Hi Guys,
Over the last few months I have been playing my system for eight music interested guest, one to two persons at the time .Some knew nothing about Hi-Fi and some quite fanatic like me. All made comments about how natural and lifelike the speakers presented the music, specially the great bandwide and dynamics was mentioned from most of the people. "Amazing...Newer heard anything like that before... Just like being there again...I don't believe it, was some of the comments. One of the guys mentioned that he would like to get the sound concentrated in a big center spot, not mono but concentrated center still with big stage. Another felt the midrange a little to forward, properly doe to of the lack of roomtreadment in my livingroom.
The last two comments have been tumbling around in my head, it´s in these comments new ideas fore improvement sometimes start out. I like to fix the problems without spoiling the good sound already existing. So slowly in small steps,1-3mm at the time, I moved the speakers towards each other and with less and less toe-in until I got the intense center with big stage. Then a little forward and backward with both speakers until best bass response and timing were obtained. This went on fore five days until I was satisfied. The midrange issue I fixed with small pieces of molton fabric behind the rack. Sweet!
Now some of the energy behind the speakers disappeared, leaving the direct sound undisturbed and with more impact from the resulting soundwave. aa
Then I remembered something I had tried years before, cleaning connectors. Everything, mainsoutlet in the wall, every powerplug in the amps and the DAC were cleaned, so were every IC male and female. Especially cleaning of the banana connectors in the speakers had big influence. Maybe because I am using silver banana plugs on my speakerkabels?
I used silverpolish and then Ajax on cotton swab fore cleaning the connectors.
What a difference, super clean, even faster, greater bandwide, more open with tons of microdynamics and most a of all a lot more musicality. Now I can play the most complex music really loud and actually enjoy it. Some of the complex music suddenly makes sense when it`s played really loud. The interaction between the instruments, the last information in the music, witch maybe is the key to understanding it, now appear. Basic notes and rhythm is like a unshakable foundation leaving the rest of the music to sparkle from the speaker. It was very good before, but now!
This great musicality almost makes me feel like dancing. This is big words, I usually don't dance unless I have had a couple of liters of beer or even stronger!
I think some of the guy´s will have to hear it once again.
I am very grateful fore having med Karsten and fore him to introduce me to these amazing speakers. The last five month with Continuum A.D.have been like getting the right tool to determine witch way to go with various changes and tweaks for improving my system. It´s a new reference to me. The weak points from other traditional build speakers are easy to hear now. Like phaseproblems around x-overfrekvencies, grupedelay problems, reduced dynamics and lack of control, incoherent sound, break up on big woofers are just some of the things that is very common on other more traditional build speakers, unfortunately even quite expensive ones too. Maybe that's the reason why I haven't been buying speakers for the last 18 Years? Nothing appealed to me until now. All of them new vine on old bottles. I truly feel sorry for the folks that haven't hear these speakers yet. So when I am able to I expose people to this naked accurate sound! aa
I also want to thank Bob fore having designed and build these fantastic speakers, and for the great posts here on AC. It´s like being back to school again, thank`s.
Best Regards,
Brian
