Hello again, after I found a few suitable speakerprojects for my friend I began to think that I myself listen to less and less music every day, how come?
The answer that I came up with is that even if I like music like Norah Jones and such most of my collection is made up of heavy metal and rock. Even if Norah, the little cutie, sounds great the heavier stuff doesn't sound as good. So, I put the blame on my Herukas (fullrange with fostex 168ez sigma).
Anyway, I need something with a little more drive in the netherregions combined with a high efficiency suitable for smaller tubeamps and KlassA SS's, say around 10W.
I've found some alternatives and I was hoping that you guys could point me in the right direction.
First of, we have the C17 by Troels, an MTM floorstander.
Then theres two from Zaph, the Waveguide TMM and the Vifa/seas MTM.
What do you think of these? My initial gut-feeling is the one by Troels but pionters and comments are welcome
Of, one more thing, I don't have a big room (approx 5x4m) and the speakers will be standing about 20-30cm from the wall.
Edit:
To clarify even more, I usually listen at moderate levels since I live in an apartment and dislike disturbing the neighbours even if I crank the volume up every now and then. Due to the same reason I'm not a big fan of the really deep floor rumbling bass which is the best way for my neighbours to get me pissed.
What I want is a pair of speakers that makes if fun to listen to music. The kind that makes you want to have a beer or eight and stomp your foot rather that sit in the sofa and just listen.
Perhaps a more laid back and forgiving kind, I don't really know what I'm fishing for here.
The answer that I came up with is that even if I like music like Norah Jones and such most of my collection is made up of heavy metal and rock. Even if Norah, the little cutie, sounds great the heavier stuff doesn't sound as good. So, I put the blame on my Herukas (fullrange with fostex 168ez sigma).
Anyway, I need something with a little more drive in the netherregions combined with a high efficiency suitable for smaller tubeamps and KlassA SS's, say around 10W.
I've found some alternatives and I was hoping that you guys could point me in the right direction.
First of, we have the C17 by Troels, an MTM floorstander.
Then theres two from Zaph, the Waveguide TMM and the Vifa/seas MTM.
What do you think of these? My initial gut-feeling is the one by Troels but pionters and comments are welcome
Of, one more thing, I don't have a big room (approx 5x4m) and the speakers will be standing about 20-30cm from the wall.
Edit:
To clarify even more, I usually listen at moderate levels since I live in an apartment and dislike disturbing the neighbours even if I crank the volume up every now and then. Due to the same reason I'm not a big fan of the really deep floor rumbling bass which is the best way for my neighbours to get me pissed.
What I want is a pair of speakers that makes if fun to listen to music. The kind that makes you want to have a beer or eight and stomp your foot rather that sit in the sofa and just listen.
Perhaps a more laid back and forgiving kind, I don't really know what I'm fishing for here.
Well if you want something exciting then you dont want laidback.
I would look at the David/Jericho project (Wilson Watt clone).
Its high efficiency in a compact floorstander.
I would look at the David/Jericho project (Wilson Watt clone).
Its high efficiency in a compact floorstander.
Yes and no. Nu subs and no large elements, below 7". I want some regular sized floorstanders and they don't have to be a kind of metalspeakers, more a pair of "regular" that deliver an OK sound. And I rather have firm bass than very deep.
Well, if there's the posibility of building the subs in the same cabinet as the speakers (like those from ZAPH) then subs are a possibility, but a later one.
Efficient Speakers
Hi Kmj.
