Feb 7th bakeoff

mike,
you're more than welcome to come along... the frikin' awesomes may be overkill though but we'll see if we can fit em in.
cheers


julian

 

Julian,

no intention of trying to move the things, just thought the amp might be great with Steve's superb subs. Whilst I'd love to be there, I doubt I'll have the spare time that weekend, and I've heard the 7thV speakers (and I happen to love 'em!)

 

Mike,

For starters, you'd need to hire a transit van, they'd never fit in your car!

 

Steady on Mike. Oh I see. You're just trying to get in with the in crowd ahead of Paul Messenger's review coming out.

... Mind you, the position of Sales Manager is coming up on the horizon.

Your amp would be great for the bass units though. I'm not sure of the geography involved yet but maybe we could sort something out.

It's getting quite exciting (call me sad or what?).

 

Damping factor claims are a good indication of snake oiling going on.

The output impedance of a solid state amp is usually much less than the impedance of the wires/connectors inside the amps case, let alone the speaker cable and all that is made almost completely irrelevant by the impedance of the speaker itself.

It's the latter that normally gets overlooked in considerations of damping factor.

Anyway with a solid state amp you'd have to design it to be bad for 'damping factor' to be significant. Tubes are different...

(I'm sure the Crown is a very fine amp, regardless of its specmanship!)

Paul

 

Julian,

Could you give me some idea of the size and shape of the room and the speaker/listening positions. I could do a bit of homework.

 

Thanks for that Paul, I've no doubt you are correct.

The Crown is actually a fairly average amp, it does exhibit outstanding control of the bottom end however. It's one of those Class D amps. It would be very interesting to hear it powering the bass units on some Briks

 

steve,
it's a bit of a strange shaped room 23 ft long and about 11 1/2 ft at one end. about 1/2 way down the room a big chunk gets taken out and the room is then about 8ft wide, height is about 8ft all the way through.
the kit sits at the wide end (front) see the 1st piccy HERE for an idea of the wide end. i've changed things around a lot since these were taken and my 2 racks now sit either side of the tv (which stays where it is) with the speakers currently in a similar position.
do your subs need to go in the corners of the room. if not i can push my b&w's back into the corners out of the way while we play with your speakers. if they do i'll have to move them out of the road.
i'm not sure how to split up the day as we've got some cd player messing about to do - i really want to have a listen to the cd5i and the quads in my system. As your speakers are going to need some room rearrangement it's probably going to be best if we listen to them either first or last, i guess we'll make it up as we go along on the day - as usual.
cheers


julian

 

With luck the speakers should be very easy to set up and, once set up, should be easy to plug and unplug. The subs might be best in corners - I'll run some room software which will give us a good 'first stab at it'.

I should probably arrive a little earlier than most to get them sorted but I don't anticipate problems.

 

Personally, I'd rather like to hear Julians system as is before we go messing around with kit. I'd also like to hear my amp drivign his speakers to see how they manage it. perhaps we could save the speaker changes for later?

 

I suggest then that I set the speakers up with Julian first and then we disconnect them and plug Julian's back in.

 

i think things are getting a little complex. we've got 3 sets of things to do....
1) try out steves speakers. this is effectively going to mean a second system set up, a source, robbo's a/r amp, another bass amp and steves speakers.
2) the cd player shoot out, i've got all the cables and gubbins necessary to connect them all up at the same time (how about we arrange for the same cd x 3 just to get really anal so we can do live source switching? i vote shpongle, are you shpongled as i know robbo has this and i'm sure someone else comming must have it?) and we can stack them on top of my cd5 so that ones a piece of cake.
3) Trying the esl's on my kit - do these need a power supply? either way it should be a matter of pluging them in and off we go.

#1 is the logistical problem. we can either do this first or last. i'd be inclined to say do it first so that the decks can be cleared afterwards otherwise there's going to be a lot of kit hanging about in the room taking up valuable space.

#2 should be a doddle.

#3 the only problem here is space so i'd say do this after we've had a good listen to steve's stuff.

this way we also have less heavy kit shifting as the day goes on.

just as an asside does anyone have any special food or drink requirements? i was going to do chips, dips and snacks, etc. as i'm a crap cook.

i'll be pming directions etc. to everyone on the list sometime tomorrow

cheers


julian

 

This evening I've fired the ESLs up for the first time in a while. They're just sitting on the carpet, moved back and forward and angled a bit to taste. They need to be 3 or 4 feet at least from the rear wall, but can go close to the side walls.

They sound great. No big installation effort here. There will probably be a bit of a sweet spot though.

Some sort of mains required to each speaker, I'll bring leads and a block. There isn't really a significant warm up.

I rather wish my room and domestic circumstances made living with them practical. I'm not finding limitations on bass or volume. But this will probably be room dependent. It'll be interesting to find out!

Paul

 

yeh i'll bring a cdr copy of this along.

 

The only thing with my shpongle disc is that mine is RA relees/reveel treated and also green penned so it will sound considerably better than the non treated discs

 

ok,
i've pm'd everyone on the list in the 1st post my contact details, except for rory - delete some pm's please.
if there are any problems or questions pm me back or phone me.
cheers


julian

 

also i've been asked a couple of times for a start time... 12 o'clock or thereabouts sounds good to me.
cheers


julian