiers? I don't get to the big city much but I got to listen to a 50 wpc integrated Antique Sound Labs amp in Denver recently. With no warm up and feeding a pair of older JBL speakers it sounded pretty good in a bad room (it did have upgraded tubes). It's Chinese but seemed very well built - the connecting posts were nicer than most I've seen in my limited experience. Also, it is as pretty and shiny as the Jolida. No phono stage. The one they were selling as a demo was going for one kilobuck - I think the list is $1,700. Any experience out there with one of these?

Thanks for the tune Thebes. Send me up a drink (a russian bear perhaps) and give my wife my love.

Hi, I'm new around here. Just joined to meet the twins. They seem to be quite fond of you Mr. Thebes - you must be thier favorite uncle. Ooooh nice turntable, I've been lurking around and watching the progress . Hey, that looks just like mine.......I mean that disc preening brush beside the tuntable assemblage looks like the one I use. Can we play some old Beatles records backwards on that baby and hear what devil sounds like singing the shower .