After moving back to NY from a few years in LA, I recently started getting back into home audio. Unfortunately, one of my Soundfield Audio Monitor 1s had no sound coming from the tweeter, something I discovered while still in LA, but hadn't addressed.
I suspected driver failure, but hoped it was just a loose wire. Step one was to purchase a heavily discounted pair of KEF Q100s, which I did this past Fall. This gave me a nice inexpensive temporary set of speakers, and would provide me with a replacement Uni-Q in case the problem was the drive unit itself in the SAMs.
After enjoying the Q100s for a few months, augmented by various sub array arrangements, I decided it was time to resurrect the SAMs. The Q100s are nice, and actually I kind of got used to the sound, but I was always fiddling with stuff like DSP, placement, crossover points, amps, etc, and I see now that it was because they weren't really giving me big, balanced, smooth, and dynamic experience I crave when I sit in front of my hifi.
I got in touch with AJ, who built the SAMs. After years of not talking, he received my call in a friendly, laid back manner. We chatted for a while about speaker stuff in general, and then I told him about what I was calling for, which was tech support on fixing the one speaker. I said the tweeter wasn't making sound, but that I had a spare Uni-Q (two in fact), in case a swap was to be needed.
Long story short, it was a driver failure, I successfully swapped out the bad one for the newer one, and got them playing that night. Had a couple issues getting the baffle off, and then making sure the wiring was correct, but in the end, it turned out fine, with the SAMs taking their rightful place in my living room.
It was a revelation. I had really forgotten just how totally bad-ass these speakers are. They're so smooth and full at such a wide variety of volumes... loud is awesome, louder is awesome, and even quiet is pretty awesome. They blow the Q100s away, (AJ was like, 'duh, of course they do' when I expressed my astonishment at this) which is funny since they share a good deal of tech. But the box design (sealed, braced) and the integrated 8" subwoofer that plays to around 200 hz, freeing up the midrange of its lower register, and... whatever else, not even sure... makes for an ENTIRELY different listening experience. Plus they look cool, I think
Anyhoo, just wanted to share my joy at having my system back, and the feeling of rediscovery of great sound. Special thanks to AJ for being pretty cool and very helpful in all our dealings. And for designing amazing transducers. Cheers, as he would say.
