On 12/04/2021 at 22:42, Lady Elanore said:

 

The beauty of these older amps and a lot of British current amps, is they have big toroidal transformers in them and can produce big current when it's demanded. This means they can drive difficult loads (many modern speakers have impedance that can dip down to 2ohms) with a good amount of shove. A clever high-powered Japanese amp/receiver may have greater headline figures, but ultimately can't deliver that same as the toroidal powered am

 
I’ve certainly seen this with newer Japanese built AV revivers, the 2019 Onkyo that I have has a lot less power than the 2009 model it replaced.

 

It’s also not helped by their proprietary room equalisation system. It’s all over the place. Luckily you can store your own settings, so it’s measuring sound levels across various frequencies. Brings back fond memories of many years back doing similar in Fountain Studios in Wembley, they had the same acoustics as the average aircraft hanger 🤬😊

4 minutes ago, Jfhuk said:

 
I’ve certainly seen this with newer Japanese built AV revivers, the 2019 Onkyo that I have has a lot less power than the 2009 model it replaced.

 

It’s also not helped by their proprietary room equalisation system. It’s all over the place. Luckily you can store your own settings, so it’s measuring sound levels across various frequencies. Brings back fond memories of many years back doing similar in Fountain Studios in Wembley, they had the same acoustics as the average aircraft hanger 🤬😊

3 x receivers ago I had an Onkyo NR906 that weighed around 24kg. A lot of that was the lovely big Transformer that gently warmed my room. Huge amount of grunt from a Japanese receiver at the time. My current Denon doesn't quite have the same 'manly' output (SwMoPs), but I run a separate poweramp for the front pair (Roksan K3) which not only heats the room but is also satisfyingly heavy. Hence, I have my grunt back and we all like a bit of grunt don't we? 

 

I missed the chance recently to buy a Cambridge Azur 851 for £850 at Richer Sounds (I was a bit skint) and that not only has HUGE power but weighed 19kg, so it must have been good  Still kicking myself over missing that one. It's one of the main things about power amps, they never go out of fashion, a good one is always a good one and will last decades with a bit of luck

 

I've seem some ex-demo Monitor Audio Gold 300s for around £2,500 and I thought if I could only persuade my accountants to let me get them for my business they would be a nice addition to my furniture  unfortunately I don't think I could lift them into position anyway as they weigh around 30kg-the speakers, not my accountants

 

"Damm you lifetime's obsession with heavy hifi!!"

22 minutes ago, Jfhuk said:

 
 

 

It’s also not helped by their proprietary room equalisation system. It’s all over the place. Luckily you can store your own settings, so it’s measuring sound levels across various frequencies. Brings back fond memories of many years back doing similar in Fountain Studios in Wembley, they had the same acoustics as the average aircraft hanger 🤬😊

Actually thinking about this I noticed the room correction was poor on my last Onkyo as they had gone from Audyssey to their own system. My Denon uses Audyssey which is reasonably good, but it helps that I have the phone app which lets you see and tweak the room's curve manually to some degree. It seems to be reasonably accurate for a cheap system as you can see the crossover peak (very slight on my front pair), although they annoying like to put a few dbs of reduction as a default whether you can see the crossover peaks or not

The thing with older hi-fi is that the speaker surrounds deteriorate with age & the capacitors usually "drift" as they are almost always basic electrolytic. I have a nice complete B&O system from 1985, which will require most caps replacing & all the speaker cones re-foaming! I might swap to butyl rubber for the surrounds & fit some nice Panasonic caps, & maybe upgrade the speaker cross-overs to poly caps.

 

When I got my new main hi-fi circa 2013 (Denon & Monitor Audio), I swapped onto proper bi-wire cables, & used Sorbothane pucks under the whole lot to stop vibrations. I then I "x-bonded" in star pattern all the metal cases to a separate earth cord to my heavy duty mains/spike/filtering block. No more static shocks, less dust etc, etc, sound openness improved...I hate double insulated equipment!! 

 

Mind you around Christmas time I modified this hi-fi!!. ..All the metal cases I applied Dynamat to the inside to stop panel vibration, this has made the CD player much quieter, & stopped the amp (class D) case making zizing/pinging noises as it gets hot!

 

Anyway biggest change was when I really modified my speaker cabinets & cross-overs....I did a write up for the UK company where I bought the caps, inductors & resistors from..& its here on their blog..bit of a long read with nice pictures:-

Monitor Audio Bronze BX2 Speaker Upgrade | HIFICollective

That's a really interesting read as I have the older MA Bronze B2 but have to say I doubt I'd have the time or inclination to upgrade them to that level of detail, even if it were so worthwhile!  Kudos to you for doing so...

 

Maybe I'll just nick my late FILs Kef R3 instead...

