Analytics

Yep, I think you nailed it. I swapped the Heresy II's in my hi-fi system with the RF-52 II's in my home theatre system. The Heresies were flawless hooked up to the Yamaha receiver, and the RF-52's fell apart connected to the Mac. It's a little surprising though--from your article, motorboating is common with tube amps. The Mac 1700 has tubes for the radio receiver, but the amp itself is solid state. The Heresies sound sweet and handled everything I threw at them with the Yamaha. I turned the bass up all the way, turned the volume up all the way, and turned on some house music, and the speakers filled the room without a hint of a problem. It looks like it's time to take the Mac to the repair shop. Fortunately there are a couple of good ones in town. Thank you guys--your help and insight was invaluable. I'll keep in touch. Really? The bass all the way up? Volume all the way up? How long do you expect them to survive? Well, it was just for a few minutes to see if I could replicate the issues I had when attached with the other amp. The speakers seemed to have survived the test, and are now back in their home attached to the hi-fi where they can't be turned up very loud without the distortion.

Thanks for the advice. Any specific complains about the Electronic Center, or just a bad vibe from them? I was planning on taking my Mac there--they seem to have a great reputation.

Yep, I think you nailed it. I swapped the Heresy II's in my hi-fi system with the RF-52 II's in my home theatre system. The Heresies were flawless hooked up to the Yamaha receiver, and the RF-52's fell apart connected to the Mac. It's a little surprising though--from your article, motorboating is common with tube amps. The Mac 1700 has tubes for the radio receiver, but the amp itself is solid state. The Heresies sound sweet and handled everything I threw at them with the Yamaha. I turned the bass up all the way, turned the volume up all the way, and turned on some house music, and the speakers filled the room without a hint of a problem. It looks like it's time to take the Mac to the repair shop. Fortunately there are a couple of good ones in town. Thank you guys--your help and insight was invaluable. I'll keep in touch.

Here are some photos of my funky system.

It sounds like the consensus is that it's either the amp or something loose in the speaker that was creating a harmonic. I think it's the second. I started checking the speakers last night and discovered something obvious. The speaker wire was attached to the speakers with banana plugs pushed into the back of the binding posts, but the caps on the binding posts weren't tightly screwed down. I screwed them down tight, and the problem might be resolved now. I say "might" because some people were sleeping in the house when I did this, and I couldn't crank up the speakers all the way. They sounded great up to the medium volume I was able to go. I'll test it more tonight, and will return and report with photos.

Heresy's have little bass compared to some of their siblings but they shouldn't sound distorted. Can you better describe what you're hearing? Is it both speakers? have you tried the speakers with different electronics? It's a very loud, vibrating distortion. When you begin to turn up the volume, there is no distortion at all, but the bass does seem to be a bit weak. With regards to power, the Mac-1700 puts out 40 watts per channel. When the dial starts to approach 50% up, the bass breaks down into a thumpy distortion. The distortion comes out very loud and distinct in waves--something on the order of 5 hissing thumps per second. Originally I thought the issue was only one speaker, but the same effect hits both of them--just not in unison. What's interesting is that if you then turn the volume down, the vibration and distortion continues, lower than the volume it was at when it started. It seems that once the harmonic causes it to start vibrating, it wants to continue. As you continue decreasing the volume, it eventually goes away. I haven't tried the Heresies in another amp, but I have tried other speakers in the Mac, and they work fine. Speakers just can't behave like that on their own. So I would not worry about them. It has to be the amp feeding them that signal. Could it be that the amp is microphonic and the HII are mechanically coupled to the amp in the cabinet? Another issue: I don't know if the HII uses a low impedance woofer (4 ohms) which the amp might not like. It could explain why other speakers work okay. Edit: Bob Crites reports that the bass driver voice coil resistance is pretty much the same from the H to H11. So I'm wrong. I like djk's reference to motorboating. The one time I heard it, it was like a purring. But I do think that overall the amp is going to weird oscillations. It might eventually hurt the speakers. So be careful. WMcD Interesting. The Mac says it will automatically handle either 4 or 8 ohm speakers.

