[thunderbrick]

How many concert halls, auditoriums or movie theaters have bass traps or room treatments?

tberd

More than you realize.  I don't go to many concerts, but I have seen venues with panels that look like B&M audio salon room treatments.  I mean, isn't that what an orchestra shell is?

[tberd]

tberd, where are you located?  Can you borrow different/bigger amps?

I've settled in with my 20.1s but have the itch to upgrade amps and my two most trusted sources are telling me two different things.    

Anybody drive 20.1s with Odyssey amps?

'brick

Hey Thunderbrick,

 Currently live in Dubai. I've had and borrowed numerous brands/sizes of amps through the years. I found with larger amps the presentation gets smeared. Something gets lost. Trust me, I bought into the mega 1000 watt amp club when I got mine. Had 3 very large class D amps that lasted less time in the system than it did to connect them to the speakers. And if it doesn't make music at 70db then at 100db it won't either.

 Most guys think a larger amp is the ticket. Need bigger amps. We all read on forums like this that it's current Maggies need and love. Funny thing is 99% of all amps on the market are VOLTAGE mode amps. First Watt made a current mode amp that sounds killer. So next time you hear someone claiming you need more current, sit back with the popcorn and enjoy the show.

 Let's talk current briefly. Maggies, okay "roughly" a static 4 Ohm load. Let's say your amplifier puts out 100 amps of "rated current". How many watts is that? How about 40,000 watts at your speaker leads. Let's cut it back by 10. Amplifier provides 10 amps which is 400 watts. So knowing 400 watts is there, it's only 10 amps. Big deal....... So my view is that it's not the wattage or current or size of the amp. It's what the amp does in the first few watts that counts. Which is where 99% of us listen at anyway, under 10 watts. 

 I remember the last solid state demo I did. Was a 350 wpc at 8 ohm Krell bruiser. Tube preamp was at 8:30 on the volume knob. I hear a ding dong sound. Who envited the cops to the party!!? That amp had so much gain it was crazy. Wasn't even breaking a sweat.

 I'd like to visit some of your homes and see where on the knob you mega amp guys listen at. Those that feel 500 watts is not enough. Do you have the volume knob cranked all the way around at say 5:00? Most guys don't make it past noon due to excessive system gain. And still we need larger amps? I don't get it. Anyway enough of my ranting.

 BTW, anytime I get away from tubes in my system and try SS or class D for sure, well let's just say every item I own has class A triode Russian tubes in it.

tberd

[thunderbrick]

Thanks, tberd!

I have a tube pre, a hybrid 150wpc amp, and a SS 150 on the sub panels.  Three other SS amps I had briefly were adequate, if that.

Knob settings?  While I don't worry about it since (I think) very few preamp gain pots are alike, I'm running noon to 2 o'clock in a 5,700 cft room.  I am not so much looking for amps to play louder, I am looking for amps that don't break a sweat at loud sessions.  My beloved Moscode 300 gets pretty hot just on the mids and HFs.

Not sure if my concerns have any validity, but what the heck?   

[tberd]

Tberd, I empathize since my room is also too small. Have you tried acoustical treatment, in particular, diffusion? It can make a room acoustically larger.

BTW, most acousticians reject non-parallel walls these days, except in very special circumstances (e.g., reflection-free zones in studio control rooms). They don't have much effect on bass modes, and they make the room unpredictable. They do help with slap echo but slap echo is easy to cure in any room. I built a number of studios with non-parallel walls back in the day, then stopped doing it when I realized it wasn't worth the trouble.

Hi Josh,

 I know where you're heading with this and yes. I would think I would need more traps or less and always fooling with it. Trying this and that it was endless.

 I agree with treatments and your statements. Some of the really cool ones I want to use, the wife won't let me So I 've scaled back on those. 

 I'm no expert but a square room or even rectangle has severe bass loading in the corners. Just part of the deal. If I were to custom build a room it would be trapezoidial in shape, I think anyway and very large.   

 My Maggie dealers living room was about 4 times larger than a typical 3500 square foot home living room in the states. I know everyones house is different but just guestimate that one out. Basically it was two seperate living room zones if you will in one room. Each zone had seperate couches and sitting areas. Then there was space for his gear. He had no treatments of any kind. Just a massive room.

tberd

[tberd]

Thanks, tberd!

I have a tube pre, a hybrid 150wpc amp, and a SS 150 on the sub panels.  Three other SS amps I had briefly were adequate, if that.

Knob settings?  While I don't worry about it since (I think) very few preamp gain pots are alike, I'm running noon to 2 o'clock in a 5,700 cft room.  I am not so much looking for amps to play louder, I am looking for amps that don't break a sweat at loud sessions.  My beloved Moscode 300 gets pretty hot just on the mids and HFs.

Not sure if my concerns have any validity, but what the heck?   

Brick,

 Don't sweat the heat man. I was once told the hotter the amp ran the better the sound. There was something to that as every cool running amp I tried got a short trial session. I like reading Stereophile when they test amps. The old "too hot to touch" deal'io. Then they give it a class A rating.

 Any serious listeners out there using class D amps anymore? Just a temporary fad or what? I know it was for me. All of about 4 minutes worth, LOL.

tberd

[mkcarnut]

When were the last class D's you heard, and were they the Hypex nCore class D's?  All the talk is that they are different.  I am looking forward to hearing them with my Maggie's (1.7's) in ~1 month).  We'll see if they live up to the Hype(x).

Mark

[josh358]

Yes, I hear Class D amps have gotten better. The ones I heard had problems in the highs. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the new ones.

