DirtyErnie

I've spent too much time in the recording studio. All I hear on FM pop radio is the compression (and maybe phase rotation) MN public radio stations need to hire someone and get their tuners aligned, they're all hiss and fizz, (and an audible spike at 19KHz, thankfully the guns and blues bands have relieved me from having to hear it). Internet radio seems to be the cure, as much as I hate to admit it.

That's very true, this is serving us very well, and sounds quite good. Sony's auto-calibration is ok, distances and levels need some tweeking afterwards, but things sound very good. Working through planning stages of a multi-amp setup, but that's a ways out.

I was surprised how good the JJ EL84s sounded in my 222c after I lowered the screen voltage to ~310v. Telefunken and RCA are still almost magic, but these are REAL nice. Check www.eurotubes.com, I think Bob is a primary importer, and has worked with JJ to get KT77s and other tubes produced.

Ages 3 years, and 3 months, both boys. Too big to tip, small enough to fit, simple to run with cheap Sony stuff. There's a 12" JBL sub behind the right side, a $100 Craigslist find. Good response from under 25Hz, but definitely not high quality sub bass, or amplification, but whatever. KV-2 center has the Crites crossover kit and titanium diaphragm, it blends fairly well with the CF2s. Edit: LOL, I didn't look close enough at the picture before posting, that's a KG2.5 for the center, now there's a KV-2. The KG is back in the NerdLab where it belongs (although lately it's been more of a MehLab).

This thread, what an adventure.

The CF2s are pretty similar, the more accurate they get, the less they suffer bad music.

If you want to really test your subs, "Dare" by Gorillaz has a true ~20hz bass synth tone. Once you hear it, you'll know it's missing from everyone else's system. It has me dreaming of Infinite Baffles into the basement. Lateralis and Ænema totally have the "mixed by the guitarist and vocalist" vibe going on. Production value on those is about halfway between "Blizzard of Ozz" and a good album.

"This is my Grandfather's axe. My father replaced the handle, I replaced the head, This is my Grandfather's axe." 😁

Re-reading your problem description, I'd bet 95% of the trouble would go away with replacing the electrolytics. My CF2.5s had very similar issues, and that's what had the biggest effect on getting the sound 'right'. Changing the poly's to Sonicaps, changing to the TI diaphragms really just changed the 'color' of the sound more than 'improved' it. But they were some very nice 'color' changes...

Do what your budget and soldering skills are comfortable with, any new parts will be an improvement. Film would be a slightly bigger improvement. Please do one speaker, then listen to both. The difference is important to know.

Change out the electrolytics first. ERSE pulse X or CDE motor-run caps are bang-for-the-buck film options. Capacitance value shrinks, ESR rises, both let too much treble into the woofers. That was the most noticeable change on my similar vintage KG2.5s. The CF2s hadn't gone that bad yet.

One mod at a time, one side at a time, is a great way to find out what difference something makes. Nice work! Definitely looking into bigger wire for the next round.

Don't worry too much about power and headroom. You'll likely chicken out to protect your ears before you get close to hurting the gear.

As long as the coverage angles are enough for your listening area, why not?

^^^ right on. As long as you're not trying for a SPL record, the worst side effect is a bit more IMD. Not the end of the world, it'll go away when your sub arrives.

I have a Sony receiver, you can set the 'size' of the speakers. 'Large' speakers get full-range. 'small' speakers can have a crossover frequency assigned, a built in hi-pass. Maybe yours has something similar? Got the manual? Sorry, TL;DR most of the thread. 😉

KT88 hits it on the technical side. Here's the easier explanation: Those speakers are bass-reflex (ported). They can only reproduce sound down to the port tuning frequency. Any frequency below that will just end up flapping the speaker cones around with no resulting sound. This flapping causes a great deal of modulation distortion in the frequencies the speaker can reproduce. If you can, run a sub with those speakers, set to cross over at 60-100Hz. That will clean up a lot of intermodulation hash.

^^^ That. And then, how scared do you want to get when the cannon goes off? That'll take more. 20 watts might make you jump, 2,000 might make you soil yourself. Season-to-taste.

In the electric guitar world, I ended up running JJ everything. Shooting-out a big box of tubes in a Mesa Tri-Axis, all the other new brand stuff was a one-trick pony, the JJ's sounded decent on everything. IEC branded Mullards caused a spontaneous outbreak of "Iron Man". They really nailed the tone. Back to Hi-fi, get some JJ Gold-Pin tubes from Bob at Eurotubes. They were noticeably better than the regular JJ stuff. Although, their website and marketing jabber isn't much better than EHX, or hell, the old Herter's catalogs.

What about motor-generator setups? Line AC turns a motor, motor turns generator, generator powers the hifi. Maybe power supply impedance becomes an issue? 5,500-watt inverter has a 2.6 ohm output impedance, 1.6 ohm minimum at peaks. That's quite a bit higher than the distribution trans that feeds your house (line losses notwithstanding). But it should be clean.

Dang, I need a bigger house... 😉

Likely, development and distribution cost can't fit into what the marketing department is willing to sell.

Algebra finally made sense to me senior year of college. Coincidentally, it all clicked in a Logic (philosophy) class, as they were the same process: 1. Start with a dis-organized pile of garbage that doesn't mean anything, 2. Filter it through a set of rules and routines, 3. End with an ORGANIZED pile of garbage that still doesn't mean anything. Aced Trig, though. 🤸‍♂️

Thanks, Chris. Future system is a bit of a blank sheet at this point: ??? --> DSP (biamp) --> 6channel power amp --> CF2's. Likely this would be fed with some sort of home theater pre-amp. 1080p is fine by me (then I can scoop up all the leftovers of the goobs that rush off into 4K :D) Long hours in the recording studio showed with no doubt remaining that 24/96 is the minimum to avoid all that digital 'brickwall filter' phase hash that lives in the top octave of a digital signal chain. 24bit was a definite improvement over 16 bit, but the bitrate was the biggest thing. Now, I gotta finish feeding all my other hobbies for a little while.