I must say that you are pushing things a little expecting just 10 watts to drive compact floorstanders to high levels due to the inherant lowish sensitivity of such designs, the best of which need at least 15 or 20 watts but if this is of any help, I recently traded my Rega Pre/Poer amp for a Lumley reference st40/pp40 valve amp kicking out 40 watts per channel and successfully matched them with Proac's superb new Studio 140's. This is a great match due to the speakers efficiency of 91 db/1 Watt/ 1m and the fact that their ports are tuned to 25 Hz in room. The result is amazing. Although my 85w Regas were good and had excellent grip, I have found no problems at all with the valve amp driving the Proac's to ear splitting levels and they are well suited to rock. They stand about 1100mm high and are a compact 2 1/2 way design employing a silk dome tweeter and two long throw 165mm (about 61/2 inch) Bass/Midrange drivers. Dont be fooled by the small drivers. I listen in a 20 ft by 12 ft room and the Lumley valve combo will drive the Proacs very loud with the amp volume at the 10 O'clock position. These cost about £1450 here in the UK. Another great alternative if you can find them are the Castle Howard S2's which were designed with valve amps in mind and again are slimish florstaners close to 90 Watt sensitivity and use quarter wave length tube tuning (and upward firing mid for better imaging). Again, superb sounding and cost about £500 second hand. For best results, stick to larger more efficient drivers if you can and dont rule out older designs such as the excellent Wharfdale E70's or E50's which can both be driven VERY loud by even 5 or 10 watts per channel due to their high sensitivity of 94 dB (cost about £150 second hand). They also sound great.
With the Proacs, their design impedence loading is close to 4 ohms, so if you have a 4 ohm tap on your outputs use this. Dont worry if you haven't. They present a fairly easy 4 ohm load compared to some.
Cheers
Hi Kmj.
I must say that you are pushing things a little expecting just 10 watts to drive compact floorstanders to high levels due to the inherant lowish sensitivity of such designs, the best of which need at least 15 or 20 watts but if this is of any help, I recently traded my Rega Pre/Poer amp for a Lumley reference st40/pp40 valve amp kicking out 40 watts per channel and successfully matched them with Proac's superb new Studio 140's. This is a great match due to the speakers efficiency of 91 db/1 Watt/ 1m and the fact that their ports are tuned to 25 Hz in room. The result is amazing. Although my 85w Regas were good and had excellent grip, I have found no problems at all with the valve amp driving the Proac's to ear splitting levels and they are well suited to rock. They stand about 1100mm high and are a compact 2 1/2 way design employing a silk dome tweeter and two long throw 165mm (about 61/2 inch) Bass/Midrange drivers. Dont be fooled by the small drivers. I listen in a 20 ft by 12 ft room and the Lumley valve combo will drive the Proacs very loud with the amp volume at the 10 O'clock position. These cost about £1450 here in the UK. Another great alternative if you can find them are the Castle Howard S2's which were designed with valve amps in mind and again are slimish florstaners close to 90 Watt sensitivity and use quarter wave length tube tuning (and upward firing mid for better imaging). Again, superb sounding and cost about £500 second hand. For best results, stick to larger more efficient drivers if you can and dont rule out older designs such as the excellent Wharfdale E70's or E50's which can both be driven VERY loud by even 5 or 10 watts per channel due to their high sensitivity of 94 dB (cost about £150 second hand). They also sound great.
With the Proacs, their design impedence loading is close to 4 ohms, so if you have a 4 ohm tap on your outputs use this. Dont worry if you haven't. They present a fairly easy 4 ohm load compared to some.
Cheers
Ok, 10W was a figure i took out of the air just because my present amp gives about 10W and are driving my 94dB herukas.
If I say something like this:
If I change my 95dB (8ohms) fullrangers for a MTM with approx the same stats, is there a chance that this will improve the bass and give a bit more bite? If we are using the same amp in both cases.
kmj said:
The bass response depends on a little more than efficiency unfortunately. I'm not familiar with your current speakers but even modest amplification should get low notes (although not necessarily "speed" or bass control). Its well worth checking more than the basic stats for the MTMs. If you can get hold of a frequency response chart from the suppliers and check with them how your room size could affect loading, then provided they're tuned for lower in room bass (ported to peak at a decent bass level) the amplification you intend to use should drive them with ease. I'd be surprised though if a slim floorstander could give 94dB though as the longer throw design and stronger magnets coupled with a smaller enclosure usually needs greater power nomatter what the manufacturers claim, its basic physics. If it helps you, check out Proac's website here in the UK and look up the Studio 140's. If these are similar in spec and design to the MTM,s then something like a 25w/channel valve amp should drive them with ease. As I mentioned, my 40 watt Lumley valve amp doesnt even break into a sweat with the proacs and delivers great bass. Nirvana's Raw and Unplugged album played through this set up is the nearest to a live performance I've ever heard. The best advice though is to see if you can audition at home. Thats what I did, after finding a friendly dealer. Hope this helps and good luck!
