Bi-Amping Chorus II's

[Mike Lindsey]

Would you be interested in selling them? I need a pair for my rears so that I can move my CF-2's into the bedroom. What finish are they? I'm looking for oak or black satin...

Mike

[Ray Garrison]

Amazing how many B&W vs Klipsch comparisons I've noticed on this board.

I used to have B&W speakers. I started with the original 801F series, purchased in 1986. Over the next eight years I moved through the series II, then on to the 801 Matrix Monitor IIIs. I now have La Scalas. In one sense, I can't think of two more different animals.

In another sense, though, thinking about it, they both have one thing very much in common. They BOTH do a better job of recreating a live musical experience than any other speakers I've heard. It's just that they excel at two very different aspects of that live experience.

The B&Ws, and in particular the original 801Fs, did that "get you on the edge of your seat, leaning into the performance, room melting away" thing better than any other speaker I have ever heard, before or since. Late at night with the lights out, playing something that was well recorded in a real acoustic space, I sometimes caught myself snapping out of reverie and grapping the armrests of the chair cause I felt like I was about to fall into the auditorium. I've never experienced anything else like it. HOWEVER, the one aspect of a live performance that the 801's just couldn't deliver, at least for me, was the LARGE SCALE DYNAMICS I was looking for with most of the music I play. I went through a bunch of amps (B&K ST140, some NAD something or other, Crown, others) and finally wound up using a pair of Adcom GFA555's bridged into mono (600+ watts). Then what started happening was the protective circuit on the B&W's crossover would SHUT THE DAMN THINGS OFF just when the climax of the William Tell Overture hit the recap.

Bummer.

With the La Scalas, I don't have anywhere near that same degree of "falling into the music" experience that I got with the B&W's, and I do miss it. But what I have instead is the closest thing to the dynamics and life of real music that I've ever had. To me, life like dynamics and scale matters more than the lifelike tonality and soundstaging of the 801's. And I'm not talking about simple volume, here... I was trying to turn up the 801's because they were dynamically compressed. The La Scalas are not, and I (think?) I actually listen to them at a somewhat lower level than most other speakers I've had.

Bottom line, I can live happily with the La Scalas, and the only time I think about the way the B&W's sounded is when I'm NOT listening to the system. When I'm listening to music on my La Scalas, I'm listening to music. When I listened to music (most of the time, anyway) on the B&Ws, I was continually thinking "...just a bit more. Come on, just a bit more. A little, tiny bit more. Just a bit... oh damn, they switched themselves off again!"

Ray

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Music is art

Audio is engineering

[forresthump]

quote:

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Originally posted by B&W-Traitor:

Forresthump: "other ulterior" => double redundancy, hehe

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your term "double redundancy" is in itself a redunancy.

& taken in the full context of my statement, "other ulterior" is not a redundancy as i stated 1 of your possible ulterior motives & inquired if you had another

ulterior motive. iow, you could have many ulterior motive which is most likely so.

your opinion is fine. but we have to now question the quality of an opinion from someone with a lesser intelligence of the english language.

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go forth & hump the world

[B&W-Traitor]

Joke = making light of mistakes

Nerd = someone who fails to see jokes

[forresthump]

sorry B&W, but how was I to know everything you said was just a joke. that explains your comments though. you need to learn to use the icons like: &

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go forth & hump the world

[B&W-Traitor]

No problem bud. Sorry about the mixup.

Thanks for the interesting comparison Ray.

This message has been edited by B&W-Traitor on 09-29-2001 at 12:26 PM

[TBrennan]

B&W---I don't mean just sound like in the room but sounding like the actual instruments, you know, to sound like an actual SVT, Hammond and Leslie or a Dynasonic. I've heard B&Ws big guns and they can't do that. No B&W ever made me think I was in the presence of a Marshall 1959 and a double stack. To me that comes first, imaging and such is way down my list.