32 minutes ago, skomaz said:

That's a really interesting read as I have the older MA Bronze B2 but have to say I doubt I'd have the time or inclination to upgrade them to that level of detail, even if it were so worthwhile!  Kudos to you for doing so...

 

Maybe I'll just nick my late FILs Kef R3 instead...

 

Yeah, I'm a bit like that with my "projects".........Easiest thing would be to do the cabinets as I did (deadening, bracing)...then reuse the existing cross-over & desolder the existing resistors & caps, & fit new better, but not as big/good as mine as it needs to fit on the original x-over board. You should see that to the left in the first picture of the thread...that will give you alot of bass improvement, & clear out the midrange.

 

Most speakers including the high end stuff have bad bracing & not enough deadening to stop panel resonance. Then they fit cheap resistors/inductors/caps/internal cables & spend ££ on expensive drivers & recommend you spend ££ on expensive external cables.......Those electrical signals still have to pass through the cross-over components & if they are cheap, they will distort the sound, so that makes a mockery of the drivers & the external cables...

 

If you want to see actual before & after sound improvements (using calibrated measuring equipment to produce 3D waterfall charts) the person/company I talked about in the thread was this bloke in USA...

 

GR-Research - YouTube

 

 

Edited 30 August, 20214 yr by fabdavrav

59 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

 

Maybe I'll just nick my late FILs Kef R3 instead...

 

 I've heard the K3s and thought they were quite excellent. In fact the first proper speakers I ever bought where the Kef Coda IIIs. I was working in London and went to Tottenham Court Road and bought them without thinking how I was going to get them home to Manchester along with my suitcase (I was spending 2 months in London, so I had a very big suitcase with me). At one point I dragged the huge cardboard box along to the train with a bit of sting (like walking a recalcitrant dog). Total nightmare, but worth it when I eventually got home. Upset a lot of people on the bus too as I recall  I gave them to a colleague when I got my first Epos pair and he still has them in daily use  

 

 To my ears, it seems to be so much easier to build a good bookshelf speaker than a good floorstander. I miss true LF from my MA 100s, but everything else sounds very sweet. The tweeters really are remarkable for what is more or less a mid-range budget speaker.

 Having been an Epos fan for many years (hence my M22s. M5s and Epos M Sub), I felt disappointed by their slow drift into anonymity and slow move downhill in performance 😞 They have been bought by a German company which is currently developing a new range though. Monitor Audio seem to be a British company that has a similar ethos to the one Epos once had, plus I like British speakers (and amps). 

Edited 30 August, 20214 yr by Lady Elanore

He was a bit of a Kef fan...   Before the R3 he had some 70s Cresta 2 in the dining room and reference 103 in the lounge.  The MIL hated them and they were well past their best by the time I saw them but he held on to them just in case even though they'd packed in working.  They are now in the hifi scrapyard in the sky...

Edited 30 August, 20214 yr by skomaz

Kef are on a little bit of a roll at the moment. Making some nice speakers, especially the K3  You can keep well-built speakers going for years in the crossover components are still in good order. My M22s are still structurally solid as the day I bought them and now I've given them new tweeters they sound pretty good once more  

3 hours ago, Lady Elanore said:

 

 I've heard the K3s and thought they were quite excellent. In fact the first proper speakers I ever bought where the Kef Coda IIIs. I was working in London and went to Tottenham Court Road and bought them without thinking how I was going to get them home to Manchester 

 

 To my ears, it seems to be so much easier to build a good bookshelf speaker than a good floorstander. Monitor Audio seem to be a British company that has a similar ethos to the one Epos once had, plus I like British speakers (and amps). 

 

 

I used to live in London in the 80's/& early 90's..& spent many a hour wandering the electronics road!! & sitting in listening rooms!!..

 

Bookshelf speakers don't go down that low a frequency, compared to floorstanders. So they don't have to cope with trying to stop low notes shaking the cabinet & messing up the mid range etc.. Its best to have a separate sub for the low stuff.

 

Anyway most so called bass in modern music is artificial noise & not true musical notes. Most drum kits only go down to about 50Hz....bass guitars down about 35Hz.....its the Jazz stuff that uses a lot of double bass (down to about 30Hz) & a full orchestra that really pushes it low...Musical acoustics - Wikipedia

 

My speakers only go down to about 42Hz...but that was before the mods to the cabinet. What has happened is that the low notes are clearer, i.e. I can hear the kick drums separate from the bass guitar, when they are playing the same note/time...same with jazz & the double bass...& they are faster..& keep up more with no overrun, or lag..

 

Monitor Audio is British, but most stuff is made in China....those nice capacitors that I used in my mods, are made in Wales!..

3 hours ago, skomaz said:

  Before the R3 he had some 70s Cresta 2 in the dining room and reference 103 in the lounge.  

