[clairemontcat]

I haven't had these speakers that long, 5 months, and I'm already thinking about upgrading.  My system consists of ipod, yamaha A/V as pre, onix sp3 tube amp and my beautiful marble 9.0's on ikea stools.

I find these speakers like to be driven with a lot of power and only really start to sing when played loud.  They excel in the bass and when played loud it's almost to much base.  Maybe this has to do with positioning?

What I feel my ears want is higher sensitivity with more detail at lower volumes.  I want a simple system.  I've been hearing good things about single driver and open baffle speakers driven by battery powered amps.

So what I'm thinking of getting is a clar-T or modded TEAC AL700p to drive  a pair of Bastani DIY Prometheus open baffles with stereo subs.
No fancy pancy power conditioner or stealth ninja anti gravity cords made by babylon systems needed.  Just a simple, low power, efficient, unsampled system that won't break the bank.

Any norh owners gone this route?

Any Norh 9.0 owners make the switch to single drivers or open baffles?

What if you put a high efficiency single driver into a 9.0 cabinet/drum.  How would it sound?

-John

[Marbles]

The first thing you need to do is try the Dennis Murphy designed cross over for these speakers.

You can find the schematic for the crossover  at www.murphyblaster.com

[Rick Craig]

The first thing you need to do is try the Dennis Murphy designed cross over for these speakers.

You can find the schematic for the crossover  at www.murphyblaster.com

One thing to keep in mind is that the sensitivity with DM's crossover is only about 81db.

[Captain Humble]

I find these speakers like to be driven with a lot of power and only really start to sing when played loud. They excel in the bass and when played loud it's almost to much base. Maybe this has to do with positioning?

Back when I was running Marble 9.0's I had them almost 3 feet from the back wall and used a sub to fill in the bottom end. If you're getting too much base you might try moving them a bit farther from the back wall and see if that helps.

I've never owned any tube components, but with solid state amps I didn't find the 9.0's to be wanting in detail.  Actually at times they seemed to be a bit over analytical.

In my system, and in my room they sounded pretty good at low volume.  Due to room size and taste I found that they couldn't deliver the SPL's I demand at times and that's why I sold them.

Just for grins, you might try borrowing a solid state amp just to see how the 9.0's sound in that configuration.

Good luck.
Jeff

[sas]

(some EDITS)

My guess is that the iPod is the weakest link in your system. The problem is that the analogue output from the ipod is just about enough to drive small headphones, but not really an amplifier.
Most analogue outs from CD players are about 2volts. I think the iPod is 1v or less.
Therefore I imagine that with the ipod your system sounds a bit "thin", and you need to crank it way up to get a full sound -- but then this sounds a bit distorted, especially in the bass.
I would also guess that whatever speakers you tried with the ipod and Yamaha receiver combination, you would have the same problem.
Your playback quality may also limited by the quality of the files on your iPod. If you are using 128-192 kbps MP3 files, the sound through the norhs will be even thinner.

Given that you want to be convinced to keep the norh 9.0's, I would look at different options:

1. Keep the ipod as you portable listening device, and set up a dedicated PC as a jukebox. You need to get a quiet PC, a display, and a mouse. You do not need a powerful gaming PC for this. If you like apple, get a laptop like an ibook, or was of those tiny cubes they just released.
   The most important thing is that from this you need PURE digital out from a soundcard. The M-audio transit USB is an example -- it gives you an optical out. (it takes the date from you hardrive and turns it into an sdpif signal). This is then fed into an external DAC - digital-to-analogue convertor, (such as the CIAudio, they also have a forum on this site), which in turn has analogue outs that can easily drive an ampifier. Total cost for a PC and a DAC - about $1000. This is roughly how my system is set up, and I find the sound blows away any CD player I've tried. The advantage here is you get a dedicated jukebok, just like with the ipod. You can sync it with the ipod too. Ideally, get a large harddrive and use lossless encoding.

2. Find a way to get a pure digital out from the Ipod and use an external DAC. But as far as I can tell the ipod canot give pure digital out. This is an annoyance, but double check because there may be some ipod docking bays or something.

3. use some kind of higher gain preamp between the ipod and the amplifier to boost the signal a bit. Maybe the norh aca2b would do the job well for $400. This is less ideal, because you still have the weak output of the ipod.

In short, with those norh 9.0's you have the potential for a fantastic system. But they are being let down upstream. Remember, rubbish in, rubbish out. The ipod was designed to drive earbud headlphones, not amplifiers.

One thing you should test though -- take a basic CD or DVD player, and try comparing the sound of a CD to the same track you have on you iPod.  Normally you should hear what you want to hear.