Actually a 6.5" MTM floorstander would be ideal - something like the Living Voice Avatar. Even might be worth having a look at the Proteus (do a search on it).
I have similar requirements and posted a few weeks ago.
Here's some comments.
First, my room is very similar size (18ft x 14ft). Current speakers are IPL smallish trans lines, single 6.5 inch bass driver, about 88dB.
I have no trouble getting all the volume I need from a 6.5 watt 300B SET, with some in hand.
Of amps I've used, in increasing quality: Naim NAP140 (50wpc), Assemblage st40 EL34 PP (45wpc), same trioded (22wpc, small but very useful improvement), DIY 300B SET (6.5 wpc). Kind of says something about correlation of power to sound quality!
Now I'm not into rock etc so I like bass that plays natural notes naturally; someone into strong rhythmic rock may prefer more bass impact and stronger control I guess; but accoustic music sounds very good.
Anyway I think you'll find say 91dB or so quite enough, and losing a few dB compared to the present speakers to get higher quality and better bass should be a good trade off.
I'm looking at Zaph's large MTM (XG18 and SEAS 27tdfc) as it's an excellent speaker and seems to meet the needs.
Myself, I may use the XT18 (WH version), as it has slightly lower Vas and 1dB more sensitivity. The latter just needs a slight tweak to the tweeter series R.
The impedance is of course somewhat low but seems fairly constant - should be OK for the SET. I'll go for the reflex ported floor stander myself as I think it will give the bass I like - not excessive but tuneful and reasonably low.
I think similar could suit you very well.
Another possible is RZ Audio's RZ6:
http://www.rzaudio.com/rz52/rz6.htm
Seems a simple but very good speaker (nice engineering!). Uses a fairly high sensitivity driver that seems to suffer less breakup than most high efficiency ones. Should give 88dB - about what I have, less than we might want; but it's a nominal 8 ohm speaker. n my case I'm tempted to consider a TL version of it, as I seem to find that my SET likes a TL .....
And the Troels and Humble sites offer some other interesting MTMs and a TL that might suit us ...
so many projects, so little time!
I'm sure all are excellent. Oh, I've driven several speakers with my SET as tests and in every case I've had excellent sound, even with low sensitivity JR149's so I would not worry over much about your valve amp. In choosing a speaker, don't compromise sound quality for the ultimate in sensitivity, I'd suggest.
Here's some comments.
First, my room is very similar size (18ft x 14ft). Current speakers are IPL smallish trans lines, single 6.5 inch bass driver, about 88dB.
I have no trouble getting all the volume I need from a 6.5 watt 300B SET, with some in hand.
Of amps I've used, in increasing quality: Naim NAP140 (50wpc), Assemblage st40 EL34 PP (45wpc), same trioded (22wpc, small but very useful improvement), DIY 300B SET (6.5 wpc). Kind of says something about correlation of power to sound quality!
Now I'm not into rock etc so I like bass that plays natural notes naturally; someone into strong rhythmic rock may prefer more bass impact and stronger control I guess; but accoustic music sounds very good.
Anyway I think you'll find say 91dB or so quite enough, and losing a few dB compared to the present speakers to get higher quality and better bass should be a good trade off.
I'm looking at Zaph's large MTM (XG18 and SEAS 27tdfc) as it's an excellent speaker and seems to meet the needs.
Myself, I may use the XT18 (WH version), as it has slightly lower Vas and 1dB more sensitivity. The latter just needs a slight tweak to the tweeter series R.
The impedance is of course somewhat low but seems fairly constant - should be OK for the SET. I'll go for the reflex ported floor stander myself as I think it will give the bass I like - not excessive but tuneful and reasonably low.
I think similar could suit you very well.
Another possible is RZ Audio's RZ6:
http://www.rzaudio.com/rz52/rz6.htm
Seems a simple but very good speaker (nice engineering!). Uses a fairly high sensitivity driver that seems to suffer less breakup than most high efficiency ones. Should give 88dB - about what I have, less than we might want; but it's a nominal 8 ohm speaker. n my case I'm tempted to consider a TL version of it, as I seem to find that my SET likes a TL .....