[Colin]

well said Ray,

When you think of the ultimate expression of radiator cone speaker systems, the bulbous curves of the B&W's top of the line 800 series must be on the short list. Their attention to cabinet construction, looks and design, while not the out-of-this-world Lamborghini variety, is certainly a solid Mercedes example of engineering, comfort and durability.

And their performance is good, oh so, deliciously good. The middle to upper bass is as taut, textured, full and substantial as any that I have heard. In some respects, it is even better than the sloppy boom of many live bass guitars and their amps.

Although I must confess I have never had them home for a personal demonstration (must remember to get me one of those black unlimited credit line cards). My serious listening sessions have been only a disc or two at the local dealers over the last several years. Yet, I regard B&W's sumptuous ships as some of the very best conventional speakers that too much money can buy.

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horns & subs; lights out & tubes glowing

[TBrennan]

Colin--To get philosophical that sloppy boom is the way the bassist chooses his rig to sound, the point is can the B&W reproduce it? :-)

[WMcD]

I think the original issue regarded preserving the integrity of the cross over design to the mid and tweeter if the connection to the woofer is removed. Would it be a good idea to connect an 8 ohm resistor to the woofer input?

This is a good question because it shows an appreciation that there might be some interaction in the impedances of the cross over. That is a "might".

My best answer is that there is no reason to add an 8 ohm resistor. But this is somewhat guess work without a schematic to work from. So take it with a grain of salt.

Modern cross over design puts the bass, mid, and tweeter in parallel. So each of the drivers are working off the amp directly. There are no situations where any individual driver is relying on another being present for loading situations.

Therefore, the open woofer connection should not make a difference to the mid or tweeter.

Even if there is some reliance, in the intricacy of the design of the crossover, on the amp being connected, there is really no reason to assume the amp acts like an 8 ohm resistor. Quite to the contrary. It probably acts as a short circuit.

This is a bit of electrical engineering. Transistor amps have a very low output impedance, down in fractions of ohms. The speaker designers assume this. So if there was a "dummy load" to be had, it would be a short circuit. (Only us Hams speak of dummy loads.)

The bottom line is to just leave the woofer input open.

Gil

This message has been edited by William F. Gil McDermott on 10-01-2001 at 12:52 AM

[KGeist]

Believe it or not, you do have to be careful about lifting the woofer out of the circuit.

Most Klipsch networks have 12 dB per octave slopes, or higher. This puts at least one inductor in series, and one capacitor to ground. If this circuit is not terminated properly, or is left open (no woofer connected), then it's a resonant circuit, resulting in a dead short somewhere in its passband. It will almost certainly trip the amplifier's protection circuit and could damage the amplifier.

The easiest solution would be to remove the capacitor going to ground. It is usually the largest capacitor on the board (40 uf or higher/ 100 volt or higher) and therefore shouldn't be hard to identify.

Kerry

[WMcD]

Mr. Geist was kind enough to not point out that my analysis was totally wrong. It was.

Of course he is very correct.

I am humbled. And must acknowledge the correction.

The question went to dummy load of the output of the cross over circuit. I misread it.

I'd think that a dummy load at the output might fill the bill. Geist gives a much better solution of removing the woofer crossover circuit.

Gil

This message has been edited by William F. Gil McDermott on 10-01-2001 at 10:08 PM

[TheEAR]

Good KGeist sounds like he has the answer after the B&W VS Klipsch battle is over! LOL

One thing is sure Matrix and Nautius B&W speakers have much more inert cabinets.This means uncolored sound(even if you dont like it)and better imaging(fact Jack).

And I am not a B&W fan,just did listen to them and still think my Dynaudio Contour 3.3's best most B&W 's easy.Dynes have a level of detail up high no B&W can match,cloth dome tweeters best the metal,composite domes for airy and natural sound.

So B&W Traitor bring it on.

And FYI I also have the Spendor FL-10,natural sound with real bass.

TheEAR(s) Now theears