Eventually you may also want to look at upgrading the Yamaha reciever. In my experience alot of receivers are generally packed with features, but lack in power.

tell us what you think.

sas

[Meltz]

I don't have much new advice to add, but I just wanted to second what sas said.  The Ipod's strengths are storage capacity and convenience, not audio quality, unfortunately.   I've got my Ipod connected to an Onkyo receiver and I can tell the difference between a song played on CD and on the Ipod - and I'm using crappy Pioneer towers.    Connect up a discman and see what you get.

Of course, if you still want to sell those 9.0's I'd be interested, depending on the price

[Highlander]

If you use the iPod as a source with any speakers capable of revealing inadequacies in the "upstream" electronics then you will never be happy.  If you are going to use the iPod as a source then save yourself some money, buy cheaper speakers, cheaper amp and then use the change to buy CD's or download some more songs.  Playing around with positioning will help a little but won't fix the fundamental problem of having a weak source.

All IMHO of course.

[clairemontcat]

Thanks for all the input.

In terms of source will I have the same problems with a G4 laptop?

I do have a discman which works well but I still feal that I have to turn up the volume to get these speakers to do their thing.

Maybe it's my ears.  All those years of surfing in the ocean have narrowed my ear cannals.

Have any of you guys tried single drivers or open baffles?

[Rocket]

hi,

Have any of you guys tried single drivers or open baffles?

your source and preamp aren't up to the standards of your speakers imo.  i don't know about using laptops as a source but why would you want to bother.

you have obviously spent a reasonable amount of money on your speakers but if you don't want to invest a lot of money you might want to buy a pair of norh 3's which are fairly cheap.

regards rod

[sas]

"In terms of source will I have the same problems with a G4 laptop?"

Hi again clairemontcat,

If you just use the headphone out, meaning that the G4 acts as the transport and the DAC, then you will have the same problem as with the Ipod. But you won't have the same problem if you only use the G4 as a transport.

What you want to do is to get pure digital out from the G4. This is best done by an external USB soundcard of some sort. There are various options you could look at: the M-Audio Transit, the Waveterminal U24, the Edirol UA5. These will cost you anything between $75 and $250. They basically take the data from the G4 and turn it into a digital signal which in turn outputs through a coaxial or optical (toslink) connection.

You would then need a DAC. An example is the Channel Islands Audio (www.ciaudio.com) VDA1, which costs $349. You plug the optical or coaxial cable from the soundcard into this, and it turns it into an analogue output to plug into your amp. I haven't tried it, but it seems to have an excellent reputation. There is also the Benchmark DAC1, ($975) which also has an excellent reputation. The Benchmark has a volume knob, so can also function as a preamp and a headphone amp too.

There are other options, such as DAC's that have a USB input. A company called Wavelength has one called the "Brick" which costs $1750. They even have one that costs $4000. Then there is the cheaper Scott Nixon Tube DAC (up do $800 depending on options I think) , which will soon have a USB input. The Scott Nixon DAC has an excellent reputation.

There are so many options. If you are interested in going down this route, have a good search through the Audio Asylum and Head-Fi forum websites, which have dedicated froums for people who use a computer as their source. You'll also find instructions on how to get "bit perfect" output from iTunes.

I can't tell you much more about the G4. I use PCs.

Another thing to bear in mind is the encoding you use to store your music. Take a look at lossless encoding (Apple lossless, FLAC etc) instead of lossy (WMA, MP3 etc). If you are ripping your own CDs, rip them into lossless first. This way you have an exact representation of the CD as a file. If you want to put the file onto the Ipod, you can transcode it to something like MP3.

I really think your source is the problem, not the Norh 9.0s. I think the 9.0's are not being exploited to their full potential. This is a shame because they are beautful speakers.
If you get a good G4 system going with a DAC, then after that you may want to upgrade the preamp and amps too.

But if you're stuck on using the Ipod, rather than going down the laptop as transport route, the Norh's will be wasted in the system.

I have no idea what your budget is, but something like the following system, configured correctly, would blow away your current system and rival the kind of playback you'd get from a high-end CD player:

G4 -> M-Audio Transit USB soundcard ($75) ->  glass toslink cable ($35 off eBay) -> CIAudio DAC ($350) -> Norh aca2b preamp ($400) -> a pair of IRD audio MB-100 monoblocks ($580) -> Norh 9.0s.

You can start with the soundcard and a DAC. Do you live in the US? If you do (unlike me), you are damn lucky. CIAudio do a 30 day no risk home trial. So to try out the laptop route, it'll cost you the price of shipping for the DAC and the price of the USB soundcard and cable.