And the Troels and Humble sites offer some other interesting MTMs and a TL that might suit us ...
so many projects, so little time!
I'm sure all are excellent. Oh, I've driven several speakers with my SET as tests and in every case I've had excellent sound, even with low sensitivity JR149's so I would not worry over much about your valve amp. In choosing a speaker, don't compromise sound quality for the ultimate in sensitivity, I'd suggest.
I have checked most of those sites and the choises are Zaphs MTM as you recommended, Troels C17 which is supposed to work quite well as long as you don't play to loud and the Auriga from Humble hommade hifi. The initial idéa was to make this a long running project and by doing that allowing a higher budget and having more time to make a really nice cabinet but when I see the less expensive drivers of the C17 I am tempted to just go with them.
The most optimal would be a set of speakers with up to date drivers that wont dissapear from the market in the next few years, not to expensive (not as important) and using 10uF capacitors in the crossover since I have some Leclanché paper-in-oil-caps with that value and those are suppost to be something extraordinary..
I think consistency has been lack luster at best in the past, but Tang Band has a 6.5" driver w6-789S which has 92db effeciency itself and decent overall specs. In an MTM configuration with the right crossover, say a series crossover as I think they have less loss, I believe you could get a speaker with around 95 db's effeciency. It would have to be matched with a very effecient tweeter, possibly a horn loaded dome such as the one Zaph uses in a project, or possibly just a premade one. I bought a 4 of these drivers to begin playing with, so far they don't measure alike, which isn't great, but I think they are close enough to make a set of speakers with, I just might need to adjust crossover values.
They are much more expensive, and I have no idea if you could get the effeciency you want, but I am really in love with the ScanSpeak slit cone drivers in general. I have now built two pairs of speakers using them, and the bass was among the best I have ever heard from small speakers. Every speaker I have heard using these drivers generally sound superb, and I'm yet to use another driver I really like much better. The seas are very nice too, better midrange maybe, but the bass isn't as good. I really would like to build myself a set of MTM Towers with a transmission line cabinet and those Midbass drivers. I think they could be a great speaker for me. Their ability to handle macrodynamics is superb.
They are much more expensive, and I have no idea if you could get the effeciency you want, but I am really in love with the ScanSpeak slit cone drivers in general. I have now built two pairs of speakers using them, and the bass was among the best I have ever heard from small speakers. Every speaker I have heard using these drivers generally sound superb, and I'm yet to use another driver I really like much better. The seas are very nice too, better midrange maybe, but the bass isn't as good. I really would like to build myself a set of MTM Towers with a transmission line cabinet and those Midbass drivers. I think they could be a great speaker for me. Their ability to handle macrodynamics is superb.
mabye slightly not - as diy as you wanted but what about some 10-12" HPD Tannoys? if you dont mind larger enclosures (30L of the 10" and 42-64L for the 12"'s) will (in my experience) give you a dynamic and fun sound thats quite forgiving.....
just my 2 pence 😉 😀
just my 2 pence 😉 😀
Well I understand where your coming from, I once had a similar low power tube + single driver speaker setup as you and it sounded great with lighter stuff, but pretty bad on metal or hardrock. I think the c17 is a good idea, but I think something along the lines of his 3-way classic may even be better. Rock just sounds awesome through 3-ways for some reason. I'm not sure why that is but the best speakers ive heard with metal and rock have always been a basic high efficiency 3-way like some of the older Jbl or Klipsch designs(heresy, cornwall). I found this design while surfing the net big 3-way maybe something in between Troels small three way and these monsters would be perfect? good luck and happy listening!
imperfectcircle
Those big ones were REALLY huge, perhaps something for my friend to pair up with his Krellklone
And I'll check the classics a bit more even if they seem to be a bit too imposing for my taste. Thanks for you opinions/pointers 🙂
Those big ones were REALLY huge, perhaps something for my friend to pair up with his Krellklone
And I'll check the classics a bit more even if they seem to be a bit too imposing for my taste. Thanks for you opinions/pointers 🙂
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