Regarding power, people listen at different levels. Massively different levels, at least judging by the meter readings people posted on the Planar Asylum a while back. So -- if you listen at 100 dB peak levels, you need ten times the power of people who listen at 90 dB levels. At 110 dB levels, 100 times the power. At 120 dB peak levels, 1000 times the power. And the figures posted in the Asylum thread diverged by even more than that. Which is less surprising than it seems when you consider that the ear's response is logarithmic, so each 10 dB/10x increase in amp power corresponds to only a doubling of subjective loudness. Anyway, the people who listen at the higher levels (which are the natural ones for a large scale work) need megapower amps, while most people don't, at least from a clipping perspective.

When people say that Maggies need current, I think they're usually referring to the fact that they're four ohm speakers, and at four ohms, most SS amps will current clip before they voltage clip. So usually that's what you're limited by. An amp with plenty of current should pretty much double its power into a 4 ohm load. With higher impedance speakers, you'd typically run into voltage clipping first. But of course amps need both current and voltage. As a secondary issue, with music, which has a 10-20 dB peak/average ratio, the usable output of an amp is determined by its peak output, not its RMS output. That, and differences in clipping characteristics, mean that amps with the same power rating can exhibit substantial differences in how loud they can play; SS amps typically have to have twice the rated power of tube amps for the same level.

[josh358]

Hi Josh,

 I know where you're heading with this and yes. I would think I would need more traps or less and always fooling with it. Trying this and that it was endless.

 I agree with treatments and your statements. Some of the really cool ones I want to use, the wife won't let me So I 've scaled back on those. 

 I'm no expert but a square room or even rectangle has severe bass loading in the corners. Just part of the deal. If I were to custom build a room it would be trapezoidial in shape, I think anyway and very large.   

 My Maggie dealers living room was about 4 times larger than a typical 3500 square foot home living room in the states. I know everyones house is different but just guestimate that one out. Basically it was two seperate living room zones if you will in one room. Each zone had seperate couches and sitting areas. Then there was space for his gear. He had no treatments of any kind. Just a massive room.

tberd

Corners are also problematic because you get a double reflection from the backwave (speaker > front wall > side wall > listener) and they exhibit a focusing effect, i.e., send the sound back in the direction from which it came. In my experience, this causes problems with the imaging. My room is open on the right, and has a wall on the left, and you can clearly hear that the image is better on the right side, unless you like the wraparound effect.

I've seen some rooms in which the owners had added reflectors in the corners. Never tried it myself, it's an interesting project for some day . . .

In a big room, you typically just need some extra HF absorption, which can be drapes and furniture. This is because the less frequently sound bounces off of a surface, the less highs are absorbed. You might also want some diffusion to reduce interaural cross correlation -- good concert halls use diffusion for that reason, in older halls architectural ornaments and in newer ones diffusers, purpose-built features, clouds, etc.

[MaggiesAndCats]

I have two copies of it on CD but not on vinyl - yet.
Sundazed put out a 180gm version which is up next on my music purchase list.
My favorite Hot Tuna album is still First Pull Up, Then Pull Down which I've listened to countless times since Junior High School.
It was only three years ago that I saw where the title came from: those paper toilet set protector dispensers that you find in public rest rooms.  I burst out laughing when I read it...

Ahhh...  Hot Tuna!!  I love those guys, in all their incarnations, and saw them a couple of months ago.  They still can rock for a couple of guys ~70 years old.  I saw the acoustic duo version in 2001 and thought I was in heaven.  Jorma and HT mandolin player Barry Mitterhof will be in the area in October.  I still have all of my old vinyl plus CD's of many of them.  They released another CD of songs a few years ago from the same live session at Berkeley House that become their first album.

Their recent album, the first in around 20 years, was released on 180g vinyl and CD.  I listened to the CD version but my rig is down right now so I haven't listened to the vinyl yet.  I was checking out music I can download from the library and came across Freegal, which has free music to download legally.  The first 2 songs I downloaded to my tablet are Mann's Fate and Water Song.  Go figure!

I use Jorma Kaukonen's last 2 solo albums to check my system performance - and to show it off to other people.  He has a full band but the music is mostly acoustic oriented.  They are wonderful recordings for sound reproduction, easily in the top 2 or 3 CD's I have.  Very clean and realistic.

As a side note, I've taken bass lessons from Jack Casady several time at Jorma's Fur Peace Ranch.  He is an exceptional instructor who "really cares" and a personality that is as unique as his bass playing.  I'll be heading back to Fur Peace in a few weeks to learn from George Porter, Jr.  Jorma will be teaching and will put on a solo show for the students, which is always one of the highlights of going there.

Steve

[tberd]

When were the last class D's you heard, and were they the Hypex nCore class D's?  All the talk is that they are different.  I am looking forward to hearing them with my Maggie's (1.7's) in ~1 month).  We'll see if they live up to the Hype(x).

Mark

 All I can say is have a good set of tube amps available when you audition the nCore. Do a same day same material shoot out. I've never seen any class D amp dethrone any tube amp. Or heard anyone that went to class D because of their superior sound. Even the cheaper Chinese copied tube gear will triumph against class D. Or if someone does they're fooled into it because D amps play louder and people think it's a better sound. Louder is not better.

 As you can tell I'm a tube guy. On paper and to my ears, class A amps are still the best amplification devices out there. All other methods be it AB, B, D, G, H have their own issues/limitations. Then there's tube vs. SS. My second choice if tubes were extinct would be a full class A Pass Labs, Plinius, Krell, Levinson and so on. I wouldn't even look at it if it wasn't 100% class A.

 Maybe the nCore will sound good to you who knows?   Good luck with it and let us know how it turns out.


tberd