This is just an example. What do you think?

sas

[sas]

clairemontcat,

Just taking a second look at your system, I see the Onix is actually an integrated amp. Is that right? It may also be fine to drive the Norh 9.0s.

If it is, I'm wondering why you are putting the Yamaha, most likely inferior, in front of it.

I suggest as a first step that you experiment with the laptop, pure digital out, a standalone DAC feeding into the Onix.

Maybe that will solve your problems. My idea is that at the moment, the ipod and the Yamaha pre are the weak parts.

Again, an easy way to se if that is good is to simply try a regular CD or DVD player and run it directly into the Onix, if it is indeed an integrated.

sas

[clairemontcat]

Thanks Sas, great info.  

I plan on going the laptop route with usb output to DAC etc.  Probably a Scott Nixon TubeDac.

I've heard that playback of lossless files from a hardrive via usb is better than most high end CDP's.  No problems with jitter etc.

I think the 9.0's are amazing speakers and have enjoyed them but wonder if others have moved on to more efficient speakers and were satisfied.

[jackman]

The 9.0's can be very good sounding speakers, and I bet the Murphy mods take them to another (better) level, but I don't think you will be able to drive them with a low powered amp.  I'm confident the Clari-tee, or modded Teak amps sound great with the right speakers but if Rick's efficiency figures are correct, and I think they are, the nOrh's will probably not sound good with anything less than 200 wpc.  

I'd probably do the Murphy mod on the 9's and look for a used Aragon 4004 on Ebay or Audiogon for around $500 (or a decent high powered amp) to drive those 9's.  You could also pick up a good CDP like the version of the CD25 that AV123 is selling for $300 or so and have a really nice system.  Oh, and you will probably want to look at a decent preamp. I have seen some very inexpensive Odyssey preamps on Audiogon that would probably work well for you.

Or...you could just sell those nOrh speakers and get a pair of high efficiency speakers that would allow you to try out one of those modded low-ish powered digital amps that seem to be the rage.  The nOrh speakers should get you enough $$$ to put together a decent all-around system.  High efficiency speakers are an area that is very foriegn to me but you should be able to get some good advice from AC folks who are into that sort of thing.  

Best of luck!

J

[nathanm]

The Dennis Murphy XO sounds like what I would try first.  But 81db?  Ouch.  That's low!  I remember listening to the SP Tech speakers at audiojerry's once and those were about 81db and the freaggin' 300 watt amp was clipping.  Wasn't even that subjectively loud either.  Something's sucking up a lotta juice in there.

When I had my marble Norh speakers I couldn't help but wonder if the super inert cabinet is actually a subjective hindrance in that it's not vibrating and offering the sympathetic resonances one is used to hearing with wooden box speakers, thus making them less loud.

Don't sell 'em though - you won't get a good price for 'em anyway.  It's a unique speaker.  How many people can say, "MY speakers look an an easter ham!"  And remember that bit about these speakers outliving the human race and all that jazz.  Now is your chance to carve the rosetta stone of audiophiledom on the inside of those drums!  Warn future generations about the evils of upgraditits!

[jackman]

The Dennis Murphy XO sounds like what I would try first.  But 81db?  Ouch.  That's low!  I remember listening to the SP Tech speakers at audiojerry's once and those were about 81db and the freaggin' 300 watt amp was clipping.  Wasn't even that subjectively loud either.  Something's sucking up a lotta juice in there.

When I had my marble Norh speakers I couldn't help but wonder if the super inert cabinet is actually a subjective hindrance in that it's not vibrating and offering the sympathetic resonances  ...

Nathan, I love reading your posts!  On second thought, I'd sell them.  81db no matter how good sounding would require two 4004's or more.  That's just too inefficient.  I like loud music once in a while and don't think 81db would cut it.  You could probably get about $1,500 for those speakers but shipping would be a beeatch.  

You have a real dilemma (sp?).  

Whatever you do, best of luck.

[Marbles]

Actually, there is a statistical effeciency based on computer modeling, as in this case, and there is measured effeciency based on the actual speaker.

The nOrhs have no back wave to interfere with the drivers  and seem to play much higher than their 85 1w/1M effeciency would suggest.  I suggest that would also be true with the DM XO.

[clairemontcat]

Whats funny is that I decided to get these speakers after reading what some of you guys were saying last year.

The reasons I have the yamaha as a pre are beacause it has a remote and the inputs on the sp3 are to far apart for the ipod cable I have.  So I can fix that.  I also like the reciever for classical and jazz fm.  i think the sp3 has aux inputs.  

I have to admit to upgradeitis.  It's the nature of the mind.

I plan on keeping the  9.0's.  I like the way they look and they go well with the rest of my 50's decore.  I won't sell them until I actually hear something that blows me away.

-John