 

Crikey, I just looked up the Kef 103s! They seem to be a beast of a bookshelf! I doubt many bookshelves would take the weight  Very unusual shape. I wish I'd heard them.

 

Having spent decades listening and working with reference monitors and such like, I prefer a simpler mechanical approach to speaker design, careful matching of compnents and extreme quality control can give so much.But a lot of the newer innovations in manufacturing and design, seem to be producing speakers that appear to outperform their dimensions and shapes. I still think I'll end up with a 3 way floorstander at some point (obviously I already own a pair with the M22s, but they aren't quite clinical enough for my ageing ears :D), just because I like the bass extension and although I run a decent active sub, it's never quite the same as a one box solution that has been designed by experts. 

 

Were the Crestas a bit like the BBC LS3/5s ?

On 30/08/2021 at 13:32, Lady Elanore said:

I've seem some ex-demo Monitor Audio Gold 300s for around £2,500 and I thought if I could only persuade my accountants to let me get them for my business they would be a nice addition to my furniture  unfortunately I don't think I could lift them into position anyway as they weigh around 30kg-the speakers, not my accountants

I used to own a pair of ex BBC LS7’s, which I’m sad I let go of. At the time we had a toddler and she kept trying to climb the heavy stands, it was too dangerous.

 

The Monitor Audio’s would certainly sound great. I did once have a financial director that was certainly trying to 30kg! 😂 That guy ate non stop.

16 minutes ago, Jfhuk said:

I used to own a pair of ex BBC LS7’s, which I’m sad I let go of. At the time we had a toddler and she kept trying to climb the heavy stands, it was too dangerous.

 

The Monitor Audio’s would certainly sound great. I did once have a financial director that was certainly trying to 30kg! 😂 That guy ate non stop.

 

I edited many radio shows on LS3/7s and Quad amps  Did yours still have the handles on? They were useful to hang things off   

By the time I got them the handles had gone, but the mounts for them where still there. I loved the sound they produced.

They were designed for OB use originally, hence the LS3/ part of their designation and the handles (you probably knew this), but found their way into many editing channels indoors as LS5/8s were considered a bit expensive and overkill for the task of 1/4" editing. 

15 hours ago, Lady Elanore said:

 

Crikey, I just looked up the Kef 103s! They seem to be a beast of a bookshelf! I doubt many bookshelves would take the weight  Very unusual shape. I wish I'd heard them.

 

 

Yeah the 103s were certainly a bit wakky an very big for a bookshelf.

 

Unfortunately they were fried by an Amp that decided to put mains voltage down the speaker terminals so I only heard them a couple of times.

 

The crestas he had wall mounted and they were usually blasting out classical music whilst he was cooking in the kitchen.

If you want good low accurate bass & only a pair of speakers (no sub required)..a single large diameter woofer is required. You then need very heavy/solid cabinets to stop it from moving....

 

Reference Fidelity Canterbury

These are not bad for size/cost..£8,995 fully built using the very good Tannoy HPD315 dual concentric drive unit (rebuilt)..& horn tweeters....32Hz to 19Hz....or down to 27Hz if near a wall...& 70kgs each!!

 

Reference Canterbury Loudspeakers | Reference Fidelity Components

 

Reference Fidelity Components | Facebook

 

 

Edited 31 August, 20214 yr by fabdavrav

59 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

 

Unfortunately they were fried by an Amp that decided to put mains voltage down the speaker terminals so I only heard them a couple of times.

 

 

A studio I worked in replaced its speaker tie lines in the roof grid from 'EP' standard  sockets, for the 100V line speakers (before speakons), to standard XLR 3 pin. Unfortunately these 100V XLR tie lines were adjacent to the Mic tie lines and neither was labelled as to its purpose.  So several people plugged mics into the wrong tie line....ooops! 

On 30/08/2021 at 16:13, fabdavrav said:

The thing with older hi-fi is that the speaker surrounds deteriorate with age & the capacitors usually "drift" as they are almost always basic electrolytic. I have a nice complete B&O system from 1985, which will require most caps replacing & all the speaker cones re-foaming! I might swap to butyl rubber for the surrounds & fit some nice Panasonic caps, & maybe upgrade the speaker cross-overs to poly caps.

 

When I got my new main hi-fi circa 2013 (Denon & Monitor Audio), I swapped onto proper bi-wire cables, & used Sorbothane pucks under the whole lot to stop vibrations. I then I "x-bonded" in star pattern all the metal cases to a separate earth cord to my heavy duty mains/spike/filtering block. No more static shocks, less dust etc, etc, sound openness improved...I hate double insulated equipment!! 

 

Mind you around Christmas time I modified this hi-fi!!. ..All the metal cases I applied Dynamat to the inside to stop panel vibration, this has made the CD player much quieter, & stopped the amp (class D) case making zizing/pinging noises as it gets hot!

