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Hesitant On New X-Overs....


SWL

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Listen for a week and then drop your old networks back in.

Nice report.

"Harshness" is an interesting topic. We have everything from different hearing curves (some have a sensitivity to the increase in higher frequency output, while others don't even notice it due to high frequency hearing loss), source material, and finally, the quality of the parts employed in the network. If the source material is good and hasn't had a massive amount of compression applied to it - any source of harshness is due to the capacitors.

The slight harshness due to break-in is often swamped by terrible source material. It's not the big deal some make it out to be, and I'm certainly not an advocate of the hundreds and hundreds of hours of break-in thing, which is clearly ridiculous. However, call it what you will, but things definitely seem to sound better after a few days of listening. The whole "just getting used to the new sound" bit -- doesn't line up with my experiences at all.

Okay, so what is the significance of Bob Stout's statements? Does anyone care? If not, what a shame - everyone should care about anything and everything that potentially impacts the sound. Isn't that why you're here, to find ways to improve you're listening experience?

Bob Stout, highly regarded, was an industry insider. He should be taken seriously. Dismissing his statements out of hand is just choosing to be ignorant.

Let's look at a snippet of what he said regarding metalized capacitors. This would include every capacitor used by everyone including me.

"The reason film and foil is "better" than metallized foil is one of metallized film's special "features". You will hear vendors speak of metallized foil as self-clearing. All this means is that if there's a pinhole in the film, a temporary arc will vaporize the metal around the pinhole. This is great for long term viability, but bad for noise since each time this happens, it adds noise. Also, most don't tell you that this only happens when the leakage current through the pinhole is adequate to heat the metallization to the point of vaporization. As noted, this is primarily a factor in polypropylene, since of all the popular high-stability dielectrics, it's the softest and therefore most likely to have pinholes as received from the film vendor, and/or develop pinholes during winding."

All metalized capacitors are advertised as "self healing" or "self clearing". What is essentially happening here is that an inherent manufacturing flaw is sold as a benefit, which in many cases it is -- but not for our purposes. A horn loudspeaker will typically never reach the voltage levels necessary to "clear" the imperfections in the delicate film layer, so the low level arcing continues, and because of the extremely high efficiency of horns in comparison to direct radiators (roughly 10x), any noise due to the arcing gets pushed to the surface -- that's what horns do folks -- everything gets pushed up, and any distortion artifacts are not left behind, they come right up with the music.

I believe we are somewhat desensitized to low level noise, it's been with us for so long that we've mostly grown used to it. What is truly revelatory is when it's gone.

Some parts are just better than others. It's no different than any other industry. Sticking your head in the sand isn't making your system sound any better. Film types, paper in oils, etc., are very much superior in every way -- and very audible (provided you haven't destroyed your hearing chasing hearing aids).

I don't mind the criticisms, I can take it.

The difficulty here is figuring out how to relate Stout's statements to the general type of break-in we are most familiar with. Maybe the worst imperfections in the film are cleared quickly, while small lesions persist. I honestly don't know the answer to that. All I know is that Film, paper and oil, and the wax impregnated stuff is very smooth and open - with an ease in presentation that is very hard to describe with words.

I would certainly be willing to build up a pair of Type AAs for the April get together in Hope - if there would be something to load them into -- then you can all decide for yourselves whether I'm a fraud or not. Due to Deb's health issues, I can't make it.

Edited by Deang
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Had to do it. I let er rip for a couple of songs.

 

Well, a couple songs turned into a dozen. This reminds me of when I first got into Klipsch. I had three pairs of RF-7's and subs up the ying-yang. I'd listen to an entire concert DVD at 115db. It was awesome.....couldn't get enough. It was like being there....ear ringing and all.

 

Got rid of the RF-7's and got a couple pair of KLF-30's. It was awesome....better than the 7's for rocking out. No fatigue, more musical and more muscle. As time went on, I don't know....I listened to them at lower volumes more and more often. When I'd crank em it just wasn't the same.

 

Now, after the crossover upgrade it's back. At higher volumes I get that 'whack' and bass that punches you in the chest and knocks you on your *** like at a live venue but it's smooth and controlled. Very smooth and controlled. I've got shit falling off the walls right now.....well, the Tuba sub is helping with that but the 30's are totally under control.

 

Gonna have to send Bob a Christmas present...or something. :)

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They're not ringing now I was actually in the other room when I was cranking it

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Sounded like a band was playing in the other room

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I have about 21 hours of Spotify played through the new crossovers at this point. Everything I initially described still holds true except for them sounding slightly more 'crisp'. Perhaps they have mellowed out a bit or maybe since I hooked them up immediately after the Fed Ex truck dropped them off and they had been sitting in a cold truck for a week had something to do with it I don't know.

 

Without a doubt they sound better than the original x-overs but I haven't been able to put my finger on it until it occurred to me that there seems to be a 'blacker backround'.....like there's less noise. The music is more pure but the one thing that really stands out is the improvement in the bass.

 

Definite improvement in the bass but then this morning I put the port extensions back in. Wow. It sounded great with the stock ports but with the extensions in the bass plays slightly deeper giving the speaker an overall cleaner and more impactful delivery. Low-medium volumes are very satisfying and turning up the volume just gets better and better unlike with the original aging crossovers.

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This experience is gonna make me eventually go the way of forum member SET 12 with his over the top outboard crossovers. I've heard them and they sound phenomenal with Fortes.

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They're not ringing now I was actually in the other room when I was cranking it

 

 

Careful...soon you'll be using a pneumatic nailer and sawzall with hearing protection on and never hear the end of it!   :o  :ph34r:  ;)

 

I wear hearing protection at work all day, everyday.....have even thought about wearing it in the car on the way home (road noise doing 80 mph on the freeway). Last night doing 115-120db in my living room with none....

 

Makes perfect sense to me. :ph34r:

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I like sitting in my chair with my wireless mouse.

 

I do the same thing. Put it on shuffle and away I go.

 

 

Yep...I've compared different formats using my DacMagic Plus. I can put on the same song, match the volumes as close as possible and switch between the two with a push of a button. WAV, Lossless files usually sound better but the difference is so minimal that I just don't sweat it. If it was produced well in the first place I'm good to go.

 

Upgrading crossovers had me curious to see if it would reveal different results. It didn't.....or at least I can't hear it.

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