Excellent info; Thanks! That makes the speakers look like babies! I don't think the McIntosh is the issue--it sounds fine with other speakers.

Road trips are always fun though. If you know what you're doing, I'll throw in some Royal tickets and let you spend the night, lol. Yes, they are H2's, H#WO, born the 6th week of 1985.

Here we go again. Heresys have plenty of tight and accurate midbass just not much deep bass, IMO. Bill I'm in Overland Park Kansas, near Kansas City. If anybody would like to stop by, dinner and beer is on me. Thanks!

Heresy's have little bass compared to some of their siblings but they shouldn't sound distorted. Can you better describe what you're hearing? Is it both speakers? have you tried the speakers with different electronics? It's a very loud, vibrating distortion. When you begin to turn up the volume, there is no distortion at all, but the bass does seem to be a bit weak. With regards to power, the Mac-1700 puts out 40 watts per channel. When the dial starts to approach 50% up, the bass breaks down into a thumpy distortion. The distortion comes out very loud and distinct in waves--something on the order of 5 hissing thumps per second. Originally I thought the issue was only one speaker, but the same effect hits both of them--just not in unison. What's interesting is that if you then turn the volume down, the vibration and distortion continues, lower than the volume it was at when it started. It seems that once the harmonic causes it to start vibrating, it wants to continue. As you continue decreasing the volume, it eventually goes away. I haven't tried the Heresies in another amp, but I have tried other speakers in the Mac, and they work fine.

It's a unique setup; I'll post some photos tonight. So, if the woofers are bad, does that mean they need to be replaced? And by "recapping" the crossovers, does that mean replacing the capacitors? I apologize for my ignorance here--I've never messed with speakers before. I'm quite happy to roll my sleeves up and learn. Thanks!

Hi Everybody, As background, about a year ago my wife purchased this unique piece of furniture at an auction. In one tall piece, it includes a lit up bar, a cheesy artificial fireplace, and an old, non-functional console stereo. We decided to call the thing our multi-media love center: if I come home from work and the artificial fireplace is on, there is a martini on the lit-up bar, and a Barry White album playing, then I'll get the hint--action tonight! So, I started working on fixing the thing. All of the stereo equipment was old broken junk, so I started there. I found a gorgeous Mac-1700 McIntosh receiver that fit perfectly into the console. That really captured my imagination, and I decided to really go all-out on this. I bought a new turntable to go with it, and hooked up some speakers. It sounded great, but I didn't feel the speakers were quite good enough to go with the Mac. So, I started researching speakers that would do the system justice, and decided that what I really needed was a pair of Klipsch Heresies, ideally Heresy II's to match the Mac. So I started saving and looking. Yesterday I purchased the Hersey II's. Oiled walnut, perfect grill, and given the age, practically flawless on the outside. The problem is, the woofers aren't doing their job right. At low volumes there isn't quite enough bass, and once you crank it up to about a medium volume, they get an awful distortion and vibration. So here is my question: what do I do? I really want this to sound nice, so I'd like to get the speakers back to their original performance level. But I wouldn't be opposed to modifying them to better-than-new performance, if such a thing is possible (e.g. I saw another thread where somebody described installing a powered woofer in the cabinet). I'm not opposed to working on them myself, but I've never attempted to fix a speaker before and really don't know where to start. I could probably afford to take them to a repair shop if that's really the best way to go. But I'm nervous that the shop might thrown in cheap parts and leave me with a working speaker that isn't as good as this one should be. I could send them back to the factory to get fixed by Klipsch (assuming they do such repairs), but I'm worried that after shipping, that might end up costing me close to what a brand new pair of Heresy III's would have cost. Does Klipsch still make replacement parts for this? Or would they at least sell me parts for the Heresy III? I can't even figure out how to go about ordering what I need. So if you were in my shoes, what would you do? Where would you start?