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Chorus II's in a 13'6 X 13' bedroom?


kenratboy

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Title says it all. Would I be crazy to put my new Chorus II's in a fairly small bedroom?

Don't they need some space to 'open up'

Right now they are in a ~18' X 18' living room with 2-story ceilings and the room opens up into the dining room (10X the cubis space as my bedroom) and they just laugh at that space ("That all you got for me to fill? HAHAHAHA!!! - Bring it on!!!") - will they do OK in my bedroom?

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If you like to jam, you'll definitely want to get some foam/acoustical treatment for your walls. I think the room will load up real quick, and the highs might drill a hole through your head. You'll be O.K., but you're going to have to pad things down a bit.

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On 11/6/2004 8:58:06 PM leok wrote:

Give them a good low power amp and they'll be fine. The only reason they'll drill holes through through your ears is if the amp is making a mess of the low power.

Leo
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Leo,

You really are going to have to explain this theory that higher power amps make a mess of the music at low power ?? Unless your talking SS your really freaking me out on this. All tube amps that are worth a darn make there lowest distortion at there lowest output. My own amps can muster extremely low distortion levels all the way up to near 20 watts. At full output they hover at 1% and will compete distortion wise with any tube amp I have ever tested. Low power, High power, Single ended, Class A you name it.

Craig

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Craig,

Sorry, I should have said an amp that does well at low power.

However, higher power amps of any type begin to have effective dynamic range limitations work against them at low power. Take two amps with equivalent signal to noise ratios, one 10 times as powerful as the other. The more powerful of the two, at say, 20mW out, is likely to have 10 times the noise power as the less powerful amp. You may not be concerned about performance at 20mW, but I am, and in the example here, we're talking about Chorus-II speakers in a small room. Working against this arguement is that many more powerful amps are simply better designed because people will pay more for them. My discussion here does refer to two amps with equivalent signal to noise ratios.

The noise, by the way is not hiss or hum. It is modulation of the program material by some noise characteristic of the amp itself. So when there is no music, no noise, when there is music, there is modulation by the noise.

Which reminds me, for this particular application, power line filtering will be especially important because power line rf modulates audio in just the way I described for the amp's own residual noise.

I used to use Magneplaner speakers with a cheap ss amp. They were remarkably free of any of these noise problems. They also required 60 Watts of power just to reach a nice full sound.

Leo

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Craig,

I don't know. This is exacty the kind of thing that is involved in the situation where ss amps that had great specs sounded harsh. But for years, people were convinced that the specs must be correct. Although that situation has been improved upon substantially by observing distortion at low power, there are still a lot of variables and a few measurements can be misleading.

An easy situation is one where distortion begins to rise as power drops, generally at powers below a Watt. Poorly designed ss and tube feedback designs will do this to an extent that low power measurements show the problem. Better designs using either technology aren't as bad (all amps display this to some extent) and listening is the only way I know to compare them. My usual tests are whether or not violins retain a softness I hear in live events, and if sibilants sound unnaturally exaggerated.

Someone using 102dB-efficiency speakers in a small room is going to hear the low power characteristics of the amp involved. So, in this situation I would look carefully at the low power performance of the amp involved.

Leo

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