[Lkdog]

Mike suggested I post and get your input if that is OK.

Longtime customer here. I have an ACI Titan sub, have had the Sapphire 25th Ann Ed; and moved up to the ACI Jaguar LE’s last summer
when you were ending production.

I still run the ACI Titan sub and use a modded Musical Fidelity A300 integrated amp to drive the ACI Jags.

Have been wondering about a couple things:

 1)    My amp does 150 X 2 @ 8 ohms and 260 X2 @ 4 ohms. Would more power benefit the Jaguars? The sound is excellent, but I have to kind of push the amp a bit to get them to open up it seems sometimes. I see you used to run a Bryston 4B SST amp which was 300 watts a channel, and now run a pretty big Adcom for the Jags.
Although the Jags are not a hard load regarding ohm swing, they are not super efficient @ 87db. I was wondering if more power would improve the presentation or reduce any sense of strain.

2) I see your room is 20' x 26' with vaulted ceilings which is even bigger than my fairly large 17' X 25' room with 8' ceilings. I do not listen to my music really that loud (maybe 80-85 db's at loudest). SOme people have suggested that the Jags may be too small for my room.
I am wondering if it is more of an amp power issue.

Any input would be apprciated and anyone else who wants to jump in is welcome!

Thanks.

[JAMn Joe]

Lkdog,

I'll try to address a couple of your issues as I have been out to Eric's on multiple occasions and we have tried various amps, preamps, cabling, positioning, et cetera.

Eric has the LFM modules that are designed to mate up with the Jag's. I believe he also owns an ACI sub but that resides in another system.

We have run the Grommes 360 tube amps at 60 watts, the Luminance Audio amp at 150 watts, and of course his former Bryston amp and the current Stan Warren modified Adcom.

There doesn't seem to be an issue of power in Eric's room but I'm not sure how much of that is offset by the LFM units sitting under each Jag. In Eric's system the amplifiers are basically just driving the Jags above the point where they are crossed over to the LFM's so the load is relatively easy.

Eric brought the Jag's over to my location without the LFM's and we tested them in a 16'x14'x8' room and they sounded great. I didn't notice and issue with not having enough power to drive the speakers to loud levels. The Jag's should have np problems with your space size as they fill Eric's listening area completely.

Eric has the speakers aproximately 5' out from the back walls, about 9'-10' between the speakers, and roughly 6'-8' from the side walls. Listening distance is about 10' from the speakers. This is an eyeball estimation as I never pulled out a tape measure to check exact measurments.

If I'm reading your statement correctly I believe you do not have the same configuration as Eric as you do not have the LFM bass units for each speaker. If I read that wrong please let me know. If your working with the sub you might want to try crossing it over at a higher frequency and if you can put a cut-off filter in or use something like the Outlaw Audio LFM module to limit the lower frequency's going to the Jaguars and let the sub carry that load you might solve your problem. The LFM unit is only a couple hundred dollars and you might be able to find a used unit on A-Gon or E-bay.

Hope this helps and I'm sure Eric will chime in next time he's on-line and checking the ACI post.

[Lkdog]

Joe-

Thanks very much for the reply. You are correct, I do not have the same setup as Eric with the dual LFM's.
My single ACI Titan handles the low end duties and he has the dual LFM's.
I have an older Titan (circa 1999-2000) that can be set to cutoff between 50-180hz.
I have it set at about 65hz and have the ports plugged on the rear of the Jaguars which Mike suggested to me when I got them.
Not quite the same as the 65hz or 85 hz filters of course, or the Outlaw filter you mention, but since I have an integrated amp, I don't have a choice.

I do have the Jags about 5' in from front wall, about 3.5' from side walls, about 8' apart, and about 9'+ from listening position. The sidewalls actually are not parallel as the right side is a stairwell wall that then becomes wider about halfway back into the room.

No toe in. The Scanspeak tweeters and Jag front baffle design are pretty amazing regarding soundstage width as you know.

I do have an opportunity to borrow a Parasound 2200 mkII amp from a friend which is quite a bit more powerful than the amp in the MF A300 and could see how that works in my setup.
That would also allow me to use some of the ACI filters in line from the preamp to the amp if I wished to try that. The Parasound is a 225 watt
high current amp, though, so should handle the Jags pretty easy.

[JAMn Joe]

Lkdog,

The other thing you might want to investigate is your cabling. We upgraded the cables Eric was using to Star Sound Technologies Sonoran Plateau cables (speaker, interconnect and power) and that made a big difference in his system. We also tried the Revelation Audio Labs cable later and that had excellent results as well.

You might have a capacitance issue with the cables you are using and the speakers. I also might suggest you unplug the speaker ports and try them that way. You might fine that by unpluggin the ports that you don't have to drive the speakers as hard.

Just a few additional thoughts.

[Lkdog]

Joe-

Using a DH Labs bi-wire speaker cable setup with T14 for tweeter and Q10 on bottom for Jag woofers.
VArious IC's, most recently Straightwire Cresecendo or RS Audio Silver.
Power cords have been VH Audio on inetrgated and source.

Recently trying some CRL/FIM Silver power cords which are better than the VH Audio it seems at first listen.

[Eric]

Lkdog,

I want to echo Joe's sentiments here. Of all the amps I have tried with my configuration the Jags have never sounded "under powered". Before I had the current Jag set up I used to run Jag 2000's with a Titan sub. I had the same results with that combination as well.

Rahter than jump at a new amp, it migh be to your benefit to try a second Titan. In that way you would be replicating to a certain level what the dual LFM's do. Rather than looking for more wattage, I would lokk for better quality amplification if you need to make an upgrade in the amp (that would be my next step). I would have no problem going down to a lower wattage tube amp that had more qualities that I was looking for, than simply pusing more power at the jags.

HTH