 

Anyway biggest change was when I really modified my speaker cabinets & cross-overs....I did a write up for the UK company where I bought the caps, inductors & resistors from..& its here on their blog..bit of a long read with nice pictures:-

Monitor Audio Bronze BX2 Speaker Upgrade | HIFICollective

Redid all the capacitors on my old mid range speakers, changed the fluids on the tweeters and inspected the cones which were all in excellent condition.

 

The electrolytics were not leaking, but some were borderline on spec.

 

Was considering an “upgrade” to MA silver or b&w 603, but was disappointed on the test listen.
 

Speaking to both companies they said it was higher range models which were  the equivalent replacements. The eye watering costs of these options made a repair of substantially cheaper pair suddenly the only option.

 

Worrying thing was how midrange speakers no longer live up to those of the recent past.

I thought the MA Silver 200s & 300s were getting pretty rave reviews? At the moment, there are a huge number of hifi outlets doing deals on ex demos of these. Richer Sounds amongst them. RS doing the 200s for £675 down from £1,000 Just seen Sevenoaks doing them for £600

 

I'd like to hear the Silver 200s beside the Gold 200s but suspect the pleated tweeters (or tweeter accordions as I like to call them) of the Golds would win me over. 

Edited 31 August, 20214 yr by Lady Elanore

40 minutes ago, Lady Elanore said:

I thought the MA Silver 200s & 300s were getting pretty rave reviews? At the moment, there are a huge number of hifi outlets doing deals on ex demos of these. Richer Sounds amongst them. RS doing the 200s for £675 down from £1,000 Just seen Sevenoaks doing them for £600

 

I'd like to hear the Silver 200s beside the Gold 200s but suspect the pleated tweeters (or tweeter accordions as I like to call them) of the Golds would win me over. 

I auditioned the silver 300 and and 603 (got stand and floor mixed up).

Not bad, but not a patch on 25 year old B&W p5

B&W suggested the 702 s2 or 703 s2 were the replacements. Too rich for me I’m afraid.

I must admit I'm still attached to my M22s, but the top end of the MA100s has made me realise that the M22s don't quite have the same control at higher frequencies (and thats with the new tweeters I fitted recently). Bass extension is obviously better than the MAs, but I value the MAs clarity and control of mid and high frequencies over sheer bass. This is why I would like my accountant to let me buy the 200 Golds (and lend me the money too  ) 

7 hours ago, Lady Elanore said:

I must admit I'm still attached to my M22s, but the top end of the MA100s has made me realise that the M22s don't quite have the same control at higher frequencies (and thats with the new tweeters I fitted recently). Bass extension is obviously better than the MAs, but I value the MAs clarity and control of mid and high frequencies over sheer bass. This is why I would like my accountant to let me buy the 200 Golds (and lend me the money too  ) 

That’s kind of my problem, bass isn’t better and frequency response doesn’t go as low.

With the refurbished tweeters treble isn’t either and might actually say maybe the newer speakers round the treble a bit.

 

I’m sure the 702/703 s2 would be better, but not enough I could justify the price tags.

That’s the thing with hifi it includes a big dose of person preference along with diminishing returns. 😂

 

3 hours ago, cheezemonkhai said:

 

That’s the thing with hifi it includes a big dose of person preference along with diminishing returns. 😂

 

Amen to that

 

I was looking at some short XLR interconnects on a website the other day, £125!!!!!! I've got dozens of them (admittedly not oxygen free copper) lying about and I doubt you could hear the difference. I am pretty sure I couldn't hear the difference and it's sort of my job to hear stuff  Mind you, it helps to be realistic about your own hearing and at my age (not telling) I have  undoubtedly suffered some hearing loss, especially at the top end. 

9 minutes ago, Lady Elanore said:

Amen to that

 

I was looking at some short XLR interconnects on a website the other day, £125!!!!!! I've got dozens of them (admittedly not oxygen free copper) lying about and I doubt you could hear the difference. I am pretty sure I couldn't hear the difference and it's sort of my job to hear stuff  Mind you, it helps to be realistic about your own hearing and at my age (not telling) I have  undoubtedly suffered some hearing loss, especially at the top end. 

 

I used to make them for a theatre and I used reels of Van Damme mic/XLR cable. Nothing fancy but decent quality and in various colours for the sound desk, equipment and microphones.

Ditto for the speaker to amp connections, but at that power level I doubt anything made much difference 

 

This sort of stuff:

https://www.vdctrading.com/shop/van-damme-cable/audio/Single-Channel-Analogue-Audio-Cable/

 

Reasonable cable, may have been mostly OFC, but nothing fancy, neutrik connectors to take a beating and decent quality leaded/lead free solder.

I really do not understand how some people can justify the prices, particularly for digital or XLR cables.
 

Edited 1 September, 20214 yr by cheezemonkhai